False Translations of Scripture Endanger Faith and Morals
16. Furthermore, quite apart from the flood of evil books which are intrinsically hostile to religion, the wickedness of our enemies has gone so far as to try to turn against religion the sacred writings divinely given to us for the building up of religion.
17. You have noticed a society, commonly called the Bible society, boldly spreading throughout the whole world. Rejecting the traditions of the holy Fathers and infringing the well-known decree of the Council of Trent, it works by every means to have the holy Bible translated, or rather mistranslated, into the ordinary languages of every nation. There are good reasons for fear that (as has already happened in some of their commentaries and in other respects by a distorted interpretation of Christ’s gospel) they will produce a gospel of men, or what is worse, a gospel of the devil!
18. To prevent this evil, Our predecessors published many constitutions. Most recently Pius VII wrote two briefs, one to Ignatius, Archbishop of Gniezno, the other to Stanislaus, Archbishop of Mohileu, quoting carefully and wisely many passages from the sacred writings and from the tradition to show how harmful to faith and morals this wretched undertaking is.
19. In virtue of Our apostolic office, We too exhort you to try every means of keeping your flock from those deadly pastures. Do everything possible to see that the faithful observe strictly the rules of our Congregation of the Index. Convince them that to allow holy Bibles in the ordinary language, wholesale and without distinction, would on account of human rashness cause more harm than good.
20. Experience also shows that this is true, and aside from other Fathers, St. Augustine states it in the following words: “Heresies and other wicked teachings which ensnare souls and cast them into the deep, arise only when the good scriptures are badly understood and when what is not well understood in them is affirm, d with daring rashness.”
21. Such is the object of this society and it leaves no means untried to achieve its objective. For it delights in printing its own translations, as well as in dashing through every city to distribute them itself to the common people. Indeed, to seduce the minds of the simple, it is careful to sell them in one place, while elsewhere it wants to give them as a gift with calculating generosity.
- Pope Leo XII, Ubi Primum (On His Assuming the Pontificate), 1824.