The worst kind of evil is the hidden kind.

I think I have Bible OCD.
I am obsessed with buying new bibles. Every time Christmas or my birthday comes around, I already have a bible that I can't wait to get my hands on all picked out on my amazon wishlist. It's a sickness.

Then I get it, I use it for like, six months, furiously take notes in it and decorate it to my standards--- and then, all of a sudden, drop it and move on to the next Bible I can't wait to get my hands on.

I do this because I have yet to find the perfect one, one that actually fulfills all of the requirements that I have IN a bible. I really think that in order for this insanity to stop, I'm going to have to just make my own. Sigh.

Alright, first, the outside: I fluctuate between wanting a bible that has black leather (real leather) exterior and one that has brown duotone leather. I like them both. I have no idea why. While I LIKE pocket bibles (cause I always carry one around) I find that they lack some of the awesome extras that study-sized bibles have. I also like the weighty feel of HEAVY bibles with lots of pages. So, yeah. Conundrum. Usually the best choice is something pretty biggish but not giant that I can still carry around in my huge bag. :P

Then comes the meat: the translation. I used to be a NKJV or NASB girl. Those were my two faithful bibles. I can't stand the NIV (No offense to NIV lovers out there) because of it's similarity to the NWT (the Jehova's Witnessess translation) The KJV is good but I am not too excited about the archaic language. I don't hate the HCS.

Then I came back to the Church and found there were all these great books missing from my bible that were just amazing. I don't know how I went without Sirach for so long. :P So now I've got a very limited choice when it comes to translations...I need to have a catholic bible or I'm missing out!

The first and most natural selection is, of course, the trusty Douay Rheims, the "only bible you will ever need." (in my case, unless you can't find one that's bound the way you like it...I told you! Bible OCD.) Obviously, the Douay Rheims is the most trusty translation, for protestants AND Catholics, and an absolutely fabulous, thorough, Bible. Plus it is truly amazing to be led into Scripture by a man God specifically raised up to bring it to us, St Jerome. I love the Douay Rheims but the different numbering and book names make it harder to use during bible studies, and there are really only three editions out there, none of which satisfy my wierd binding issues.

The NAB, the official American Catholic Bible comes in lots of incredible formats-- two of my favorite bibles in this house are editions of the NAB. They have lots of "notes and study helps," are beautifully bound, and have lasted two years of heavy underlining and crunching into a tight diaper bag. When I first came "home to Rome" I bought a study edition and a pocket version, and read them through.I did this because it was the official Catholic version of the Bible, used in the lectionary, and promoted on the Bishops' Conference website.
Sadly, I find the NAB to be the most heretical, horrific garbage of a translation because of the inseperable commentary that goes with it. The translation itself isn't TOO bad, it's actually ok. But the commentary. Oh. The Commentary. This commentary, quite honestly, is shocking. And this is coming from a scholarly Bible translation loving girl... I LOVE me some Bible.

If you're interested in a blow by blow reason why the NAB commentary is an unreadable wolf in calfskin please click the link, which is one of many traditional Catholic articles describing the unusability of the "Scholarship" present in the NAB commentary.
I will spare you the lengthy breakdown, but let me just say that the entire commentary is virtually discouraging and faithless, a moral relativist mishmash of pop theology and "scientific" method which essentially questions everything and accepts or at least presents the opposite of tradition on the basis that tradition hasn't adequately been proved, even though neither has the opposite hypothesis. For instance, we read in the NAB commentary that the Israelites USED God as an excuse to enslave nations, or that Nebuchadnezzar couldn't possibly have gone a little bonkers and acted like a goat, or that Jesus may have been walking on the seashore and not the water, and on and on it goes. It's not so much that it flat-out LIES as that it passes off these "half-truth" hypotheses as fact and if the subject is entirely "miraculous sounding" it assumes that it is a fable or myth rather than an actual, literal story. In other words, it uses historical criticism out of context of other approved-by-the-Church methods to use in CONJUNCTION with historical criticism.

