Timothy Flanders,
a traditional Catholic who converted from Eastern Orthodoxy (and prior to that,
Protestantism) wrote the following which highlights how the Vulgate tends to
take a priority over textual criticism, exegesis, and other important sciences:
The Importance of the Vulgate: Doctrine
As we discuss why
every word of Holy Writ matters, this becomes particularly acute when we look
at the Vulgate of St. Jerome. This will have a significant impact on our
discussion of Catholic English Bible translations. There have been a number of
Catholic doctrines which have been based on texts from the Latin Vulgate which
do not appear in modern Catholic Bibles based on the Masoretic Hebrew or
Protestant Biblical scholarship . . . Galatians 5:22 also enumerates the fruits
of the Holy Spirit based on a Latin variant, counting twelve: charity, joy,
peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty,
continency, chastity. This is the list enumerated and explained by St. Thomas
in I-II q70. But this appears to be an early commentary in the Latin Text, as
this list of twelve does not exist in the Greek manuscripts, which only have nine.
The modern Catholic English translations all reduce the number to nine. Thus it
might be concluded that the whole Latin Tradition was wrong about the number of
the fruits of the Holy Spirit. But this
is only possible if we assert that inspiration is restricted to the Text of the
Holy Bible, and not the oral Tradition that governs it. Here we see how the
oral Tradition and the original text overlap. Both must be accepted with
piety. (Timothy S. Flanders, Introduction
to the Holy Bible for Traditional Catholics: A Beginner's Guide to Reading the
Scriptures for Spiritual Profit [Our Lady of Victory Press, 2019], 259, 261,
emphasis added)
Not only does this show the priority of the Vulgate among many
Catholics, it also means that this (purportedly apostolic) oral tradition seeped into the text of the Latin text of the New Testament (not the Greek!), expanding the number of virtues from 9 to 12.
We see this (ahistorical and anti-intellectual) approach with respect to Rom
5:12 and Original Sin:
But perhaps the most
fundamental doctrine which is obscured today is Original Sin. St. Augustine
drew evidence for this doctrine from a variant of Romans v. 12:
Wherefore as by one
man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all
men, in whom all have sinned.
Propterea sicut per
unum hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit, et per paccatum mors, et ita in
omnes homines mors pertransiit, in quo
omnes peccaverunt.
The Council of Trent
in its Fifth Session then issued an anathema of the dogma of Original Sin based
explicitly on this passage:
If anyone denies that
infants, newly born from their mothers’ wombs, are to be baptized, even though
they be born of baptized parents, or says that they are indeed baptized for the
remission of sins, but that they derive nothing of original sin from Adam which
must be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attainment of eternal
life, whence it follows that in them the form of baptism for the remission of
sins is to be understood not as true but as false, let him be anathema, for
what the Apostle has said, by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin
death, and so death passed upon all men, in
whom all have sinned, is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic
Church has everywhere and always understood it.
But the Protestants
could read this anathema and laugh. They knew the Greek could be translated
this way:
Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through
sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned
(Catholic RSV 2006).
The Greek manuscripts
all have eph’ ho which means “upon
whom” or “in asmuch as.” It was translated into Latin as two variants: eo quod (because of) or in quo (in whom). St. Augustine
obviously had the latter variant in the manuscripts he used, which was then
confirmed by Trent. (Ibid., 262-64)
Flanders then offers this conclusion. Do note that if a Latter-day Saint
or some other non-Catholic were to say something like this, the Catholic would
claim that such is “anti-intellectual” and even “cultic”:
But an over-emphasis
on the “original text” can be used by heretics in this case to undermine
Augustine and Trent. Did Augustine err because he was not consulting the Greek?
Of course not. This verse, like every verse of the Scriptures, is governed by
the oral Tradition. It “is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic
Church has everywhere and always understood it.” (Ibid., 264)
