First of all, understand that the Vulgate has been approved as free of doctrinal error. This does not mean free of translation errors or free of translations resting on a wrong reading.
Not correct.
The Council of Trent: “But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.”
The Council of Trent: “Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod,–considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,–ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.”
There was no statement that Vulgate editions are necessarily free from doctrinal error (which might enter into a particular edition by a translation or editing error, or a copyist error). But if we exclude errors from translation, editing, or copying/printing, then we are merely saying that Sacred Scripture itself is without error.
Second, undersand what the Nova Vulgata is. It is the Vulgata brought up to date according to the latest findings of scholars. It aims to remain as close as possible to the original Vulgate, even to the point of using the same grammatical rules, not the rules of classical latin.
Not correct. There are no ‘latest findings’ which were used to update the Vulgate; if so, give an example. Also, the editors deliberately departed from the Latin Scriptural tradition and from all past editions of the Vulgate, preferring instead to rely on Hebrew and Greek texts, and often rendering those texts loosely, not as close as possible to the ‘original Vulgate’. Also, we do not have a copy of Jerome’s version of the Vulgate, and the Vulgate existed prior to Jerome (the vetus latina), of which we also have no copies. Also, the Nova Vulgata, and the norm of using the Nova Vulgata in Bible translations, has been criticized by modern Scripture scholars.
So if you buy the Nova Vulgata, you will have the best that the Church has to offer as Her offcial bible.
What is the basis for this claim?
If you decide to buy the Clementine Vulgate, be very careful. Some editions have neither punctuation nor capitals. That can be very difficult to read, especially if you’re not a Latin scholar.
The numerous editions of the Clementine Vulgate of which I am aware all have punctuation and capitalization, e.g. the Leander van Ess edition, the Hetzenauer edition, the Vercellone edition, the Tweedale edition, the Colunga and Turrado edition.
Only the Stuttgart edition (the Beuron/Stuttgart Bible Societies text edited by Bonifatius Fischer in 1975), which is not properly a Vulgate edition at all, but is a Protestant critical edition, lacks punctuation and capitalization.
