Last week I wrote that a good way to use these few weeks of “Epiphanytide” is by doing some Spiritual Reading. Well, putting my money where my mouth is, I have been reading (or re-reading) some of the great books by Msgr. Ronald Arbuthnott (I love that middle name!) Knox. Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) may not be as well-known as his colleague G.K. Chesterton (whom I also enjoy reading) but he was just as much a renaissance man. Knox’s full-time job was as a Catholic Chaplain...but he found time to give sermons and radio talks, translate classic Christian works, and write apologetics, cultural commentary, satire, Church History, Spiritual books and Detective stories. When he died, The Catholic World wrote “the death this summer of Msgr. Ronald Knox has deprived the English-speaking Catholic world of, perhaps, its most eminent contemporary writer.” On February 17, 1888, Ronald Knox was born in Kibworth, Leicestershire, England. His father, Reverend Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, was a prominent Anglican priest who later became the Bishop of Manchester. His father claimed that Knox was reading Virgil at six years old. In 1912, Knox was ordained as an Anglican priest and became a chaplain at Trinity College, University of Oxford. He kept the position until 1916. In 1917, Knox converted to Roman Catholicism. Over the next decade, Knox became an ordained Roman Catholic priest and counseled Chesterton as he considered joining the Roman Catholic Church. In 1925, Knox’s first detective novel. “The Viaduct Murder” was published. In 1927, Knox became a chaplain for Catholic undergrads at the University of Oxford. Biographer Evelyn Waugh notes that Knox was deliberate about his job as an Oxford chaplain: he was there to counsel Catholic students, not evangelize or comment on political parties. Waugh suggests this made Knox unique for his time. Knox counseled four generations of Catholic undergraduates at Oxford, taking many in as lodger, David Walker, observed that it wasn’t until later he realized how important Knox was: “It was only when we looked back that we realized how much this hopelessly shy, quiet creature had affected our thinking.” Knox’s two periods as an Oxford chaplain coincided with CS Lewis’ Oxford years teaching at Magdalen College. They didn’t know each other well, but they met in the 1930s through Dr. Humphrey Havard. When they met, Lewis reportedly called Knox “possibly the wittiest man in England.” (2 years ago, Bishop Lopes gave his clergy Milton Walsh’s book “Second Friends” which analyzes what they had in common.) However you decide to spend these weeks before Lent, a decision to engage in Spiritual reading can be a great way to begin.
Faithfully, Your Friend and Pastor, Fr. Christopher C. Stainbrook