RELUCTANT LEGEND
by Wilfrid Sheed
WHEN a pair of English Catholics decide to get married, one of the
first questions to be settled is inevitably "Can we get Monsignor
Knox to preach the sermon?" Only after that is it possible to
discuss bridesmaids, flowers and how to keep Uncle George sober
during the reception.
It is a curious fact that one of the world's deepest scholars
should double as a last-minute marriage counselor for so many
young Catholics. Monsignor Knox is best-known for his colossal,
almost unique achievement of translating the whole Bible by
himself-a task which might have broken the spirit of a whole
university -and yet he still succeeds in being the happiest man at
many a wedding feast, as well as the wisest.
Monsignor Knox probably holds the record for sanity among
scholars. Just as he was the right man to translate the Bible
(with his uncanny combination of erudition, concentration and
style), so is he the right man at a wedding, or a funeral, or any
great human occasion. He has the great pastoral gifts of
compassion, sincerity and genuine spirituality; and he has also
the social gifts of wit, good nature and taste, which make his
presence a pleasure as well as a comfort.
In spite of his pre-eminence in both these fields (a collection of
his wedding sermons will be coming out in the Spring which will
illustrate his excellence in that form), nobody would dream of
calling Monsignor Knox a Bible-specialist, or a wedding-
specialist. He is so completely equipped as a scholar and as a
thinker, that his choice of activity can be dictated not by his
capacities, but by the needs of the Church.
AT the moment, he is probably England's most popular Catholic
preacher. He has assumed this position unobtrusively, without any
of the usual devices of the spellbinder. Unlike many popular
preachers, he doesn't wave his personality about, or try to
ingratiate himself with his hearers. He would never dream of
attempting to reduce a mob to hysteria in the name of Truth. And
unlike many popular preachers, he would have no objection to being
silenced For there are many things he would rather do than preach
and it is almost his misfortune that he does it so superlatively
well that he has to go on with it.
Throughout the year he interrupts his intense work of Scripture
commentary to travel to different parts of the country, wherever
he is asked to go. His preaching method is restrained, but his
voice is strong and vibrant, and at no point do you find your
attention wandering. Every sermon is carefully constructed, so
that it remains to be read afterward as a highly satisfying work
of art. But more important, each sermon is packed with challenging
ideas, absolutely new, so that one becomes suddenly aware of the
presence and pressure of a really creative mind. It would be an
assignment worthy of a Ph.D. thesis to try to find a single stale
idea in Knox's sermons-or even a repetition.
AT least three times a year, Monsignor Knox descends on Oxford
University for a sermon, and there he really seems to roll up his
sleeves and enjoy himself. The University Catholic Church is
invariably packed for him, and many people squash into the
auditorium upstairs to hear him over the loud-speaker. Some of the
best seats are taken by nonCatholic professors and dons, who are
in search of intellectual entertainment: they are never
disappointed. His university sermons, some of them collected in a
book called <In Soft Garments> are a model of lightness and
urbanity.
Oxford serves as a kind of holiday for Monsignor Knox. It was his
spiritual home before Rome took its place, and he is still more at
ease there than anywhere else. If he had remained an Anglican, he
could have had a blissful life at Oxford; before he became a
Catholic, he was already a legend there, and he was well on his
way to becoming a monument as well. But he had a special quality
differentiating him from the other great wits and scholars which
caused him to swerve off the foreordained track; and it is this
quality, rather than his vast catalogue of attainments, that makes
his story unique and important.
RONALD ARBUTHNOTT KNOX was born in 1888, son of the Anglican
bishop of Manchester. His family was large (he was the sixth
child) and, says Knox, remarkably happy and placid, not a good
breeding-ground for rebels, or Catholics. In an interesting later
essay on Bertrand Russell, Monsignor Knox defends the Victorian
home against charges of repression and cruelty, and cites his own
family as a fairly typical and kindly example.
At an early age, he began to exhibit uncommon brilliance. By the
time he was twelve, he was writing flawless verse in Latin and
Greek, and at eighteen he had a book of verse published (nothing
unusual perhaps, except that the poems were in three languages).
