Posted on 10/20/2025 11:43:37 AM PDT by ebb tide
I am grateful to OSV News for reporting on my concerns about the USCCB’s granting of an imprimatur to the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue) Bible. I appreciate USCCB Scripture scholar Father Pablo Gadenz responding directly to my concerns. But I found his responses unpersuasive, and I still think the imprimatur should be withdrawn, for the reasons below.
First, a recap for readers unfamiliar with the issue. The updated edition of the NRSV, the flagship Bible of Mainline Protestantism, was published in 2022. Protestant Scripture scholar Robert A.J. Gagnon (who literally wrote the book on The Bible and Homosexual Practice) immediately flagged it for having “gaywashed” the “clear reference to homosexual practice in the offender list in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (and 1 Tim 1:10 where the same Greek term appears).” I wrote a Catholic Answers article shortly thereafter arguing that the USCCB should not grant an imprimatur until those two verses are fixed. Two weeks ago I wrote a column for Catholic Culture on the announcement that the USCCB had granted an imprimatur to an NRSVue, Catholic Edition, with no change to those verses.
You can read Dr. Gagnon’s 2022 post here and my Catholic Answers article here. You can read my Catholic Culture column here and the OSV News article here. I also discussed the issue in an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room, which you can view here.
As OSV News reports, the “primary translation” of the Catholic Church in the U.S.—the one we hear at Mass—is the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). The NRSVue, Catholic Edition, has been approved only “for private use.” So it’s not a big deal, right?
Wrong. For several reasons. As one commenter recently noted at the Catholic Bible Talk Blog:
You might not realize it, but the NRSV is probably the most widely used Bible translation in the English-speaking world. It is the Bible of the mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church in Canada. It is also the Bible of academia; every single college student who takes a Bible class uses the NRSV, which is why every August-September the NRSV rockets up the sales charts.
In other words, a Catholic imprimatur for the NRSVue matters. Even if it is only for private use and even if the Church in the U.S. uses a different translation for its lectionary. And the objection to those “gay-washed” verses matters even more.
As Fr. Gadenz told OSV News, the condemnations of homosexual practice in Romans and Leviticus are still there in the NRSVue. But as Protestant Scripture scholar Mark Ward noted at the time the NRSVue was first published, homosexual practice is condemned in only a small number of Biblical passages. The NRSVue removes three of them, including two where St. Paul says those who engage in such acts, and are unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is, the NRSVue removes something St. Paul said, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, regarding salvation. That is a very serious matter. Indeed, salvation—or lack thereof—is the most serious matter of all.
Again, the Greek word in question is “arsenokoitai.” Mark Ward and others speculate that St. Paul may have invented the word himself, as there is no previous record of it prior to Paul’s use of it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:10. But Paul didn’t invent it out of thin air. He’s combining two separate words in the Septuagint translation of Leviticus that mean “men” and “bed”—men-bedders. As Ward notes, in 1 Cor 6:9 Paul is condemning both the passive (malakoi) and active (arsenokoitai) partners in male homosexual acts. The NABRE reads “sodomite,” the ESV “men who practice homosexuality.”
The NRSVue changes the passage to “men who engage in illicit sex,” which obscures the fact that it is homosexual relations that are being condemned. Worse, when the Washington Times reported on this controversy in 2022, they framed it this way:
At issue: Does arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται), a Greek word used only twice in the New Testament, mean all same-sex relations or only illicit ones?
Does anyone really think that St. Paul was making a distinction between licit and illicit gay sex? I cannot imagine that this was the same “debate” the USCCB’s Fr. Gadenz had in mind when he told OSV News that the updated footnote for arsenokoitai in the NRSVue (“Gk uncertain, possibly men who have sex with men”) “now acknowledge[s] the view in the debate that was previously found” in those two verses. But you see the problem. To claim to be uncertain about whether arsenokoitai references men who have sex with men is to open the door to all sorts of ideological mischief. To grant that translation—that uncertainty—an imprimatur is to say that it is free of doctrinal or moral error. It seems to me to be in error on both counts.
As I told OSV News, I am not a Scripture scholar. I am relying on those who are. But I confess to some surprise that I am, so far as I know, the only writer in the Catholic world to make a public issue of this. In the early 1990s, fights over so-called “inclusive language” translations rocked the Catholic and Protestant worlds alike. The publication of the English language edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was delayed an extra two years over it. It seems to me that “gay-washing” the Bible is a much bigger deal than male pronoun-washing it. But I’m the only Catholic mentioning it.
As Mark Ward said, it is out of love for our homosexual neighbors that we ought to object to this mistranslation. We want them to inherit the kingdom of God too. It is a lack of love for them to hide from them what these verses actually say.
Ward also says, “It can’t be an accident that a translation associated with the Protestant mainline is the first major English Bible to suddenly find arsenokoitai impossible to translate.” I don’t know what was in the mind of the translators when they changed those verses. But the NRSV does seem to reflect whatever is au courant in liberal Christianity whenever it is being updated. Feminism in the 1980s, LGBT today. Against the accusation of “gay-washing,” it has been noted that other condemnations of homosexual practice are still in the NRSVue. But progressives are master incrementalists. When the Protestant Mainline updates its flagship Bible again—say, in another thirty years—what makes you think they won’t “gay-wash” it further?
