The New Catholic Bible

...It was made, again, on the false principle that it must be literal at whatever sacrifice of clearness...

...Gigot tells us, it never became popular, and only the New Testament reached a second edition...

...For the Bible to be read, it must be readable, i.e., not only produced with all the typographical excellence which its dignity demands, but also edited with at least as much regard to its sacred contents as is due to any other classic...

...The "Douay" in one or another of its forms, holds the field to this day.ds the field to this day...

...Francis Gigot, who taught Sacred Scripture at Yonkers, and it is Dr...

...The Rheims translation was begun by Dr...

...That fact alone, apart from other considerations, would seem to suggest another, and if possible a final, rendering...

...It was made we are speaking mainly of the New Testament in the first instance, from the old unre-vised Vulgate, itself, of course, a revision of previous Latin translations from the original Greek, and although Bishop Challoner revised it again and again, using the later Clementine Vulgate, he did not remove all its obscurities and uncouthness...

...Of the four volumes which comprise this edition, two Saint Paul's Epistle to the Churches (Volume III) and The Other Canonical Epistles and the Apocalypse (Volume IV) are finished, whereas of the two earlier volumes, Volume I The Synoptic Gospels only lacks Saint Luke, and Volume II Saint John and the Acts still awaits the latter section...

...The Authorized Anglican Version, made under James I from the originals, was not published till 1611...

...Later in the century, the conversion of John Henry Newman probably suggested to the authorities that at last an opportunity had come of enlisting the services of a scholar and a master of English to accomplish this long overdue work the production of an accurate and uniform English Catholic version of the Scriptures...

...It was only when, at the Reformation, an appeal was made to the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, and when, by the spread of unauthorized vernacular translations, Christians were invited to judge for themselves what they should believe, that the Church made strict regulations concerning the use of the Bible by the faithful, forbidding the issue of translations not approved by herself, and unprovided with adequate interpretative notes...

...and furnished, moreover, with all the aids to intelligence that its character as very ancient literature would suggest...

...It was the Catholic Church which produced and collected and guaranteed the New Testament to confine our attention to that in the beginAmong recent Catholic publishing ventures none is more important than the steadily progressing Westminster Version of the Scriptures...

...Archbishop Kenrick, nevertheless, finished the translation of the whole Bible, which he called "a revision of the Rhemish Version," in i860...

...It was her councils that settled the Canon, her doctors who translated and explained the text, her monks who multiplied copies of the originals and of various Latin versions, before the invention of printing...

...Anyhow, the second provincial council of Westminster, held in 1855 under Cardinal Wiseman's presidency, passed the following canon: To secure as soon as possible an accurate rendering of Sacred Scripture from the Latin Vulgate, the Fathers have decreed that the task of producing it should be committed to such learned men as the most eminent Archbishop [Wiseman] should select...

...For its promoters had become convinced that it was useless to call Catholics to the more frequent use of the Scriptures, so long as they were presented to them in the version made at Rheims, completed early in the seventeenth century, and so long as they were printed in the inadequate fashion sanctioned by long tradition...

...His present paper describes the work and reveals its vast and international scope...

...Another American version of the Four Gospels from the Greek was made by a Father Francis Spencer, O.P., in 1898, but, again, in spite of encouragement by Cardinal Gibbons, it had little vogue...

...Those who use the Bible to formulate accusations against the Catholic Church are entirely indebted to her for the ammunition they employ...

...Or the things that I mind, do I mind according to the flesh, that there be with me it is and it is not...

...With regard merely to its material presentment, R. G. Moulton, a Protestant scholar, has asserted with appositeness and truth: The Bible is the worst printed book in the world...

...II Corinthians, I, 17...

...At the moment only the New Testament is in hand, since it is vastly more important for Christians to have a correct and readable account of early Christianity and the Life of its Founder than to be immediately familiar with the checkered history of the chosen race...

...A second article, to appear next week, will discuss interesting affiliated problems of Scripture study...

...The whole was finished by 1582, but only the New Testament was then published at Rheims: the Old did not see the light at Douay, whence the name attached to the whole till 1609-1610...

...Lingard, the historian, published anonymously his Four Gospels from the Greek, a version which was praised by Cardinal Wiseman...

...Two years after this decree, Wiseman did intrust the task to Dr...

...The Editors...

...No doubt the American prelates were equally surprised at Wiseman's inaction...

...The Tridentine legislation, which restricted the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular to those of the faithful whom ecclesiastical authority should judge likely to profit by it, has long become obsolete, and Pope after Pope in recent days has urged upon Catholics the advisability of studying the Bible, so as both to gain a fuller knowledge of their faith and to find fresh stimulus therein for their devotion...

...Incredible as it now seems, that representative Westminster synod did not know that Bishop Kenrick of Philadelphia, afterward Archbishop of Baltimore, had, some six or seven years before and with the approval of the American hierarchy, begun a new translation of the Vulgate and had already finished the New Testament in 1851...

...The need of such an enterprise as this is a real one, and has long been felt...

...But those days have long gone by...

...However, as Dr...

...Owing to the work of Protestant Bible societies, still inspired by the old conception that the Scriptures are self-interpreting, the world is flooded by translations of the Bible...

