English-speaking Roman Catholics have never produced a first-class Bible of their own. The Douay Version, their standard since 1609, was written in Douay and Rheims, France, by exiles driven from England and cut off from English libraries. Worse, in 1546, the Council of Trent had required, in effect, that all official translations be made from St. Jerome's 5th century Latin Vulgate text, rather than from manuscripts in the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. The King James Version, published by Protestants in 1611, has always overshadowed the Douay among scholars and laymen.
Now all...