“THE Catholic Church,” wrote a priest to a woman studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Christian witnesses, “settled once and for all the content and interpretation of the word of God.” His statement was in full agreement with the New Catholic Encyclopedia, which states: “According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the Biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church (at the Council of Trent).”​—Vol. 3, p. 29.

It is noteworthy that the Council of Trent did not go along with Jesus Christ and his early disciples in accepting only the books of the established Hebrew Scripture canon. That council accepted apocryphal books. These were books of which the learned Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, wrote to a certain woman in connection with the education of her daughter: “All apocryphal books should be avoided; but if she ever wishes to read them, . . . she should be told that they are not the works of the authors by whose names they are distinguished, that they contain much that is faulty, and that it is a task requiring great prudence to find gold in the midst of clay.”

In declaring that certain apocryphal or deuterocanonical books formed part of the Bible canon, the Council of Trent also disregarded the words of the apostle Paul: “The Jews are the people to whom God’s message was entrusted.”​—Rom. 3:2, Catholic Jerusalem Bible.