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R e v i e w s
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This Rock
Volume 12, Number 6
 July-August 2001 
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Knox Redux
Several years ago, as an Evangelical Protestant investigating the claims of the Catholic Church, I had the good fortune to come across a tattered copy of The Belief of Catholics in a used bookstore. It didn't take long, once I began reading, to recognize that the author of this classic work had much in common with another Catholic apologist, G. K. Chesterton. Both were former Anglicans who had crossed the Tiber in rather dramatic fashion, and both were writers of immense talent. Knox, who was fourteen years Chesterton's junior, was an admirer of the famed journalist, calling him "my earliest master and model."
Knox was a priest and a superb spiritual director who wrote several books about the spiritual life for both religious and laity. As I recently reread The Belief of Catholics, I was even more deeply impressed by Knox's insight into human nature and the various forms of blindness that afflict mankind. It is this penetration into the human soul, combined with a dry-and occasionally cutting-wit and a vibrant style, that make Knox such a compelling read.
Recognizing that the Catholic apologist can easily fall into the trap of being a defensive reactionary, Knox states that his book "is an attempt to write constructive apologetic, to assert a claim." One way Knox accomplishes this is by starting with what the observant Catholic notices about modern man and society, not with what people say about the Catholic faith. In the opening chapter, "The Modern Distaste for Religion," a number of problems unique to modernity are observed, including the influence of modern media, the dumbing down of education, the mindless use of cliches, and the rise of materialism.
"A rush age," Knox observes, "cannot be a reflective age." In many ways this book, written in England nearly eighty years ago, could have been written about modern-day America and the problems faced by Catholics in our country: apathy, relativism, feel-goodism, the shunning of dogma, and sexual amorality. For example, writing about the latter, Knox observes that "A steady, ceaseless flow of literary propaganda has shaken the faith of our generation in the indissolubility of marriage, hitherto conceived as a principle of natural morality."
Having started with a critique of the modern situation, Knox notes the intriguing fact that many people are repulsed by what they falsely believe Catholicism teaches while being attracted to many elements of the Catholic faith. Many intelligent people admire (often secretly) something about Catholicism, but find issues sufficient to keep them outside the doors. Whether they know it or not, people, "especially the young people of our time, want authority." And so one of the tasks of the apologist is to demonstrate that the religious and moral authority of the Catholic Church is not arbitrary or dictatorial but is based in truth and love, established by God for the good of man.
The book logically progresses to belief in God, rooted first in natural observation and philosophical consideration and then fully realized in Catholic teaching based on divine revelation. Knox devotes two chapters to the person of Jesus Christ ("Our Lord's Claim Stated" and "Our Lord's Claim Justified") before moving on to the question of "Where Protestantism Goes Wrong." Here Knox demonstrates that how a man views the Church will either make or break the basis of his view of Christ, the Bible, and authority. "It is from that living Church that we take our guidance. Protestantism claims to take its guidance immediately from the living Christ. But what is the guidance he gives us, and where are we to find it?"
Later he points out the faulty logic by which Protestants discarded the belief in transubstantiation but maintained the inspiration of the Bible, even though both are squarely based on the authority of the Church. "Did they," he inquires, "suppose that biblical inspiration was a self-evident fact, like the axioms of Euclid?"
The final chapters are devoted to the positive vision of the Catholic faith, showing how Catholic doctrine meets reality and addresses every aspect of human existence. Man is made for God, and the place to meet God and have communion with him is within the divine institution founded by Jesus Christ. "In a word," Knox writes, "we do not think of our Church as the best religious body to belong to; we believe that those who do not belong to it, provided that they believe in our Lord and desire to do his will, may just as well belong to no religious body at all." I bless my good fortune in having a chance to read this classic apologetical work once again.
-- Carl E. Olson
The Belief of Catholics
By Ronald Knox
Ignatius Press
(2000)
Originally published by
Sheed & Ward
1927
242 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0-89870-586-0
Jiminy Cricket
In this age of pastoral sensitivity, sometimes a slap in the face does a world of good. When discussing the myriad ways men fall short in their obligation to God, the booklet The Seven Capital Sins pulls no punches.
