Knox - Catholicism vs. Provincialism

(I)t is a good thing to belong to a Catholic Church. It keeps you from getting too provincial in your outlook ... to be a member of a Church which is as wide as mankind, and therefore to be able to remind yourself that not everybody thinks as you do; other people have their own national way of looking at things, just as you have yours. It helps you, I mean, not to be provincial-minded, if you belong to a Catholic Church.

Just in the same way, of course -- though that is really rather outside our subject this afternoon -- it is a good thing to belong to a Church which can look back on nineteen centuries of existence; it helps you not to be too much impressed by the latest craze, the latest catchword. Just as many people around us are too English in their outlook, so many people around us are too twentieth-century in their outlook; it's only a different kind of provincialism really.

- Ronald A. Knox