When talking with Catholics, you might hear them mention “the Douay-Rheims”.
Well, what exactly is that?
To understand that, we have to go back to the time of the Protestant Reformation in the mid-1500s.
During that time there was much, much fighting and arguing in England over whether to be Catholic or Protestant. Eventually, the Protestants got the upper hand for long enough that they made Catholicism effectively illegal. At times, it was punishable by death to be a Catholic priest.
So, in response, many Catholics fled over to “the continent”, or in other words, the rest of Europe. Their main destination was France.
One group of these Catholics fled to the city of Douay (now spelled Douai) in northeastern France around the year 1560. While there, they helped set up a college/seminary to train exiled English Catholics as priests. In an attempt to make England Catholic again, they even sent 300 priests to England to secretly minister to the people. Around 130 of these men ended up being executed for being priests.
This new college then decided to create its own English translation of the Bible to compete with the Protestants’ English translations.
Now, the Vulgate is a good translation. But, it is weird to translate from a translation, rather than from the original. It would be like if we wanted to make a new translation of the Bible into French. Should we A) translate from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into French or B) translate from an English version of the Bible into French?
Either way, the Catholics in Douay decided to translate from the Vulgate. After some time, they finished their translations. But, when they had finished, the college had actually temporarily relocated to the French city of Rheims (now spelled Reims).
A big issue the Catholics at the college faced was that they were short on money. At the end of 1582, while in Rheims, they published a few hundred cheaply made copies of their New Testament translation. It wasn’t until 1609 and 1610, though, that they had enough money to also publish their translation of the Old Testament. By this time, they were back in the city of Douay. So, the New Testament is typically called the “Rheims New Testament”, and the Old Testament is typically called the “Douay Old Testament”. Together, they make up the “Douay-Rheims Bible”.
This translation is a very direct, literal translation from the Latin, making it very hard for modern English readers to understand. So, just like how the King James Version was revised and updated in 1769, so too was the Douay-Rheims.
Throughout the mid-1700s, a Catholic named Richard Challoner updated much of the translation of the Douay-Rheims. He made it far easier to read for the average English speaker.
And, through many more updates and revisions, we still have the Douay-Rheims available today.
In summary, the Douay-Rheims was the first ever English translation of the Bible approved by the Catholic Church. It was translated by some English Catholics who fled to France. And it is a very literal translation of the Latin Vulgate, rather than the original Scriptures.