He was extremely contented at Eton and with reason: for he
achieved the unusual double of winning all the prizes and being
highly popular as well. Once again there is no sign, of the rebel-
although his special private quality must have flashed for a
minute when at the age of seventeen he knelt on the school stairs
and made a vow of celibacy. He did it because he already felt by
intuition that whatever his vocation was, he would have to pursue
it alone.
AT Oxford he seemed to blend even more perfectly with his
surroundings. Again he won every prize in sight-no mean feat at
Oxford- and in addition he became a star speaker at the Oxford
Union debating society and altogether a university "character." He
was a brilliant figure--almost a dandy according to rumor-and
already people were attributing clever remarks to him which he
hadn't made, a tribute which is only paid to well-established
wits. He was the perfect Oxonian, practically the archetype; and
if they had had a yearbook at Oxford, it would probably have
predicted a brilliant future for him as a don, a politician or at
least as a worldly archbishop.
After graduation, he went into the Anglican ministry and became
the chaplain at Trinity, one of the Oxford colleges. In doing so,
he entered his most purely brilliant phase: jests, limericks,
parodies poured out of him, and for a while he was probably the
most famous wit in England-a comical parson in the best English
tradition. He was beginning to make his Anglican superiors
nervous, because some of his fire was directed at them (e.g., his
devastating parody <Reunion All Round>)-but the rest of the nation
saw only the jester, and Knox began to be credited with every joke
that was cracked by anyone in the British Isles. (Incidentally.
this has been a life-long affliction.)
HE has written an account of his early life called <A Spiritual
Aeneid> and in it we see that his serious spiritual adventures had
begun long before his public realized it. Particularly, he was
plagued by the absence of unity and authority among Protestants.
But his conversion in 1917 came as a genuine shock to his
admirers. Cardinal Newman's submission to Rome had been surprising
enough-but then Newman had always been an unusual fellow, a kind
of outsider. Knox was something else again. His Oxford associates
thought of him as "one of us," a man they could really understand
and trust. Only recently, I met a venerable scholar who was still
lamenting the calamity of that poor fellow Knox-"such a brilliant
chap before he got cracked on religion."
It is hard to estimate the revolutionary impact of this conversion
on the Church in England. Knox brought with him unquestioned
intellectual stature; and yet it was impossible to dismiss him as
a brilliant crackpot with a grievance. If Knox wasn't sane nobody
was. Directly, he was responsible for numerous converts including
Sir Arnold Lunn, and to some extent G. K. Chesterton. Less
directly he made countless young intellectuals and sophisticates
realize that there was nothing shameful about being a Catholic.
Since Knox joined the Church, in 1917, the number of Catholics at
Oxford has been multiplied by five, and there have even been
complaints that Catholicism has become an intellectual fad at the
University. If this is true, it is undoubtedly Knox's doing. In
addition, he was probably the most typical "Englishman" ever to go
over to Rome; and he cleared the way for many other typical
Englishmen to do likewise.
Ordained in 1919, Father Knox was appointed chaplain to the
Catholics at Oxford in 1926. For thirteen years he served there,
at once the glory and the support of the Catholic students. He
supported the chaplaincy largely by the sale of fiendishly
ingenious detective stories (later he wanted his great translation
to be advertised as being by "the Author of <The Viaduct
Murder>"). He also waged a running battle in print and over the
radio against the bright and celebrated agnostics of the day. In
fact believers began to lean almost too heavily on him; whenever a
new heretic was heard, they comforted themselves with the formula:
"Ronnie can take care of him." During the twenties and thirties,
it was a great comfort to have Knox on your side.
In 1939 he retired to the country to start his solitary work on
the Bible. Since then he has withdrawn more and more from public
controversy, and concentrated his gifts on the simple exposition
of doctrine and the spiritual life. Possibly this is a result of
getting away from argumentative Oxford, or perhaps it comes from a
feeling that the public is tired of controversy, and is more in
need of spiritual nourishment.
