Catholic Church against Bible Reading?

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edward_george said:
“Tyndale’s translation was banned by the authorities”
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Wasn’t that the topic? Did the Church authorities ban a translation of the Bible?
 
No, they didn’t ban just a translation of the bible? They banned a false and inaccurate translation of the bible.

Notworthy
 
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NotWorthy:
They banned a false and inaccurate translation of the bible.
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Two points:
  1. Do you have a translation of the Bible which is entirely accurate?
  2. If a translation has some inaccuracies, I would be opposed to burning the publisher alive at the stake. This burning at the stake seems to be too severe and painful a punishment for this particular crime of being inaccurate in a translation.
 
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stanley123:
Two points:
  1. Do you have a translation of the Bible which is entirely accurate?
    Yes the Catholic Church who put the bible together is accurate. We have all the books as intended.
  2. If a translation has some inaccuracies, I would be opposed to burning the publisher alive at the stake. This burning at the stake seems to be too severe and painful a punishment for this particular crime of being inaccurate in a translation.
    As stated before the Church did not put him to death it was the agents of King Henry VII. Yes it was a horrible punishment, but then again the Catholic Church does not agree with murder.
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stanley123:
Wasn’t that the topic? Did the Church authorities ban a translation of the Bible?
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You’re being disengenous. Your earlier post suggested that Tyndale was burned at the stake merely for the act of translating the Bible, which is NOT what he was actually executed for.

Sure, by today’s standards, execution for translating a misleading copy of the Bible seems extreme. However, in the context of those days (where heresy was regarded as a serious, destabilizing act), it does not stand out as unusual. I know Protestants who were completely unaware of their own crimes in this regard, conveniently believing that executions for religious matters were entirely a Catholic affair—not so, not so.
 
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MonicaC:
Yes it was a horrible punishment, but then again the Catholic Church does not agree with murder.
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But does the Church agree with the punishment of burning at the stake for an inaccurate translation of the Bible?
According to Wikipedia:
“In 1184, the Synod of Verona legislated that burning was to be the official punishment for heresy. This decree was later reaffirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, and numerous spiritual and secular leaders up through the 17th century.”
 
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stanley123:
Two points:
  1. Do you have a translation of the Bible which is entirely accurate?
  2. If a translation has some inaccuracies, I would be opposed to burning the publisher alive at the stake. This burning at the stake seems to be too severe and painful a punishment for this particular crime of being inaccurate in a translation.
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Good point! The Bible is inerrant, but translations, and for that matter footnotes, are not inerrant. Yes, I’m sure each version of the Catholic Bible, have some errors.

But not all errors are the same. If one translation can be interpreted two ways, and only one way is correct, then there will be some honest errors.

Some errors are intentional, sort of like adding “alone” after faith, eh? But’s that’s another thread. The Bible translation in question (Wycliffe’s) had some errors that were grossly interpreted. They were sloppy and could leave someone astray. When questioned about them, they were not corrected.

Now, if someone was passing out bibles in your church, and you knew they were false and inaccurate, what would you do???

Notworthy
 
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Sherlock:
Sure, by today’s standards, execution for translating a misleading copy of the Bible seems extreme. .
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Yes, I would agree with you on that. Burning a person alive in public for having an inaccuracy in his translation of the Bible, does seem a bit extreme to me.
By the way, what was the inaccuracy in his translation? I heard that there were inaccuracies in many Bible translations even today, and I heard criticisms of some of the newer Catholic versions.
 
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stanley123:
But does the Church agree with the punishment of burning at the stake for an inaccurate translation of the Bible?
According to Wikipedia:
“In 1184, the Synod of Verona legislated that burning was to be the official punishment for heresy. This decree was later reaffirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, and numerous spiritual and secular leaders up through the 17th century.”
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I don’t understand why you don’t want to believe that maybe just maybe your source might be wrong. Others here have given other sources that point to the fact that yours is wrong.
Maybe the Holy Spirit is calling you to start looking at actual history and not the history of that made up by those who don’t like the Church.
I will pray for your journey in search of the truth.

God Bless you,

Monica
 
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NotWorthy:
Now, if someone was passing out bibles in your church, and you knew they were false and inaccurate, what would you do???
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I would do the same thing that I do when a Jehovah’s Witness comes to my door with a Bible passage that appears to be somewhat inaccurate. This is how I handle it:
  1. I have the Douay Rheims version handy and go over the indicated passage in the Douay Rheims version.
  2. I discuss with the individual the importance of good translations, and also what I think is the interpretation of the Church on this passage.
  3. Generally, i would be opposed to burning such a person alive at the stake. This seems to me to be an extreme punishment which is not indicated by the the severity of the crime at hand, namely passing out a Bible with an innacuracy in its translation. (BTW, on occasion these Bible readers do mention the rather hideous crimes which we see in the everyday news concerning the Catholic clergy).
 
