Getting the RSV-CE Right
The Bible Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition is a real pain to work with if you don't know what you're doing. I spent about three years trying to set it up properly for a parish study program before I figured out the actual issues. Let me save you some time. First, understand what this version actually is. It's the 1965 Catholic revision of the 1952 RSV New Testament and the 1966 RSV Old Testament, with the Deuterocanonical books included. The main difference from the standard RSV is the canonical arrangement and certain textual choices that reflect Catholic tradition. The 1973 revision updated the New Testament slightly. If you want the most complete version, look for the RSV-CE Second Edition.
Where to Get Bible Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition
The easiest legitimate source is Ignatius Press. They publish the printed edition and have an app. You can also find it on various Catholic Bible software platforms like Laudate or Catholic Answers Confess. For free digital copies, some diocesan websites host them, but I'd recommend against scraping them — the copyright status is complicated depending on your region. Here's something nobody tells you upfront: the RSV-CE uses a different book ordering than the NABRE, which most American Catholics are used to. The Deuterocanonical books are placed after the New Testament rather than interspersed within the Old Testament. If you're building a reading plan or cross-referencing with another translation, this will bite you.
Practical Issues I Ran Into
When I was preparing study materials, I hit a wall with the Psalms numbering. The RSV-CE follows the Hebrew Masoretic numbering for the Psalms, not the Septuagint/Vulgate numbering that most Catholic liturgical books use. So Psalm 9 in the RSV-CE is Psalm 8 in the liturgy. I had no idea this was happening until I was mid-print and someone in the congregation pointed out the discrepancy during a reading. I ended up having to create a conversion table and note it in every handout. It took me about four hours to work through all 150 Psalms and verify each one against a Vulgate reference. Another edge case: Isaiah 7:14. The RSV-CE renders this as "a young woman shall conceive" rather than "a virgin shall conceive." This isn't an error — it's a deliberate scholarly choice based on the Hebrew word *almah*. But if you're doing apologetics or answering questions from people accustomed to the Vulgate's *virgo*, you need to be aware of it going in, not after someone challenges you on it during a Bible study. I learned to always keep a side-by-side copy of the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) available when using the RSV-CE for teaching purposes. The differences aren't massive, but they surface in the exact places where people tend to ask questions.
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How I Actually Use It Now
I keep the RSV-CE primarily for its literary quality. The language is closer to King James-level English without being archaic in a confusing way. For everyday study, I use NABRE because the numbering matches what people see at Mass. For deep textual work, the RSV-CE's footnotes are still better than most modern Catholic translations. The biggest practical tip: download the electronic text in UTF-8 format if you're doing anything digital. Older PDFs and scans of the RSV-CE often have encoding issues with the Diacritical marks in the footnotes, and trying to fix them individually is a nightmare. I spent two weeks once fixing footnote encoding across the entire New Testament. Now I just grab the clean .txt or .xml versions from whatever source I'm using. If you're looking for a single-volume edition with good binding for personal use, the Ignatius Press hardcover is worth the extra money. The paper quality matters more than you'd think with this particular translation because the footnotes are dense and you'll be flipping between the text and the notes constantly.
What It Does Poorly
The RSV-CE isn't great for new believers. The language is formal to the point where it requires actual effort to read. It's also not helpful for liturgical use because of the Psalm numbering mismatch. If your goal is Mass preparation or personal devotional reading aligned with the lectionary, the NABRE or the Jerusalem Bible would serve you better. The Deuterocanonical books are present but the arrangement means you have to flip past the entire New Testament to get to Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and Maccabees. It's jarring if you're expecting those books to sit alongside the historical texts they belong with narratively. For serious academic work, the Second Edition (1973) is preferable to the original. The textual changes were minor but meaningful, particularly around certain passages where the Catholic revision committee felt the original RSV was too aggressively Protestant-leaning in its renderings.
