Regarding apologetic tip-toeing, it is certainly true that the scene in the
early 1980s was either indifferent or hostile to the field. (In the Preface
to my dissertation, I noted that “Apologetics” appears in a standard
dictionary after the entry “Apollyon: the angel of hell.”) That being said,
it was my bishop, here on the left coast, that suggested I do my studies in
apologetics, and my director was most encouraging. If I seem to step away from some of RAK’s earlier positions, this is in part because he himself did so. (Not regarding dogma, of course, but manner.) He was not enthusiastic about “A Spiritual Aeneid” being republished, and his Preface “After 33 years” is interesting in this regard. (It appears in the 1950 and later editions.) His pamphlet “Proving God”, to which I refer frequently in my book, also reflects Knox’s desire to approach apologetics differently.

The other reason for my stepping away is that the understanding of the Church herself regarding other Christians communions has changed somewhat in the past 50 years. I don’t know what Knox would have made of Vatican II, but he tended to be a middle-of-the-road Catholic and I don’t think he would have been as negatively affected as Waugh was.

By the way, there is an interesting incident related in Waugh’s letters: he met Fr Feeney in the 1950’s and was dismayed by Feeney’s very negative views of his good friend. Waugh describes Fr. Feeney speaking of Knox’s conferences to school girls (the “Slow Motion” books) as if the chaplain were reading “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” to these innocent girls. When asked if he had read much of Knox, Fr. Feeney responded to Waugh: “I don’t need to eat an egg to know it’s rotten!” It’s not often someone could out-curmudgeon Waugh.

Indeed, after reading Fr. Walsh’s book in which he often quoted from The Knox Brothers, I purchased it and I’m looking forward to reading it.

I hope it came through in my original post that I was only disappointed with Fr. Walsh’s book in as much as it obscured or didn’t have time to cover aspects of Knox’s life which had first excited me. That’s not Walsh’s fault. Oh, well, and there’s also this point about Walsh’s tip-toeing language in places, which hinted at post VII theological outlooks.

At any rate, I myself am very happy to say: Floreat Ronaldus!

“And now for two or three more clouds coming down on London from the north, and then I am through with London clouds.”

“Monsignor Ronald Knox is the son of an Anglican bishop and the brother of an Anglican minister. He severed his own connections with Anglicanism so as to acquire the central assurances and valid orders of Rome. His change of religious allegiance was managed without any apparent ruffling of his relatives, and he entered the Church, pipe in hand. That pipe he has not since put down, not even in photographs. Nor has he put aside any of his former canniness and nimble ability to amuse. Chesterton paid him a compliment for this in a quatrain:

“Mary of Holyrood must smile indeed,
Knowing what grim, historic shade it shocks,
To see wit, laughter and the Popish creed
Cluster and sparkle in the name of Knox.”

“One day, in a room full of beer fumes and tobacco smoke, a young university student said to Monsignor Knox, ‘Ronnie! What is a good definition of an egotist?’
‘An egotist,’ Monsignor Knox replied, puffing away at his pipe, ‘is one who won’t let you talk about yourself.’”

“Monsignor Knox is famous for such witticisms. And here is a specimen of his spiritual wisdom.”

“Life, says Monsignor Knox — by way of proposing a parable — may be compared to an examination we all must take in order to get into Heaven. The saints are taking this examination for honors, the rest of us for pass degrees. And God will be glad to pass all of us, provided we do not disturb the saints while they are taking their examinations.”

“This Knoxian version of ‘The Laborers in the Vineyard’ might be called ‘The Loafers in the Classroom.’”

“Ronald Knox is a great one for knowing the boundaries of things, both in behavior and in thought. And he has a shrewd way of keeping the apostle and the apologete in a priest distinct. One is in doubt at times as to whether he wants England to come back to the Church, or the Church to come back to England. I once heard him say, when he was the Catholic chaplain at Oxford, that his purpose there was not to make conversions, but only to minister to those who already had the Faith. His own reasons for becoming a Catholic — his previous wide reading and proficiency in the humanities, his spiritual indebtedness to Virgil’s Æneid — most of the students were familiar with, thanks to his many books and articles on the subject. Some of the students, however, thought Monsignor Knox’s logic too tactful to be innocently true, and they felt that if he stopped his affirmative arguments for a moment, and polished up his negative premises, he might easily win on the other side.”

“Monsignor Knox, by way of revising the bad English of the Church he entered, recently loaned it his vocabulary, and issued an edition of Holy Scripture known as “The Knox Bible.” In this Bible, Ronald Knox figuratively puts wristwatches on all the Evangelists, and invites them to dinner in a don’s refectory, where, in the midst of revelation and refreshment, they may be colloquially introduced, and may receive academic credit for being the excellent and inspired authors they are.”

“Monsignor Knox has also lately written a doctrinal divertissement, a light piece, known as The Mass in Slow Motion. In it we learn, among other things, the reason why the priest turns round at the Offertory to say the Orate Fratres. It is to wake up the altar boys who have been sleeping while his back was turned. There being now no Chesterton to add a quatrain to this incident, I should like to add one of my own.”

“Mary of Holyrood must weep indeed
Knowing what immemorial saints it shocks,
To see Mass measured at a movie speed
And offered to Hollywood in the name of Knox.”

“At Oxford, in England, when I visited it, Monsignor Knox was first among the Roman Catholic intellectuals. . . .”

Mind you, St. Benedict Center started as a sort of study group for Catholics at Harvard University. I have no doubt that part of the reason they were persecuted by Cardinal Cushing was that the young aristocratic WASPs of Harvard were converting in large numbers thanks to St. Benedict Center. So you can see why Fr. Feeney would target Msgr. Knox’s priorities at Oxford. (Likewise, St. Benedict Center was founded as a group of enthusiastic Catholics by a woman, Catherine Goddard Clarke. That may also help explain the particular critique of Knox’s point about the perils of enthusiastic groups and women.)

