NEW! A BIOGRAPHY OF RONALD KNOX TO CELEBRATE THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH ON AUGUST 24th, 1957
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat ei.
NEW: Ronald Knox as Apologist: Wit, Laughter and the Popish Creed
Fr. Milton Walsh
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic, Ronald Knox was a well-known part of the English literary landscape. He was a favored preacher for occasions great and small; his articles on a host of topics found a place in the newspapers and monthly literary magazines; his voice was heard often on the BBC. Most significant was the tide of books that flowed from his pen and found a wide readership in Great Britain and the USA.
In this book, Milton Walsh, an expert on Knox's writing, has analyzed and provided ample quotations from the most significant writings of Knox that fall under the genre of apologetics. Knox was a superb apologist because as a priest he was a man of deep faith, and as a writer he had a wonderful way of expressing the Christian truths in an elegant and clear language. Knox was also a man with a grand sense of humor and a keen wit, as well as empathy and kindness, and both his humor and charity are captured well in these writings. Ronald Knox stands alongside G. K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Evelyn Waugh as a great spiritual and literary British writer whose works are once again receiving wide readership and appreciation.
Milton Walsh, a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, wrote his dissertation on Ronald Knox and is a longtime reader and researcher of the works of Knox.
KNOX'S REQUIEM
Mgr Knox died on 24 August 1957 at Mells, and his body was brought to Westminster Cathedral on 28 August. The Requiem was celebrated on the following day by Bishop Craven, Auxiliary in Westminster, with the Cardinal Archbishop presiding. The homily was preached by the famous Jesuit philosopher Fr Martin D'Arcy. Part of that homily reads:
Excerpted from a gracious tribute to Msgr. Knox on the Westminster Cathedral blog.
MEMORIES OF RONNIE
By the Rev. Vernon Johnson
It was a June evening towards the end of the summer term at Oxford in 1906. I was standing at the entrance to Pusey House, the High Church undergraduate centre, and saying farewell to one of the clergy. As I turned to go he said, ‘By the way, an extremely brilliant boy who has taken the first scholarship at Balliol is coming up from Eton next term. He has leanings in our direction. Pray that he may not lose his faith at Oxford.’ That was how I first heard of Ronnie!
The following October, Ronald Knox swept like a comet, with all a comet’s attendant brilliance, into the life of Oxford University. Before the term was far spent his name was on everybody’s lips. The Dons in their Senior Common Rooms were all discussing his brilliance, half afraid as to where it might lead him. (One of the authorities when asked his opinion of Ronald Knox is reputed to have replied, ‘He is indeed brilliant but rather too given to Socialism and Christianity’.) In the Junior Common Rooms the undergraduates were all rocking with laughter at his wit.
As time went on every great classical prize fell to him and it was not long before there was nobody at the Union who could touch him for popularity as a speaker. After the great debates, the foremost political leaders were all eager to secure him for their party.
In the midst of all this adulation Ronald Knox remained quite unmoved and utterly unspoilt. What was the secret which kept him always so charmingly modest amid this hurricane of fame? His racy wit and inveterate love of a joke had indeed quickly earned for him the reputation of being an enfant terrible, flippant and superficial. Little did these people know of the private personal life which lay behind this brilliance and which he was at such pains to keep completely hidden.
Two incidents will reveal it. In the early morning, often after a dazzling success at some great debate at the Oxford Union, he would slip out of Balliol across St Giles to Pusey House. There, together with our little group, he would make his Communion quite unconcerned, just as friendly and just as much at ease with us, most of whom were very ordinary, as he was with the brilliant company of the night before. At least twice in the week he would be found making his Communion in this manner, no mean achievement when one realizes what an undergraduate’s evening usually can be.
The second occasion was when he had just finished his papers for the Ireland, Oxford’s greatest classical prize. A few days before the result was due to be published he came and begged me to spend the intervening time with him in retreat at the Cowley Fathers, so that he might be ready to accept the result properly which ever way it went. On the last morning of this little retreat it was announced that R.A.Knox had won the coveted prize. It was a deep personal love of our Blessed Lord and an absorbing devotion to the church to which he belonged that kept Ronald Knox steady and secure throughout the brilliance of his Oxford career.
