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02/26/2004: "Old-Time Sensationalism"

In the Confessions, Augustine tells how, as a youth, he was mad for the theater. As an adult, he looks back on this passion with bemusement and repentance. "A man listening to a play is not called upon to help the sufferer; he is merely invited to feel sad....so long as he feels sad, he will stay fixed in his place, enjoying every moment." Augustine finds this a perversion of the end of the virtue of compassion: "A man who is genuinely compassionate would rather that there was nothing for him to feel grief about." This mock grief of the theater fan is a mere counterfeit, and as all counterfeits, devalues and undermines the true coin. It's not tender, it just resembles it. So Augustine meditated on his one-time passion; maybe it's worth thinking about in light of today's Passion as well.

(Citations from Rex Warner's translation, II, 2.)