A quote from one of the early Church Fathers kept getting labelled as hate speech by Facebook, according to a Catholic blogger. 

Domenico Bettinelli posted on his blog in mid-July that he continually had a quote by St. Augustine labelled as hate speech as soon as he posted it.

"Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. And it’s not some fire and brimstone 'Sinners are going to hell!' quote, but in fact, quite the opposite," Bettinelli writes on his blog.

He says he decided to share the quote from Augustine after noticing two priests he knows had the quote taken down. He wanted to see if it would happen to him as well. The quote, from a homily by St. Augustine of Hippo, says:

Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon. But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others.

Bettinelli says originally the quote stayed up for a bit, and was reshared by others, but then he received a notice from Facebook that it had been hidden and labelled as hate speech.

"Hate speech? It’s the opposite of hate speech," he writes on the blog.

"It’s calling for people to stop focusing on others’ sins and concentrate on their own. Augustine is just re-formulating Jesus’ own words from the Gospel: 'Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?' (Matthew 7:3)"

He then posted a screenshot of the notification and reshared the quote. It again was labelled as hate speech.

A Facebook representative told CBN News on Friday that "We restored this post earlier this week as soon as we identified our mistake. This post does not violate our Community Standards."

Bettinelli says, however, that when he chose the option to have a human at Facebook review the alleged infraction they also ruled that it was hate speech.