In a class I have taught by a liberal feminist nun, she said something about St. Jerome getting upset due to a temper over not being elected pope and then went to Palestine. She also brought forth a hypothesis or idea something like that St. Jerome destroyed St. Paula's scriptural commentary, which is now lost, because he wanted to promote his commentary while St. Paula's commentary was better. I know the saints had things to overcome, but this did not sound like a good portrayal of St. Jerome. I don't think St. Paula would care now about her writings being lost since she's in heaven. There are several writings of the early Church lost to us now anyway. I have the feeling that my professor either did not mention or did not know the whole details concerning St. Jerome and his time in Rome and Bethlehem. I know St. Jerome did doubt the canonical status of the deuterocanonical books, but he did come around to accept their canonical status before he died. He even quoted those books. For all I know, I would imagine he found it difficult personally to include in the Latin Vulgate the deuterocanonical books by order of Pope St. Damasus.

Any experts on St. Jerome here? :wink:

Bump! :roll-laugh2:

A quick search of the subjects PAULA and PALLADIUS in the Catholic Encyclopedia will reveal that at least there is some basis for what your professor said about St Jerome.

Palladius, the church historian and disciple of St John Chrysostom, met with Jerome and Paula in Bethlehem. He later opined that Jerome was full of envy and repressed Paula so that she could serve his own purposes.

Palladius was a big fan of Origen. St Jerome was a furious foe of Origen. There may have been a heated argument that led Palladius to see everything Jerome did in the worst possible light.

I can find nothing about anything that St Paula actually wrote, much less anything on St Jerome destroying it. This was the late 4th century, early 5th century AD. It's not as though St Jerome spoiled St Paula's chances for becoming a Father of the Church. That wasn't happening. Not in her lifetime.

Envy... Repression... Paternalistic... It's horrible how modern infidels with this or that ideological axe to grind are blind to the things of the Christian Spirit. Faith, holiness, asceticism, loyalty to a spiritual director, esteem for a spiritual disciple, the true communion of saints.

But ancients with ideological axes to grind, such as Origenism, could be pretty horrible too.

There is a famous story according to which a medieval pope was looking at a picture of St Jerome lacerating his breast with a stone and said, "You do well to hold that stone, for without it you never would have been accepted as a Saint."

He had lots of notorious faults. His exegesis could be faulty. He got into a heated dispute with St Augustine over the correct interpretation of the "withstanding to his face" incident between St Peter and St Paul. Jerome opined that it was all pre-arranged to make a point.

St Jerome also claimed that some things in the Gospels were true only "relatively." For example, he said that some of the things that are related of the Herods are true only in the sense that the Evangelists recorded what men THOUGHT to be true. This was disastrous. Centuries later His Holiness Pope Benedict XV was combatting Modernist take-offs on this theory.

On the other hand, St Jerome has the special honor of being the one who upheld most forcefully the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mother, and of being the first to insist that St Joseph was not a widower with four sons, but a perpetual virgin himself. The latter became the common Catholic view.