In the Winter 1983 issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Philip Devenish, a United Church of Christ pastor and later professor at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, published a provocative article: “Can a Roman Catholic Be an Historian?” Devenish’s opening line was part apologia: “Not only might the phrasing of this question seem tendentious, but asking it at all might seem gratuitous.”
Yet he does ask the question, and concludes: “Since one cannot be a Catholic historian without also being a rational historian, and since particular prejudgments of Catholic hermeneutics are incompatible with the rational hermeneutics that define the method of the rational historian, one who adheres to Catholic hermeneutics cannot be an historian at all.” In short, the answer to the question posed in his title is a firm no.