Henry Graham’s “Where we got the Bible” dealt with this, but I loaned it out to my brother last night (where are you at when I need you, “On Fire”?).

I was curious myself, so I may do a little digging.

From what I remember, they weren’t just sloppy work, they were twisting scriptures to mean entirely different things, and they were done purposely, not just from poor scholarship.

Notworthy
 
I have an old bible with an indulgence printed in it for reading it. Old-school indulgence, too, x days/mo.

As far as chaining one down, why are telephone books chained down- and how much more expensive a hand-copied bible?
 
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MonicaC:
I don’t understand why you don’t want to believe that maybe just maybe your source might be wrong.
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Do you say then that this is not true, what is in Wikipedia on this particular topic? How about if we go to St. Thomas Aquinas online:
“On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death.”
Please see:
newadvent.org/summa/301103.htm
 
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NotWorthy:
From what I remember, they weren’t just sloppy work, they were twisting scriptures to mean entirely different things, and they were done purposely, not just from poor scholarship.
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That might explain things a bit, if this could be documented. I think that the Tyndale translation is online, and can be checked. But I personally, don’t know what particular passages were being objected to.
 
From Catholic Answers:

What the Church fretted about was not vernacular translations but unauthorized translations, and it’s a concern Protestants should be able to relate to. The English government suppressed bad translations of the Bible and published the “Authorized Version.” Modern mainstream Protestants protest scriptural quackery like the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation, which manipulates the text to deny the deity of Christ. The reason there were, in fact, numerous vernacular translations of Scripture throughout Europe long before the Reformation was because there was no particular urge to keep people away from the Bible.

Here’s another article:
The church opposed the teachings of John Wycliffe, who taught sola scriptura, denied the authority of the pope and bishops, denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and wrote against penance and indulgences.

The way I understand it, Mr. Wycliffe bent his translations to support these issues.

Notworthy
 
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stanley123:
Yes, I would agree with you on that. Burning a person alive in public for having an inaccuracy in his translation of the Bible, does seem a bit extreme to me.
By the way, what was the inaccuracy in his translation? I heard that there were inaccuracies in many Bible translations even today, and I heard criticisms of some of the newer Catholic versions.
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Of course you think it extreme—because you’re living in the 21st century. It was not considered extreme back then. Killing people for religious reasons was not regarded then as it is now, and Protestants were just as willing to kill Catholics—just look at the history.

I don’t think it had to do with inaccuracies as much as it did with distortions, but I’ll look up the relevant bits if I can find it.

You mention in a later post that JWs mention the priest sex scandals—do they actually think that that is strictly a Catholic phenomenom? Hardly----the rates of such abuse are about the same in Protestant clergy, somewhat higher in teachers, counselors, etc. The only case of sexual abuse that has touched me on a personal level was the abuse of the minor daughter of a close friend—the perp was a Protestant youth pastor. The church hid the whole thing, of course, and never even told the other church members. It never made the news. They ostracized my friend and never even had the guts to apologize—and she didn’t sue them. So the JWs need to be careful using that kind of tactic as a “proof” of some kind that what the Catholic Church teaches is false—that sort of tactic can easily come back to bite them in the rear end.
 
This comes from the first link of the previouspost: (Thanks, Patrick, for finding it).

It is a fact usually ignored by Protestant historians that many English versions of Scripture existed before Wycliff, and these were authorized and perfectly legal (see Where We Got the Bible, by Henry Graham, chapter 11, “Vernacular Scriptures before Wycliff”). Also legal would be any future authorized translations. And certainly reading these translations was not only legal, but encouraged. All this law did was to prevent any private individual from publishing his own translation of Scripture without the approval of the Church.

Finding no support for his translation from his bishop, he left England and went to Worms, where he fell under the influence of Martin Luther. There in 1525 he produced a translation of the New Testament that was swarming with textual corruption. He willfully mistranslated entire passages of sacred Scripture in order to condemn orthodox Catholic doctrine and support the new Lutheran ideas. The bishop of London claimed that he could count over 2000 errors in the volume (and this was just the New Testament).

And we must remember that this was not merely a translation of Scripture. His text included a prologue and notes that were so full of contempt for the Catholic Church and the clergy that no one could mistake his obvious agenda and prejudice. So, did the Catholic Church condemn this version of the Bible? Of course it did.
The secular authorities condemned it as well. Anglicans are among the many today who laud Tyndale as the “father of the English Bible.” But it was their own founder, King Henry VIII, who in 1531 declared that “the translation of the Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale should be utterly expelled, rejected, and put away out of the hands of the people.”