Another great anchor of his spiritual life at Oxford was the Church of the Cowley Fathers whom Ronnie nicknamed ‘the Guvnors’; ‘the Guvnor’ being the term by which our paternal parent was usually known during our time at Oxford. ‘The Pater’ was outmoded long ago. Here every Sunday morning at eleven a little company used to gather. I think, as I look back, that what held us so faithful to this service was that, there being no communions, the Solemn Eucharist was obviously offered solely for the worship of Almighty God and, as such, it stirred and nourished that need for worship which lies deep in each one of us. Anyway, none of us ever missed it if we could possibly help it. ‘I do not suppose that there were a dozen Sundays in all my undergraduate time when I did not attend St John Cowley at 11.’ (Spiritual Aeneid)
On our walk back to college we would gossip kindheartedly about our friends, as undergraduates invariably do; discuss the current events of the term or exchange hopes of the future of the High Church movement. A carefree happy little company.
It will be seen that my friendship with Ronnie Knox found its origin solely in our common devotion to the High Church cause in which we were absorbed heart and soul. Being at Trinity, I at first knew very few of his Balliol friends. Indeed, it was at an undergraduate meeting in Trinity that I first met him.
From the very first I was immensely drawn to him, his personal diffidence and gentle modesty amid all his outstanding talents fascinated me. I found myself desperately eager to get to know him personally but was very diffident of making any approach as he was in such demand. However, one day I summoned up courage enough to ask him to breakfast in my rooms at Trinity, but took good care to ask a third lest Ronnie should find it too boring. The third was no less a person than Father Stanton of St Alban’s, Holborn; an inimitable raconteur, he kept us both spellbound with his stories of the Holborn slums. That breakfast was a huge success!
My next effort, even more daring, was to ask him to come for a walk one afternoon. A little incident has imprinted this walk indelibly on my mind. After wandering through the country lanes we found ourselves at Cowley, then a little country village with its beautiful pre-reformation church set in the midst. Hopeful that it might prove to be High Church, another to add to our list, we made our way to the church door. Over the door was a brass plate on which was written, ‘This is the house of God, this is the gate of Heaven’. It was locked! Ronnie turned to me with a whimsical smile. ‘In other words, Vernon, go to Hell!’
When we were up at Oxford the Student Christian Movement was very flourishing, and one of its activities was the organization of a great interdenominational rally during the long vacation. Ronnie with a few others and myself were chosen to represent the Oxford University Church Union with a watching brief. The meeting took place at Baslow in Derbyshire. All went fairly well till the evening prayers. These were held in a huge marquee. After a passage of Scripture had been read, there were some general prayers followed by a pause and then various individuals began to testify to the religious experiences they had received. In horror-stricken tones Ronnie whispered, ‘Have we got to do that?’ Nothing could have been more alien to him whose spiritual life was so completely and so purposefully hidden. We never went to a prayer meeting again. For a time we attended the discussions but as there was clearly no point of contact we soon gave them up. Instead we borrowed two bicycles and toured the lovely Derbyshire countryside in search of churches with ‘leanings in our direction’! These bicycling excursions were a source of acute anxiety to me, for Ronnie was quite reckless in his riding down the steep Derbyshire hills. I was already beginning to see in him a second Newman (up to a point, of course) and I did not want to see our second Newman unconscious in a ditch.
And now in 1909 came an event which was to have a profound effect on the life of Ronald Knox. He paid his first visit to Caldey Island. He went with a reading party of undergraduates of which I was fortunate to be a member. Two of that party became Anglican bishops. The island itself is strikingly beautiful with its exquisite bays, sandy beaches and rugged cliffs. Set in the midst of this island was the monastery of the Caldey Benedictines. Here for the first time he saw the purely contemplative life; a community living the full Benedictine rule, saying the full Benedictine Office with all the full Benedictine devotions. At first Ronnie reacted rather strongly against it. We were housed in a little bungalow called ‘Stella Maris’ and I can see him now sitting on the end of my bed arguing that Mass and the Divine Office in Latin could hardly be permitted in the Church of England and that reservation of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction would never be countenanced by the Anglican Bishops.
