Fr. Ronald Knox

Monsignor. Theologian. Translator. (1888-1957)

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The Church of England is a compound of lights, green stoles, bad brass, C of E's Men's Society, Eucharist at eight, Matins at eleven, confession if you happen to feel like it, doctrine which forgets Paul, discipline which defies Peter, and devotion which has never heard of Mary.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The Mass does not add to Calvary, does not multiply Calvary; it is Calvary, sacramentally multiplied...it is Christ continuing what Christ began.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The secret of Christianity is that there are no half-shares in it.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Life can never be dull for us while the Church is still militant, still has a battle to fight and a position to be vindicated.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

A person who tries to live a life that's pleasing to God without any sacraments to help him is always in danger of measuring everything by his own effort, and becoming rather smug about his own effort. But the sacramental system, whatever else it does, ought to teach us humility.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Next to thinking that you can do without God the most dangerous mistake you can make is thinking God cannot do without you.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Catholics hold Scripture is inspired, not in the metaphorical sense in which modern Protestants make that affirmation, nor yet in the limited sense that the Holy Spirit prevented the authors from falling into error. We believe the Scriptures have the Holy Spirit for their Author.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Sin surely is rebellion, and the deliberateness of the rebellion is the measure of the sin's gravity.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The medicine man is not the forerunner of the priest, he is the forerunner of the scientist.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

God wouldn't have given us an intellect, if he didn't want us to think straight.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Catholic religion is more than a creed; it's a life, a warfare, a loyalty, a romance. But it's a creed too; and the assertion of it involves an intellectual responsibility. Man's intellect is part of himself, and must be represented, consequently, in the scheme of his salvation.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

What is the use of encouraging children to grow older, if the grand lesson of life is, after all, to learn to be as young as they?

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The true sanity realizes that the truth, let it be what it may, matters furiously.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

It was, and is, an over-educated age that needs to sit at the feet of an under-educated saint.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The people who have no ideals in this world are always dull and generally unhappy.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The Church may be rent by a thousand discords, but its supernatural unity goes on undiminished.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

To be present when two other people are arguing is, almost always, to be in a state of impotent fury at their joint incompetence.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

The difference between being merely Catholic by creed, and being a full citizen of the Catholic world, in times like these, is, if I may degrade the subject by an undignified metaphor, all the difference between merely watching a race and watching a race you have money on.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

It is eternity which matters, and time does not count.

[Fr. Ronald Knox @FrRonaldKnox]

Christian law, St. Paul tells us, is not written on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart. It is not a code of directions exterior to ourselves, but a spirit with which we are to be imbued, an attitude which we are to assimilate.