Gregory XVI, 1831–1846

Versions of Sacred Scripture ¹

[From the Encyclical, "Inter praecipuas," May 6, 1844]

1630. . . . Indeed, you are aware that from the first ages called Christian, it has been the peculiar artifice of heretics that, repudiating the traditional Word of God, and rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, they either falsify the Scriptures at hand, or alter the explanation of the meaning. In short, you are not ignorant of how much diligence and wisdom is needed to translate faithfully into another tongue the words of the Lord; so that, surely, nothing could happen more easily than that in the versions of these Scriptures, multiplied by the Biblical societies, very grave errors creep in from the imprudence or deceit of so many translators; further, the very multitude and variety of those versions conceal these errors for a long time to the destruction of many. However, it is of little or no interest at all to these societies whether the men likely to read these Bibles translated into the vulgar tongue, fall into some errors rather than others, provided they grow accustomed little by little to claiming free judgment for themselves with regard to the sense of the Scriptures, and also to despising the divine tradition of the Fathers which has been guarded by the teaching of the Catholic Church, and to repudiating the teaching office itself of the Church.

1631. Toward this end those same Biblical associates do not cease to slander the Church and this Holy See of PETER, as if it were attempting for these many centuries to keep the faithful people from a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures; although, on the other hand, there are extant many very illuminating documents of remarkable learning which the Supreme Pontiffs and other Catholic bishops under their leadership, have used in these more recent times, that Catholic peoples might be educated more exactly according to the written and traditional word of God.

1632. Among those rules, which have been written by the Fathers chosen by the Council of Trent and approved by Pius IV ² . . . and set in the front part of the Index of prohibited books, in the general sanction of the statutes one reads that Bibles published in a vulgar tongue were not permitted to anyone, except to those to whom the reading of them was judged to be beneficial for the increase of their faith and piety. To this same rule, limited immediately by a new caution because of the persistent deceits of heretics, this declaration was at length appended by the authority of Benedict XIV, that permission is granted for reading vernacular versions which have been approved by the Apostolic See, or have been edited with annotations drawn from the Holy Fathers of the Church or