The Catholic Youth Bible: New American Bible Including the Revised Psalms and the Revised New Testament

Rating:
Summary: Great for adults!
Review: I am 34 years old and this book was recommended to me by my Mother-In-Law 50+ and another friend 50+. So I highly recommend this Bible for any age. Makes the Bible so easy to understand...I love it!
Nevermind the review below it is obviously from an Evangelical Protestant type Christian, that kind of thinking is what turned me away from Christianity 15 years ago. Thank God I found the Catholic Church-Christ's True Church and my life has changed...what an eye opener. So many good 'Bible Christian Protestants' think that their way is the true way, but how can one honestly believe this when so many Protestant religions totally disagree on scripture passages?
They interpret the Bible however they want to? They take 5 verses from the Bible and start a Church! Then this kind of thinking leads to cult types religions based on Christ (Mormons, Jehovah's, David Koresh, etc.)Protestantism leans too much on mere traditions of men (every denomination stems from one Founder's vision. As soon as two or more of these contradict each other, error is necessarily present).
If one would just be open and pray, one would most definitely come Home to the One, True Church...the church Jesus HIMSELF started...The Catholic Church...not some church started by a man in the 1500's!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent multicultural connections
Review: I just wanted to say that for me one of the things that really makes this Bible stand out is how it shows the similarities other cultures and religions have found in their quest for the truth. It points out beautiful beliefs and ideas from Asia, Native America, Africa etc. I think this is wonderful because it helps Christians relate to people who may not share exactly the same beliefs but essentially esteem the same values. I think it's important for us to remember when trying to spread the Gospel that Jesus didn't preach to people without first sparking their interest in a subtle way wether through actions or comforting words. In today's world beliefs can be a cause of separation but LOVE is the universal language that all religions worthy of the name can understand. I was given this Bible as a gift and had been thinking of getting a Douay/Jerusalem Bible, but I kept this one particularly for the Multicultural links and the other notes as well.

Also reccomended: Disputed Questions and The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton
God Bless

Rating:
Summary: A great Catholic life application Bible
Review: I recently bought this Bible for my young daughter but have found myself using it more and more. It is great! Many of the notes help Catholics see that Scripture really is found in the Mass. For example in Luke 7:7 the centurion says, "Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed." This Scripture passage is the basis for the words Catholics use right before receiving the Holy Eucharist. I have found their simple explanations help me better understand my faith making it easier to explain my faith to other non Catholics. I would recommend this Bible to anyone who has been looking for a Catholic life application Bible in more simple terms.
It does contain all the notes of the New American Bible as well.

Rating:
Summary: Really good Bible!
Review: I'm a student at a Catholic School and we use the Catholic Youth Bible as our text book in Religion class. It's a good book that includes all the footnotes from the New American Bible. It has information on the various writers of each book, footnotes that make the Bible much more easy to understand and a section in the back with good pictures of holy places and things like that. The footnotes about different cultural religious beliefs are kind of stupid because they have little to do with Catholicism or the Bible. I reccomend it to children and adults who need a better understanding of the Bible from a Catholic point of view.

Rating:
Summary: Youth Bible from Catholic dissenters....be careful.
Review: The Catholic Youth Bible (CYB) is a misguided attempt to interpret Sacred Scripture according to modern standards in an effort to make the Bible, and the Catholic Faith, more appealing to young people. Generally, young people see through such attempts to make religion fashionable, and rightly find them unappealing. Furthermore, by pandering to religious pluralism and other decidedly un-Catholic ideas, and by ambiguously presenting Church teaching, the CYB compromises the Catholic Faith. Thus, in an effort to make the Catholic Faith appealing, the CYB is neither appealing, nor is it Catholic. A young person of high school age is better served with an unadulterated Catholic Bible and a catechism of the appropriate reading level.

The CYB highlights the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) with over 650 short articles. These articles are designed to teach something about the Bible or make suggestions about how to live these teachings.

The CYB claims to be Catholic because "its introductions and articles reflect Catholic interpretation of the Bible and [because it] contains all seventy-three books and letters that form a complete Catholic Bible (pg. vii)." Throughout the CYB, however, "Catholic Christians" are referred to in the third person and their "beliefs" are presented as subjective opinion. Some articles, under the heading, "Catholic Connections", are intended to show the biblical basis for some Catholic beliefs and practices. This heading is rather confusing in that it implies that only certain sections, and not the whole of Sacred Scripture, have a connection to the Catholic Faith.

Other articles, intended to show how the Bible is "multicultural", represent distinct cultural perspectives. These articles introduce irrelevant cultural experiences, traditions, and poetry. Some even present non-Christian religious ideas and prayers. Ironically, these articles foster racial fixation in the context of Sacred Scripture which otherwise transcends racial difference.

Also, some of the "Live It" and "Did You Know" articles contain unnecessary and disturbing images. One article, for example, gives an account of the group rape of a teenage girl (pg. 43 No Way Shechem!). Another considers what menstruation must have been like for women of the Old Testament (pg. 123 Monthly Periods).

Ostensibly a version of the bible that will appeal to "modern" Catholic Youth. But it doesn`t take much searching to find objectionable content in the CYB. According to the CYB the author of Sirach is "sexist" (pg. 810 The Sexism of Sirach), the author of John's Gospel is anti-Semitic (pg. 1249 "The Jews" in the Gospel of John), and the sin of the Sodomites is ``inhospitality`` (pg. 25 Be Kind To Strangers). The rest is predictable. There is far more error in this Bible than I could possibly address in this space.

As the CYB purports to be Catholic, however, let us take a look at how it presents Church teaching. On page 1237 under the heading "Catholic Connections" and titled "The Eucharist" we find, "In Luke's account of the Last Supper, Jesus asks his disciples to remember him and all that he did, as they share the loaf of bread that he identified as his body given for us and the cup of wine that he identified with the New Covenant sealed by his blood." This is not consistent with Church teaching, which states "by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the wine into the substance of his blood (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1376)."

I do not recommend this Bible to anyone, for any reason. (TiberRiver review).