I wish Catholic publishers who own copyrights for Catholic translations (like the New American Bible, Jerusalem Bible, and the New Revised Version) would follow the example of our Protestant brethren in making the Bible freely accessible to anybody.
Is this the Catholic version or the Protestant version? Is there a difference? Sorry for my ignorance
Catholics and protestants uses the same bible except that there are some additional books or canonical books (or canonized books) that were added in between the old and new testaments. Canonical books I believe has royalties therefore it can't be made free.
Re: Bible Widget AND SOFTWARE here's one free Bible software... http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Bible-Reader-Free-Download-2987.html God is good!
They do differ in translation and the number of books included. Bible translations for Catholics like The New American Bible (the text used in Catholic liturgies), The Jerusalem Bible (highly-acclaimed work by French Bible scholars, I think), and The New Revised Standard Version (excellent for study purposes) contains the so-called "deutero-canonicals" which may or may not be present among translations used by Protestant communities.
Don't forget the Douay-Rheims Bible which is old enough to be in the public domain. There are a variety of reasons why Catholics are not as aggressive at promoting the bible as Evangelical Protestants. Some of it is temperamental -- Catholics like mainstream Protestants or Orthodox are not as evangelical as as Baptists and Pentecostals. Some is theological -- Sola Scriptura is one of the pillars of the Reformation. I am sure that if there were Catholics so inspired they could easily put up a widget. Copyright wouldn't be an issue as they could probably get permission or could use the Douay-Rheims. But the differences in the versions are small, a few words in translation and a debate over what version of the Jewish Torah to use as the Old Testament. That is why it is so easy to have Catholic versions of all the major translations, from the King James to the New International Version. There are two main exceptions. Some bibles are freer translations, not as word-for-word. They try to be more poetic, to capture the essence or what they think is the essence. Many would disagree with what they think the essence is. For instance, is it "lead us not into temptation", "do not lead us to the test" or "don't let us yield to temptation"? Is it "forgive us our trespasses", "forgive us our debts" or "forgive us our sins"? Then there are the Bibles that are trying to make a particular political or theological point. There are versions of the NIV that try to be more gender-neutral, replacing references to "Father" and "he" with gender neutral terms. Is it "our father" or "our lord"?