Notworthy
 
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patrick456:
From what i heard, Tyndale wasn’t put to trial by church authority but by the secular court of the Holy Roman Emperor.

Hope this links helps:
turrisfortis.com/tyndale.html

turrisfortis.com/bible.html

turrisfortis.com/book.html
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Hey, Patrick, 👍 good links! Thanks!!

OK, here is something that always seems to get left out of any anti-Catholic’s discussion of this subject…
The real villain of the piece was the English crown, not the Catholic Church, not the pope, not priests or bishops; it was the English government.
The reigning monarch, for centuries, controlled the publishers of the Bible in English. (To some extent, they still do: I learned recently that, in Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth still holds the copyright to the King James version…A perpetual patent that has passed & will pass to monarchs since it was first done in the 17th C.).
They allowed or forbade translations according to what was politically savvy for their own interests…
Yes, people were killed for a variety of “crimes”, including printing English Bibles, but it was done by the government, NOT the Church.
For an interesting parallel…I just received, from Ireland, my very own Irish penal rosary. This one decade rosary was “invented” when the English crown made it illegal for anyone to possess a rosary. It was designed to be easily hidden. The law against the rosary was in effect until the latter part of the 19th C. Not the Middle Ages, you all, the 19th century!
As you might guess, those condemned to penal servitude–or worse-- for having a rosary were likely nearly all Catholic…
(This info has been;) brought to you courtesy of your :yup: Friendly Neighborhood Methodist. Except for the rosary part–added from research into the lands of my ancestors-- I learned about it in Free Methodist Sunday School as a child…)
 
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stanley123:
…
According to Wikipedia:
“In 1184, the Synod of Verona legislated that burning was to be the official punishment for heresy. This decree was later reaffirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215, the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, …”
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Hello, Stanley. I believe the time periods mentioned above would coincide with what we now call the height of the “French Inquisition”.

Just so we can all appreciate both sides of that period, allow me to summarize what convert historian Matthew Arnold discloses on his recent tape (Fire and Sword):

Cathars (or Albigensians) rejected human authority at most any level (not just religious), and adopted the following beliefs and practices which they claimed to find in Scriputure Alone…
  1. Spirit is good, matter is evil (warmed over hash from previous heresies).
  2. This meant Jesus could not have had a real body, because everything in physical world is evil. He was with us in phantom form only, and of course this denied both His death and His resurrection.
Fairly heretical, you might say, but what’s the big deal? Well, keep on reading…
  1. Since matter is evil, human bodies are inherently evil, and participation in procreation is evil. The worst sin that could befall a woman was to die during childbirth, since she is committing a terrible sin, and also dying without a chance to make amends.
  2. Because of this, marriage itself was evil and detestable, but fornication was OK as long as it did not lead to conception.
  3. Abortion was therefore practiced widely among believers.
  4. Homosexuality was apparently OK, since it could not lead to the evil of procreation.
  5. There were two important “sacraments” which could clean the soul for the afterlife: The Consolatum and The Endura.
  6. The Endura, for example**,** was a choice of
    a. suicide by starvation, or
    b. suicide by suffocation (with the help of other believers).
The Endura “sacrament” was finding its way to younger and younger family members. Finally secular society itself took a stand and began to lynch and burn people who were “accused” of propogating this garbage on family and town members. An ambitious political ruler even spread rumors that a dozen or so of his most ardent opponents were “closet” Albigensians. They were all executed by mobs!

The Church, looking with understandable suspicion on such executions, and not really sure that every accused person across the land was really “guilty”, saw the dire need to bring this vigilante action under some type of control. And so the French Inquisition is born.

You can’t find these Catharist sacraments on Google. I tried it and found “myself” on a previous November post!
Did Arnold invent them? I don’t think so, he looks pretty straight to me. I think he found them, buried in history. This is what I think:
  1. Such times in history are never pretty or clean, and no one is going to look good, no matter how the story really went.
    Such tragedies are a “target rich environment” for historians and others with a strong “anti-Church” bias. They have written prolifically on the subject, though not mentioning much about the Catharists’ true practices.
  2. From within the Church, many of us recognize there “ain’t nobody gonna get in this fight and come out without at least a bloody nose”. So best just to let attacks of past historical mistakes go unchallenged. I think Mr. Karl Keating himself would fit this category. Nothing wrong with it, just one way of dealing.
  3. Matthew Arnold, however, is going to fight for what he believes is true history. Even though “doctrine” is not involved, it’s worth chasing. Because “lies are lies, and truth is true”.
God Bless Us All!
 
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