![\"(Saint](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2015\/02\/Saint_Cecilia_Wymondley.jpg\")
<\/a>The first sermon in the book is on Saint Cecilia<\/a>, who Knox sees as a model for ordinary<\/em> Christians, who may feel they have no particularly saintly challenges to face. \u00a0He\u00a0contrasts St. Cecilia with St. Catherine of Alexandria. While Catherine was a great debater, explaining the why of Christianity to the people who persecuted her, St Cecelia operated on a smaller stage and her life was more a testament to the what and how of Christianity, as her husband was moved to convert by her faith.<\/p>\n Knox takes as a lesson from her life that Christians should think more about what their witness looks like in the midst of everyday life, rather than when someone asks them a question explicitly about their faith. \u00a0He writes:<\/p>\n The purity which is our traditional inheritance as Catholics has a message and a charm for the world about us. \u00a0Each of us, whether he likes it or not, is an advertisement of the Catholic faith to the little circle of his neighbours\u2013a good advertisement, or a bad advertisement. \u00a0And it is such a mistake to think that we ought to try and impress our neighbours by making it clear to them that Catholics are not Puritans, are not strait-laced, are sportsmen like anybody else. \u00a0The world is very ready to say that of us, but it does not really respect us for it. \u00a0It does not respect us, for being ready to join in rather risky conversation, and enjoy rather doubtful jokes; it does not respect us for being careless about what company we keep and what places of amusement we go to. \u00a0It respects us, if it sees we shrink from the touch of anything that may defile us; if it sees that the virginity which is practised in the cloister has its complement and its fruit in the chaste conversation of Catholics who are living in the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Saint Therese would echo Knox\u2019s advice, based on her instruction to literally flee temptation and sin in her autobiography\u00a0The Story of a Soul<\/em><\/a>, though she would recommend flight for its own sake, regardless of whether anyone else is by.<\/p>\n And sometimes when the temptation was very severe, I would run like a deserter from the battlefield if I could do so without letting the Sister see my inward struggle.<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n I spoke just now, dear Mother, of the flight that is my last resource to escape defeat. \u00a0It is not honorable, I confess, but during my novitiate, whenever I had recourse to this means, it invariably succeeded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n St. Therese\u2019s advice is meant to be followed invisibly, but Knox sees a salutary effect for the people who observe a Christian shrink from sin. \u00a0I wonder, a bit, how dated Knox\u2019s advice may be (or at least how dated his expectation of the reactions of others would be). \u00a0The book was originally published in 1940, when I\u00a0assume<\/em> that propriety was still the kind of thing you might hear people praised for, even if people disagreed about how far you should take it.<\/p>\n Today, I don\u2019t think my friends are favorably struck by my absenting myself from their games of Cards Against Humanity<\/a>, and moving away to read until they\u2019re done. \u00a0And I\u2019ve certainly had people complain about my habit of rapping my gavel and saying \u201cSwearing is out of order on this floor\u201d at the monthly debates I host.<\/p>\n My behavior is usually classed as squeamishness, and, if not resented, is mostly interpreted as a wacky quirk, with no more moral dimension than my habit of wearing nerdy t-shirts or of reading the Sunday\u00a0NYT<\/em> in print. \u00a0And I only seem to know how to employ it in certain circumstances. \u00a0It\u2019s easier to excuse myself from a more formal occasion, like a Cards Against Humanities game, than to extricate myself politely from a conversation that has drifted into discussing the genitals of one of the speaker\u2019s past paramours.<\/p>\n I\u00a0have<\/em> seen my friend group spontaneously censor itself for the sake of propriety, but I was not the cause. \u00a0One of the attendees of our monthly debates is a thirteen year old, and, when he walked into the room before we began debating \u201cR: Ignore Politicians\u2019 Sex Scandals\u201d you could see everyone notice his presence, and mentally check over the examples they planned to use in speeches, to tone down any crudity\/explicitness that wasn\u2019t necessary for the point they were making.<\/p>\n His youth commanded respect, without resentment.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how (without perhaps finding an explicit debate proposition for my friends and I to tackle) to suggest that we adults might also be ill-done by when we are exposed to certain crudities or cruelties. \u00a0Becoming accustomed to something is not the same as becoming strengthened by it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Surprise! I know this book wasn\u2019t on my shortlist for the year\u2019s Monday reading<\/a>. \u00a0I ran across it in a used bookstore yesterday and, having read Evelyn Waugh\u2019s biography of Knox<\/a>, I thought it would make a good first reading of Knox himself, plus would give me a way to \u201cbetter know a saint.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Unlike last year\u2019s book<\/a>, this one isn\u2019t available on kindle, but the used paperback copies are less than $2 on Amazon<\/a>, if you want to read along.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2015, I\u2019m reading and blogging through Ronald Knox\u2019s\u00a0collection of sermons on Christian exemplars,\u00a0Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes. \u00a0Every Monday, I\u2019ll be writing about the next portrait in the book, so you\u2019re welcome to peruse them all and\/or read along. The first sermon in the book is on Saint Cecilia, who Knox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":11020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,48],"tags":[240],"class_list":["post-11017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debatetactics","category-morality-in-practice","tag-knox-bookclub"],"yoast_head":"\n