I wonder how many Christians would read your post and choke on the words “Catholic Christian”. We look at such a term from our Protestant / Post Reformation perspective and immediately attribute to both Monica and Augustine all the abuses and doctrinal errors that came to classify medieval Catholicism.

But in Monica’s day the papacy (while growing in power) had not yet come to mean what it did to the reformers or even to us. The Roman Catholic church had not yet developed into the monster that it would become. To call someone a Catholic Christian was a way of distinguishing the church that struggled to follow the doctrine of the apostles from the numerous heretical cults and movements that had sprung up around assorted individuals. Augustine himself would later play an important role in defining and defending apostolic teaching in his controversy with Pelagius.

We still say in the Apostles’ Creed “I believe in the holy catholic church…” This means that we hold that the church of Jesus Christ is universal and continues to distinguish the church that holds to the old apostolic gospel as opposed to those cults and heretical gatherings that have abandoned Scripture.

ARP

is it first in order of priority, or just a convenient way of listing them?

i’d be interested to know where things like prayer and the sacraments fit in