This book is an excellent resource for Catholics who want to learn more about pressing eccumenical topics. Knox is easy to read and understand, even though he's British. He refers to the Anglican Church a bit and contrasts it with the Roman Catholic Church.

I would recommend this book to all my Protestant friends simply because reading it will most definitly answer questions of the Catholic Faith.

Overall a terrific book. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars only because it is a little outdated (written in the early part of the 20th century). But the conversation in the book can never be outlived, and the same topics and issues will be around for the next century.

Great Book!!!

Tremendous source to explain the Catholic Church by one of its greatest writers who knew it from the outside as well as the inside. Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, an Anglican convert to Catholicism, influenced GK Chesterton, Bishop Fulton Sheen and countless converts among others, with his logic, historical expertise, and ability to explain Catholicism and its most challenging issues to the uninitiated and Catholics alike. Starting with the current agnosticsm (then as today), he proceeds to philosophical proof of Divine intellect and will, and then he traces the development of oral tradition from the Apostles and the early Church to the present Roman Church. With wit and incisive facts, he expertly explains the paradox of free will versus submission to an authority, Dogma versus doctrine versus ritual, and the Catholic view versus the "world view". The careful reader will gain an appreciation into both sides of the issues presented. IMHO there is no better English explanation of Catholicism in 250 pages.

Reads like an inquisitors manual but unfortunately only repeats tired charges with the same scant evidence and thin standards that the original inquisitors used in their investigations. In the first third of the book only one piece of "solid" evidence is brought forth linking the anabaptist and the manichee. This fact being the common usage of the idea that "Christ passed through the Virgin Mother as water through a pipe." This is about as conclusive as asserting someone is from Alabama on the basis of saying "kit and kaboodle." The book is certainly fun to read, fans of Knox love it, it is full of inuendo and characterizations. "Heretics" meet in "nests" and the "virus" of protestanism spreads throughout the land. Obviously this is antimodernist hoopla which makes fun reading for those interested in Catholic historical narratives before the rise of sound scholarship. -JL

It's true, a book by Ronald Knox is something you can just flip through in one sitting. You really have to pay attention. This is not "fast food" - and for a previous reviewer to dismiss Monsignor Knox, and this book, as "antimodernist", perhaps says more about the reviewer than about Monsignor Knox. I highly recommend that you print out the sample pages which Amazon.com provides, and read them, slowly, carefully, lovingly. Knox's writing is his own best advertisement - you will see that the slower you read, the more you get out of it, and the more you WANT to read. At which point, buy it!

Knox's "Enthusiasm" is a survey of the history of certain mystical trends, which the author dubs "ultra-supernaturalist", throughout the course of Christian history. Knox examines the various outbreaks in detail, especially those of the 17th and 18th centuries. Furthermore, he successfully and profoundly analyzes the psychological basis for all such movements.

This book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the history of fringe religious movements in general, any of the sects described here specifically, or the psychology of fanaticism.

I also recommend that students of Eric Voegelin read this book, as it provides much food for thought in light of his comments about the nature of gnosticism. Likewise, anyone who finds the psychological portions of this book interesting should look at Voegelin's work, which deals with similar issues from a philosophical perspective. I suggest that you begin with "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism" and then move on to "The New Science of Politics" to get a basic grounding in Voegelin. He and Knox share a fundamental insight - that fringe religious groups are motivated by an antinomian hatred for reality and society that seeks to destroy nature rather than to heal it, which is the goal of more mainstream religion. What Voegelin adds to the discussion is a deeper fund of historical examples of such attitudes, an investigation of a paralell set of ideas to be found in modern philosophy, and an understanding of how these ideas have influenced modern culture and politics (for example, Voegelin regards socialism, in all it's forms, as a secularized version of the same kind of anitnomian millenarianism to be found in, say the Montanists, who Knox investigates at length).

Fitzgerald is to be congratulated for her frank portrayal of her father and uncles. Even so, I felt something was being withheld. After all, the Knox brothers were part of the Waugh generation and lived through an incredibly revolutionary period in world history. As interesting as each of these brothers is, it's hard to believe they were as domestic and tweedy as she wishes to think of them. One needs to look elsewhere for the dirt on these fellows (but, alas, I know not where).

My interest was primarily in Ronald Knox, the youngest of the children (the Knoxes had two daughters, as well, but neither of them seems to have made much of an impression on their neice). As a young man Ronald converted to Roman Catholicism, to the chagrin of his father, an Anglican bishop of Evangelical leanings, and of his brother Wilfred, an Anglo-Catholic priest. Although Fitzgerald does not sidestep religious issues, I sensed that she herself was not very religious and that she never quite understood why dogmatics could be so divisive in her family. Ronald wrote so-so detective fiction. His great achievement, however, was the translation of the Latin Bible into modern English for Roman Catholics (sadly at a time when the Roman Catholic church was just about to realize the importance making Bible translations from the original Hebrew and Greek). I wanted to know more about Knox's process of working and the public response to the finished translation. But Fitzgerald, ever bouncing from one Knox brother to the next, gives very little information on this subject.

