We need a moral compass (From The Northern Echo)

We need a moral compass

12:23pm Tuesday 30th August 2011 in Peter Mullen By Peter Mullen

LAST Sunday was the Feast Day of St Augustine (AD 354-430). If he were to come back to Europe today, he would probably feel very much at home.

There were the barbarians attacking and besieging Rome itself and gangs of marauders – you might say, terrorists – mounting raids on outposts of the empire; there was within Rome an alien and disaffected minority who refused to accept the Roman civilisation.

Not long after Augustine’s day the Emperor said to the writer and philosopher Sidonius: “I know what to do Sidonius. I will close the gates of Rome!”

And Sidonius replied: “Too late, Sir. Our enemies are already within our gates!”

And then among Romans themselves there was widespread decadence. Augustine stared into this decadence and said: “A city is not fortunate when its walls are standing while its morals are in ruins.” Is there a better sentence to describe the recent destruction and mayhem in our towns and streets?

He asked: “Why do you seek an infinite variety of pleasure with a crazy extravagance, while your prosperity produces a moral corruption far worse than all the fury of an enemy?”

There were theatres putting on gross pornography and the sadism and blood lust of the gladiatorial arena. Augustine described and condemned these scenes.

“Full publicity is given where shame would be appropriate; close secrecy is imposed where praise would be in order. Decency is veiled from sight; indecency is exposed to view. Scenes of evil attract packed audiences; good words scarcely find any listeners. It is as if purity should provoke a blush and corruption give grounds for pride.”

Pretty much like Britain AD 2011. That’s one reason why Augustine is a saint for our times.

Even the educated and well-to-do people of Augustine’s day fell into futility and nihilism.

In the chaos of decline and fall of the thousand year classical civilisation, they came to believe life itself was meaningless.

And so they turned to sensual excess and casual cruelty.

We recognise the same things in our own culture of drugs and celebrities, of mindless diversions and the banality of popular entertainments.

Everything lewd or dumbed down – or both. And anything striving to rise above the morass scorned as elitism.

We most deeply learn from him only when we try to enter his soul. And how do we enter a man’s soul? We do it by contemplating his prayers. Take one of Augustine’s great prayers: “Lord, thou hast made us for thyself; and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.”

It’s a well-known prayer. But what did this great man mean us to understand by it?

When Augustine spoke about the love of God, he always said it is like sexual love; it is like being in love. What he meant by that prayer then, was that you only find your heart when you give your heart away. This is the driving force in Augustine’s teaching. You must give your heart away – that is you should make others the centre of your concern and not yourself. Then when you have given your heart away, you find you have received it back again. It’s something like happiness. Something like peace of mind.

He was also brutally honest with himself and his own failings: “O Lord, make me chaste and continent – BUT NOT YET!”