Here at the headquarters of Manhattan Infidel we’ve had the opportunity to interview many important figures. But this is I believe my first interview with a saint. I am pleased to introduce to my readers a giant of the western church, St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) himself.
MI: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me.
SA: Yes, I just came from Carthage, where I found myself in the mist of a hissing cauldron of lust.
MI: Sounds like fun. I’ll have to visit.
SA: Do not make light of my predicament, Infidel. I was inflamed with desire for a surfeit of hell’s pleasures. Love and lust together seethed within me.
MI: Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to –
SA: I was drunk with the invisible wine of my own perverted, earthbound will.
MI: Um.
SA: My soul failed to govern the impulses from which it derives bodily pleasure.
MI: I get your point. Moving along. Let’s talk about your conversion. Your account of it in the Confessions is justifiably famous. In Milan you met St. Ambrose –
SA: His celibacy seemed to me the only hardship he had to bear.
MI: Okay here we go again.
SA: I thought it would be too much for me to bear if I were deprived of a woman’s love. I was bound down by this disease of the flesh.
MI: You had syphilis?
SA: No! Concupiscence you moron! For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity.
MI: Happens to me every Saturday night.
SA: I was scratching the itching sore of lust.
MI: Yeah we’ve been through this. Let’s talk about –
SA: Wherever sexual passion is at work, it feels ashamed of itself.
MI: [Sigh] You got issues Auggie. You got issues.
SA: Do your genitals obey reason?
MI: What? Of course. Always.
SA: Really?
MI: Sometimes
SA: Really?
MI: Let’s not talk about my vacation in Thailand.
SA: Sometimes lust is most importunate when I least desire it. At other times bodies remain frigid when lust is blazing in their souls. Lust itself, lascivious, refuses to obey, and the very passion that so often joins forces to resist the soul is sometimes so divided against itself that, after it has roused the soul to passion, it refuses to awaken the feelings of the flesh. It leaves a straining lover in the lurch.
MI: They have pills for that now.
SA: What?
MI: Take some of these. But don’t take them if you’re taking nitrates for chest pain as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. And ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity.
SA: What? What are you saying? Are you still in the grip of concupiscence? Get away from me!
MI: But what about the rest of the interview?
SA: Concupiscence! Concupiscence!
MI: So that’s it? The interview is over?
SA: Concupis –
MI: I guess so. Well I’m out of here.
And so ended my interview with the great Doctor of the Western church.
(893)
Carthage: The ScoresNY of the Roman World.
I remember a peanut farmer by the name of Jimmy who claimed only to have lusted in his heart. Is Augustine in Georgia? Maybe the two are related.
Shamus: So in other words Carthage is where the ancient basketball players got their strippers?
Jim: That’s highly possible
Infidel, I’ve often wondered when you would publish something that would condemn you to eternal damnation. I think you just did. Though, you might get extra-credit for your “assistance” to a Saint.
I think we should use those security camera systems to monitor any further interviews with St. Augustine.
Yeah, that was mighty powerful persuassive spam right there.
Matt: I was worried about this one. I took Augustine’s name when I was confirmed but…..auggie did have issues.
Shamus: Yep. I get lots of spam. Good old Security camera made it through the filter.
Good interview published! Pretty cool to know some lesson from this interview. Hopefully become impressed and really impressed. Thanks dude.
Security cameras, Emma – mambo dogface to the banana patch?
It appears lust is a major problem for Auggie, who would have thought.