New Advent simply does not understand the historical view of canonicity as explicated by Cardinal Catejan above.
This is the opinion of Cardinal Cajetan, not a binding, infallible decree. Not too long ago, Cardinal Martini, one of the most prolific Cardinals at the Vatican reasoned that contraception should be okay in certain circumstances. A thousand years from now, if someone reads his interview in the light you read Cardinal Cajetan's, the future historian would draw the conclusion that the Church, in 2006, declared infallibly that contraception is okay. It doesn't work that way.
Until the 5th century, Christians very frequently ranked 3 Esdras with the Canonical books; it is found in many LXX MSS (Septuagint manuscripts) and in the Latin Vulgate (Vulg) of St. Jerome. Protestants therefore include 3 Esdras with other apocrypha (deuterocanonical) books such as Tobit or Judith. The Council of Trent definitively removed it from the canon."
There is much confusion over this, so I understand your error here. The apocryphal Book of Ezra is known in the Greek as 1 Esdras. Because it was not preserved in Hebrew, Jerome flushed it, but in doing so, renamed it "3 Esdras". 1 Esdras, as Jerome differentiated, was the combined Ezra and Nehemiah. That became the accepted title for Ezra-Nehemiah. The Septuagint, however, sometimes referred to the Ezrah-Nehemiah combination at "2 Esdras". So now you have Pope Damasus faced with Jerome, who's popularized "1 Esdras (Substantially the Book of Ezra to the Greeks, substantially the "Ezra" portion of the canonical "Ezra-Nehemiah" as known by the Greeks from Jerome's nomenclature). Remember, the apocryphal Book of Ezra (Greek) has been kicked to the curb and re-named 3 Esdras. Now, the Greeks sometimes referred to the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah (rejected by Jerome) as "2 Esdras" ("3 Esdras" to Jerome). Jerome's "2 Esdras" comprised the "Nehemiah" portion of the canonical Greek "Ezra-Nehemiah"
SO: Jerome's "1 Esdras" would later be renamed, "Ezra". Jerome's "2 Esdras" would later be renamed just "Nehemiah". The Church, at the time of the Declaration of Damasus knew these texts as "1 Esdras" and "2 Esdras" (as named by Jerome). By the time Trent came around, no one referred to Ezra and Nehemiah as "1 and 2 Esdras". But the Eastern Church still recognized the Septuagint "1 Esdras" (or "The Book of Ezra") and "2 Esdras" (or "the Apocalypse of Ezra"). Therefore, in rejecting "1 Esdras and 2 Esdras", Trent was not rejecting Ezra and Nehemiah - which Damasus approved of under the Jerome-named 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras - instead, the Council was clarifying, for the sake of the Eastern Churches still using the Greek, that "The Book of Ezra" (or the East's "1 Esdras") and "The Apocalypse of Ezra" (or the East's "2 Esdras") were not canon material.
Therefore, any claims that Trent in some way contradicted the Council of Rome is absolutely false.
The 1 and 2 Esdras referred to by Trent were two completely different texts than the 1 and 2 Esdras referred to at Rome. What's truly mind-bending is that there were different name assignment for Ethiopic text of Esdras, but I can't go into that because my head is about to explode.
I had to look this up.
What is commonly called the Gelasian decree on books which are to be received and not received takes its name from Pope Gelasius (492-496). It gives a list of biblical books as they appeared in the Vulgate, with the Apocrypha interspersed among the others. In some manuscripts, indeed, it is attributed to Pope Damasus, as though it had been promulgated by him at the Council of Rome in 382. But actually it appears to have been a private compilation drawn up somewhere in Italy in the early sixth century.Even so, which church? What the councils of Hippo and Carthage meant when they referred to two books of Esdras, is found in the Septuagint, not the Vulgate. Augustine, for example, who was a participant at Carthage, defined the two books of Esdras, and he defined them differently.
(The Canon of Scripture [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988], p. 97)
Are we to believe that Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century, and many fathers, and others in the Glossa, THE official Biblical commentary in the Middle Ages used for training of theologians; through Cardinal Ximenes' with his Polyglot edition of the Bible, sanctioned by Pope Leo X and published with Leo's approval, to Cardinal Cajetan, were delibertately teaching what they knew to be contrary to the Magisterium, or that they were ignorant of the position of the church? Or is it more reasonable to believe that they were, as some such as Pope Gregroy stated explicitly two hundred years after the council of Carthage with regard to I Maccabees, merely stating the position of the Church of their day?
Cardinal Martini, one of the most prolific Cardinals at the Vatican reasoned that contraception should be okay in certain circumstances. A thousand years from now, if someone reads his interview in the light you read Cardinal Cajetan's, the future historian would draw the conclusion that the Church, in 2006, declared infallibly that contraception is okay. It doesn't work that way.
Only by assuming the very thing in question can one liken the views of Cardinal Martini in relation to official church teaching to the writings and sanctions of the aforesaid scholars and Popes.
Cordially,