2019 New Catholic Bible

po18guy

po18guy

Well-known member
Anyone have one of these? I think they were released in 2019 by Catholic Book Publishing Company. I cannot seem to lay my hands on a copy to see if it is orthodox enough in its translation. As well, I cannot locate a site which allows you to examine a sample page.
 
I haven’t heard of it. Myself, I use the Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) for homeschool, and the Douay-Rheims and Haydock Bible for more devotional purposes, as well as for Challoner’s footnotes in the former and the extensive commentaries in the latter.

I am aware that there are more recent translations and commentaries, and I do not entirely shun them, but in using these, as in all things, I would look to ensure that they conform to what the Church has always traditionally taught. For instance, I don’t deny that Moses may have had amanuenses in writing the Pentateuch — he was a busy guy! — and we know even from Fr Laux’s comments on the Bible in Chief Truths of the Faith, that Paul had “ghostwriters” for many of his letters (“signing off on them” in the fashion of Popes who have encyclicals written for them), but I’m skeptical of any attempts to demythologize or “explain away” Scripture.
 
If I get to a book store, I will try to examine a copy. I simply will not fork out money for “Greetings, favored one”, “I forgave in the presence of Christ” or suggestions that Luke made up parts of his Gospel, or that no one knows why Matthew is called Matthew. Give me Vulgate-based translations for faith and morals - and Saint Jerome’s warm humanness.
As much angst as it is generating, I am glad to witness the train wreck of the 1960s, as God will bring good from it.
 
po18guy said:
If I get to a book store, I will try to examine a copy. I simply will not fork out money for “Greetings, favored one”, “I forgave in the presence of Christ” or suggestions that Luke made up parts of his Gospel, or that no one knows why Matthew is called Matthew. Give me Vulgate-based translations for faith and morals - and Saint Jerome’s warm humanness.
As much angst as it is generating, I am glad to witness the train wreck of the 1960s, as God will bring good from it
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I’ve got Bibles running out of my ears, I could almost open a Bible store (and I don’t exaggerate by much), many different translations, Catholic, non-Catholic, and ecumenical. But I don’t have that one, in fact, I don’t know if I’d ever even heard of it or not.

If the Bible is the Word of God — and it is — the Holy Ghost would not have allowed His Church to be in any significant error as to the basic meaning of Scripture, its essential translation, its origins and authorship, and so on. Fr Laux reminds us that if there is any apparent error or contradiction, it lies in the translations, as the original texts are lost.

Besides, we don’t get our Faith just from the Bible — that’s sola scriptura — we derive it from Sacred Tradition (of which the Bible is only a part), from those things that have always been believed, by all the faithful, in all places (paraphrasing St Vincent of Lerins).
 
I have collected something like 40 editions myself. Irreplaceable.
However, for a fact, Christians do not absolutely need a bible. We learn this from the bible itself. No Christian IN the bible HAD a bible. Bibleists change the subject when I ask for an explanation. God bless them!
Was going to pick up an English Standard Version, but found that the Church is “A” pillar and foundation of the truth. Why pay for that when we know better?
 
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po18guy said:
I have collected something like 40 editions myself. Irreplaceable.
However, for a fact, Christians do not absolutely need a bible. We learn this from the bible itself. No Christian IN the bible HAD a bible. Bibleists change the subject when I ask for an explanation. God bless them!
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I don’t quite have 40 Bibles, more like half that. (Pretty small store.)

Thanks for bringing that fact into it. Fr Laux makes almost the same identical point in Chief Truths of the Faith. Good book (no pun intended).


I do have to wonder, if the “you have to keep updating your understanding of the Faith constantly, to keep up with more recent scholarship and the ‘recent magisterium’” point of view were to carry the day, whether all such books published, say, before Vatican II, would have some kind of “warning label”, such as this or something similar:

This book is an outdated presentation of the Catholic Faith and should not be read in isolation. It is offered here for historical interest and should not be read by those unknowledgeable about the Faith. You should update your religious education with more recent works, and make those your first preference.
 
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Sign of the times. It’ll pass. Saint Teresa of Avila teaches that.
I recall Jude 1:3 “…contend for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints”
Modern scholars have the odd mindset that, the further in time they are from a given subject, the more they know. Even more than those who were there. Entropy applying to all things, this does not seem likely. “Modern scholarship” often results only in the latest version of “itching ears.”
 
po18guy said:
“Modern scholarship” often results only in the latest version of “itching ears.”
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Long story short, these are people who want to change the Catholic religion. Some of the themes are:
  • More or less universal salvation
  • Most things can be challenged as historical relics, and possibly even inaccurate ones at that
  • Erasing all distinctions between people — male and female, priest and layperson, and, yes, homosexual and heterosexual
  • A leveling of economic and even cultural differences
  • Relegating the Western European and European-adjacent Catholic cultural and intellectual heritage to a scrap heap, to be replaced by a largely Global Southern Catholicism, a faith of “encounter” with Christ and with one another, heavy on emotion, light on doctrine, light on critical analysis, light on asking questions
  • A kind of amnesia (and ignorance!) regarding anything before Vatican II
  • And change everything that can be changed
 
“Feel good” - for now. The evil one incites those who wish only to comfort those on the wide path to eternal loss.
 