Honestly, I have been SO puzzled as to why and how on earth the USCCB would promote this particular version of the Bible, since it can certainly lead someone who DOESNT have a solid biblical foundation to work from into error. Those of us who are already familiar with our bibles, certainly need not fear, but those who begin their expedition into the Word of God through something like this are really in danger of accepting heresy as Truth! (and that , quite frankly explains how things like the RCIA we were forced to sit through in our parish happen-- it leads EVERYONE astray, even those seeking truth.)

Then, I read the encyclical, Providentissimus Deus, last night. WOW. Talk about getting a shiver down my spine. Though you can read the full text of it at the link above, I will just share one snippet with you:

10. But first it must be clearly understood whom we have to oppose and contend against, and what are their tactics and their arms. In earlier times the contest was chiefly with those who, relying on private judgment and repudiating the divine traditions and teaching office of the Church, held the Scriptures to be the one source of revelation and the final appeal in matters of Faith. Now, we have to meet the Rationalists, true children and inheritors of the older heretics, who, trusting in their turn to their own way of thinking, have rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief which had been handed down to them. They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all; they see, instead, only the forgeries and the falsehoods of men; they set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables and Iying stories: the prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event or forecasts formed by the light of nature; the miracles and the wonders of God's power are not what they are said to be, but the startling effects of natural law, or else mere tricks and myths; and the Apostolic Gospels and writings are not the work of the Apostles at all. These detestable errors, whereby they think they destroy the truth of the divine Books, are obtruded on the world as the peremptory pronouncements of a certain newly-invented "free science;" a science, however, which is so far from final that they are perpetually modifying and supplementing it. And there are some of them who, notwithstanding their impious opinions and utterances about God, and Christ, the Gospels and the rest of Holy Scripture, would fain be considered both theologians and Christians and men of the Gospel, and who attempt to disguise by such honorable names their rashness and their pride. To them we must add not a few professors of other sciences who approve their views and give them assistance, and are urged to attack the Bible by a similar intolerance of revelation. And it is deplorable to see these attacks growing every day more numerous and more severe. It is sometimes men of learning and judgment who are assailed; but these have little difficulty in defending themselves from evil consequences. The efforts and the arts of the enemy are chiefly directed against the more ignorant masses of the people. They diffuse their deadly poison by means of books, pamphlets, and newspapers; they spread it by addresses and by conversation; they are found everywhere; and they are in possession of numerous schools, taken by violence from the Church, in which, by ridicule and scurrilous jesting, they pervert the credulous and unformed minds of the young to the contempt of Holy Scripture. Should not these things, Venerable Brethren, stir up and set on fire the heart of every Pastor, so that to this "knowledge, falsely so called,"28 may be opposed the ancient and true science which the Church, through the Apostles, has received from Christ, and that Holy Scripture may find the champions that are needed in so momentous a battle?

WOW. So in other words, POPE LEO XIII, on NOVEMBER 18, 1893 warned us against translations like the NAB and bade us take care to avoid them like the plague. And yet this is the translation that we are expected to hear proclaimed and use???
In my frustration, I began reading from my trusty old NKJV Spirit Filled Life Bible, wondering if I could just go ahead and miss out on those beautiful canonical books which were missing from my bible in favor of a better commentary. You Catholics out there will laugh at me, but I'm telling you right now, the Jack Hayford Bible Commentary in my Charismatic Protestant Bible is almost entirely "Catholic" in it's explanations, whereas my Catholic bible persistently puts me in a fury over the sheer faithlessness of false intellectualism of it all.

So, here I sit, wondering what the hey. If I win the lottery, I'm going to see to it that Scott Hahn's RSV2CE gets published with a quickness, because it's the only hope for Catholics who aren't able to, for reasons of archaic language, (or poor binding options) read the Douay Rheims. No wonder there is so much garbage parading around as Catholicism these days-- no one is being filled with the PURE Word of God, but getting it filtered through the most evil of commentaries.
I've got to hand it to Satan on this one. He's a step ahead of the game. Fortunately, I'm not the only one who is onto him.

St Jerome, pray for us.