Fr Bux on St Augustine and the Church's catholicity

The Fides press agency published a dossier of St Augustine-related texts (in Italian only, alas) to accompany the Roman Pontiff's visit to Pavia this past weekend, including this essay by Father Nicola Bux on St Augustine and the catholicity of the Church which is quite good if one negotiates around the infelicities of the (Fides) translation.

In the prayer he composed in front of relics of Saint Augustine when they were brought in 2004 for a few hours to his private chapel, John Paul II asked the great Saint for the gift of some of his love for the Church. I was deeply moved. Perhaps the Pope was aware of how we Catholics tend to forget our Mother, thanks to whom we became and are re-born as children of God. Was it not said in the old days that no one can be a child of God unless his mother is the Church? Today we live in times when Christians distinguish themselves from the Church, they separate from her and are hostile to her; they seem embarrassed to belong to her; they work for peace, for solidarity, for justice but separately from the Church; they appear to have forgotten that Jesus wished the Church to be the place for the redeemed existence of man, the place in which to find answers to the questions of human life.

From the certainty we receive in the Church, flows our presence everywhere in the world; it is in the Church that the Spirit dialogues with man in the sense than through her He reaches out to everyone; he does not blow separately within and without the Church, he moves her from within - how many charisma, institutions, orders, fraternities, Church movements He has produced! - in order to dialogue with man in every era, to tell him about the Gospel, to communicate the beauty of saying yes to the law of the Spirit, to indicate Jesus Christ as the answer to the needs of mankind, to every genuine searching for God; this is the result of a personal encounter with the Lord, not a moral decision.

The way is not something apart from the Church: Saint Augustine was aware that a true Catholic does not live loyalty to Christ separately from the Church, he does not suffer from dichotomy or worse schizophrenia between the Church and the world, he does not belong half to one and half to the other. The Augustinian motto “omnes amandi” or “being all for all” means “correcting the turbulent, encouraging the weak, assisting the infirm, confuting the critical, shaking the lazy, stopping the angry, suppressing pride, healing conflict, helping the needy, freeing the oppressed, approving the good, tolerating the bad, loving all”.

The great Bishop knew well that the Church is “life”, she is communion, then comes also the juridical form: “communio” means believing together with the Church. Freedom to be authentic must be in the truth, it needs communion, otherwise it is isolated, good only for self and therefore false; in this sense Augustine fought heresy as a personal choice of what to believe and how to act. He knew that “victory belongs only to truth and the victory of truth is charity”. Therefore the Catholic Church is organised not by the hierarchy but by the experience that is the faith, the encounter with Christ which cannot be separated from communio ecclesiale, and is at the same time both personal and common; only the encounter of the faith produces love, friendship and culture. The Saintly Doctor of the Church was convinced that “no one should be forced to unite with Christ; with the word we must act, with discussion we must fight, with reason we must conquer ”.

It is Saint Augustine's Catholic thought which Pope Benedict XVI is reliving making it ever more relevant today. I believe this thought inspires the Pope's “programme”, his personal responsibility towards the universal Church, ultimately for its reform, and he wants the Church to be for all believers and accepted even by non believers who have at heart the reason and truth of man. 

(Agenzia Fides 21/4/2007)