I got involved in the Forum discussion with others about the Confraternity Version (i.e. 1941 Confraternity Version New Testament and Confraternity Version Old Testament as of its state in 1969), and there is quite a good discussion in that Forum of how the Confraternity Version and the C.C.D.'s later New American Bible (N.A.B.) compare to each other and to other Bible versions (transaltions). (These Confraternity and “Confraternity-Douay” version Bibles are mostly out-of-print, but they are not hard to find in used book stores and through WWW sources. The Confraternity Bible in many editions of and prior to 1969 can be found through the Amazon WWW sites, especially
Amazon.com) Check the Confraternity Version Forum for more about the C.V., N.A.B., the Douay-Rheims-Challoner Bible, and several other versions.
A big problem with Bibles, Roman Catholic and otherwise, is the notes that go with them, especially in “study Bibles” (“annotated Bibles”, “reference Bibles”, etc.). Some versions that basically have good texts are published with dreadful annotations and other notes, especially those whose editors and contributors are “punch drunk” on the Higher Critical method. Such notes spoil even the most stardard editions of translations such as the N.A.B. and The New Jersusalem Bible (N.J.B.). I tend simply to ignore such notes most of the time, when reading such versions and the notes, to varying degree, which tend to be attached to nearly all of them. The Jerusalem Bible (J.B.) and the N.J.B. are eminently worth reading, for their texts, but, Lord save us, just ignore the nonsense in the notes!
At least the three best ever Roman Catholic Versions in English, i.e. the Douay-Rheims-Challoner Version, the Confraternity Version (as defined above), and the Knox Bible lack such acidly degrading notes. The newly published Orthodox Study Bible’s O.T. was translated from the Septuagint (O.T.) and Byzantine (N.T.) Greek texts, and its notes are quite traditionalist, so it is a fine recommendation, as well. There are notes in these English Bibles, but they are helpful (at least for the most part) and do not depart from doctrinal and exegetical orthodoxy. The texts, too, translate from their base (Latin with or without resort, variously, to Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek original language souces, in the case of the Roman Catholic translations mentioned, and entirely from Greek, in the case of the Orthodox Study Bible) with fidelity and an avoidance of undue use of paraphrase.
There is a lot of foolish drivel that has been written and published to deride versions translated into English from the Septuagint (LXX) Greek O.T. and (for both Testaments) from Latin. The Clementine Latin Vulgate Bible, to take the Bible of antiquity that was foremost in Western Catholic transmission, was an exceedingly fine ancient translation, one that those who prepared and transmitted its manuscripts did with such fidelity to the older texts from which it was prepared (compared, for example, to very late and rabbinical O.T. Hebrew Masoretic Text) that it is better to translate from the Clementine Vulgate than from some of the degraded and Hebrew O.T. and Greek N.T. texts which modernist scholars favour.
I hope that these comments, even if brief and not all that comprehensive, help.
Jerry Parker