Again, my gratitude to OSV News for covering this story and to Fr. Gadenz for his responses. Nevertheless, the problem remains. The USCCB should consider withdrawing its imprimatur of the NRSVue until those two verses are re-translated to mean what they actually say.
Ping
For I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.Revelation 22:18-19
Correct.
It’s just another Alexandrian translation.
I went to check the reading of Acts 8:37 on biblegateway.
“No results found.”
A technical point... which I make despite agreeing with this complaint levied in Catholic Culture: that claim sounded odd to me, so I ran a few searches about that. It doesn't appear that any version of the RSV is even in the Top 10 of worldwide Bible sales (maybe barely so) at present.
While sales are distinct from the claim of most used, there are also sources that appear to suggest that the RSV's aren't used any more than they are sold.
(Disclaimers: I'm a Protestant and use the ESV. Regardless, I applaud any attempt to maintain scriptural accuracy. To that end, we have way too many Bible versions that have 'agendas').
No doubt the latest NRSV will be rejected by the denominations splitting off of the “mainline” Protestant churches (soon be former “mainline protestant churches in my view) - as with the growing Global Methodist Churches that split off the United Methodist Church, over just this sort of issue.
There is no shortage of degenerate liars and misinformation specialists embedded in the upper ranks of the Church hierarchy, and too many of those hold sway with the Vatican.
The Pope’s mutton-headed equivocation regarding abortion and the death penalty show us he has abandoned all reason. And now that we have seen that Pope Leo XIV is another political animal, in the cut and weave of Pope Francis, we have only prayer left in our defense.
Most homosexuals were molested as children and seek to normalize their behavior to achieve easier access to molest YOUR children.
I just wish we could beat the leftist narrative using real facts, not red-herring Catholic vs Protestant "facts". And my favorite translation is the Amplified.
The latter point doesn't do much to support the former. Sitting on a shelf gathering dust is not "widely used."
I’m aware of that school of thought, and I don’t agree with it.
My church, Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), a very conservative denomination, uses, for the majority of the time, the King James Bible. But I use the New American Standard Bible, because it is more accurate. The Bible study tool my husband and I use for our personal Bible study, is the “Enduring Word” website. It uses the New King James Bible. It’s a little clearer than the original King James Bible. (I would recommend Enduring Word to anyone who wants a comprehensive Bible study tool. I don’t agree with every single interpretation he gives, but I have very few disagreements with him.) I’ve never heard of the NRSV, and it isn’t on the Bible list for Bible Hub, the other Bible study tool I use.
Is it better to have Bibles that do not condemn homosexuality (because the translators wanted it that way) or to have the head of your church openly support homosexuality?
Pope Leo was supposedly handpicked by Pope Francis and early indications is that he is as pro-homo as Francis.
Sin is sin is sin is sin. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Do “mainline” churches now pretend that what God sees as sin is okay simply by re-writing His Holy words?
Excellent article, sad to see Catholics falling away from the truth once delivered to the saints; if the Gentiles do not listen to the Apostle to the Gentiles they will be broken off.
Good grief....ya'll can't even get this right.
On its face, it seems like something a bunch of sodomite bishops would do.
Which is consistent with the approved RC bible for America, the New American bible, and (last i knew) its revised version, the NABRE, which does not use render the Greek “porneia” as “sexual immorality” or anything sexual, such as simply rendering the words for fornication/fornicator as "immorality" or "immoral persons" among the many occurrences of the words for sexual immorality. (Matthew 5:32 Matthew 15:19 Matthew 19:9 Mark 7:21 John 8:41 Acts 15:20 Acts 15:29 Acts 21:25 Romans 1:29 1 Corinthians 5:1 1 Corinthians 5:9 1 Corinthians 5:10 1 Corinthians 5:11 1 Corinthians 6:9 1 Corinthians 6:13 1 Corinthians 6:18 1 Corinthians 5:9 ,10,11; 7:2; 6:9; 1 Corinthians 10:8 2 Corinthians 12:21 Galatians 5:19 Ephesians 5:3 Colossians 3:5 1 Thessalonians 4:3 Hebrews 12:16 Jude 7 Revelation 2:14,20,21; 9:21; 14:8;17:2,4; 18:3,9; 19:2) even though in most cases it is in a sexual context.
And in addition to not calling fornication just that, is the preference for gender-neutral language being the norm. A RC reviewer states regarding the NABRE:
...with the NABRE, the U.S. Bishops have used inclusive language more extensively than ever before. Masculine references are obscured or neutered. But of course all feminine references are retained. The use of the Biblical phrase ‘sons of Israel’, indicating the Israelites as a group led by men, which is thoroughly attested to in manuscripts, is utterly rejected. References using the term ‘man’ and to mankind using the term ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ are also rephrased. The only exception seems to be in the Psalms, which allows some traditional phrasings, such as ‘Blessed is the man’ and ‘the son of man’. However, even the Psalms have substantial use of inclusive language in many places. - https://ronconte.com/2011/04/06/new-american-bible-revised-edition-review-of-inclusive-language-1/
Of course, RC scholarship also produced the the New American bible with its liberal notes, which was the official bible for Americans for decades.
Yet you don’t see the NRSV ever used on Jeopardy! No wonder these “religion professors” build on this one version. Advances their own cause.
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