Once again, I already said that I personally do not favor the change. However, I am not going to say that those who undertake the change are making a grave mistake. I will leave that up to God to decide.
"Man" or "men" when it means "mankind", is not referring to males but to people. This should be made clear. In the past it was not necessary, because it was normal in English-speaking society to simply revert to the masculine pronoun when referring to people of indeterminate or mixed gender. But that tradition of grammar and society is not a theological principle, and as the society itself has changed and stopped doing that, some people - of a traditional male chauvinist variety - people who do not like the change towards gender equality in our law, society and culture, can - and DO - turn to the language of the Church as justification for their atavistic views. By correcting the language so that it properly reflects gender neutrality where no sex is intended in the sacred text or liturgy, the Church is taking away a weapon of the stubborn and stupid, and that's a good thing.
On the other hand, where male gender is intended, as with the Father and the Son, the Church does not neutralize he gender, as that would be wrong.
In translating the Bible, the Church's most recent efforts have translated the pronouns for the Spirit as written: "he", where the manuscript reads "he", and "it" where it reads "it". This is the only defensible approach now that the sex of the Holy Spirit has become an issue. However, the Church has not - regrettably - done so for the Old Testament, where the Hebrew and Aramaic say "she".
In a similar vein, the Church does not describe the tents of Abraham, Isaac and the patriarchs as HER tent, even though the Hebrew says that.
The more literal the translation, and the more mechanical, the better.
But it doesn't matter so much for Catholics anyway, because we are not a Bible Alone religion. For Protestants, getting these things exactly right ought to be crucial.
Also, Catholicism still officially, deep down inside, consider the Latin to be the final word on the Scripture, so translations from Greek recensions are used for most Catholic bibles, because the Greek and Latin are so close, but in the Psalms, the Hebrew departs significantly from the LXX, and the Greek versions differ from the Latin forms, many of which predate the Vulgate and come from the Vetus Latina.
Catholic Bibles use the Roman Missal Latin form of the Psalms as their basis for translation - the final authority - as opposed to Greek translations or the Hebrew.
But this detail is really pretty irrelevant.
