Catholic canon and approvals: imprimatur, the USCCB list, and what they mean
Why a Catholic Bible has 73 books, what the nihil obstat and imprimatur certify and do not certify, which translations the USCCB lists, and the difference between approval for reading and approval for Mass.
Prepared by Christian Rated editorial team
External review pending · No completed external review is credited for this guide yet.
A Catholic Bible has 73 books; a Protestant Bible has 66. This guide explains the difference, says what the words nihil obstat and imprimatur certify and do not certify, and shows where to find the facts on this site. It does not take a side on the canon.
The 73 books
The Catholic Old Testament has 46 books, the Protestant 39. The seven extra books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Catholic editions also carry longer forms of Esther and Daniel. The New Testament is the same 27 books in both. The Council of Trent fixed the Catholic list in its decree of 8 April 1546. Catholics call the seven books deuterocanonical, a term introduced by Sixtus of Siena in 1566 meaning “second canon”.
Protestants call the same books the Apocrypha. Luther’s 1534 Bible printed them between the Testaments with a note calling them useful and good to read but not equal to Scripture. The 1611 King James Version printed them in the same position, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England say they are read “for example of life and instruction of manners” but not to establish doctrine. The Westminster Confession of 1646 excluded them, and most Protestant printings since the nineteenth century omit them. The Orthodox churches hold a larger canon still, including books such as 3 Maccabees and Psalm 151.
Every translation’s spec sheet here has a Canon row, and Catholic editions sit on their own rows.
Nihil obstat and imprimatur
Nihil obstat, “nothing stands in the way”, is the finding of a censor appointed by a bishop that a book contains nothing contrary to Catholic faith or morals. Imprimatur, “let it be printed”, is the bishop’s permission to publish, usually given after the censor’s finding. The two names and the date appear on the copyright page.
The standard notice printed beside them says what they are: declarations that the book is free of doctrinal or moral error. It also says what they are not: no statement that the bishop or the censor agrees with the contents, opinions or statements expressed. An imprimatur is not a review and not a quality endorsement. On this site it is listed as an institutional position, dated and sourced, and it moves no number.
For Bibles the rule is stricter than for other books. Canon 825 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law says that books of the Scriptures cannot be published unless the Apostolic See or the conference of bishops has approved them, and that a translation prepared with non-Catholics needs the same approval. So a Catholic Bible’s approval comes from a bishops’ conference, not from a single bishop.
The USCCB list
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops keeps a public list of the translations it has approved since the 1983 Code came into force. It includes the New American Bible with its revised New Testament (1986) and Psalms (1991), the New American Bible Revised Edition (2011), the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, the Good News Translation Catholic edition, and others. Earlier approvals, such as the Douay-Rheims in its Challoner revision, the RSV Catholic Edition (1966) and the Jerusalem Bible (1966), predate the list and carry their imprimatur in the front matter.
Other conferences approve for their own countries. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India granted the ESV Catholic Edition (2018) and the NLT Catholic Edition (2017) their approvals, and the bishops of England and Wales adopted a lectionary based on the ESV Catholic Edition in 2024. In Spanish, editions such as the Biblia de Jerusalén and the Biblia Latinoamericana carry an imprimatur, and the Spanish listings here record it.
Where a conference’s approval is public and dated, it appears under institutional positions on the translation’s page with a source and a fetched date.
Approved to read and approved for Mass
Two different approvals are easy to confuse. Approval under canon 825 lets a translation be published and read by Catholics. Approval for the liturgy is separate and narrower: the readings at Mass come from the lectionary, which in the United States is based on the New American Bible with modifications made for public reading. A translation can be fully approved for private reading and study and still not be what is read from the ambo.
What none of this measures
An approval says a text is free of doctrinal error in the judgment of the body that gave it. It does not say the translation is readable, well footnoted, or suited to children, study or reading aloud. Those are what the meters and the counted reviews here are for, and they are computed the same way for an approved edition, a Protestant edition and a public-domain text. A non-approval is not a quality defect, and an approval is not a quality endorsement.
Sources
Council of Trent, Session 4, Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures (1546). Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 825. The USCCB page “Approved Translations of the Bible”, on usccb.org. The Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI. The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1. Publisher pages for the NABRE, RSV-CE, NRSV-CE, ESV-CE and NLT-CE, cited on each edition’s spec sheet with a fetched date.