Newman and Knox Pray For Us

On and off, for years, I have been fascinated by John Henry Newman, who in the middle of the 19th Century, after much complex thought and intense prayer, converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. I have read his sermons. I have been to the pulpit in Oxford, at St. Mary's, where he preached before his conversion. I have been at Little more where Newman was received into the Catholic Church.  I have read several biographies of him trying to get into his mind, the mind of a man who can articulate, with relative certainty, the decision to become and remain Catholic, the essence of that Faith and its ultimate Truth.  And the teaching of that Faith without compromise. 

After Monsignor Parnassus of my parish died last August, I discovered a number of books in his library by another Anglican convert, who was born two years before Newman's death, Ronald Knox.  They were sold as part of Monsignor's estate and I did not have a chance to read but a few pages of one, a retreat for lay people. Those few pages were enough for me to make a note. I need to know more about another Englishman who made a conscious change to the faith which has been mine from birth.

. Fr. Newman



It is nearly a year after that mental note.  Something brought me back to Knox. I think it was a sense that my commitment to my faith was in danger. The world is falling apart. Christians are, literally, being crucified in the Middle East.  And here we Americans are living our lives as if we have all the time in the world and we cannot be touched by persecution. We have forgotten about 9/11 and are blissfully passive about the liberties being taken away from us in small bits. I am put in mind of the frog placed in a pot in cold water, heated gently, until finally, the frog realizes the danger too late.  And Catholics, in my parish, and elsewhere, seem outright apathetic during services. They come late and leave early. They wander around, often at the moment of the Consecration.  And there seems to be little more than a passing nod to theological principles. Ecumenism has somehow become a kind of "whatever" to any form of belief.  I have wondered why I should even remain a Catholic if what is taught is merely some kind of proscenium for an absence of first principles. There is a bit of the brother of the prodigal son in my attitude.  I see my own fellow Catholics saying, "Oh, that really isn't something you have to believe!", often things which are as the apostles said, "hard sayings" that it would be rather nice to be able to dismiss. 

 Fr. Knox

So I needed another level head, like Newman's. I turned to Ronald Knox. I decided to see if there was a biography. There was an autobiography, A Spiritual Aeneid, and a biography by the author of Bridgehead Revisited.  I read both. My first reaction was to note how similar were the experiences of the two men who existed together on the earth for only two years, Newman and Knox.  They shared a depth of intellectual dis-ease with what they tried and tried to reconcile--the confusions of the Anglican faith which incorporated low and high forms that were greater or lesser a reflection of the Catholic Faith from which they had split from after Luther nailed his theses and Henry the VIII had an itch in his groin that he confused with divine inspiration.  And each, ever so slowly (less slow for Knox than for Newman) read and prayed and read again and concluded that the Faith of the Church fathers was the faith manifested in Roman Catholicism.  It saddens me that Knox is not as well known in convert and Catholic circles as is Newman, but that is a potential subject for another entry.

What reading about Knox (and pieces of his writing) has done, as it did for Newman before him, was make me long for thinkers like him, for models like them, who can keep me from a tendency toward despair for the manifestations of Catholicism that are unclear, or contradictory.

They knew the faith they adopted.  It was not a matter merely of "feeling good" on earth to which I think Catholicism has devolved, in complete misunderstanding of the nature of life and the sacrifice of Christ.  It was an assent (Newman wrote a book called the Grammar of Assent) to a nuanced whole of which Christ is the Center and the Catholic Church's Magisterium is the admittedly imperfect repository, but one that has the fullness of the truth.  If you pick and choose what you will accept you have two choices (and I am talking to myself here as well as to this blog), then you are in the wrong religion. The New Evangelization seems to be missing the point of our faith.  I heard a priest say that it wasn't necessary to be theological. I think the opposite. I think it is first necessary to understand what our faith says, determine to embrace it even when it is hard and it is ALWAYS hard, and then invite those who would join what Robert Barron calls "The Strangest Way". 

The Catholic Church has survived far worse than the misunderstandings and meanderings of today. Blessed John Henry Newman and Ronald Knox, pray for us.