Monsignor Ronald Knox - would have been a great blogger

He died at the age of 69 years on 24th August 1957. In my family home the name 'Ronnie' Knox was in common use, mainly by the many priests and seminarians from Ware who frequently visited (and often stayed on for two or three weeks).

A wit and a classicist - there were

quite a few like him before 1970!

As with so many great Catholics, Mgr 'Ronnie' Knox was a convert who was received into the Church in 1917. A year later and he was ordained - he had enjoyed a spectacular period at Oxford where he excelled as a classicist.

This was a  man of great talent, he was witty, erudite and devout but he never lost the common touch.

He was the author of many books on the faith and, in particular, his 'Mass in slow motion' (written from his talks to schoolgirls on the subject) is to be treasured. In it the Monsignor likens the Mass to a dance (not the liturgical dance kind that we know and hate today), but a dance where the priest and the server first tentatively approach the Lord with the prayers at the foot of the altar. It climaxes at the Consecration and Holy Comunion before winding down to the 'Ite Missa est' and the last Gospel.

He also translated the St Jerome Vulgate from the latin into English painstakingly bringing the Old and New Testaments up to date in a language style that made the Bible accessible to all - I am particularly grateful for the manner in which he brought the letters of St Paul into the 20th century as some of them were impossible to construe with any meaning.

He lived, of course, in the time of Chesterton and the two were great friends, Mgr Knox actually gave the sermon at GKC's Requiem in Westminster Cathedral, and, like Chesterton, he enjoyed writing detective novels and wrote a series of ten; this is a man who packed his life full of value.

He was not altogether approved of, especially by his fellow clergy who found his style of writing and his views somewhat out of sync with the ultra conservatism of the times. His views on indulgences verged (so his accusers believed) on disrespect as he stated on several occasions that he thought the Church should make them available: "when we get up to make room for an old lady on a bus". He was also not one for Marian devotions (which does, admittedly, make him hard to admire). 

 It is reported that he claimed: "......most of the literature about her (Our Lady) and the popular devotions connected with her leave me cold.”

The following passage is a good indication of his somewhat unorthodox views and is taken from his obituary in The Point, July 1958:-

"....As the above comments are phrased, one might get the impression that Monsignor Knox thinks that Saint John (despite all the doting senility he ascribed to the Saint) actually wrote the Holy Gospel according to Saint John. Not so. “Saint John,” writes Knox, “never really sat down and wrote a Gospel; what we’ve got is the result of a series of Press Conferences, at which his disciples were plying him with questions all the time.” The series of reminiscences that were thus “elicited from him piecemeal” were later shuffled together, the Monsignor says, and made into the Fourth Gospel. And so it happens that Monsignor Knox in the Gospel of Saint John, readily and without scruple blames those unknown disciples: “It looks as if their notes got muddled.”

A few weeks before his death, Monsignor Knox completed work on a new English translation of the autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus. The book has just been published in this country and has been hailed as witness to the “abiding influence” of the late Monsignor.

Source: Catholicism.org

It is impossible to look at Knox's life in the faith and not see strong similarities between him and some of our priest bloggers today, in particular,

 Fr Tim Finigan and Fr Z.

Humour has always been an integral part of Catholic life, from the gallows humour of St Thomas More and the Martyrs to the likes of Chesterton, Belloc,  Tolkien (anyone who created a Hobbit must have had a great sense of the absurd) and, of course, Evelyn Waugh who was a personal friend of the Monsignor.

Perhaps Knox's most extravagant jest was his radio hoax which he pulled off in 1926 which is believed to have been the inspiration for The War of the Worlds hoax orchestrated by Orson Welles in 1938.

Knox's broadcast came out of the blue on an unsuspecting audience; London was being invaded, rioters were storming Broadcasting House. It was a very obvious spoof but it succeeded in panicking many people who were, as then, unused to serious subjects such as a news broadcast being parodied and the BBC had to issue the following reassurance the next day......

“Some listeners, who apparently only heard part of Father Knox's talk at 7:40 this evening did not realise the humorous innuendoes underlying the imaginary news items and have felt uneasy as to the fate of London, Big Ben and other places mentioned in the talk. The preliminary announcement stated that the talk was a skit on broadcasting and the whole talk was, of course, a burlesque. We hope that any listeners who did not realise it will accept our sincere apologies for any uneasiness caused. London is safe. Big Ben is still chiming, and all is well.”

Remember him in your prayers today - he would have made a great blogger!