What Catholic Bibles in English are on the Net?

This site is no longer updated, and will be going away soon. See my top-level page for more information.

There is now a complete 19th-century edition of the Douay-Rheims bible on the Net. See this page.

For 20th-century translations used by Catholics, the closest thing on the Net is currently the Revised Standard Version. The full version, including deuterocanonical books (filed under "Apocrypha") can be found at the University of Michigan. In addition, Bible Gateway has the RSV, but in a version limited to the the 66-book Protestant canon.

Most passages in the on-line RSV's seem to be identical to those in the Catholic-approved editions of the RSV, with the exception of some missing books and chapters in some on-line editions. (I'd be happy to know about and point out known exceptions.)

There are a number of modern English translations that were made specifically for Catholics, such as the New American Bible and the Jerusalem Bible. These are both copyrighted. We would have to get permission to put them on the Internet. (If someone would like to look into getting permission, that could be quite helpful.)

A Public Domain Douay-Rheims Bible On-Line

While the Douay-Rheims is now on-line, the on-line publisher still claims a copyright on the etext. Dan Connolly is organizing an effort to put a public-domain version on-line; he needs volunteers to enter and proofread material. If you're interested, write to him at dcon@crow.cybercomm.net. Some of the books that have already been entered, proofread, and formatted can be found here.

Also, the Vulgate is available in Latin.

For the weekly scripture readings, I currently link to the RSV at gospelcom.net, since that is used in Catholic liturgies in many countries. If the RSV text for a given week is missing, though, or the on-line copy is not consistent with the Catholic version of the RSV, I'll link to the Douay-Rheims.

(Back to Catholic info page.)

spok@cs.cmu.edu (Last updated 20-Jan-97)