The Church recommends translations based on recent manuscript discoveries to ensure greater accuracy:

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/...ds_doc_20010507_liturgiam-authenticam_en.html

Given that, consider the most recent translation that’s closest to what’s used for liturgy. Examples are NABRE and NSRV-CE.

Finally, wait for the updated version of NABRE because they say it’s being made with support from the Vatican and U.S. Bishops, which means it may be used not only for liturgy but also for catechism and scholarship.
 
Time to put the NAB and /RE to sleep. Modern scholarship is partly responsible for the 60 year malaise in the Church. Sadly, it went off the rails exactly when Pius XII suggested new scholarship and manuscripts - a perfect theological storm.

Give me a Vulgate-based translation any day.
 
That’s an anti-Catholic view. The Church wants modern scholarship because recent manuscript discoveries allow for more accurate translations.
 
po18guy said:
Time to put the NAB and /RE to sleep. Modern scholarship is partly responsible for the 60 year malaise in the Church. Sadly, it went off the rails exactly when Pius XII suggested new scholarship and manuscripts - a perfect theological storm.

Give me a Vulgate-based translation any day
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You answered exactly the same as I would have. Thanks for helping me out.

I don’t deny that discovery of new manuscripts might help in refining certain Bible passages, and as even Fr Laux (pre-Vatican II) notes, there is always the possibility of errors, albeit minor ones, in the translations that have come down to us through the history of the Church, as only the original writings are guaranteed inerrancy. Nonetheless, the Holy Ghost would not have allowed the Church to be in any material error as to what the Word of God is. Otherwise, we are in the position of “digging up” something and saying “aha! — finally we have the truth!”. To imply that we have all been walking in darkness until the past 60 years (not that our correspondent is necessarily doing that), that is the “anti-Catholic view”.

And did the “early Church” to which revisionists and restorations are always alluding have better translations than we did before the past 60 years? And if so, why, then, did the Holy Ghost allow them to be lost for two millennia?

As I always say, for many in the Church nowadays, “the Church began in 1962”, or possibly, went into a kind of suspended animation from the much-romanticized “early Church” until then. That’s sounding more like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons or, as their leader has told them they should prefer to be called now, “The Church of Jesus Christ [sic] of Latter-day Saints”. (Mainstream LDS seem not to have a problem with being called “Mormons”. This isn’t the first time that a religious leader has told people that they should change their thinking and shun that which they have hitherto fondly embraced. Sounds kind of cultish if you ask me.)

As an aside, while I don’t challenge the orthodoxy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (least of all since I discovered that Fr John Hardon wrote much of the English version of it), it would be nice, if they’re going to come out with a new catechism, to provide a “here’s what’s new” section, to explain “this is what we’ve refined, or found a development of doctrine”, or what have you, so that the reader can easily compare it with what went before. But they don’t do that. One could come away with the impression that they don’t want you know that these things weren’t taught before. Could lead to awkward questions such as “well, why not?”.

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The Church started requiring more accuracy together with more Biblical scholarship during the nineteenth century.
 
Just a minute with your accusations! Are you saying that manuscripts that the early Church and Saint Jerome never saw are more reliable than those contained in the Vulgate?

Q: Why did the early Church, all over the Christian world, for almost 4 centuries NEVER have these “modern discoveries”? Antiquity is no guarantee of authenticity, as many ancient writings were flat out rejected. We know the Qumran scrolls are old. Why do we assume, or strive to prove that they are authoritative? They either agree - re: faith and morals - with existing documents or they are to be disregarded as Christian teaching. There is no new revelation.

“Something” occurred between the world wars. This “something” has produced a 70+ year malaise in the Church; it has produced the greatest exodus from the faith in the recent age. Is malaise desirable? I wonder why “recent discoveries” cast doubts on all that went before. I know the evil one fairly well. I know his designs. I know the form of his mechanisms. He knows our weaknesses and itching ears.

Examine how Fr. Dorindo Ruotolo was persecuted by the Church he loved - for daring to “out” the modernists both for who - and what - they were:
"He accused [historical-critical methods] of being the product of an “accursed spirit of pride, presumption, and superficiality, disguised under minute investigations and hypocritical literal exactness.”
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For speaking truth to power, his faculties were revoked by Pope Benedict XV; his bible commentary placed on the list of forbidden books!

Today, he is a Servant of God. Was he wrong, or did he step on modernist toes?

Frankly, I think the “recent discoveries” risk being spurious documents. Secondly, I believe that “modern scholarship” is a deception emanating from the spirit realm. Both have infected the Church like Covid.

Fallen human nature, its outsized ego (and resulting immaturity) hate dissent.

Test the spirits. Any spirit which dissolves Christ is antichrist.
 
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