...Ephesians, vi, 12...

...No other monument of ancient or modern literature suffers the fate of being put before us in a form that makes it impossible, without strong effort and considerable training, to take in elements of literary structure which in all other books are conveyed directly to the eye...

...If she had been the foe of the Bible, as they maintain, because the Bible disproved her claims, she had the best opportunity of evading its witness against her: she need not have created it at all...

...As a reaction from the freedom with which contemporary Protestant translations were treating the sacred text, the Rheims scholars (Dr...

...Or, to take another example: Whereas then I was thus minded, did I use lightness...

...But unfortunately the attempt came to nothing, and its failure served to block further efforts in England for over fifty years...

...As to encouraging the faithful to read the Scriptures, her practice has varied according to circumstances...

...Gregory Martin, who made the entire translation in less than two years, and Dr...

...He had delayed in setting the work on foot: now, when Newman and his collaborators had spent on it a strenuous year, he sent him the communications from America without any suggestion as to what action should be taken...

...translated as clearly as possible and printed according to its sense...

...The enterprise now on foot has had not a few forerunners, even among Catholics...

...ning...

...The sensitive Oratorian, already disheartened by Wiseman's lack of interest in the work and his refusal of any financial help, took his reticence to mean the withdrawal of his support, and consequently dismissed his staff...

...The name given to the Version was suggested by the diocese of publication, but from the first its promoters were determined to enlist the aid of English-speaking scholars of all nationalities...

...Newman, who promptly accepted it and gathered together a large band of assistant translators...

...The cause of that disaster was first made clear in Ward's Life of Newman (1912...

...A short glance at its history will explain to a large extent the presence of these defects...

...and the best and most obvious remedy she can apply is to diffuse her own versions as widely as possible, equipped with explanatory notes in accordance with the doctrine she is commissioned to impart...

...Bristow, who revised the rendering and added the notes) often restricted themselves to a bald literal-ness, resolving, as they wrote, "not to mollify the text but to keep to it word for word...

...Martin and other Oxford scholars in 1578 when the Elizabethan persecution was at its height...

...Wiseman at that time was showing marked signs of the physical failure which characterized his later years...

...When the American bishops learned of the commission given to Newman, they wrote, in 1858, to Cardinal Wiseman, deprecating such waste of energy...

...As early as 1838, Dr...

...So it happens that, in the cheap one-volume editions in which it is generally found, almost all the elements of readableness are absent...

...It is this purpose of the highest authority which has at once justified and inspired the preparation and production of the Westminster Version...

...In fact, the case is entirely otherwise...

...Boy-Ian of Maynooth who has edited the difficult Epistle to the Hebrews...

...As a matter of record, the translation of the Apocalypse is the work of the late Dr...

...Although it has often been made a charge against the Catholic Church that she has kept the Bible from the people, it is a charge which has no real substance...

...This was obviously going too far in the other direction, and, although Challoner and other revisers have removed the worst results of this process, enough still remains to make parts of the New Testament almost wholly unintelligible...

...Before the invention of printing, only the comparatively wealthy, whether corporations or individuals, could have access to such valuable manuscripts, just as only the comparatively learned could utilize them when they had them...

...At the same time the synod of Baltimore resolved that the English forces should be asked to combine with the American to produce a single authoritative version...

...We have therefore asked Father Keating, who has taken a major part in this enterprise even while laboring hard as editor of the London Month, to write for The .Commonweal an account of this Version and an exposition of the questions which have arisen regarding it...

...As a result of Challoner's repeated revisions, and the labors of others both in Ireland and America, who worked over the Rheims text independently, the "Douay Bible" today appears in at least four versions, differing in many, if slight, particulars, and based on the great revisions by Challoner in 1749 and 1752, and on later ones by other hands...

...Thus one of the main objects of the new Version will be achieved, viz: to promote diligent perusal of the Scriptures by providing a translation which shall be clear as well as accurate, and, moreover, shall present the text in a manner less unworthy of its sacred character than that in which it too commonly appears...

...Allen and Dr...

...The Church's own Book has thus been "pirated" to an incredible extent, while all who run may read...

...How they hampered themselves and baffled their readers by this determination may be more clearly seen in the following brief extract: For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against Princes and Potestats, against the rectors of the world of this darkness, against the spirituals of wickedness in the celestials...

...As far, then, as the New Testament is concerned, the enterprise is nearly complete...

...THE NEW CATHOLIC BIBLE By JOSEPH KEATING THE recent publication of the Gospel of Saint John, translated from the original Greek, with notes, introduction, etc., by the Reverend W. S. Reilly, S.T.D., D.S.S., Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Baltimore Seminary, furnishes an apt occasion for calling the attention of American Catholics to what really is a cosmopolitan enterprise, the character of which has been somewhat disguised by its local title...

...When the remaining portions, which are well in hand, are ready, it is proposed to issue in a single volume a pocket edition of the New Testament for devotional reading, omitting matters only intended for students...

...The majority of the Church's children in those days could not read, and got their knowledge of the Bible from sermons, from the liturgy, from church decorations and from mystery plays...

...The Douay-Rheims Version is defective in accuracy and clearness, in typographical arrangement, in explanatory notes, and almost necessarily, in general get-up...