The Church's mistaken infallible pronouncement

[fineca]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

Hmmm…but later we’ve learned there are errors in the Vulgate, and the Church itself uses the Neovulgate now, and so we don’t accept the Scriptures as they are contained in the old Vulgate with all their parts, which makes us all anathema. Are we all out of the Church, or should we leave, or can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

 

[Nita]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

Hmmm…but later we’ve learned there are errors in the Vulgate, and the Church itself uses the Neovulgate now, and so we don’t accept the Scriptures as they are contained in the old Vulgate with all their parts, which makes us all anathema. Are we all out of the Church, or should we leave, or can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

The old Latin vulgate isn’t forbidden or considered unsacred and uncanonical. We just have a newer translation also. My guess is the Trent pronouncement was aimed at which books were to be included in the canon of Scripture; a response to the Protestant Reformation which excluded some of the OT books.

Nita

 

[Della]

can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

The reasonable solution is simply that you (and I) don’t have the authority to be interpreting Church documents. The Magisterium has that authority and knows what the documents say, to whom they refer, and how they are to be enforced.

Why bother yourself over things like this? Things that you don’t understand and were not directed at you. Be content to know that Christ’s Church cannot teach falsehood because Christ is its head, that it is led and guided by the Holy Spirit, just as Christ promised. What more does any Catholic need to know than that?

 

[fineca]

Yes it was, but well, the fact remains that the pronouncement basically declares the Vulgate a sacred translation we are bound to accept in all its parts (if so, why have another translation?)…but there are blunders in it like the horn of Moses and whatnot…we need something better than guesses to solve this…

 

[FCEGM]

Yes it was, but well, the fact remains that the pronouncement basically declares the Vulgate a sacred translation we are bound to accept in all its parts (if so, why have another translation?)…but there are blunders in it like the horn of Moses and whatnot…we need something better than guesses to solve this…

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

This is nothing more than assuring that the correct canon is employed by faithful members of the Church, not the translation thereof, Fineca.

 

[1ke]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

Hmmm…but later we’ve learned there are errors in the Vulgate, and the Church itself uses the Neovulgate now, and so we don’t accept the Scriptures as they are contained in the old Vulgate with all their parts, which makes us all anathema. Are we all out of the Church, or should we leave, or can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

You misunderstand. This is talking about the canon of Scripture. That is what it means by “sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts”.

Luther removed several *whole *books and *parts *of others when he compiled his canon. The Church rejects this, and reaffirms the official canon in this declaration.

 

[1ke]

Yes it was, but well, the fact remains that the pronouncement basically declares the Vulgate a sacred translation

No it does not.

we are bound to accept in all its parts

Yes, we are bound to accept the entire canon, including the parts Luther tried to remove.

(if so, why have another translation?)…but there are blunders in it like the horn of Moses and whatnot…we need something better than guesses to solve this…

The declarations of Trent are not referring to translations.

 

[rpp]

You misunderstand. This is talking about the canon of Scripture. That is what it means by “sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts”.

Luther removed several *whole *books and *parts *of others when he compiled his canon. The Church rejects this, and reaffirms the official canon in this declaration.

It must not be forgotten that the Council of Trent was called, belatedly I will admit, to respond to the various charges brought by the Protestant reformers like Luther, Zwigli, and Calvin.

Because an abridged version of the Bible became popular among protestants, this declaration was made to point out that the entire canon of scripture is required, not the abbreviated version Luther, Calvin, et. al, were promoting.

Nice try, though Finea. You will have to continue to pour through other Church writings.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

Hmmm…but later we’ve learned there are errors in the Vulgate, and the Church itself uses the Neovulgate now, and so we don’t accept the Scriptures as they are contained in the old Vulgate with all their parts, which makes us all anathema. Are we all out of the Church, or should we leave, or can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

I know of no difference between any versions of the Vulgate in regards to the Canon or number of books contained or even the number of chapters in each book. Trent was defining the Canon of Scripture in response to some who were trying to remove some books. The Church declares that the Scriptures are only perfect in their original autographs from the pens of the writers. Which we no longer have.

 

[Nita]

Yes it was, but well, the fact remains that the pronouncement basically declares the Vulgate a sacred translation we are bound to accept in all its parts (if so, why have another translation?)…but there are blunders in it like the horn of Moses and whatnot…we need something better than guesses to solve this…

Again, the “said books with all their parts…” probably relates to the Reformers rejecting parts of some books.
Eg. part of the book of Esther (Esther 10:4 - 16:24 in the Douay Rheims);
part of the book of Daniel (Dan 3:24-90 Douay Rheims).
There may be others; these are just two that I am familiar with.

Regarding the horns of Moses which seems to be troubling to you, the Hebrew word does also mean " display horns" - as well as “send out rays”. It isn’t as tho St. Jerome got the word totally wrong. moseshand.com/studies/moses.htm Subsequent translators consider “rays” to be the better choice - thus translating it “skin of his face became radiant” (NAB) or “skin of his face shone” (RSV).

Nita

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

Hmmm…but later we’ve learned there are errors in the Vulgate, and the Church itself uses the Neovulgate now, and so we don’t accept the Scriptures as they are contained in the old Vulgate with all their parts, which makes us all anathema. Are we all out of the Church, or should we leave, or can someone find a reasonable solution to the problem, which to me seems serious…?

