{"id":11109,"date":"2015-02-16T12:33:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T17:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=11109"},"modified":"2015-02-16T12:33:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T17:33:01","slug":"promises-no-one-asks-the-church-to-keep-saints-bookclub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2015\/02\/promises-no-one-asks-the-church-to-keep-saints-bookclub.html","title":{"rendered":"Promises No One Asks the Church to Keep [Saints bookclub]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In 2015, I\u2019m reading and blogging through\u00a0Ronald Knox\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0collection of sermons on Christian exemplars,\u00a0<\/em>Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian Heroes<\/a>. \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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"(Sailko<\/a>
(Sailko \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this week\u2019s chapter, Ronald Knox is describing St. Gregory the Great<\/a>, and roots his sermon in an anecdote of St. Gregory punning on the name of an English captive, Angles, explaining that his true heritage was more\u00a0Angels<\/em> and his proper home wasn\u2019t England but the Kingdom of Heaven. \u00a0Knox uses this story to set up his discussion of the promise of the Catholic Church and the longing that it satisfies, in St. Gregory\u2019s age and in his own.<\/p>\n

The Church had just begun to realize that she was outliving the Roman Empire, and saw in the spreading of the faith not a philosophy to be preached to the world, but a citizenship to be extended to it\u2026<\/p>\n

In St. Gregory\u2019s time, men were looking to the Church as the one abiding institution; it seemed to them that the break-up of earthly dominions and the shifting of nations which was taking place throughout Europe pointed to mere chaos ahead, unless hope lay in the Papacy. \u00a0To-day, there is the same break-up of great dominions; the dame shifting of the limits of nationality. \u00a0The world has altered its look since we learned our geography, and it has not got to the end of its alteration yet. \u00a0In this new world, men still look to the Catholic Church and to Rome as the divinely-appointed centre of the Catholic Church, as the one abiding institution which will survive the new chaos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading this chapter, I wondered if the hunger that Knox describes persists in our own time. \u00a0In the Roman age, and in the age of the British Empire, it was more natural to take pride in citizenship in an eternal institution, and, when temporal governments failed, the Church promised to be that everlasting body that the people sought.<\/p>\n

However, today, most people I know don\u2019t belong to institutions that disappoint them by not enduring \u2014 most people I know don\u2019t belong to long-lived institutions at all. \u00a0There\u2019s no desire to be kindled, disappointed, and redirected. \u00a0Most of the institutions we interact with look like NOI<\/a>, recently constituted, prone to sudden collapse\/dispersal<\/a>, but leaving us confident the constituent parts will be gathered up again and re-amalgamated, if still needed.<\/p>\n

Now, when we ask\u00a0Are We Rome?<\/em><\/a> we\u2019re asking how close we are to decline, not whether we can make good on the stability that Rome tried to offer. \u00a0Knox took for granted that his listeners were looking for a body that could satisfy their desire to say \u201cCivis [something] sum<\/em>\u201d but I have trouble imagining him delivering this sermon unaltered today. \u00a0In order to pull it off, he might need to first stoke up his listeners\u2019 attachment to whatever institutions they participated in, so that they would long for a stronger attachment and a stronger place to shelter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be sending the monthly update on my book\u00a0<\/em>Arriving At Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers that Even I Can Offer<\/a>\u00a0this week, and\u00a0if you get the email,<\/a>\u00a0you can enter a lottery to get an early copy. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2015, I\u2019m reading and blogging through\u00a0Ronald 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. In this week\u2019s chapter, Ronald Knox is describing St. Gregory the Great, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":11110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240],"class_list":["post-11109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-knox-bookclub"],"yoast_head":"\nPromises No One Asks the Church to Keep [Saints bookclub]<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 2015, I\u2019m reading and blogging through\u00a0Ronald Knox\u2019s\u00a0collection of sermons on Christian exemplars,\u00a0Captive Flames: On Selected Saints and Christian\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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