r The Catholic Democracy of America,64 - Digital Repository Services

23 Romani Catholicism in America.
it would be a magnificent memorial of the Centenary of the
American Hierarchy if the assembled Bishops would move
the Holy See to permit them to supervise an American edition
of the Bible to supersede the Douay translation. The English
Authorized Version has become such an integral portion of
English literature that the most powerful Church is handicapped
among English-speaking people in not using its phraseology.
There are a score or two of passages which would
need emendation for doctrinal reasons, but the rest of the
Anglica versio the Roman Catholic Church might appropriate
with great advantage to herself without the surrender of a
shred of doctrine. There are hundreds of verses of Holy
Scripture and hundreds of Biblical names, which in our authorized
form have passed into the everyday language and literature
of the people—perhaps to a greater extent in America
even than in England: most of the classical passages have
precisely identical meanings in their equivalents in the Douay
Bible, but in that version they are as uncouth and unfamiliar
as are proper names like Achab, Assuerus, Aman, and Mardochai.
The Catholic Church in America has adopted one
detestable institution from the Protestant churches in England
—the pew system, which is as inappropiate in a democratic
country as it is inconsistent with the principle of the great
Church of the people. Why not restore that Protestant
institution to the sole use and enjoyment of American Protestants
(for the English Church is discarding it), and take in
exchange the noblest translation ever made in the days before
translation was a lost art, which is in truth the common heritage
of all English-speaking people?
An able writer, quoting Bishop Vaughan of Salford, has
recently remarked upon the debt which the Church of Rome
owes to the Irish, in whose brogue her services are recited all
over the world. Undoubtedly the immigrant Irish have done
a great propagandist work, but no graver mistake could be
made than that of supposing that the Catholic Church in
America is merely a branch of the Church in Ireland. Much