Why aren’t there more Catholic Bibles?

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 05, 2024

You’re Catholic and it’s September. That means it’s the Month of Our Lady of Sorrows, right?

Sure. But did you know that it is also the Month of the Bible? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. I don’t think anyone did. I’m a 54-year-old cradle Catholic and this year is the first I’ve heard of it.

The news arrived in my mailbox matter-of-factly, courtesy of the Catholic Transcript, the monthly magazine of the Archdiocese of Hartford. Our Auxiliary Bishop Juan Betancourt, a Scripture scholar who is on the USCCB Committee doing another revision of the New American Bible (NAB), announced it in his column. He said “the pastoral objective” of Month of the Bible is to “promote among the faithful the habit of reading the Bible.”

Which sent me down one of my favorite rabbit holes.

There are different kinds in the online Catholic world. You know what I mean: There is the culture war guy. The Vatican gossip guy. The liturgy guy. The apparitions guy. The apologetics guy. The Bible guy. And on and on.

I’m a culture war guy. It’s what I do for a living. It’s where my passion lies. In the months ahead, as Catholic Culture’s readers get to know my work, that is mostly what you will be seeing from me.

But a well-rounded Catholic should be a little bit of all those things. In my case, I’ve developed a sweet tooth for the Bible stuff.

Of course, everyone should be reading their Bibles. We shouldn’t need “Sunday of the Word of God” or “Month of the Bible,” relatively new concepts, to remind us to read our Bible. But if these things help, so much the better.

As someone who already reads the Bible daily (in addition to absorbing the Scriptures at Mass), the Month of the Bible is an excuse to meditate on some questions that have been on my mind lately.

Like, for instance, why is the Protestant Bible-selling market so much more gigantic than the Catholic one? Knowledgeable Catholics rightly know that it was the Church that gave the world the Bible, not the other way around. As a Jimmy Akin title reminds us, the Bible is a Catholic book.

I recently visited the Books-A-Million (BAM) store in Waterford, CT, the only one in our state. Their Bible section was amazing for a secular bookstore. BAM had about seven columns of Bibles with eight rows in each column. That is a lot of Bibles.

What blew me away was the variety. I don’t just mean the translations. I mean the variations in physicality, the different niche Bibles for people in different walks of life, etc.

But here is the thing. Most of the Bibles in those seven columns, and eight rows per column, were Protestant. I think perhaps one-half of one shelf were the Catholic Bibles.

The Catholic apologetics movement of the last several decades has done incredible work to better educate lay Catholics in our faith after the confusion of the immediate pre-Vatican II era. One mountain still to climb, though, is to get Catholics to buy Bibles in as large a number as our separated brethren do, and to read them.

Perusing my favorite Bible review YouTubers, who are mostly Protestant, I come across entire worlds within the Bible market with which I was previously unfamiliar. I was mostly a paperback or hardcover guy. Bonded leather Bibles, at best.

What are these “Premium Bibles” I’m learning about? Who knew you could get a “Schuyler Quentel” Bible or a “Cambridge Diadem” Bible or a “Cambridge Cornerstone” Bible or Bibles that are calfskin, or goatskin, or stamped grain, or cowhide, or whatever.

And how about all those translations? Yes, we have the NAB and its many revisions for Catholics who attend Mass in the United States. And the RSV-2CE for those of us excited about, for instance, the impending arrival of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. And the NRSV for fans of Bishop Barron’s beautiful new Word on Fire Bible.

But how is it that, despite all these, it is the Protestant-only New International Version (NIV) that reigns forever supreme as the top-selling Bible?

I see that the English Standard Version, which does have a Catholic Edition, has pulled into the #2 spot behind the NIV. Might it already be #1 if Crossway, the original publisher, did not oppose ESV Catholic commentaries, as Fr. Fessio revealed a few years ago?

And why does the Augustine Institute’s nicest ESV-CE have a blank cover, with the words “Holy Bible” only on its spine and the box it comes in? Is that new? Or has that always been a thing?

A lot of these questions are, I know, trivial matters. The pastoral objective of Month of the Bible is, again, to get Catholics reading their Bibles. Not to get them reading about their Bibles, as I’ve been doing.

I hereby recommit myself to reading the Bible during this Month of the Bible.

When I can tear myself away from the Catholic Bible Talk blog.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

Show 6 Comments? (Hidden)Hide Comments

• Posted by: djw2e6874 - Sep. 08, 2024 1:12 AM ET USA

  Reading Scripture should be an essential part of any Catholic's daily prayer life. It is God's Word. He longs to speak to us through the Bible. With high literacy rates, there is no excuse. Even, if someone simply read from the four Gospels his whole life, it would bear tremendous fruit. For Protestants, the Bible is everything because there are is no Mass or other sacraments, no adoration, no devotions apart from the Bible. Efforts to increase Biblical literacy among Catholics should only grow.

• Posted by: till8774 - Sep. 07, 2024 8:54 AM ET USA

  Yes, we should all read the word of God regularly, but I have a different take. I like reading the same edition over and over. That allows me to start memorizing the passage and have it on recall. I don't necessarily try to memorize it, but by reading the same version repeatedly, one becomes used to it and can recall it in a more specific, rather than general, way. I occasionally use other versions to see comparisons, but overall for me it is best to stick to one version.

• Posted by: Katherine01 - Sep. 07, 2024 1:13 AM ET USA

  Am also pondering the difference between Catholics and protestants in general. We have the Catechism and a hierarchy of shepherds who help keep the flock firmly on the rails, laid down following the teaching of Christ. Whereas our protestant brothers and sisters live with constant splintering and divisions and offshoots of both church and Bible. Perhaps is easier to have massively customizable book options when the contents are more like a "choose your own adventure' form of Biblical Truths?

• Posted by: Katherine01 - Sep. 07, 2024 1:09 AM ET USA

  Welcome to Catholic Culture! Am looking forward to your regular writing. Is funny, as a convert who grew up Presbyterian, then Methodist, the seeming lack of Bibles in the Catholic church shocked me. Until I realized while not in the pews, the entire Mass and liturgy was the Bible writ large, all year. I wonder if the lack of Catholic Bibles is a POV issue? My city of Houston, TX has tons of Catholic books stores filled with options!

• Posted by: Randal Mandock - Sep. 05, 2024 7:08 PM ET USA

  I agree with the title of this article, but not in the same way as the author describes it. In my last 3 years of decluttering, I've given away a dozen or so Protestant and Jewish translations of the Bible and all Catholic translations newer than 1970. I would like to be able to buy newly-published 1970 NAB, Confraternity, and "Catholic Treasures" Haydock Rheims-Douay Bibles. The Haydock commentaries supplement the Navarre, and Greek and Hebrew interlinears support these biblical translations.

• Posted by: garedawg - Sep. 05, 2024 6:51 PM ET USA

  From my days as an evangelical Protestant, my theory is that they all carry their bibles to church with them, and then the bibles get lost, so they need to buy more. Several of my own bibles met that fate, so I started showing up empty-handed.