Roman Catholics: In His Own Society

"Piety based on error is indefensible," says Father John Lawrence McKenzie, and the error that he refers to is the fundamentalist misreading of Scripture. A witty and outspoken Jesuit scholar from Indiana, McKenzie considers it his right and duty to set his fellow churchmen straight about the Bible, which was not open to critical study by Roman Catholics until Pius XII encouraged it in his 1943 encyclical on Scriptural studies. In so doing, McKenzie, at 55, has become the nation's most controversial and quotable Catholic theologian—perhaps because there is all of a sudden so much of his work to quote from.

Besides a steady stream of lectures and learned articles, the tireless McKenzie has within the last year shepherded four books into print, including a popular interpretation of the New Testament (The Power and the Wisdom) that is already in its fourth printing and a 900,000-word Dictionary of the Bible, six years in the writing, that both Protestant and Catholic scholars are acclaiming as a classic. Last month Sheed & Ward published his Authority in the Church, a series of reflections on the spiritual understanding of power and rulership. In addition, McKenzie is translating Second Isaiah for Doubleday's Anchor Bible (TIME, Oct. 23, 1964), and he recently signed a contract to write a history of Catholicism.

Accuracy & Judgment. McKenzie's accuracy and sound judgment as a Biblical theologian have gained him the wholehearted respect of his Protestant peers. Last year he became the first Catholic scholar elected to the presidency of the largely Protestant Society of Biblical Literature, and he is currently a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the first Catholic to hold this post. Within his own church, however, McKenzie is something of a maverick. Other Jesuits consider him a loner, and he now prefers to seek teaching assignments outside his society's institutions. Next fall, after summer teaching at the United Presbyterians' San Francisco Theological Seminary, he takes up residency at Notre Dame, which is run by the Congregation of Holy Cross.

McKenzie is that rarity among academics, the readable expert: his trim prose glitters with aphorisms—and with, for a Catholic priest, unconventional ideas. He has kind words to say for Protestant Demythologizer Rudolf Bultmann, carefully argues that parts of the Gospels are not historical in the modern sense, accepts the validity of form criticism, which assumes that certain sayings of Jesus were created by the early church. Under the circumstances, it is no surprise that the Vatican regards him as a rather disturbing thinker. Besides the normal prepublication censorship to which all priest-scholars must submit, McKenzie has to have all his writings cleared by Rome. He makes no secret of his opinion that "the practice of censorship is basically immoral and irrational."