Customer Reviews

Catholic Youth Bible - New American Bible - Pray It, Study It, Live It

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the book is great. The seller,skmfg1234, however is totally unreliable. I was promised shippin between Aug 30- Sep1. It's 11 days past that range and still no delivery. So much for getting it as a birthday gift. My advice DO NOT PURCHASE ANYTHING FROM SKMFG1234.

The Catholic Youth Bible (CYB) is a misguided attempt to interpret Sacred Scripture according to modern standards in an effort to make the Bible, and the Catholic Faith, more appealing to young people. Generally, young people see through such attempts to make religion fashionable, and rightly find them unappealing. Furthermore, by pandering to religious pluralism and other decidedly un-Catholic ideas, and by ambiguously presenting Church teaching, the CYB compromises the Catholic Faith. Thus, in an effort to make the Catholic Faith appealing, the CYB is neither appealing, nor is it Catholic. A young person of high school age is better served with an unadulterated Catholic Bible and a catechism of the appropriate reading level.

The CYB highlights the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) with over 650 short articles. These articles are designed to teach something about the Bible or make suggestions about how to live these teachings.

The CYB claims to be Catholic because "its introductions and articles reflect Catholic interpretation of the Bible and [because it] contains all seventy-three books and letters that form a complete Catholic Bible (pg. vii)." Throughout the CYB, however, "Catholic Christians" are referred to in the third person and their "beliefs" are presented as subjective opinion. Some articles, under the heading, "Catholic Connections", are intended to show the biblical basis for some Catholic beliefs and practices. This heading is rather confusing in that it implies that only certain sections, and not the whole of Sacred Scripture, have a connection to the Catholic Faith.

Other articles, intended to show how the Bible is "multicultural", represent distinct cultural perspectives. These articles introduce irrelevant cultural experiences, traditions, and poetry. Some even present non-Christian religious ideas and prayers. Ironically, these articles foster racial fixation in the context of Sacred Scripture which otherwise transcends racial difference.

Also, some of the "Live It" and "Did You Know" articles contain unnecessary and disturbing images. One article, for example, gives an account of the group rape of a teenage girl (pg. 43 No Way Shechem!). Another considers what menstruation must have been like for women of the Old Testament (pg. 123 Monthly Periods).

Ostensibly a version of the bible that will appeal to "modern" Catholic Youth. But it doesn`t take much searching to find objectionable content in the CYB. According to the CYB the author of Sirach is "sexist" (pg. 810 The Sexism of Sirach), the author of John's Gospel is anti-Semitic (pg. 1249 "The Jews" in the Gospel of John), and the sin of the Sodomites is ``inhospitality`` (pg. 25 Be Kind To Strangers). The rest is predictable. There is far more error in this Bible than I could possibly address in this space.

As the CYB purports to be Catholic, however, let us take a look at how it presents Church teaching. On page 1237 under the heading "Catholic Connections" and titled "The Eucharist" we find, "In Luke's account of the Last Supper, Jesus asks his disciples to remember him and all that he did, as they share the loaf of bread that he identified as his body given for us and the cup of wine that he identified with the New Covenant sealed by his blood." This is not consistent with Church teaching, which states "by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the wine into the substance of his blood (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1376)."

I do not recommend this Bible to anyone, for any reason. (TiberRiver review).