and 1930s, especially Conscience and Its Problems and The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum. In many ways he revived the study of moral theology in the Church of England and is considered one of the leading moral theologians of the 20th century. Bishop of Oxford Kirk was consecrated a bishop on St Andrew's Day 1937 (30 November), by Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, at St Paul's Cathedral; he was enthroned as Bishop of Oxford at Christ Church Cathedral on 9 December 1937. He began his episcopacy by re-organizing the large, rural diocese and moving the episcopal offices to the city of Oxford. Kirk issued a temporary seal as the function of Chancellor of the Garter was dissociated from the See of Oxford in the wake of the Abdication Crisis. In piety as well as scholarship, Kirk followed in the tradition of the Oxford Movement, emphasizing the sacramental nature of the Catholic Church and apostolic succession. As a result, at the time of the independence of the Anglican Church in India from the Church of England, Kirk was a leader of the Anglo-Catholic party at Lambeth in 1948 that warned the Church from compromising its catholicity by adopting intercommunion too quickly, when not all of the clergy of the United Church of South India would have received episcopal ordination. He worked with the Archbishops of Canterbury, William Temple and his successor Geoffrey Fisher, and with George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, however, in devising a compromise solution, and in May, 1950 a resolution was passed in the English Convocation allowing for limited intercommunion. Kirk died on 8 June 1954, before the resolution was passed in July, 1955, formally inaugurating the communion of the two churches. The title of his last published work, Beauty and Bands, is that of a sermon he gave at the episcopal consecration of Glyn Simon in Brecon Cathedral. Personal life In 1921 Kirk married Beatrice Caynton Yonge Radcliffe; they had three daughters and two sons. Their elder son was Sir Peter Michael Kirk (1928–1977), a Conservative politician. Beatrice died in 1934. One of their daughters, Patricia, married Eric Waldram Kemp, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford and later Bishop of Chichester, and author of The Life and Letters of Kenneth Escott Kirk, Bishop of Oxford, 1937–1954 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959). Major works A Study of Silent Minds (1918) Some Principles of Moral Theology