It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.

-Msgr. Ronald Knox

"Each citizen has a private philosophy and a private code. That's the trouble. And when you've invented the code or the philosophy for yourself, you suddenly find at some moment of emergency that it doesn't bind you. How could it? The stream doesn't rise higher than the source."

-Fr. Ronald Knox

"Dogmas may fly out at the window but congregations do not come in at the door."

When "the failure of the Churches" is discussed in public print, our well-meaning advisers always insist, with a somewhat wearying reiteration, on the need for a more comprehensive Christianity, which shall get away from forms and ceremonies, from dogmas and creeds, and shall concentrate its attention upon those elementary principles of life and devotion which all Christians have at heart. Each prophet who thus enlightens us makes the curious assumption, apparently, that he is the first person who has ever suggested anything of the kind. As a matter of fact, the brazen lungs of Fleet Street have been shouting these same directions at us for a quarter of a century past. And have "the Churches" taken no notice? On the contrary, as I have suggested above, the pilots of our storm-tossed denominations have lost no opportunity of lightening ship by jettisoning every point of doctrine that seemed questionable, and therefore unessential; hell has been abolished, and sin very nearly; the Old Testament is never alluded to but with a torrent of disclaimers, and miracle with an apologetic grimace. Preachers of the rival sects have exchanged pulpits; "joint services" have been held on occasions of public importance; even the inauguration of a new Anglican cathedral cannot take place nowadays without a fraternisation of the Christianities. In hundreds of churches and chapels everything has been done that could be done to meet this modern latitudinarian demand. And the result?

 The result is that as long as a man is a good preacher, a good organiser, or an arresting personality, he can always achieve a certain local following; and among this local following a reputation for broad-mindedness stands him in good stead. But the ordinary man who does not go to church is quite unaffected by the process. He thinks no better of Christianity for its efforts to be undogmatic. It is not that he makes any articulate reply to these overtures; he simply ignores them. Nothing, I believe, has contributed more powerfully to the recent successes of the "Anglo-Catholic" movement than the conviction, gradually borne in upon the clergy, that the latitudinarian appeal, as a matter of experience, does not attract. Dogmas may fly out at the window but congregations do not come in at the door.

-Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics

(H/T Nicole DeMille)

"Any old stick is good enough to beat the poor old Church of Rome, and if it breaks, you've got two!'
-Msgr. Ronald Knox

A quite new hatred of the Catholic religion has grown up within my lifetime- a hatred of its strict principles on certain points, which our neighbors, though their own liberty of action is not in the least interfered with, dislike as being a criticism of their own conduct, and a criticism which in their heart of hearts they know to be just

-Ronald Knox, In Soft Garments

Knox again

From a good piece of satire. :-)

"When suave politness, temp'ring bigot zeal
Corrected I believe to One does feel

-Ronald Knox, Absolute and Abitofhell

"They would want to know how it got there."

Why I realize I *have* to read Ronald Knox. :-)

From Second Friends: C.S. Lewis and Ronald Knox in Conversation by Milton Wash (p. 57):
_____________________

...Can the philosophy of materialism explain the existence of intelligence? [Bertrand] Russell believes it can: given the vastness and complexity of the universe, it is probable that among the various combinations you will have one or two that produce intelligent organisms. This, for Knox obfuscates the question: "If the police were to discover a human body in Mr. Russell's Saratoga trunk, he would not be able to satisfy them with the explanation that, among all the innumerable articles of luggage in the world, it is only natural that there should be some few which are large enough to contain a body. They would want to know how it got there." By airily talking of hypothetical possibilities in a vast universe, Russell is avoiding the question of how in fact our material world has produced the spiritual reality of intellect. The existence of something different from the material world requires a cause that is other than material, and points to a Mind which is the source of our human ability to reason.