Audio Catholic Bible

Audio Catholic Bible is a listening app built around the Douay-Rheims, the old Catholic English translation of the Scriptures.

It streams an audio reading of the Douay-Rheims, the New Testament in full and most of the Old, read by a man with a British accent. The recordings were originally made on cassette in the 1970s and have been cleaned up for the app. You download it free and can sample chapters, then unlock the complete Old and New Testament with an upgrade.

The Douay-Rheims is the draw here. For more than three hundred years it was the Catholic English Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate, and it still reads with a weight and reverence that newer versions lose. Hearing it read aloud in that older English is a different kind of prayer, closer to how Scripture was meant to be heard.

It is good for listening during a commute or a walk, for resting your eyes while still taking in Scripture, and for Catholics who love the traditional translation.

You should know the audio is streamed, not stored, so you need a signal to listen, and the recordings show their age in places. The full text is a paid unlock, and the ratings are mixed, mostly about the streaming and the dated audio rather than the content, which is solidly Catholic.

It is free with a paid upgrade, from As Written Productions. On the App Store here: Audio Catholic Bible. A rare audio Douay-Rheims, worth it if that translation speaks to you.