Death must come some time; this world isn’t our home, only a kind of hotel where our rooms will be wanted sooner or later for somebody else; life is meant to be only a span of time, and a comparatively short one. When I say it’s meant to be, I am, of course, assuming the [...]
G.K. Chesterton was one of the very greatest men of his time. He will almost certainly be remembered as a great and solitary figure in literature, an artist in words and ideas with an astonishing fecundity of imaginative vision. He will almost certainly be remembered as a prophet in an age of false prophets. Occasional [...]
Tell me, when you’ve “had words” with somebody, isn’t there usually a chance, before the next time you go to confession, of saying some kind word, doing some trifling service, which will obliterate the memory of your quarrel without the need of referring to it? That is what Jesus Christ wants you to do. Pastoral [...]
No survey of contemporary literature can call itself complete today which ignores Catholic literature. And this not only because of the promise it holds out for a complete renovation of the arts, but also because of its many distinguished writers and its not inconsiderable critical and creative work in all departments of literature. The Catholic [...]
People who read books of this kind usually expect the author to answer the question: “Why did you become a Roman Catholic?” I am not trying to explain it, but I must try to illustrate it by an example. It was as if I had been a man homeless and needing shelter, who first of [...]
"A Spiritual Aeneid" is Ronald Knox's account, ingeniously constructed on the Virgillian frame, of his transition from Anglo-Catholicism to Roman Catholicism. It was written immediately after his reception and before his ordination as priest and is, by contrast with many similar confessions, remarkably unemotional and full of charity and justice towards the Church of his [...]
Ronald Knox is a spiritual master whose value is not found in a “verbal fireworks show that will wow you” but preaching “utterly useful to one attempting to live Christian life.” For that reason, it is a delight to see that Cluny Media has republished two of his classics. Taken together they provide a kind [...]
People often ask me about “spiritual reading.” I recommend Monsignor Knox. He gives us no visions or holy weirdness, which are themselves not necessary. Instead, he addresses us where we are in ordinary life. Ronald Knox (1888-1957) is a fascinating and too often underrated figure. Theologian Lawrence Cunningham observed a few years ago that, having [...]
Ronald Knox, like his fellow Englishman G.K. Chesterton, was both a Roman Catholic and a detective fiction writer. Originally, it was Chesterton’s writing that lead Knox, a former Anglican priest at Trinity College, Oxford, towards converting to Catholicism. When Knox converted in 1917, Chesterton was still the Anglican son of a somewhat apathetic Unitarian family. [...]