{"id":11525,"date":"2015-06-10T14:34:30","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T18:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=11525"},"modified":"2015-06-10T14:34:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T18:34:30","slug":"a-dominican-invitation-to-witness-saints-bookclub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2015\/06\/a-dominican-invitation-to-witness-saints-bookclub.html","title":{"rendered":"A Dominican Invitation to Witness [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 (kinda), 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

\"(The<\/a>
(The Dominican Blessed \/ Fra Angelico<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe I wouldn\u2019t have been slow to get back into blogging through Knox\u2019s sermons on the saints if I had noticed that the next chapter was on St. Dominic \u2014 after all, I owe a lot to the Dominicans in DC. \u00a0And I recognize the friars I know in Knox\u2019s description of the Order, which goes beyond what the Dominicans are usually known for (nerdy theological study).<\/p>\n

Those were times, it is sad to say it, in which the Church seemed to have lost the salt wherewith Christ had commissioned it to season the world\u2026 There were crying abuses; and, whereas the Albigensians, a purely destructive movement, deserve little of our sympathy, the poor Waldenses could at least claim that they had reason for the disaffection which made them the antagonists of the Church. \u00a0An intellectual heresy can be met by the weapons of the intellect; a moral protest, such as that of the Waldenses, can only be met by a rival moral protest within the Church itself. \u00a0Just as the tide of the Reformation was stemmed, not merely by polemical writing and preaching, but by the great spiritual renewal which was accomplished throughout Europe by the Saints of the sixteenth century, so three hundred years earlier, it was not only the learning of the Friars, but their poverty, their chastity, the simplicity of their lives and manners, that saved Europe for the faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I appreciate the credit that Knox gives to heretics here, who are<\/em> sometimes as he describes the Waldenses \u2014 seeking in good faith a real (not just perceived) good they\u2019re having trouble finding in the Church. \u00a0Finding them and bringing them home isn\u2019t just a matter of\u00a0proving<\/em>\u00a0in theory that the good they love has its fullest expression in the Church (as something like\u00a0The Last Superstition<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>tries to do) but of offering a proof by construction.<\/p>\n

Later in the chapter, Knox explains that the witness of the Dominicans wasn\u2019t just a matter of accepting poverty and chastity, in a disciplined rebuke to excess, but of living these disciplines vibrantly and joyfully, so that the people who met them could see the lightness that came with their rule of life.<\/p>\n

One of the ideas I brought up at our recent Benedict Option discussion was that a good way to\u00a0start<\/em> a BenOp project is to ask these two questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What do I do alone that I could do with others?<\/li>\n
  2. What do I do with others privately that I could do publicly?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We had part of our discussion on my apartment building\u2019s roof, where passerby can eavesdrop (if they\u2019d like) and even ask to join in. \u00a0(That\u2019s happened more than once when I\u2019ve held debates up there). \u00a0Looking for opportunities to get our Christianity out of the privacy of our own rooms is a way to offer an invitation and a proof-of-concept to others. \u00a0And also a challenge to make sure there\u00a0are<\/em> parts of our spiritual life that we\u2019d like to invite others into. \u00a0(I\u2019m way less likely to rush or mumble through the Divine Office when I pray it with others).<\/p>\n

    In general, I think\u00a0arguing<\/em> with folks at a distance tends to be a worse use of time (mine and theirs) than having something to invite them to, so that, when we wind up arguing, they\u2019ve had a chance to see more about what I\u2019m pitching than I can quickly summarize, including parts they might not have thought to ask about or that I might not have thought to bring up. \u00a0It\u2019s better to argue against the richness of a worldview-as-its-lived than only the apologetic summary of it.<\/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 (kinda), I\u2019ll be writing about the next portrait in the book, so you\u2019re welcome to peruse them all and\/or read along. Maybe I wouldn\u2019t have been slow to get back into blogging through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":11528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[240,52],"class_list":["post-11525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parsing-catholicism","tag-knox-bookclub","tag-quest-for-community"],"yoast_head":"\nA Dominican Invitation to Witness [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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