The St. Monica Club

I am a subscriber to America Magazine, and this article, Praying for a child who has left the faith? Join the St. Monica club. | America Magazine popped up this morning.  First of all, I will say that of course I am not against praying for adult children who have left the practice of faith.  A lot of people don't acknowledge how painful this situation can be for parents who tried to do everything they could to bring their children up to be practicing Christians. And it is good that there is a loosely organized online support group for parents in this situation. Just knowing that there are others in the same boat is an encouragement for people dealing with a painful or disappointing outcome in the lives of their adult children.

Where I part company is in adopting St. Monica as the patron of mothers (and I assume fathers) whose children no longer practice faith. I left a short comment after the article, but I will go into a bit more detail here.

Basically Monica nagged Augustine relentlessly until his thirties trying to convince his to convert to Christianity.  She even followed him to Rome on one occasion against his wishes.  That kind of thing happens in parent/adult child relationships in our day, too. But it isn't a pattern for a successful relationship; more often it results in estrangement.

More complicated is the role of Monica in Augustine's breakup with the mother of his son, with whom he had a many year relationship.  This article is informative, especially about the situation of concubinage, which we fortunately don't see now, at least in US society: AUGNET : 1027 Augustine's concubinage

From the article: "...taking a concubine was an uncertain area of church law. The North African bishops had decided that it would be impossible to forbid Communion to anyone who was faithful to one partner in concubinage. In Book III of his Confessions, Augustine says that at the age of eighteen, "I came to Carthage, and all around me in my ears were the activities of impure loves. I was not yet in love, but I loved the idea of love." [Confessions 3, 51]"

"...The practice was partly generated by the rigid class system of late Roman society.  In that society, marriage was an alliance between families and estates. It was not a romantic affair based on personal preferences. Another possibility was that the woman in question was a former slave. If so, Augustine, who was born as a Roman citizen, would not legally have been permitted to wed her....Augustine and concubine remained together and were faithful to one another for thirteen years, until about 385.  Augustine wrote of himself, "But she was the only one and I was faithful to her."  The grief which Augustine felt at parting from her shows how strong the relationship had been. It was, nonetheless, out of ambition rather than for any moral scruple that Augustine parted from the mother of his son."

"...Augustine never recorded for posterity the name of the woman he loved, the mother of his child. From their union came a beloved son, Adeodatus, born in 372-373. His birth happened early in his parents' relationship.... Augustine later described Adeodatus as an exceptionally intelligent child and close friend to Augustine himself. Even so, Monica was going to accept only what was socially most acceptable for her son and for his career now that he was a rising star in Milan. When she came to live with Augustine in Milan, she told him that he should have a "proper" wife whom he was legally able to marry."

"In deference to the pleas of Monica, Augustine agreed to marry a chosen woman of suitable station. One temporary problem was that the young lady in question had not at that time reached the legal age for marriage. The marriage would have to be delayed. Some authors suggest that this could mean that she was as young as twelve or thirteen years of age at the time of the agreement. Other writers have surmised that, because Monica was a great influence in this plan, the young lady in question must have been a Christian; Augustine never wrote on this matter. Monica argued with such force and persistence that Augustine finally agreed to send back to Carthage the woman who was his de facto partner (concubine) and the mother of Adeodatus."

"Many writers have pointed out the harshness of this decision, but it reflected the social realities of the time. Even so, their parting was very painful for Augustine. He wrote in his Confessions, "When they took from my side her with whom I had slept for so long, my heart was torn at the place where it stuck to her, and the wound was bleeding.....My heart, which clung to her, was broken and wounded and dropping blood." The love of his life returned to Carthage in North Africa "after having made a vow to you [God] that she would never go to bed with another man... " [Confessions 16, 132-133] Some writers have suggested that back in Carthage this woman became a Christian, but Augustine certainly made no such statement. He praises her for vowing to take no other man, while he himself showed no such control of his passions.  He promptly took another woman while he waited for two years for his betrothed to reach the legal age for marriage."

This account is hard for us to understand in the present day.  Certainly concubinage was a misogynistic practice; the woman, while not a slave, was not in any kind of an equal relationship. There would have been a massive power imbalance, and really no possibility for consent as we understand it.

We should note here that Augustine never married the underage girl he was engaged to while he was waiting for her to reach maturity (which might have been the advanced age of 15). For what it's worth, this was before the time of mandatory celibacy for clergy.  Theoretically Augustine could have married the girl he was engaged to (or his concubine) and still pursue the priesthood after his conversion.  Though under Roman law formally marrying a concubine might have been a thorny situation, I have never heard that there was any insistence in church rules that one had to marry someone in one's own social class.

I am not personally in the situation of the mothers in the St. Monica Club, so I am a bit of an outsider looking in.  But if I were, I would be hesitant about adopting St. Monica as my patron, because of the situation of her not respecting her son's free will and agency, and massive boundary crossing. And also the hubris of thinking I knew what is best for my children as far as choice of their spouse.