The subject is study bibles and I think that the Ignatius New Testament Study Bible goes a long way toward filling the Catholic gap for a useful study Bible.
It turns out that I picked up the (non-Catholic) New International Version Study Bible about 25 years ago, and it is very handy. It has copious cross references and study notes. It is a paraphrased version of scripture but it is very high quality.
My relatives gave me a copy of the Ryrie Study Bible, which is based on the American Standard Version, which is a successor to the King James Version, and a pre-cursor to the Revised Standard Version and RSV-2nd Catholic Edition. It is a decidedly anti-Catholic work.
I look at the non-Catholic versions of the Bible to cross-check ideas and maybe get a different perspective. So many people are non-Catholic, I like to glance at what they have on their minds.
The Catholic Church approves the reading of Jewish commentaries on the Old Testament (see the document “The Jewish People and their Scriptures” in the document library at
www.ewtn.com.) and I find them very interesting. I have picked up (on sale) various commentaries on the Torah from the Jewish Publication Society. Jews hold on to the first five books of the Bible as their most important set of inspired writings. Jews are the “people of the book” who are obliquely mentioned in paragraph 109 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Catholics are NOT “people of the book”).
The Jewish commentaries have scoured the Torah and all the Jewish writings for thousands of years, and they have studied nuances in the language of the Torah very deeply. I subscribe to a couple email newletters, which also take me to some outstanding Jewish audio commentaries. (Jewish comedian Lewis Black did a routine on Jews and Christians, and he says that Jews will tell you what scripture really means – for a price. He’s not totally kidding. They make their living by teaching and writing, and you will learn a lot – for a price.)
I have a separate thread on the book “Christ in the Psalms” which is an excellent introduction to the whole idea of interpreting the Old Testament in the manner which Jesus taught. It’s a homiletic approach to the psalms, not an exhaustive commentary, but it is very thoughtful and useful. It has opened up the psalms to me. The author, orthodox priest Fr. Reardon, says that not only were the psalms written simply in their context of history,but were prophetic of Christ, in their entirety. Psalm 1 describes the Christian life – how we ought to walk, how to stand, and how to sit.
