LENT WITH RONALD KNOX

The Modern Distaste for Religion

In a too crowded age--I refer, not to the multiplication of mortal lives, but to the multiplicity of human interests--it is an uneasy business to estimate tendencies or to prophesy developments. So many agitators, publicists, and quack physicians, each with his own platform and his own audience, din into our ears the importance of a thousand rival or unconnected movements, so ruled by chance is the sub-editor's preference for this or that head-line, the loyalty of the public towards the catchwords it favoured yesterday, that a wise man might well ask to be excused the task of pronouncing upon the chaos, or of guessing the outcome. Last century, for instance, one thing seemed luminously clear, that Liberalism was advancing, and was bound to advance, in a constant ratio of progress. Does Europe, does England, ratify that opinion now? And if there has been a reaction, is the defeat final or temporary? Which of the modern movements are genuine currents, which the backwash of a flood? Which of our modern evils are symptoms, and which are organic diseases? Which of our modern results are the true offspring of an age, which are sports and freaks of history? Historians of to-morrow, excuse our frantic guess-work in your clearer vision.
Amidst the tangle, one strand seems to define itself-- within the last hundred years, within the last fifty years, within the last twenty-five years, the force of religion, as a factor in English public life, has steadily and visibly declined. I do not mean that a careless and external diagnosis would detect the change. Within the last few years we have seen, perhaps, a greater output of religious discussion in public print than any age since the Reformation. But this itch for religious discussion, which is peculiarly British, is not really an encouraging symptom. Men do not talk about their health when their health is strongest; a nation does not talk about its religion when its religion is flourishing. Statistics, it is true, may be misleading, but they are the thermometer of change. And any statistical comparison I have ever undertaken, or seen undertaken, seems to yield the same result--namely, that the area of lives visibly affected by habits of religion shrinks from decade to decade, and almost from year to year. To take an instance at random--Trollope, in his "Vicar of Bullhampton" ( published in 1870), writes of a London population "not a fourth of whom attend divine service." Is it not the impression most of us would record, after a Sunday morning spent in the metropolis, that to-day we should have to write "a tenth" instead of "a fourth"?

CONTINUE READING ...

Here are a few more options for Lenten reading:

Audiobooks:
A Month of Sundays with Monsignor Knox
A Retreat For Lay People
The Gospel in Slow Motion
In Soft Garments
Retreat For Beginners
Stimuli

OR simply go to our website and click on any of the titles or images of the many books available via Amazon, Ignatius Press or others.

New Year's Resolutions

If one of your New Year's resolutions is to read the Holy Bible, then consider the following:

New Advent has the entire Knox Bible online.

Baronius Press recently published a beautiful edition of the Knox Bible.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We wish all our readers a blessed Christmastide!

ROUSE UP!

Carl Olsen, at the Catholic World Report blog, has a thoughtful post entitled 'Advent and the Apocalypse' in which he quotes Ronald Knox. Go there to read his piece and then return to read the meditation which he quotes.

Rouse Up!

We live in an impenitent age; fearing, in our nervous moments, as the result of human negligence, the same sort of world-catastrophe which our ancestors hoped for as the proof of divine omnipotence. And still, because the enthusiasts have so often cried "Wolf", we think of the Second Coming as a contingency fortunately remote. As we listen to the prayers of the Advent liturgy, we have to force ourselves into an artificial frame of mind; to associate ourselves, by a pious exercise of the imagination, with the hopes of an earlier Christendom. We want Our Lord to come, but not just yet.

I am not suggesting that this is an ideal attitude, only that it is a common one. But, whatever we make of certain incalculable probabilities, it is surely important that we should not miss the drama of the season. It is a drama of divine patience, and of human impatience. On the Sunday before Advent, and on three of the Sundays in Advent, the collect begins with the word Excita, "Rouse up." But with a difference: twice we ask God to rouse up his power and interfere, somehow, in the course of world affairs; why does he behave as if he had gone to sleep? (Remember Our Lord, asleep on the boat; "Master, art thou unconcerned? We are sinking.") Twice we ask God to rouse us up; to awaken us from the heavy sleep which makes us go slack and take things for granted. (Remember St. Peter, asleep in the garden; "Simon, art thou sleeping? Hadst thou not strength enough to watch even for an hour?") The drama of Advent is that when we see everything going wrong with the world, we are tempted to be indifferent about it all. And we ask one of two things; either that God will "wake up" and do something about it; or that he will wake us up, and give us grace to watch in Gethsemane, with heavy eyelids.

To shrug your shoulders and hold no briefs means that you get more comfort, perhaps, out of life; but less excitement.

From 'Lightning Meditations', Sheed & Ward, 1959

TOASTING KNOX

Tim McCormick, S.T.B., is the author of the Catholic Bibles blog and an admirer of Msgr. Knox and his writings. Every Sunday he posts a comparison of one of the Lectionary readings with Msgr. Knox's translation, entitled 'Sunday Knox'. Knox's Bible translation, other writings and all things Knoxian come up for discussion on a regular basis.

Here is a post of particular interest, taken from the archives of The Tablet. It is the transcript of the toast given by Cardinal Griffin, at a banquet held in Knox's honor in 1955, and Msgr.'s reply.

