Did Richard Challoner Protestantize the Douai-Rheims?

©Lúcio Mascarenhas, Sept. 13, 2006.
http://www.geocities.com/livrant/challoner-bible.html

Dear Brother Hyacinth,

I am glad that you ask about the Challoner Bible.

When England cut itself from Christ to adhere to its own homemade version of Protestantism, called Anglicanism, it also altered its society, and with it, its language. At the same time, Christian Englishmen in exile at the towns of Douai in the Spanish Flanders and in Rheims in France set about translating the Vulgate into their English. This version was called the Douai-Rheims version. However, it's English was already replaced by the Protestant ascendancy's new English, and it was also banned by the Protestant rulers of England, so that the English Christian remnant at home, by and large, did not have access to it. When about a hundred and fifty years later, persecution had slackened, it was found that because they had no other bible, many Christians were using Protestant versions, such as the "King James Version".

Bishop Richard Challoner was born of a Protestant mother, who, being widowed soon after his birth, converted back to Christianity. He became a priest and was made a bishop. Seeing the sorry plight of the Christians in England, he set about revising the Douai-Rheims version so that it conformed to the contemporary English, and this version is called the Challoner version.

Often, Douai-Rheims and Challoner are confused. They are not the same. The true Douai-Rheims were never popularly available and never popularly known, except by reputation. The Challoner was commonly called Douai-Rheims.

For more than two hundred and fifty years in England, Bishop Challoner's bible version was the only version to be had, and English Christians were very grateful to him for having produced it.

However, in the last forty years or so, an ugly rumor or legend has been woven around the Challoner and Douai versions, which slander, defame and misrepresent the saintly Richard Challoner.

Vile slanders have been uttered and written about and against Challoner insinuating that he "Protestantized" the "true Catholic Douai-Rheims" version to conform to the Protestants' King James Version, and some have even offered the "true Douai-Rheims version" for sale.

Believe me, they are liars and slanders and charlattans to boot; men of idle mind who have no other work than to divide and destroy the saints of Christ Jesus.

Facsimile of a page from the 'real' Douai-Rheims

If you were given the "true Douai-Rheims version", I assure you that, in most probability, you would not be able to read it or understand it. It is written in a form of the English language that those of us who can understand modern English will not be able to comprehend. The same was true of the Christians of Richard Challoner's time, which is why he was forced to sacrifice valuable time to revising it to the then contemporary English.

Some of these idlebodies and maligners of the saintly Richard Challoner take the scholarly words of the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907-1913 to be a condemnation of Challoner as a counterfeiter and charlattan, when they are nothing of the sort. The words of the Catholic Encyclopedia have been misunderstood or misrepresented.

Take for example these words, that these maligners are fond of quoting:

Although the Bibles in use in the twentieth century by the Catholics of England and Ireland are popularly styled the Douay Version, they are most improperly so called; they are founded, with more or less alteration, on a series of revisions undertaken by Bishop Challoner in 1749-52.

His object was to meet the practical want felt by the Catholics of his day of a Bible moderate in size and price, in readable English, and with notes more suitable to the time.

He brought out three editions of the New Testament, in 1749, 1750, and 1752 respectively, and one of the Old Testament in 1750.

The changes introduced by him were so considerable that, according to Cardinal Newman, they "almost amounted to a new translation".

So also, Cardinal Wiseman wrote, "To call it any longer the Douay or Rheimish Version is an abuse of terms. It has been altered and modified until scarcely any sense remains as it was originally published".

In nearly every case Challoner's changes took the form of approximating to the Authorized Version, though his three editions of the New Testament differ from one another in numerous passages. [See Bernard Ward's entry Douay Bible in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909.]

Challoner's maligners misrepresent Newman & Wiseman's words to mean an condemnation of Challoner as a fraud and counterfeit, when such was not their intention at all.

Far more closer to the truth is the version of facts as found in the Preface to TAN Books' 1989 edition of the Challoner Douai-Rheims Bible:

The present Bible is the Challoner revision (1749-1752) of the Douay-Rheims Bible. Catholics owe the saintly Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781) a great debt of gratitude for undertaking this work. Challoner was one of those courageous priests who traveled around offering Mass secretly for small groups during the religious persecutions in England. Such Catholics needed a Bible, and had needed one for 100 years. The Douay-Rheims Bible had been printed a few times on the Continent but had never really spread to England. Some Catholics in England were even reading the King James version — a situation which Bishop Challoner knew had to be rectified.

Some of the passages in the original Douay-Rheims Bible were needlessly obscure. As an extreme example, Ephesians 6:12 read, "For our wrestling is not against flesh and bloud: but against Princes and Potestats, against the rectors of the world of this dankness, against the spirituals of wickedness in the celestials." The spellings were archaic, and the verses were not set off by new lines for clarity. Challoner rectified these problems, checking carefully against the Clementine Vulgate and the original-language texts. On the whole, Bishop Challoner's revisions were minor. He replaced certain anglicized Latin words and archaic words and expressions, rearranged the word order of the sentences, and yet maintained the overall word-for-word accuracy of the 16th/17th-century Douay-Rheims Bible.

The Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims Bible was a godsend. It became the standard Catholic Bible in English until the mid-20th century (when the Confraternity Bible was published). It continued to be called the "Douay-Rheims" because of its similarity to the original Douay-Rheims Bible. The great work English Versions of the Bible, by Frs. Pope and Bullough, states that English-speaking Catholics the world over owe Dr. Challoner an immense debt of gratitude, for he provided them for the first time in history with a portable, cheap and readable version of the Bible, which has stood the test of 200 years of use. Moreover, it is more accurate than any modern Bible because it is based on ancient texts, no longer extant, which were "captured" and "frozen," so to speak, by St. Jerome (342-420) in his Latin Vulgate. The Douay-Rheims is thus the most reliable English-language Bible there is. We look forward to the day when the Christian world will rediscover this fact and come to a renewed appreciation of the monumental work of St. Jerome, of the Douay-Rheims translators and of Bishop Richard Challoner — men who were raised up by God to make the Bible available to the English-speaking world. [Preface in Tan Books' 1989 Edition.]

There are many people who take upon themselves the audacious labor of slandering and defaming and misrepresenting the saintly Richard Challoner, but one man stands out: Dr. William von Peters, who, by means of his website (see below) popularizes this slander, and his, i.e., the Von Peters' version of the "real" Douai-Rheims version!

I pray you ignore and contemn such men and pay no heed to such slanderers and defamers, who are the angels of the devil and shall with him be cast into the eternal fire for their audacious sins. Do not allow yourself to become one of these sectaries!

Kind regards,


Lúcio Mascarenhas
http://lucius-caesar.livejournal.com

For more information, see the following pages:

1. Bernard Ward's entry Douay Bible in the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909



2. William von Peter's RealDouayRheims.com — Purports to be the "Real" Douay-Rheims and slanders and misrepresents the saintly Richard Challoner

For online editions of the Douai-Rheims Challoner version, see (CAUTION: NONE OF THESE ARE TRULY CATHOLIC SITES!!!):

1. DRBO.org — TAN Books' reprint, 1989
2. Christian Classic Ethereal Library
3. Project Gutenberg
4. NewAdvent.org

"You must fight energetically, since you know very well what great wounds the undefiled Spouse of Christ Jesus has suffered, and how vigorous is the destructive attack of Her enemies" — Pope Pius IX.

"The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance will be needed...." — Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, par. 39, 1937.