Thanks
E

As Pius XII explains in Divino Afflante Spiritu, the Council was not addressing questions of textual criticism, but talking about the status of the Vulgate in the Church - without prejudice, FWIW, to those parts of the Church in which the Septuagint is the traditional OT version.​

The decree is about the version in general - it does not imply any decision as to which edition of it, if any, ought to be preferred; there were many available when the decree was promulgated in 1546, & many followed in the next 40 or so years. Nor was it saying:

• Passage X is in the text - and must be kept

• it was saying, in effect:

• No passage that ought to be in the Vulgate in its purest form, is to be absent from it: if a reading is part of the text, through a mistake, out it must go; if a reading is found somewhere that ought to be in it, and is not, it must be included.
  The Council wanted a Vulgate with as pure a text as possible. That is where textual criticism comes in: it is a necessary means to that end. “Divino Afflante” was written because of a pamphlet in 1941 by a priest who interpreted the decree in too restrictive a sense, who understood it to be saying that the actually existing text in 1546 was the same thing as the text of the Vulgate in its purest form.

As for the standard by which to judge what text is to be included: I don’t know, without doing some research, whether the standard is the best form of the Vulgate text, even where it differs from the best Greek text; or, the best Greek text.

Hope that helps

 

[fineca]

Thank you all, that sure helped! I’m not going thru Church documents trying to find errors, I just ran into this argument on JWhite’s site and then read the original document myself and was bothered and wrote in a provocative way to be sure to get good responses and so I did - one should read papal encyclicals before making stupid claims, after all, when dealing with history, it’s pretty likely that the Church has come across the problem in question before as well and solved it too

 

[Church_Militant]

This is nothing more than assuring that the correct canon is employed by faithful members of the Church, not the translation thereof, Fineca.

 

[fineca]

now that we’re talking about the canon, has someone written on the inerrancy of the deuterocanonicals? Most of the defenses of biblical inerrancy are written by Protestants and they don’t deal with the books in question and there are many historical inaccuracies etc in the deuterocanonicals according to modern biblical criticism and I wonder if someone has addressed them…

 

[po18guy]

Thank you all, that sure helped! I’m not going thru Church documents trying to find errors, I just ran into this argument on JWhite’s site and then read the original document myself and was bothered and wrote in a provocative way to be sure to get good responses and so I did - one should read papal encyclicals before making stupid claims, after all, when dealing with history, it’s pretty likely that the Church has come across the problem in question before as well and solved it too

Here you learn truth. On the site you refer to, you learn error. They have much bible, but little faith. They are grasping at straws, hoping to find Catholic error. They err, even in that!

Christ’s peace be with you.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

The old Latin vulgate isn’t forbidden or considered unsacred and uncanonical. We just have a newer translation also. My guess is the Trent pronouncement was aimed at which books were to be included in the canon of Scripture; a response to the Protestant Reformation which excluded some of the OT books.

Nita

Nita you are confusing translation with textual variants, if any textual variants are used that ignores text in the old latin vulgate than the OP has a point. But, the OP must show that there are in fact textual variants that ignore something said in the old latin vulgate text.

“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. Let all, therefore, understand, in what order, and in what manner, the said Synod, after having laid the foundation of the Confession of faith, will proceed, and what testimonies and authorities it will mainly use in confirming dogmas, and in restoring morals in the Church.”

history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct04.html

 

[Ignatius]

Here’s an infallible pronouncement from 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. SESSION FOUR

They are not talking about a particular translation, but about which books are included. They can be of any translation or language. The Church certainly has always accepted the Greek Spetuagent version and continues to.
If you want correctly to understand these pronouncements, you must view them with the mind of the Church and in the context in which they were made; otherwise you will misunderstand what is being said.

And finally, an anethma is not an infallible prouncement. It is always subject to being recinded or amended and is therfore never considered an infallible statement.

Grace and peace to you.

 

[fineca]

Interesting. Have some anathemas been revoked in the history of the Church? Someone said the Church revoked the excommunication of Galileo Galilei recently. As far as I know it was just that the pope said there were mistakes made in how it all was done, not that there was any official canceling of excommunications (I guess the CHurch never even excommunicated Galileo or did she?)

I repeat my other question - does anyone know of defenses of the deuterocanonical books’ inerrancy in terms of history/theology?

 

[rpp]

Interesting. Have some anathemas been revoked in the history of the Church? Someone said the Church revoked the excommunication of Galileo Galilei recently. As far as I know it was just that the pope said there were mistakes made in how it all was done, not that there was any official canceling of excommunications (I guess the CHurch never even excommunicated Galileo or did she?)

I repeat my other question - does anyone know of defenses of the deuterocanonical books’ inerrancy in terms of history/theology?

Galileo was never excommunicated so there was nothing to reverse.

However the excommunications of some people have been reversed when the people either repented or it was discovered later that information used to base the excommunication on was incomplete, incorrect, or false witness. This happened with many of the Knights Templar who were falsely accused, arrested and executed by certain French authorities in an effort to gain control of the funds the Templars were holding on behalf of Crusaders.

Excommunication is not an infallible pronouncement. An anathema from a Church council in union with the Pope is. As far as I know, none have been reversed because they are infallible.

 

[bobzills]

An anathema from a Church council in union with the Pope is. As far as I know, none have been reversed because they are infallible.

What about the Fourth Council of Constantinople part II held from 879-880 which was supposedly confirmed by Pope John VIII and which condemned and anathematised any alteration whatsoever to the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed. And there is supposedly a letter from Pope John VIII saying that the filioque is an addition to the creed which is rejected by Rome? And didn’t other Councils anathematise any addition to the creed which did not contain the filioque clause, thereby condemning the addition of the filioque clause to the creed. Obviously, these anathemas were overturned in the Roman Catholic Church, but not so in the Eastern Orthodox Church.