F. faults Newman for his disdain for St. Alphonsus’ Marian writings. Brownson too found traditional devotional writings too “bathetic” for his Anglo-Saxon constitution. He would have agreed with Newman on that score.

If we seek saints’ criticisms of one another, consider the fact that St. Jerome called St. Ambrose “that old crow” . . . So writers can give each other a good knock without thereby incurring the title of “crank.”

But I go on. If I wished to distract so much attention from the matter of Msgr. Knox, perhaps I should have started my own post.

“The more you read Newman, the less you remember what he says. He is an author whom it is impossible to quote. What you recall, after you have finished reading him, is never what the clarity of his style was revealing, but some small, unwarranted queerness that it was almost concealing….

“You remember Newman was shocked that Catholics were giving Protestants the grounds for declaring that “the honor of Our Lady is dearer to Catholics than the conversion of England,” as though anything else could be the childlike truth. You remember that Newman particularly disliked the Marian writings of St. Alfonso Liguori, a Doctor of the Universal Church, and said of these writings, “They are suitable for Italy, but they are not suitable for England.” You remember that, with regard to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Newman insisted, in scholarly fashion, that “her case is essentially the same as St. John the Baptist, save for a difference of six months” — which is precisely the difference this dogma demands. You remember that though Newman was in favor of Papal Infallibility, he was not in favor of its being infallibly defined by the Pope.

http://www.fatherfeeney.org/other/london/london5.html

Brad C. does not present the actual criticism of Newman, but only the rhetorical build-up to it. I hope everyone takes the time to read Brownson’s entire critique before saying “Wow, Brownson’s a dork.” Amongst the things he writes are, “We humbly and devoutly thank Almighty God that we were wrong; that we relied too little on the power of divine grace; and that, contrary to our expectations, Mr. Newman, and a large number of his friends, have already been permitted to enter that communion, out of which it is madness to suppose we can please God, or secure the salvation of our souls.”

Incidentally, some of Brownson’s most Papist sounding speeches about Catholicity were written while he was still a Unitarian-or-something-or-other. And even after converting, as I understand it, he subscribed to some of the ideas of Fr. Hecker. I think he later recanted. Hecker’s disciples were the ones who later created the heresy of Americanism.

And I don’t think that anyone claimed that either Knox or Newman entered the Church to subvert it. The obituary about Knox stated that he was dealing in indifferentism. Indifferentism is what makes Catholicism palatable and susceptible to infidels — I don’t think that the author of the piece was positing that Knox himself was in some Illuminati conspiracy of Learned Elders. Just that he wasn’t of much use against the rising tide of indifferentism. If and when Msgr. Knox comes up for beatification and/or canonization someone will have to sift through the statements catalogued by the author of the “Point” article.

About that catalogue, Joseph Shaw wrote: “I’m interested to see that list of liberal-sounding remarks, but it could easily be balanced by anti-liberal ones.” The author’s point is that there should not have been any liberal-sounding ones. Now, to be fair, some of the criticisms in “The Point” aren’t all that fair. Yes, we get merits (the equivalents of indulgences) for helping old ladies. But, *if I am to believe what the obit says* (I’ve never read Knox’s stuff, so I can’t make any judgment from my own experience), some of Knox’s stuff really is objectionable.

Or think of Belloc and Chesterton. Both men hated — and I mean *hated* — capitalism. Some libertarians say that both men were raging commies. Chesterton seems to have thought that WWI was an entirely righteous affair undertaken to destroy the unrighteous Prussian tyrant. Most traditionalist Catholics today view WWI as an all-around tragedy that resulted in the lamentable defeat of the Hapsburg Empire.

Furthermore, I regard the “liberal” assignment of inculpable ignorance (I object to calling ignorance “invincible” — Christ the Incarnate Wisdom, not ignorance, is “invictus”) as the root of much heterodoxy and heresy today. If you don’t want the secular government to practice affirmative action, you shouldn’t want the celestial government to practice it either. Knox rejected Anglicanism because it was too liberal. Excellent! Now, I ask, for I really don’t know, did he hold it against his Anglican friends that they did not follow him? (Reportedly Tolkien always held it against C.S. Lewis that he stayed protestant — good for Tolkien, and so much the worse for Lewis.) If Anglicanism is so corrupt that one should leave, then that rule holds equally true of one’s neighbor as of oneself (”love thy neigbor as thyself” and all that). If God can make it clear to Knox why he should leave, then he can make it equally clear to Knox’s Anglican friends and relatives, etc. Hopefully, he did hold them to their obligation to become Catholics.

“His Anglican friends or the heretics about whom he writes in Enthusiasm were many of them very good men” How good is very good? Apparently not so good as to recognize the voice of the Divine Shepherd (”those who here you hear Me; I know mine and mine know Me”). Hamlet says that he is “indifferent honest” yet he could not find time to plot all the sins he wished to commit. In other words, he was a pretty good guy, relatively speaking, and still a pretty sinful guy. I myself have been a fairly good person *by human standards,* yet I have lived much of my life in mortal sin. So much for human standards! Look, if Tertullian was such as to enter Heaven, as Newman says, then we know by that fact that he was such as to reject his schism. And I like to think that Newman was right — which would mean that Tertullian repented unbeknownst to us. Cardinal O’Connor said something similar of Fr. Feeney, whose early writings he admired, that it was only a matter of time before his quarrel with the Holy Office got resolved. And so it was.