Tan Books and Publishers has carved its niche in the Catholic publishing world by reprinting worthy books that have become public domain. The Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri originally issued The Seven Capital Sins in 1959. The booklet explores the manifestations of the seven sins-pride, covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth-that used to the called the seven "deadly" sins and that Bishop Fulton Sheen called "the seven pall-bearers of the soul." Self-seeking or self-love, from which all these vices spring, is the "seven-headed monster that each one of us has to fight our whole lives through" (1).
Pride is the sin "most hated by God" (7). "Everybody is infected with the virus of pride," writes the author. "But there is a particular kind of pride in each individual; at least a particular kind dominates. . . . Searching into our type of pride is very important for obtaining a true knowledge of ourselves and for making fruitful efforts to root out sin and vice from our lives" (8).
According to the booklet, pride comes packaged in fifteen different ways, some of which seem at first glance oxymoronic. For instance, we would recognize immediately that pride is the basis of the sins of self-centeredness and vanity; but did you ever stop to think that self-pity, timidity, and scrupulosity are sins that have their basis in pride? If self-pity includes resentment, suspiciousness, or harboring resentments, it is based in pride. If timidity springs from unreasonable fear that makes us worried of others' opinions so that we cater to human respect rather than act as we should-that stems from pride. If scrupulosity fixes our attention on the wrong things so that we pay too much attention to them and are unscrupulous in more important matters-that stems from pride. (A note to the scrupulous: Give this booklet a pass.)
It's good to remember when the text was written, because sometimes its Eisenhower-era sensibilities show. In warning against the gluttony of drink, the author writes, "Unfortunately, drunkenness is not confined to the male sex, as it was notably in former years, but has become a common vice among women, in whom it seems all the more degrading" (36).
Or again, in discussing sloth, the author writes, "Spiritual melancholy, or depression, is a secret anger with ourselves and a species of self-love. Because of it, we have no courage to break with our faults and imperfections, with our habits of sin, and we feel a sense of despair. This in turn makes us quarrelsome and contentious" (41). He quotes a Fr. Faber as saying, "'Sadness is a sort of spiritual disability. . . . There is no moral imbecility so great as that of querulousness and sentimentality. He who lies down at full length on life as it were a sickbed-poor, languishing soul, what will he ever do for God?'" (42).
Such views take no account of the research of the last generation which shows that many times depression results from a biological imbalance, often hormonal, that can be treated with chemicals so that the sufferer is able to live a normal life. Again, keeping in mind the age of the text is helpful because, if you can steer around these shoals, there is deep water here to be harvested for bounty.
The Seven Capital Sins comprises a chapter on each sin that includes practical suggestions about overcoming that sin in one's life. Chapter eight is short, a less-than-helpful comparison of types of sin with diseases of the body (i.e., pride = cancer, covetousness = tuberculosis, lust = leprosy, envy = blood poisoning, et cetera). The last chapter, "Jesus, Our Model," is better; it includes prayers to assist in the struggle with each type of sin.
There are occasional apologetic insights buried in the text. The author posits that our Lord probably referred to the seven capital sins when he spoke of the unclean spirit that goes out of a man and roams through the desert places seeking a resting place and, finding none, returns with "seven other spirits more evil than himself" (Matt. 12:45).
But it is overwhelmingly a booklet about self-knowledge, and there are those of us who will recognize ourselves depressingly often in these pages. In its descriptions of the types of sins and how they manifest themselves in our lives, The Seven Capital Sins is a capital work. And since it's small enough to slip into a shirt pocket, it could serve as a personal Jiminy Cricket, always nearby to prick our consciences when our noses grow long with self-deception.
-- Brian Kelleher
The Seven Capital Sins
By Benedictine Convent of Perpetual Adoration
Clyde, Missoury
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc.
(2000)
Originally published in 1959
62 pages
$2.00; quantity discounts available
ISBN: 0-89555-679-0
Available from Tan
1-800-437-5876
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