Excerpts:

Cardinal Griffin: "The first appearance of his translation of the New Testament was awaited eagerly. It found its critics and it found its admirers, but the only point on which there was universal agreement was that here for the first time were the epistles of St. Paul in understandable form."

Msgr. Knox: "The book which has coalesced today into a single volume has come to be known, not by my wish, as the Knox Bible. Such a phrase dazzles you, for a moment, with a hint of immortality ; but a little reflection will convince you that there is no immortality about lending your name to a product. Become a household Word, and you are speedily forgotten. What housewife ever wastes a thought on the memory of President Hoover ? What traveller even recalls the existence of George Mortimer Pullman ? In what refreshment-room will you find a portrait of the fourth Earl of Sandwich ? The Knox Bible has become a mere name ; already, several years back, a Downside boy, doing a history paper on the sixteenth century, informed the examiner that 'John Knox was a cruel Protestant ; he wrote a book we have today, the Knox Bible.'

IGNATIUS PRESS AT SEA

My wonderful husband, Gene, and I were recently privileged to spend a week on land and at sea with Mark Brumley and many of the great folks from Ignatius Press. We traveled on pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul. 

We also traveled in the footsteps of Ronald Knox who, in 1930, delivered this lecture, The Greeks At Sea, on board a cruise ship in the Aegean Sea. 

Ignatius Press is the world's largest English-language, Catholic publisher and has several books by Ronald Knox on its extensive list.

GOD'S GIFT TO THE CHURCH?

Here's a nice short blog post about Ronnie from Br. Charles Shonk, O.P.

RONNIE KNOX: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

Father Milton Walsh reports on the recent colloquium in London:

I would like to give a fairly brief report to the Ronald Knox Society about this wonderful colloquium recently held in London. The colloquium was sponsored by Heythrop College, University of London, in association with Inspire (Centre of Initiatives in Spirituality and Reconciliation) and the support of the Institute of English Studies in the University of London and of the Tablet Trust.  The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies will be publishing the proceedings (Ronnie Knox: A Man for All Seasons, eds Francesca Bugliani Knox and Francesco Montarese).

            

The organizer and guiding spirit of this splendid gathering was Dr Francesca Bugliani Knox.  She is married to Dillwyn Knox, the grandson of Ronald Knox’s brother Dillwyn; he was present, and I am happy to report that, like his grandfather, he goes by “Dilly”.  Francesca explained to us the reasons for the title to the colloquium.  As to “Ronnie”, this was the name by which Knox was known not only by family and friends, but even by mere acquaintances. He himself said that strangers called him “Ronnie”, and, if anything, it was the surname that was dispensable.  This familiar form of address captures something of the spirit of a man who wore his remarkable intellectual and spiritual gifts lightly. The “man for all seasons” conjures up, of course, the figure of Thomas More, but the phrase in its original context also captures Knox’s personality.  Robert Whittington, a schoolteacher of More's time, said that More was “a man of angel's wit and singular learning; I know not his fellow.  For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability? And as time requireth, a man of marvellous mirth and pastimes: and sometimes of sad gravity: a man for all seasons.”

Read the entire report.

THE TABLET REPORTS ...

... on last week's colloquium on Ronald Knox.
Here are excerpts from Fr. Ashley Beck & Claire Asquith's talks.

N.B. RONNIE KNOX, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

For all those who can possibly be in London this weekend, there's a terrific conference on Ronald Knox happening at Heythrop College (University of London): Ronnie Knox, A Man for All Seasons.
A huge amount of work has gone into planning this exciting event, the first of its kind.

More information.

VENI, SANCTE SPIRITUS

From our archives: a wonderful meditation by Ronald Knox, entitled 'The Holy Spirit' (in PDF), from 'The Layman and His Conscience'.
Happy Pentecost!

If a man should set out to go through the Bible, pausing and making a meditation wherever he found material, his attention would be caught without fail, I think, by the second verse of it. “Earth was still an empty waste, and darkness hung over the deep; but already, over its waters, stirred the breath of God.” Creation still in the melting-pot, so that we have nothing for our composition of place except a formless sea of undifferentiated matter; dark, not by some effect of shadow, but with that primal darkness that reigned before light was made. And over this inert mass, like the mist that steals up from a pool at evening, God’s breath his Spirit, was at work. Already it was his plan to educe from this chaos the cosmos he had resolved to make, passing up through its gradual stages till it culminated in the creation of Man.

Deep in your nature and mine lies just such a chaos of undifferentiated matter, of undeveloped possibilities. Psychology calls it the unconscious. It is a great lumber-room, stocked from our past history. Habits and propensities are there, for good and evil; memories, some easily recaptured, some tucked away in the background; unreasoning fears and antipathies; illogical associations, which link this past experience with that; primitive impulses, which shun the light, and seek to disguise themselves by a smoke-screen of reasoning; inherited aptitudes, sometimes quite unexpected. Out of this welter of conditions and tendencies the life of action is built up, yours and mine. And still, as at the dawn of creation, the Holy Spirit moves over those troubled waters, waiting to educe from them, with the cooperation of our wills, the entire life of the Christian.

Continue reading ...

FAN FICTION

Here's an interesting article on Sherlock Holmes and his undying fascination. The author makes some good points about fan fiction in general, tracing its origin back to Homer/Virgil and mythical storytelling.