(Of Britain's 50 million inhabitants, about 3 1/2 million are Roman Catholics. The leaders of that church in Britain have traditionally included many men notable in the arts, public life, or scholarship--of whom Msgr. Ronald Knox, wit, popular author, preacher and Biblical scholar, is a brilliant example--Ed.)

AT THE AGE of 63, Monsignor Knox is probably the outstanding Roman Catholic churchman in Britain. He has recently completed the first Catholic translation of the complete Bible into English in more than 350 years. Novelist Evelyn Waugh has suggested that, as Bible reading declines among non-Catholics, Knox's Bible may some day be the best-known version in English. Its clearness and freshness of style have made readers feel they were opening a new book.

Yet Knox was already famous when he sat down, more than twelve years ago, to his work of translation--famous as a preacher, as a scholar, as a writer of detective novels and as a wit, but chiefly famous as a man. In the years before 1914, when the first plays of Somerset Maugham were delighting London with their brilliance, Knox already had a reputation for his wit and his satires against watery faith and confused thought.

He has always tried to be ordinary and unobtrusive: even his humor has been an exercise in humility, leading some to undervalue his serious work. But being unobtrusive was always hard, for, even at Eton and Oxford, he bagged his limit in prizes. His father was Bishop of Manchester. His brother was editor of Punch. Knox came from the old governing class and tried loyally to be the silent and sensible Briton that Eton and Oxford existed to produce. In 1912 he was ordained a priest in the Church of England; in 1917 he entered the Roman Catholic Church.

FIRM IN HIS own convictions, he has a deep respect for those of others, as a reporter found who came to him hoping for a strong statement on the rise of Dr. Buchman's "Moral Re-Armament" movement. All he received was a note, ringed around with Knox's usual qualifications ("It's possible that . . . I'm inclined to think . . ."), to the effect that a more emotional approach to religion was due, as there had not been one for over half a century. This is Knox's pet subject and for 30 years his secret preoccupation, which has resulted in a recent work, Enthusiasm. In it he examines the most violently emotional and "inspired"' religious phases of the last nineteen centuries. Knox the quiet listener attends these outbursts with sympathy; Knox the priest notes them as heresies; while Knox the reticent Briton is surprised by such displays of emotion, and Knox the obedient Christian is puzzled by so much self-assertion.

Yet his conscience and his humor are always breaking the surface of convention. This unobtrusive cleric, when teaching at a seminary, left the high table to sit with the students, in protest at the inferior food they were getting. That is Knox, a modest and conscientious breaker of the peace.

These contrasts also persist in his appearance. He is the most unmiddle-aged of men, having the gaunt features and detached air of an old man, mixed with the shyness and sudden malice of a child. It is as though a Marx brother had become an archbishop, or even more impressive, an archbishop had the gifts of a Marx brother.

Between Christian humility and British reserve, there are times when he seems almost inarticulate. As Roman Catholic chaplain at Oxford, he used to crouch on a low seat, leaving the fire and the talk to his guests, moving only when one or the other needed fuel. He has the reticence of the confirmed pipe smoker, for the British often use their pipes as stoppers to save them the trouble of opening their mouths, even choosing the slowest tobaccos to keep them quiet. In a series of Oxford dialogues which appear in his Let Dons Delight, Knox makes a personal appearance, but his remarks are only indicated on the printed page by a series of dots. His conversation is not always as reserved as that, but when he does intervene with a witticism, his silent laughter suggests apology or even pain, rather than amusement.

His weakness for complicated railroad routes, crossroad puzzles and detective novels is more easily explained as the recreation of a naturally acute mind. Because he has a horror of propaganda, his whodunits (the most ingenious has the Knoxious title Double Cross-Purposes) are less theological than Chesterton's Father Brown stories. It is not true, as has been said, that you can always spot the murderer because he is sure to be a Catholic--though that too would be Knox all over; he would think it arrogant to make the hero a Catholic. Yet the London paper which once said "his chief interest in life is detective novels" certainly underestimated the intensity of his faith.

THE QUIET power of that faith comes out in his sermons. He has the same restraint in the pulpit, and the simplicity of his appeal to a congregation perhaps owes something to the Puritan past. But he is very far from the old Puritans in the gentleness of his manner. He and his listeners are "we," quietly discussing "our sins." Here the effort to be ordinary is no longer a strain. It is spontaneous, and sincere. This genuine quality, even more than his intelligence, has made him one of the best preachers in English.

His preaching has overflowed from the pulpit into the press; one Christmas the London Evening Standard set his version of the Gospel story in place of an editorial. Knox eyes Scripture with the news sense of a journalist: its characters are present in the world today. This vivid gift appears best in his small masterpiece, The Rich Young Man, the idea of which he had from a monk himself under a rule of silence. It relates how the man who went sadly away, "for he had great possessions," gambled his fortune and took to crime, ending as the Penitent Thief on the cross. This unexpected light on a familiar text is typical of a Knox sermon.

Knox has not reached his proper place in his church. Not everybody appreciates his humor.-There are some who agree with Dr. Johnson that "This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive." Yet there have been witty cardinals before now. Knox would not want to be a cardinal, but it would please many beyond his own communion if he became one. Waugh has compared his career to Newman's, but Newman wanted recognition; Knox does not. Nor was Newman a humorist.

In his Essays in Satire, Knox "proved" that Queen Victoria wrote Tennyson's In Memoriam. Perhaps one day some researcher will amuse a future generation by asserting that Essays in Satire was written by the man who made the great 20th century translation of the Bible.

-One of the most famous of Knox's witticisms was a limerick on the Berkeleyan idea that things exist only when they have an observer: There once was a man who said: "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be

When there's no one about in the Quad."

It drew the anonymous reply:

"Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd,

I am always about in the Quad;

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by Yours faithfully, GOD."

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