Religion: Catechetical Congress

Standard Bible for English-speaking Roman Catholics is the Douay-Reims version, named for the French towns where, at English colleges, the New Testament was translated from the Latin in 1582, the Old in 1609. To bring the Douay-Reims Bible up to date and to get a modernized Scripture approved by the U. S. hierarchy has been the aim, during the past three years, of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.

This ancient body (founded in 1562), devoted to the spread of religious teaching, did not reach the U. S. until 1903, did not hold annual meetings in the U. S. until four years ago. Last week 5,000 Catholics gathered in Hartford, Conn, for the Confraternity’s Catechetical Congress — so called because catechetical is the adjectival form of catechism, which means teaching. At the Congress were introduced two new aids to Catholic teaching: a revised catechism, a gospel newly put into English.

The Confraternity appointed 21 Catholic theologians to revise the Douay-Reims Bible. A sample of their work, the Gospel according to St. John, was circulated among last week’s Catechetical Congress. Chief innovations: it omits all archaic word forms except thee, thou, thine; does not capitalize the pronouns referring to Jesus Christ; arranges the text by paragraphs, not by numbered verses. Typical revisions: “desert” for “wilderness” in the passage I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness; “wine” for “vinegar” in the description of the last moments of Christ on the Cross.

Since 1885, U. S. Catholic children have learned by rote a “Penny Catechism” prepared by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. A new catechism, compiled by 150 U. S. theologians, was last week being scrutinized by U. S. bishops.

The very first question has been simplified from “Who made the world?” to “Who made us?,” the answer from “God made the world” to “God made us.” Considerably expanded are sections dealing with the duties of a Catholic citizen. There children will learn that a citizen pays “just taxes,” exercises his right to vote, and that officeholders are bound under pain of sin not to take bribes.