Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943.4 Coming at the mid-point of the century, it legitimated the use of the historical method for Catholic scholars, and changed everything. From the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, the phrase “Roman Catholic biblical scholarship” would have been regarded by many as oxymoronic: it may have been Roman Catholic, but was it really scholarship? At the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, however, the phrase is equally oxymoronic: