Husband and Wife: Complementarity and Timeless Truth
Was St. Augustine a Catholic or a Protestant?
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St. Augustine is the saint of the early Church most often promoted by Protestants, outside of the apostles of course. Most Protestants believe that this Church Father was very similar in belief and practice to their own denomination and NOT a Catholic.
So, was St. Augustine a Protestant or a Catholic? Check out these five key quotes below and you decide. Share this article with a Protestant friend and see what they think!
1. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone (Against the Letter of Manichaeus called Fundamental 4:5 [A.D. 397]).
2. TRADITION
But in regard to those observances which we carefully attend and which the whole world keeps, and which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the apostles themselves or by plenary [ecumenical] councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church (Letter 54:1 [A.D. 400]).
3. THE MASS
Christ is both the priest, offering Himself, and Himself the victim. He willed that the sacramental sign of this should be the daily sacrifice of the Church, who, since the Church is His body and He the head, learns to offer herself through Him (The City of God 10:20 [A.D. 413-426]).
A Christian people celebrate together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers (Against Faustus the Manichean [A.D. 400]).
That bread which you see on the altar having been sanctified by the word of God is the body of Christ, That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ (Sermons 227 [A.D. 411]).
4. UNDERSTANDING DOCTRINE
But when proper words make Scripture ambiguous, we must see in the first place that there is nothing wrong in our punctuation or pronunciation. Accordingly, if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church, and of which I treated at sufficient length when I was speaking in the first book about things (On Christian Doctrine 3:2:2 [A.D. 397]).
5. PURGATORY
Temporal punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by some after death, by some both here and hereafter, but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But not all who suffer temporal punishments after death will come to eternal punishments, which are to follow after that judgment (The City of God 21:13 [A.D. 419]).
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