HIS powers of exposition were tested to their fullest during the
war-years, when a girls' school was evacuated into his area and he
was assigned to preach there. At the time, he was working a six-
day week among dictionaries and commentaries; but just as he is
right for weddings so was he right for the schoolgirls. And his
sermons to them were such models of simplicity-in-depth that they
have since been put out as three highly successful adult-books:
<The Mass, The Creed> and <The Gospel-all <in Slow Motion.>
Knox's scholarship has always tended to make him more lucid
instead of less so. His linguistic genius has given him a
surprising mastery of colloquial English, and he is not above
using slang if it helps his meaning. He is the opposite of the
traditional woolly-minded professor. He is alarmingly alert in
conversation, and his interests are far from being exclusively
antiquarian or specialized. For instance his book <God and the
Atom> came out while the rest of us were still too dazed to think
about it. Indeed, he gives such an impression of being in touch
with everything that it comes as a mild surprise to hear that he
saw his first "talkie" only two years ago: <The Song of
Bernadette>, liked it very much, but hasn't seen another one.
IT isn't easy to describe Monsignor Knox's presence. He has
struggled hard to appear unobtrusive, with considerable success.
He talks softly, and laughs a good deal, inwardly, so that you can
only tell he is laughing by looking at him closely. He is medium
in size, light in movement. The chief distinguishing feature,
apart from the very interesting face with which nature has
embarrassed him, is his collar, which always seems to be a size
too large.
He has that reticence with strangers which seems to be almost a
disease among educated Englishmen. But unlike many shy people he
gives not the slightest suggestion of arrogance, and you can
<feel> at ease with him even if at first you can't talk easily
with him. And once the ice is cracked, he is a superb
conversationalist, and with the passage of time an excellent
friend. Oddly enough, his shyness may even <help> other Englishmen
to feel at home with him.
No one has ever achieved fame more reluctantly. A journalist
looking for an interview and a few pictures would probably do
better with Greta Garbo. Now that his Bible has finally appeared
in one volume, his picture is on display in bookshops all over the
country, and his name is already a household word over here as
well as in England. It is a development that he views with
distaste. At a dinner given for him by his friends last year, he
pointed out hopefully that as nobody ever thought of Mortimer
Pullman or the Earl of Sandwich in connection with their
inventions, so too might Knox, the perpetrator of the Knox Bible,
be forgotten.
There is a slim chance of this wish being granted. One-man
translations of the Bible are extremely rare. No Catholic has
attempted the task since St. Jerome, and nearly all the Protestant
versions have been the work of several men. By itself it would be
no mean life-work for a man to look back on; at any rate it would
be enough for immortality. If you add it to all Monsignor Knox's
other achievements-his incredible success in so many literary
veins, his vital work for the Church-you have a greater load than
anonymity will bear. In short, Monsignor Knox has become a
reluctant legend, and thus he must remain.
But as pointed out earlier, the catalogue of achievements is not
the main story. Knox's Catholic admirers have noticed a steady
increase in spiritual profundity which has never been checked or
diverted. He has never allowed his cleverness to handicap him or
stunt his growth, although the temptations must have been many.
His vocation has been in truth a lonely one, and many of his
cleverest contemporaries have no real idea of what Knox has been
up to these last forty years.
One reason for this growth is a natural humility that goes much
deeper even than his modesty.
Other people may be impressed by his worldly performances-he
certainly isn't. Some years ago he wrote a letter to the late
Caryll Houselander, in which he told her that her writings had
convinced him more than ever of his own abysmal mediocrity and
lack of spirituality. I don't know about your reaction to this,
but it seems to me that if Monsignor Knox is mediocre, somebody
will have to think up a new word to describe the rest of us.
This article was taken from the February 1957 issue of "The
Catholic World", published by The Missionary Society of St. Paul
the Apostle in the State of New York.
Copyright (c) 1997 EWTN Online Services.
-------------------------------------------------------
Provided courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
PO Box 3610
Manassas, VA 22110
Voice: 703-791-2576
Fax: 703-791-4250
Web:
http://www.ewtn.com
Email address:
[email protected]
-------------------------------------------------------
