Catholic Public Domain Version

The Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) is an English Bible translated by Ronald L. Conte Jr. and completed on March 28, 2009. It renders the Latin Vulgate in its Sixtine-Clementine form, the text promulgated under Sixtus V and Clement VIII. Conte worked as sole translator and editor, consulting the Vercellone (1861), Desclée (1885) and Hetzenauer (1914) Latin editions, with the 1914 edition as his main text.

The method is plain: translate from the Latin, not from Hebrew or Greek. The public domain Douay-Rheims, in Challoner's revision, served as a guide for the English, so the CPDV sits in the long line of Catholic Bibles made from the Vulgate. Readers will notice that some renderings differ from modern versions based on the original languages, and that is expected: the Vulgate is itself an ancient translation with its own readings.

A few things to know about this edition here. Midvash keeps the 66-book structure, so the separate deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees) are not included. The deuterocanonical portions inside Esther (with its chapters running up to 16) and Daniel (chapters 13 and 14, and the longer chapter 3) are kept, following Vulgate numbering. The Psalms also follow the Vulgate and Septuagint numbering, so ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ is Psalm 22 here, not 23.

Conte placed the translation in the public domain in perpetuity, and the text is distributed under that status (the CrossWire SWORD module is marked Public Domain). That makes the CPDV a freely reusable English witness to the Vulgate tradition, useful for comparing how the Latin Church read and prayed the Scriptures for centuries.