“Gay-Washed” Bible’s imprimatur should be withdrawn. Here’s why.

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 15, 2025

I am grateful to OSV News for reporting on my concerns about the USCCB’s granting of an imprimatur to the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue) Bible. I appreciate USCCB Scripture scholar Father Pablo Gadenz responding directly to my concerns. But I found his responses unpersuasive, and I still think the imprimatur should be withdrawn, for the reasons below.

First, a recap for readers unfamiliar with the issue. The updated edition of the NRSV, the flagship Bible of Mainline Protestantism, was published in 2022. Protestant Scripture scholar Robert A.J. Gagnon (who literally wrote the book on The Bible and Homosexual Practice) immediately flagged it for having “gaywashed” the “clear reference to homosexual practice in the offender list in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (and 1 Tim 1:10 where the same Greek term appears).” I wrote a Catholic Answers article shortly thereafter arguing that the USCCB should not grant an imprimatur until those two verses are fixed. Two weeks ago I wrote a column for Catholic Culture on the announcement that the USCCB had granted an imprimatur to an NRSVue, Catholic Edition, with no change to those verses.

You can read Dr. Gagnon’s 2022 post here and my Catholic Answers article here. You can read my Catholic Culture column here and the OSV News article here. I also discussed the issue in an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room, which you can view here.

As OSV News reports, the “primary translation” of the Catholic Church in the U.S.—the one we hear at Mass—is the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). The NRSVue, Catholic Edition, has been approved only “for private use.” So it’s not a big deal, right?

Wrong. For several reasons. As one commenter recently noted at the Catholic Bible Talk Blog:

You might not realize it, but the NRSV is probably the most widely used Bible translation in the English-speaking world. It is the Bible of the mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church in Canada. It is also the Bible of academia; every single college student who takes a Bible class uses the NRSV, which is why every August-September the NRSV rockets up the sales charts.

In other words, a Catholic imprimatur for the NRSVue matters. Even if it is only for private use and even if the Church in the U.S. uses a different translation for its lectionary. And the objection to those “gay-washed” verses matters even more.

As Fr. Gadenz told OSV News, the condemnations of homosexual practice in Romans and Leviticus are still there in the NRSVue. But as Protestant Scripture scholar Mark Ward noted at the time the NRSVue was first published, homosexual practice is condemned in only a small number of Biblical passages. The NRSVue removes three of them, including two where St. Paul says those who engage in such acts, and are unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is, the NRSVue removes something St. Paul said, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, regarding salvation. That is a very serious matter. Indeed, salvation—or lack thereof—is the most serious matter of all.

Again, the Greek word in question is “arsenokoitai.” Mark Ward and others speculate that St. Paul may have invented the word himself, as there is no previous record of it prior to Paul’s use of it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:10. But Paul didn’t invent it out of thin air. He’s combining two separate words in the Septuagint translation of Leviticus that mean “men” and “bed”—men-bedders. As Ward notes, in 1 Cor 6:9 Paul is condemning both the passive (malakoi) and active (arsenokoitai) partners in male homosexual acts. The NABRE reads “sodomite,” the ESV “men who practice homosexuality.”

The NRSVue changes the passage to “men who engage in illicit sex,” which obscures the fact that it is homosexual relations that are being condemned. Worse, when the Washington Times reported on this controversy in 2022, they framed it this way:

At issue: Does arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), a Greek word used only twice in the New Testament, mean all same-sex relations or only illicit ones?

Does anyone really think that St. Paul was making a distinction between licit and illicit gay sex? I cannot imagine that this was the same “debate” the USCCB’s Fr. Gadenz had in mind when he told OSV News that the updated footnote for arsenokoitai in the NRSVue (“Gk uncertain, possibly men who have sex with men”) “now acknowledge[s] the view in the debate that was previously found” in those two verses. But you see the problem. To claim to be uncertain about whether arsenokoitai references men who have sex with men is to open the door to all sorts of ideological mischief. To grant that translation—that uncertainty—an imprimatur is to say that it is free of doctrinal or moral error. It seems to me to be in error on both counts.

As I told OSV News, I am not a Scripture scholar. I am relying on those who are. But I confess to some surprise that I am, so far as I know, the only writer in the Catholic world to make a public issue of this. In the early 1990s, fights over so-called “inclusive language” translations rocked the Catholic and Protestant worlds alike. The publication of the English language edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was delayed an extra two years over it. It seems to me that “gay-washing” the Bible is a much bigger deal than male pronoun-washing it. But I’m the only Catholic mentioning it.

As Mark Ward said, it is out of love for our homosexual neighbors that we ought to object to this mistranslation. We want them to inherit the kingdom of God too. It is a lack of love for them to hide from them what these verses actually say.

Ward also says, “It can’t be an accident that a translation associated with the Protestant mainline is the first major English Bible to suddenly find arsenokoitai impossible to translate.” I don’t know what was in the mind of the translators when they changed those verses. But the NRSV does seem to reflect whatever is au courant in liberal Christianity whenever it is being updated. Feminism in the 1980s, LGBT today. Against the accusation of “gay-washing,” it has been noted that other condemnations of homosexual practice are still in the NRSVue. But progressives are master incrementalists. When the Protestant Mainline updates its flagship Bible again—say, in another thirty years—what makes you think they won’t “gay-wash” it further?

Again, my gratitude to OSV News for covering this story and to Fr. Gadenz for his responses. Nevertheless, the problem remains. The USCCB should consider withdrawing its imprimatur of the NRSVue until those two verses are re-translated to mean what they actually say.