CATHOLIC CHURCH · CHRISTIAN LIFE
Benedict J. Groeschel
For we say that in this Trinity two or three persons are not greater than one alone.
— from Augustine
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Augustine
AUGUSTINUS (A.D. 354-430), son of a pagan Patricius of Tagaste in North Africa and his Christian wife Monica, while studying in Africa to become a rhetorician, plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts in search of truth, joining for a time the Manichaean society. He became a teacher of grammar at Tagaste, and lived much under the influence of his mother and his friend Alypius. About 383 he went to Rome and soon after to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric, being now attracted by the philosophy of the Sceptics and of the Neo-Platonists. His studies of Pauls letters with Alypius and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose led in 386 to his rejection of all sensual habits and to his famous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. After a year in Rome again and his mothers death he returned to Tagaste and there founded a religious community. In 395 or 396 he became Bishop of Hippo, and was henceforth engrossed in duties, writing and controversy. He died at Hippo during the successful siege by the Vandals. From his large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the Confessions which reveal Gods action in man; On the City of God which unfolds Gods action in the progress of the worlds history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over Pagan in adversity; and some of the Letters which are important for the study of ecclesiastical history and Augustines relations with other theologians.
Thy will be done
At the heart of this story are two intensely ambitious and ultimately tragic figures: Nelson Rockefeller, scion of the liberal Standard Oil family, and William Cameron Townsend, founder of the ultraconservative Wycliffe Bible Translators. Although leaders of opposing camps, both found common cause in the struggle against fascism and then communism, with ironic, fateful results. For the first time, using Rockefeller's own recently released documents, the authors reveal the secret economic side of Nelson's political career as a key adviser on Latin America to U.S. presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon and as Gerald Ford's vice president. Thy Will Be Done explores Rockefeller's mysterious role as Dwight D. Eisenhower's liaison with the CIA, his championing of Eisenhower's nemesis, the military-industrial complex, his growing conflicts with President John F. Kennedy over Latin America, and his secret political alliance with Lyndon Johnson during that president's bitter dispute with Senator Robert Kennedy over Latin America and the Vietnam War. We see Rockefeller gathering political power and building a vast business empire in Latin America, working with the CIA, developing close friendships with famous Latin American politicians and businessmen, and increasingly advocating military dictatorships, while Townsend's missionaries are used to pacify native populations in frontiers rich in oil and rare minerals or subject to guerrilla insurgencies. Seeking to hasten the prophesied Second Coming, Townsend pursues a fanatical effort to reach every Bibleless tribe with the Word, even to the point of saving their souls by destroying their cultures and allying with the dictators who oppress them. Rockefeller and Townsend contributed more than any other Americans to the conquest of the Amazon that now threatens to destroy the "lungs of the planet," the rain forests. Their systematic campaign of colonization was a chilling foretaste of American intervention in the Third World that has become so common that today we take for granted repeated forays in the name of democracy and the securing of valuable resources.