We discussed it all endlessly during our many island walks. Why should not the comprehensiveness of the Church of England be stretched to absorbing even the Benedictines of Caldey? After all, many things once frowned on as illegal were now accepted! We began to think that perhaps these Benedictines were but the logical development of all that the old Priory Church had stood for centuries ago! It took more than one visit before he could accept it but, when he did, he did so completely and without any reserve. Caldey became his spiritual home and the source of inspiration for his future ministry as an Anglican. To Caldey he returned again and again and it was within the monastery that he made his two retreats before his Anglican orders.
‘I passed at Caldey seven weeks of extraordinary happiness and peace. Thinning out carrots in the garden with the fierce sun beating on my cassock, bathing with the community in the recreation on those interminable days of sunshine, standing in a blaze of light at Vespers or in almost complete darkness at Compline while the slow cadences of the Divine Office rolled over my head – I do not think, whatever its effect on my divinity, that a theological college could have provided me with more of religious inspiration for my future Ministry.’ (Spiritual Aeneid)
Caldey in fact released us from our High Church inhibitions and set our feet upon the path of what later on came to be popularly known as Anglo-Catholicism. Caldey became for us the rallying point and fulcrum for the winning of England to the fullness of the Catholic Faith on which our hearts were so keenly set.
That first visit of Ronnie to Caldey remains very vividly imprinted on my mind. It had its lighter side. I remember our being chased off his fields by the island farmer, a furious red haired Welshman. Very quietly Ronnie argued with him and put him on the horns of a perfect dilemma. ‘You young Oxford men may be very clever and all that but you are not going to cross my field’, was the rejoinder. Another afternoon we dug a trench in the sands when one of our number, Cistercian-like, except for a few clothes, laid himself down in it murmuring to our great merriment, ‘This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell for I have chosen it’. At other times we would be clambering over precipitous rocks, here too, as in Derbyshire, Ronnie caused me acute anxiety by the risks he took. We were not destined to visit Caldey again together, for I was ordained the following year and was soon to enter the Novitiate of the Society of the Divine Compassion.
Some time later the Caldey Benedictines made their submission to Rome; though it was a great blow and profound disappointment, it did not make either Ronnie or myself in any way anxious about our own position. For him it was not to be a vital question for four or five years.
What it cost him to leave Oxford with all its associations and its friends when that great crisis came in him life nobody will ever know. Once again it was his profound humility and deep sense of his utter unworthiness to receive such a grace that enabled him to make the sacrifice without a word of repining. We said good-bye during the luncheon hour on the embankment near Charing Cross; he was doing war work at Whitehall. ‘It is either Rome or nothing, I am going to Farnborough to make my decision.’ Those were his last words to me.
A glimpse of what it cost him was given me by a Father who was at Farnborough at the time, the only one now remaining of the old Community. He told me that when Ronnie went to Farnborough no one knew who he was or why he was there. But an old monk, a priest, very holy and very understanding, said to this Father: ‘Who is that young man, he seems to be going through some acute mental conflict?’ The old priest was asked to pray for him. A little later the Guestmaster went to Ronnie’s room to bring him down to supper; he was sitting on his windowsill, cleaning his pipe, and said, ‘You will be glad to know that I have decided to make my submission’. The following day the old priest was heard to say, ‘It’s all right now, the trouble is over, you can see it by that young man’s face’. I still have the postcard which he sent me telling me it had happened. I confess it caused me to shed tears, it was such a tremendous blow. There goes another Newman, so I thought, why couldn’t he stay? Nine years after we met again at the Old Palace, Oxford, myself now faced with the same crisis.
Ronnie, with his ubiquitous pipe, even though it was summer, was sitting on his fireguard – you did not often get Ronnie off his guard: he gave me a great welcome, took me under his care and shepherded me in. We were one again.
Even to those who knew him most and loved him best, Ronnie was largely a hidden personality. His baffling diffidence, his deep humility and intense reserve made it difficult for his friends to penetrate the sanctuary of his heart and soul. Thus in many ways he was a lonely person. To the public at large, who knew him mainly by his scholastic achievements and his ready wit and as perhaps a bit of a recluse, this hidden Ronnie was entirely unknown. But Ronald Knox’s intense reserve was never a lack of understanding or of sympathy with those around him; on the contrary it concealed a tenderness and sensitiveness to men and things which at times was almost more than he could bear.
