Do you think that authoritative and approved for use in the liturgy are pretty close? I do.
If it weren’t authoritative — ir would have never been approved, would it?
“If it weren’t authoritative — ir would have never been approved, would it?”
Yet up until the Council of Trent, a significant part of the Roman Catholic Church REJECTED the Apocrypha as authoritative. It was just good for reading. And actually, the Council of Trent left it that way - possibly. It refused to decide if the Apocrypha was good for doctrine, or just nice stories to read.
“The majority agreed with the opinion of the general of the Servites, that controverted theological questions, which had already been the subject of discussion between Augustine and Jerome, should not be decided by the Council but should be allowed to remain open questions. The result of the above-mentioned vote of the general congregation of 15 February committed the Council to the wider canon, but inasmuch as it abstained from a theological discussion, the question of differences between books within the canon was left as it had been.” — History of the Council of Trent, pgs 56-57
Writing prior to the canon decision at the Council of Trent, Cajetan wrote:
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain from the Prologus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome. Now, according to his judgment, in the epistle to the bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, these books (and any other like books in the canon of the bible) are not canonical, that is, not in the nature of a rule for confirming matters of faith. Yet, they may be called canonical, that is, in the nature of a rule for the edification of the faithful, as being received and authorised in the canon of the bible for that purpose. By the help of this distinction thou mayest see thy way clearly through that which Augustine says, and what is written in the provincial council of Carthage.”
http://thesearewritten.blogspot.com/2007/08/cardinal-cajetan-on-biblical-canon.html