NIV is a Jesuit Bible and heretical
NIV and the Jesuit Priest
The article you linked to is either a hilarious satire of anti-Catholic conspiracy theories or else is completely bonkers.
Assuming the latter is the case, which is to say, the author of the article is stark raving mad, which I am not sure is a safe assumption, but assuming for a moment that he does actually believe that, you should rest assured that he is completely in error, because the NIV is one of the least Catholic bibles out there.
I mean, aside from the fact that the Roman Catholic Church endorses several competitors, such as the NRSV-CE, the ESV-CE, the NAB, the RNJB and the venerable Challoner Douai-Rheims, as well as the lesser known but much loved Knox Bible and the somewhat overrated original Jerusalem Bible, all of which feature the Deuterocanonical Books, which are very important from a Roman Catholic perspective, and which the NIV lacks (but the King James Version has, because the KJV was translated for use in the Church of England, and the Church of England and other Anglican Protestants also read those same Deuterocanonical Books that the Roman Catholic Church reads, like the books of the Maccabees, Tobit, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom, Judith, and others), there is also the issue of the NIV following an intentionally politically correct agenda which in the case of the third edition has become even more pronounced, with the intentional avoidance of masculine terminology wherever possible.
All of this is extremely problematic to the Roman Catholic Church, which obviously includes the Jesuits. And for every instance that article cites of the NIV favoring Roman Catholic doctrine, I can point to instances where it does not. Most notably, there is shocking bias in the New Testament, where every time the Greek text employs the word Paradosis, which literally means “traditions”, the NIV renders it as “teachings” if the connotation is positive, for example, in 1 Corinthians 11:2 , 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6 , whereas in every place where there is a negative connotation, Paradosis is translated correctly as “traditions”, for example, in Matthew 15:1-9 , Mark 7:13 Galatians 1:14 and Colossians 2:8. A better translation would render all of these instances of the word “paradosis” as “traditions,” for “teachings” is more accurately rendered as “kerygma.”
However, the reality is that the NIV started out as a low church Reformed Protestant Bible published by people opposed to the concept of Tradition as an important aspect of Church Life, something valued not just by Catholics but also by high church liturgical Protestants including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Moravians, most of whom also believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, like Roman Catholics, even though they do not agree with the specific neo-Aristotelian Scholastic concept of transubstantiation.
The article also ignores the Eastern dimension. The world’s second largest denomination is the Eastern Orthodox Communion, consisting of Ukrainian, Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Albanian, Georgian, Antiochian, Cypriot, Alexandrian, Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Latvian, Lithuanian, Aleutian, Chinese and Japanese Orthodox Christians and many American, English, Australian, Canadian, African, Korean, and European converts. it believes most of what Roman Catholics believe, differing mainly in the rejection of purgatory and papal supremacy. The Oriental Orthodox are the world’s sixth largest denomination consisting of the Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Indian, and Syriac Orthodox Churches and in terms of faith and liturgical practice are almost the same as the Eastern Orthodox. And the same is true of the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Ancient Church of the East, which consist of around 1.5 million Christians, mostly from Iraq and Iran or else living in the diaspora in the US, Europe and Australia, who have endured extreme persecution from Muslims.
These Christians cannot use the NIV, because the Syriac Orthodox and Assyrians use an ancient translation of the Bible into Aramaic, the same language spoken by our Lord, known as the Peahitta, the Ethiopians use an ancient translation which preserves several Old Testament books such as Jubilees which exist only in fragments elsewhere, some of which were only recently found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Israel, and the rest either use the Septuagint Old Testament, which features different versification, a different structure to the Psalter (the book of Psalms), more explicit Christological references, and the Deuterocanonical Books, plus longer and more spiritual versions of certain other books such as Esther.
The third and fourth largest denominations are the Anglicans and Lutherans, respectively, both of which are not ideal users of the NIV. Only the fifth largest family of denominations, the Presbyterian churches, represented an ideal audience for the NIV, and then, that use is limited to the more liberal Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, such as the PCUSA, the Church of Scotland and the United Reformed Church, as well as other liberal mainline denominations that are not keen on tradition, such as the American Baptist Convention, the United Church of Christ, the Uniting Church in Australia, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, and fellow travelers.
. It is too bad that Catholic Bibles do not get discussed in threads like this. BTW, in Gen 1:2, the NAB has "a mighty wind" and the NJB has "a divine wind"!!! I understand the reason, but there should be appropriate weight to theology and tradition.