On the mantelpiece of his rooms at Oxford was an exquisite miniature of a very charming lady; it was clearly his greatest treasure, he took it with him wherever he went. I can see it now on the little table by his bed at Caldey. It was his mother. She died when he was five years old. During all our time at Oxford he never once mentioned her to me. I have always thought that her loss had gone so deep that he could never speak of her. Indeed, I have often wondered whether I many not have contributed to his diffidence and to his repressed need of human sympathy. With characteristic wit he coined a word – ‘spinal’ – whereby to conceal this. ‘Spinal’ denoted anything that savoured too strongly of human emotion or expressed too crudely the delicacy of personal feelings and so sent a queer feeling up the spine. Anything spinal was ruthlessly cut out of all conversation.
One evening Ronnie went with me to see the play The Passing of the Third Floor Back, in which Forbes Robertson converts a whole series of fellow lodgers. Ronnie squirmed and groaned all the time. It was too ‘spinal’ for words.
That he was intensely sensitive to the need of human affection he tells us himself. ‘I think I could still point to the precise place on Chamber Stairs (at Eton) where I knelt down at the age of seventeen one evening and bound myself by a vow of celibacy … conscious how much my nature craved for human sympathy and support, I thought it my obvious duty to deny myself that tenderest sympathy and support which a happy marriage would bring. I must have power to attend upon the Lord without impediment.’ (Spiritual Aeneid)
It was this intense desire for human friendship and, at the same time, the supernatural motive by which it was so superbly sublimated that was the key to his quiet hidden influence with people of such varied types.
It was not necessary to be an undergraduate or intellectual to claim his help. Having retired to Aldenham Park to have time and quiet for study, he found a convent school evacuated on him and himself surrounded by the young ladies of the Assumption. He immediately placed himself at their disposal, giving them regular conferences which became so popular that one small girl, though not well, insisted on returning to school ‘so as not to miss any of Ronnie’s talks’. He completely won their hearts and they his. I remember his saying to me with rueful regret, ‘I have had to ask them not to play netball just outside the window of the room in which I am doing my translation’. I doubt if he refused them much else.
His devotion to these young people peeps out of his book The Mass in Slow Motion in two places. First in the preface where he says, ‘I will not pretend to have finished the business of proof-reading altogether dry-eyed’. The second is the last sentence of all where he pleads with them never to let anything separate them from Our Lord and to say often with the priest, ‘A te numquam, a te numquam, a te numquam separari permittas’. Such a threefold repetition from Ronnie speaks volumes. He became the idol of the school at Aldenham, just as he became the idol of the Westminster Clergy, a very different section of humanity.
From the very first the character of Ronald Knox was graced with a deep sense of his own unworthiness and of his failure to correspond with the graces and opportunities he had been given. This sense of failure would haunt him in his undergraduate days; even in the midst of his greatest successes he would have moments of deep depression. Later on when I followed him as chaplain at the Old Palace, Oxford, the report he left behind ended on the note that there were many ways in which he had failed to fulfill his hopes and that no doubt his successor would have better fortune and succeed where he had failed. A De Profundis when it should have been a Magnificat, for it was he who so solidly established the Chaplaincy and gave it a prestige unknown before.
One result of this sense of his own unworthiness was that nobody was ever too insignificant for his help. I recall a quite illiterate old person showing me a letter he had written to her, a letter of great length and most carefully thought out. To another who had written again and again continually asking the same fruitless questions after many replies, Ronnie wrote at last saying he was very sorry his letters had not helped her and that he thought he could do more for her by saying a Mass for her. This he accordingly did. How in the midst of all his other work he found time for these simple folk is beyond human comprehension.
I was with him a few weeks before he died. Very ill, with one foot well in the next world, he was perfectly serene. We talked awhile on ordinary things and then said farewell. Just like that! I never saw him again.
What passed between him and Almighty God during those long years during which he was absorbed in the translation of the Scriptures we shall never know. ‘I gather this kind of cancer doesn’t mean suffering in any acute form, I expect I’m not worthy of it’. These words, I think, enable us to glimpse something of the height of sanctity to which Ronnie Knox had attained before he passed from our midst.