Religion: The Witty Monsignor

Britain's outstanding Roman Catholic scholar, most versatile writer, and gentlest man died this week. Msgr. Ronald Knox, 69, No. 1 convert to Catholicism since the Oxford movement, left both the monumental and the diverting behind him: a masterful translation of the Bible, a classic Limerick, a definitive history of Christianity's hot-blooded sectarianism and six popular detective novels. But it was perhaps as a man that he exerted his deepest influence on those around him.

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was the sixth child of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester (both of his grandfathers had also been...

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