Fitzgerald doesn't waste much ink, either, on examining sibling rivalry (it must have been strong--not one Knox could be considered a slacker) or on psychoanalysing family dynamics. There are no lessons here to glean about family life in general, nothing that could serve as a mirror to one's relationships with one's own siblings. The Knoxes seem to have been truly unique, and are probably best appreciated as accomplished individuals.

Those looking for juicier portraits of bright young Brits in the years leading up to World War II, should turn to Humphrey Carpenter's "Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends" or Martin Green's "Children of the Sun: A Narrative of 'Decadence' in England after 1918."

Why read biographies? Several reasons come to mind: to get a glimpse of a vanished past, to live vicariously through glamorous and interesting people, to learn truths about the good life that survive those vanished pasts and apply to even the unglamorous.

All of these apply in spades to _The Knox Brothers_, novelist Penelope Fitzgerald's 1977 biography of her father, Edmund ("Evoe") Knox and his brothers, Ronald, Wilfred and Dilly.

The most famous of the Knox brothers today is Ronald, a famous British convert to and apologist for Catholicism. His conversion is well-detailed by Fitzgerald, along with the strife it caused within the family: his father was an Anglican bishop, and remained essentially unreconciled to his convert son, and his brother Wilfred also became an Anglican clergyman. Evoe, who also achieved great fame as editor of the humor magazine Punch, was an indulgent agnostic, but Dilly was rigorously atheistic.

Despite such differences, mutual love and respect prevailed among the brothers, and as Fitzgerald writes, "one would think it must have been as clear then as it is now that if human love could rise above the doctrines that divide the Church, then these docrines must have singularly little to do with the love of God." The humane perspective that would later distinguish her novels is on ample display in this biography, as is her wry humor.

Perhaps most fascinating and unusual of the four brothers was Dilly, who served in both world wars as a codebreaker, and played an instrumental role in cracking the German Enigma machine during World War II. Fitzgerald describes his work in generous detail, and places it in the context of the family's general fascination with language and wordplay.

I highly recommend this biography, which like the lives of its subjects is briskly paced and rich in variety. One caveat: if you have no place in your heart for Anglophilia, you may find the personalities of Fleet Street and Oxbridge rather tiresome.

Penelope Fitzgerald produced some of the finest short novels written. Before she started her career as a novelist she wrote these collected biographies of her father and his 3 brothers in 1977. It seems appropriate that this collection of familial histories was updated and placed in its final form by Ms. Fitzgerald shortly before her death.

For those that believe Genetics play a role in the hereditary talent of later generations, this book certainly will reinforce that view. Whether when reviewing her Father's life, or that of his 3 brothers, all these men were exceptional in there own manner. There were characteristics they held in common; amongst them were brilliant wits, and integrity. The latter trait would seem redundant, or perhaps should be one we hope someday will be for all men like her Uncle Wilfred and her Uncle Ronald. Both of these men were Priests, but even here these Brothers maintained their own identities. Wilfred was an Anglo-Catholic Priest, and his Brother was a Priest of The Roman Catholic Church. The History of these men's lives are all of great interest, however the differences in the Religious Denominations, at first so similar to the ear, and then so different theologically, provided some of the more interesting aspects of the book.

Father Ronald went beyond the normal duties of his calling, and expanded his talents not only into journalism, but I believe rather specially as an Author of Detective Novels. All this was in addition to being The Chaplain At Oxford, and a man who translated a revised form of The New Testament, so that so many more could enjoy the writings.

For readers familiar with World War II, the word Enigma has a meaning in excess of the dictionary definition. Enigma was the machine that the Germans used for enciphering their communications, had it remained a secret, the War if nothing else would have been lengthened, perhaps dramatically. Uncle Dillwyn was repeatedly promoted and was critical to "finding a way in" to Enigma, and was credited with contributing to several strategic victories that without the understanding of Enigma could not have taken place.

Her Father was again a man of many gifts, but it is his time as Editor of the legendary "Punch Magazine" that seemed to best define the man's many traits. He too was a writer, journalist, humorist, and devoted Husband and Father. He may or may not have foreseen that a short 6 years after his death his Daughter Penelope would begin her own literary career with a book that paid tribute to he and his brothers.

Ms. Fitzgerald does honor to the memories of her family members without appearing to lose objectivity, and succumbing to fawning over her subjects. If you have read her books, or the interviews she gave none of this will come as a surprise. She was a woman of great talent, minimal ego, and she happily, for readers, shared all her gifts.