Which version of the Bible should I read?

The Douay-Rheims bible is a good Catholic bible to have.  The Douay-Rheims with the Haydock Catholic Commentary is even better (it’s a big, red 3-volume set).  However, it’s not enough to just study the bible.  One must know the basic Catholic dogmas, and especially those which pertain to the current crisis.  As the bible teaches, there are many passages in Sacred Scripture which are hard to understand, and which people twist to their own damnation. 

2 Peter 3:15-16 – “…also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.”

This is why Christ instituted a Church, so that its official teaching could clarify and infallibly define those disputed, critical or more difficult questions.  What’s fascinating about this passage in particular is that in it St. Peter (the first Catholic pope) is telling us and emphasizing that heretics twist the writings of St. Paul to their own destruction!  Again, in the bible itself the first pope is warning us about people perverting the teaching of St. Paul.  Well, it is the very epistles of St. Paul that the Protestants most perverted and misused to introduce and spread their heretical teachings, such as faith alone, etc.!  It was to St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans (chapter 3, verse 28) that Martin Luther (the first Protestant) outrageously added the word “alone” to make it say justification by faith alone, when it doesn’t teach anything of the sort. (The passage simply teaches that the works of the Old Law, such as circumcision, etc. cannot justify).  Thus, 2 Peter 3:15-16 is subtly prophetic: in it the first Catholic pope gives a warning to the world about the future tactics that will be employed by Protestants to pervert the teaching of St. Paul to people’s destruction.  In a future E-Exchange, we will discuss this in more detail.