Once upon a time in the Catholic Church, May 4 was the Feast Day of St. Monica. Feast days in the Catholic Church serve a variety of purposes, but celebrating the lives of the saints is one of the biggies: saints are exemplars.
Alas, we get the story of Monica only from her son, Augustine [bio and bio with refs], the post-pagan, totally one with the Church, post-manachean Augustine. Augustine is known as one of the great Doctors of the Church, engaged in arguing theology and church doctrine in the early years of the established church (the 300's). Prior to this phase, Augustine (according to himself, again) was a brilliant, randy lad, who sampled spiritual philosophy with the same vigour he sampled life's pleasures.
The story we hear about Monica from him is one of a devoted mother in a rough marriage who prayed and drank and prayed some more for the conversion of her son to the one true church, and by this, hopefully to a more stable life. In other words, this is the prototypical story of a mother obsessed with her son's life and focuses all her energies on saving his soul, and whose prayers eventually won him round. No wonder she is the patron saint of
"married women, abuse victims, alcoholics, alcoholism, difficult marriages, disappointing children, homemakers, housewives, married women, mothers, victims of adultery, victims of unfaithfulness, victims of verbal abuse, widows, and wives ."[ref] Talk about polymorphism.
Indeed, the church some time ago, in its infinite wisdom and love of models of women as servants moved Monica's feast day from May 4 to August 27 - to be right before her precious son's - thus reducing any consideration of Monica's value as a saint independent from her role as the Great Augustine's Mom.
And it's enough to make a person spit.
The picture of Monica as the mother triumphant is a horrifying model: it encourages catholic mothers to pray for their kids to come to Jesus, and to be justified in their prayers. In my neighborhood growing up you could just see moms leaning on this saint's example as a justification of their views of their kids' behaviour, and reinforcing with sanctified example, the "mother knows best" response.
That was bad enough, but it used to really bother me that Monica as a figure didn't seem to stand on her own. Her best strength was her persistence in bugging God (and her bishop) about her son. But what about putting up with that husband? or dealing with alcoholism? or just being a struggling prayerful gal, likely cut off from much of a social life? Who was there to help her? She had to create her own 12 step program.
I remember once going to mass with my family on the new Aug27 feast day and this young sexist (troubled) priest only spoke about Monica as the great man's mum; without him, she wouldn't be a saint, and what a great exemplar of a life dedicated to her son etc. Several times a restraining hand kept me from standing up and shouting "Bull!" - but i did share my views with him afterwards: that his was a rather partial view.
But who knows? again, we only have Augustine's portrait of her which mayn't have separated himself from his view of her - perhaps if she had written her own diary or been interviewed by Jon Snow, she would have suggested that there was more to her life than day and night contemplation of her son (but then again maybe not) - or maybe he just made it all up. We are talking 332 AD or so.
In any case, i prefer to celebrate my Name Sake's feast on May 4, a lovely day in mid spring when the light is getting long and the days brighter - and several months away from her codependent son.
My Latin teacher said Monica comes from the Latin "moneo" i advise from the verb monere- to advise. That's inspiring. There's some debate about this - other origins may be possible - phonetian perhaps - but maybe they mean the same thing as the Latin: adviser. And maybe instead of whinging to god so much, Monica became a rather centered person who got her own stuff together and advised her son to grow up and get a life - in the nicest possible of ways - as she got on with her garden, accounting and philosophical writings that her son later copied.
Posted by mc at May 4, 2005 05:48 PM