Augustine and Modernity

To dovetail into the upcoming discussion of John Paul II's last book Memory and Identity, I shall delve into yet another one of the interminable examples of the totalitarian nature of modern thought. It's becoming a regular feature, but one must be responsive to the times.
Anyway, I had the distinct displeasure of reading the 23 May 2005 issue of US News and World Report. Though the headline story is the sensational revelation that casinos have a winning edge(!), buried on page 64 of the magazine is a review of a new biography of St. Augustine. The new book is called Augustine:A New Biography by Georgetown University "classicist" James O'Donnell.
Despite the fact that O'Donnell was born more than 1,500 years after Augustine's death, the intrepid author has figured out Augustine better than anyone else in the last millennium or so. His contention is that Augustine wrote his Confessions to "convince the world" of his theological points.
Of course, many people wonder how Mr. O'Donnell figured out Augustine's secret purpose. The answer is (aside from rejecting anything that Augustine wrote that O'Donnell does not agree with as some sort of propaganda) that a "handful" of accounts are construed to characterise him as a "nerdy, calculating do-gooder."
Naturally, we're not told whether these accounts come from true friends of Augustine, or perhaps his old Manichean friends displeased at his conversion. In addition, O'Donnell characterises Augustine as a "scheming, self-promoting hammer of Donatists".
This leads to another bit of silly argument. He claims that Augustine's criticism of the Donatists was an eeeevil and intolerant act that "weakened grass-roots Christianity (so)that Islam easily prevailed in North Africa a few centuries later." Donatism, of course, was a heretical doctrine. It held that priests who had handed over materials in the great persecutions before Constantine could no longer deliver the sacraments. It emphasised the purity of the clergy as a necessary precondition for the religious service.
Naturally, the article doesn't cover that. Instead, Donatists are Christians who "accepted the practice of re-baptism for those believers who they felt had relapsed into sin." Sounds nice and tolerant, eh? It again exercises the modern dynamic of "intolerant religious fundamentalist (Augustine) vs. tolerant branch of religion (Donatism)." People respond to it because it fits with their understanding based on modern ideas.
In reality, the Donatists were not tolerant- they were extremely ascetic and they did not forgive clergy who erred during the Roman persecutions. They also considered lay people who took sacraments given by an impure cleric to be damned with said cleric. None of this is mentioned in the article, naturally. If you're really interested in Donatism, see the short-but-sweet Wikipedia Article and the longer article in the Popish Encyploaedia.
Anyway, Augustine argued against the Donatists at the great debate between Donatist and Orthodox Bishops in Carthage in 411 AD. His testimony turned the momentum against the Donatists, and they began shrinking thereafter, with the help of state suppression of their doctrine. Augustine, interestingly enough, protested against their harsh suppression by the Roman state. In any case, though "a few historians" believe that Islam took over thanks to the suppression of Donatism, it's far from established, and foolish to blame Augustine.
Finally, O'Donnell criticises Augustine's idea of Original Sin as something that "defies logic on various points." From what O'Donnell says, it seems Augustine pulled the concept of Original Sin out of his mitre. This isn't the case- Original Sin is the curse for the primal disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3, God commands Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of Life. "Ye shall not eat of it...lest ye die. (Genesis 3:1)" They do, and they are expelled from Earthly Paradise (Eden) for their offense, in addition to having numerous curses laid upon them. They feel shame ("And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked (Genesis 3:7)"), and they become self-aware as a result of this primal disobedience. Humans to-day are self-aware, and as this awareness is connected to the primal sin of the Original Parents, the blight of their sin continues.
Of course, that's not good news for the likes of O'Donnell, so he derides it as "illogical" that the curse is extended to Adam and Eve's descendants. Are we not still self-aware? Does the ground not still resist us, or women not feel sorrow in their childbirth (Genesis 3:16-17)? The curse is a multi-generational affair.
In any case, the second paragraph in brings us to the author's purpose. "Benedict XVI...has long claimed St. Augustine as his theological lodestar. Observers might reasonably wonder whether that debt can explain the central mystery of...Joseph Ratzinger: how a reform-minded adviser to Vatican II became a rigid defender of the church doctrine while through it all claiming a core consistency to his beliefs and teachings."
In answer to this "central mystery," one might quip the proposition that Ratzinger began enforcing church doctrine when it became his job to do so as head of the former Inquisition. One might also put forth the idea that a commitment to "reform" is not a permanent engagement. Perhaps young Ratzinger was satisfied with the reforms of Vatican II, and decided to keep it at that. In any case, this is another modern blunder- the idea of "reform" as a permanent (and universally good) entity. The idea of "reform" is to "re-form" something until it works properly, rather than a permanent state of affairs.
But regardless, we see the quintessential modern criticism of Benedict XVI's platform as told through the distorted tale of Augustine: if you don't commit to "reform" and get into line with our perfect understanding of things, you're deeply flawed and will destroy your organisation forever, as Augustine supposedly did. What actually happened is not relevant to their purpose.