In Soft Garments: A Collection of Oxford Conferences

In Soft Garments: A Collection of Oxford Conferences.  By the Right Reverend Monsignor Ronald Knox, Burns Oates, 1942.

 

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) is one of the leading Catholic English writers of the early twentieth century. Though he was raised an Anglican and entered the Anglican priesthood, five years after his ordination he converted to Catholicism and became a Catholic priest soon afterwards. 

 

Throughout his career he worked to evangelize the masses through essays and radio lectures, although he also wrote mysteries and pioneered the use of pseudoscholarship in exploring literature.  Knox became famous for a series of essays on Sherlock Holmes, where he combed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries for facts and trivia, and drew ingenious conclusions and speculations regarding discrepancies and unanswered questions in Doyle’s work. In Soft Garments is a collection of talks he gave to Oxford students, mostly on the role of religion in contemporary life.  The title comes from the Book of Matthew, which states, “They that are clothed in soft garments are in the Palaces of Kings.”

 

There are twenty-four essays in this volume, with titles such as “The Church and Human Progress,” “Morality and Convention,” “Unselfishness in Marriage,” “Faith Lost and Found,” and “Immortality.”  Knox’s first essay, “The Cross-word of Creation,” discusses the validity of various justifications for the existence of God, and concludes that some oft-cited “proofs” of God’s existence are too facile to hold under critical scrutiny, and then moves on to cite better evidence and reasoning to prove that God is real.  “The Cross-word of Creation” ends thusly:

 

“It’s not necessary for us to prove that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, it doesn’t matter (for the purposes of our present argument) whether the laws we find in nature are beneficent or harmful in their operation; the point is that order exists in the Universe, and that it is logically impossible to conceive of order existing without a Mind.  And if we denied the existence of that Mind, and went on thinking about it hard, it wouldn’t be very long, I fancy, before most of us would go out of our own.” (7).

 

Some of the essays deal with real-world situations, such as how Catholics who want to live up to their Church’s teachings ought to respond to divorces.  Knox observes that it is easy for Catholics to get caught up in uncomfortable situations, such as when a divorced friend asks a Catholic to be involved in the wedding party for a second marriage.  In “Cutting the Knot,” a penetrating look at the reasons why divorce is not acceptable, Knox writes,

 

““The Catholic Church forbids divorce”– so we are always reading in the newspapers.  Of course, that isn’t true.  It isn’t the Catholic Church which forbids divorce; Almighty God forbids divorce, and all the Catholic Church does is to say she’s very sorry, but there it is; the Divine Law will not allow a marriage to be dissolved, so she is afraid she can’t very well do anything about it.  If it was the Church that had made this law, she would be able to dispense people from this law; the whole point of the situation is that the Church is powerless; she can do nothing.  She can no more prevent a person who has two wives being in mortal sin that she can prevent a person who falls off a precipice breaking his neck.  It is not part of her legislation that a married man should not remarry.  It is part of her doctrine that a married man cannot remarry, so long as his first wife is alive.  If he goes through the form of marriage, it is an empty farce.” (166).

 

In this essay, and all of his other essays, Knox explains the Catholic Church’s position by first debunking the widespread popular opinion that the Church has adopted a certain perspective out of sheer arbitrariness.  Catholic doctrine is not meant simply to be mean or contrary or rigid, but instead is formed the way it is because it is compelled to follow a specific code of conduct because to deviate from the prescribed path will in all likelihood lead to something sinful, destructive, or unbearable.  Actions have consequences, and the many “don’ts” of Catholicism is to warn people of potential pitfalls that may not be immediately apparent.  Knox observes that Christian morality is far more than just an attempt to prevent people from doing whatever they want, it is a guide that has the wellbeing of everyone involved at heart.  Knox writes:

 

“Those are the people who are asking nowadays, “Why shouldn’t I?”  And the obvious answer is, “If you think morality a mere matter of social convention, if you are only concerned to consider what other people will say about you, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”  Nobody will think very much the worse of such a man nowadays if his irregularities are not too blatant.  And if he cannot see that morality means something more than a code of human conventions, there is no more to be done with him.  What we have to try and persuade him of is: First, that there are such things as right and wrong.  Second, that the art of living and, if I may so describe it, the fun of living, can be found only in regulating your life according to fixed principles of conduct.  Third, that there is one single standard of morality, ideally for all people, and practically for all Christian people.  And fourth, that if you are really a Christian, the irksomeness of merely obeying negative rules is exchanged for the positive joy of trying to live so as to please our Lord Jesus Christ.” (163).

 

Too often, people look at Catholic codes on conduct and denounced them as repressive or irrelevant to the modern world.  Knox uses numerous plausible real-life examples throughout his work in order to illustrate how behavior restrictions apply to contemporary everyday life.  Knox’s primary theme in these essays is to point out just why acting as the Church teaches is vital to long-term safety and happiness.  Though certain codes of morality may clash with short-term interests and base desires, no modern argument has been able to prove Christian behavioral doctrines wrong.  As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”

 

In Soft Garments, though written for a young audience nearly seventy years ago, is still accessible to readers of all ages today.  These were meant to be comparatively casual yet salutary talks, and in book form they make for chapters that are both easily read and challenging intellectually.

 

 

–Chris Chan