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Based on two cases of ecclesiastical book censorship from the 1950s, the article deals with the Holy Office's handling of Catholic biblical exegesis during the late phase of the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-58). On the one hand, the inner-Vatican conflicts between the Suprema Congregazione and the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the years 1956-58 are examined. Secondly, the case of the German New Testament scholar Karl Hermann Schelkle shows the specific situation of Catholic biblical scholarship between the centre and the periphery a good decade after the biblical encyclical "Divino afflante Spiritu" (1943).