Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship?

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clem456

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Yep my good protestant friend has got me fired up now.
“The Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship” is what he says. He has a fondness for the Tyndale/Wycliffe stories and I guess he’s never heard of the hordes of saints, theologians, and scholars who gave him the bible he thinks Tyndale invented.:rolleyes:

I am always taken aback when I hear this charge. I realize it is ludicrous but I really need something specific when I refute him.
I have seen Henry Graham’s piece from the turn of the century. Is there anything else?
 
If the Church hated Scripture scholarship so bad, why does Scripture scholarship comprise 90% of the world’s Catholic manuscript books? Over the course of two millennia?

It’s like claiming that Ford was always trying to ban cars and roads, while trying to explain away the whole automobile company thing.
 
Mintaka said:
If the Church hated Scripture scholarship so bad, why does Scripture scholarship comprise 90% of the world’s Catholic manuscript books? Over the course of two millennia?

It’s like claiming that Ford was always trying to ban cars and roads, while trying to explain away the whole automobile company thing.
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I realize that. I am looking for perhaps Church documents or historical studies of the issue.
 
It would help to know what is the argument? Wycliffe was problematic for his heretical translation, not that he translated into vernacular English, which occurred many times prior to Wycliffe. Rev. Graham mentions some of these. You also have translations by Ven. Bede and others. You can see some here from University of Toronto (read anywhere you see English or its language ancestor “Anglo”.) You can also point to the insane number of commentaries throughout the centuries from ECFs and saints, preserved and transmitted by the Church, along with the preserved text of Scripture itself. Your friend’s argument is nonsensical.
 
The argument is just that he insists that scripture scholarship was discouraged and I have nothing other than common sense to refute it.
The U of Toronto piece is a good indication that translations were ongoing.
thanks
 
Generally, the “proof” of keeping the Bible away from people in the middle ages is - ‘They kept the Bible chained up in the Church’.

Back when we used phone booths, yeah, way back then… we would chain the phone book up in them. This wasn’t to keep people from reading it.:eek:

My understanding is that, during Wycliffe’s time, most average people were illiterate and too poor to own their own Bible. To say that Wycliffe was “trying to take the Bible to the people” would be a moot point to people who cannot read.
 
Funny given that the vast majority of scriptural scholars were and are Catholic. Although I can see the Church discouraging private interpretations of scripture as that leads to error, apostasy, schisms and protestants!
 
Newsy said:
Generally, the “proof” of keeping the Bible away from people in the middle ages is - ‘They kept the Bible chained up in the Church’.

Back when we used phone booths, yeah, way back then… we would chain the phone book up in them. This wasn’t to keep people from reading it.:eek:.
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Yep and I heard that the founding father of Protestantism, Martin Luther, kept the Bible in his church chained up so…
 
yeah stuff like that fires me up too
but then, i think your friend hates Catholics; is there evidence he doesn’t?
 
Newsy said:
Generally, the “proof” of keeping the Bible away from people in the middle ages is - ‘They kept the Bible chained up in the Church’.

Back when we used phone booths, yeah, way back then… we would chain the phone book up in them. This wasn’t to keep people from reading it.:eek:

My understanding is that, during Wycliffe’s time, most average people were illiterate and too poor to own their own Bible. To say that Wycliffe was “trying to take the Bible to the people” would be a moot point to people who cannot read.
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The chaining of Bibles in some areas may have been factual for two reasons:


  1. *]The printing press had yet to be invented, allowing copies of Bibles to be readily available
    *]Without the printing press, Bibles were manually scribed, often in illuminated form, and would have been scarce and very valuable, requiring it to be specially protected
    *]The literacy level of the age may also have played a factor
 
clem456 said:
Yep my good protestant friend has got me fired up now.
“The Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship” is what he says. He has a fondness for the Tyndale/Wycliffe stories and I guess he’s never heard of the hordes of saints, theologians, and scholars who gave him the bible he thinks Tyndale invented.:rolleyes:

I am always taken aback when I hear this charge. I realize it is ludicrous but I really need something specific when I refute him.
I have seen Henry Graham’s piece from the turn of the century. Is there anything else?
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Does he perhaps mean a certain kind of Scriptural scholarship, e.g. a particular method? It seems strange to say that the Catholic Church discouraged Scripture scholarship when her greatest theologians were also Scripture scholars, as were a number of the Popes. Not only that, but the great modern Catholic theologians like Rahner, de Lubac, Ratzinger, von Balthasar, are all excellent Scripture scholars, not to mention Fr Brown 🙂
 
clem456 said:
Yep my good protestant friend has got me fired up now.
“The Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship” is what he says. He has a fondness for the Tyndale/Wycliffe stories and I guess he’s never heard of the hordes of saints, theologians, and scholars who gave him the bible he thinks Tyndale invented.:rolleyes:

I am always taken aback when I hear this charge. I realize it is ludicrous but I really need something specific when I refute him.
I have seen Henry Graham’s piece from the turn of the century. Is there anything else?
Click to expand...
Well, if he’s mentioning Tyndale as evidence, the first thing you can do is point out that Tyndale was executed by strangulation on order of the very protestant Henry VIII, not the Catholic Church.
 
He may have been referring to the fact that certain Bibles were on the Church’s banned reading list, which was lifted in 1965. I was taught, in Scripture class, that the Church did not want people to do personal interpretation without guidance from the Church for a variety of reasons: wrong translation, wrong study guides, wrong/misguided interpretation, and so on. There weren’t as many Catholic translation Bibles until comparatively recently, or “over the counter” study guides by Catholic apologists. Many Protestants still think that’s the way it is today, and don’t realize that Catholic high schools (at least in my diocese) have mandatory Scripture study. However, it didn’t used to be that way. Most Catholics over the age of 50 probably remember this. Things have changed in the past 50 years.
 
jonathan_hili said:
Does he perhaps mean a certain kind of Scriptural scholarship, e.g. a particular method? It seems strange to say that the Catholic Church discouraged Scripture scholarship when her greatest theologians were also Scripture scholars, as were a number of the Popes. Not only that, but the great modern Catholic theologians like Rahner, de Lubac, Ratzinger, von Balthasar, are all excellent Scripture scholars, not to mention Fr Brown 🙂
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Or Fr. John P. Meier, or Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, or Dom Bernard Orchard, or Fr. Roland de Vaux, and so on and so forth.
 
Newsy said:
Generally, the “proof” of keeping the Bible away from people in the middle ages is - ‘They kept the Bible chained up in the Church’.
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The Vatican Library keeps most of its books chained onto banchi (‘benches’). Go figure. 😉



In fact, that’s a pretty common way to keep books way back. This was how books were kept in 15th century England:



And this is what the banchi of the Laurentian Library in Florence looked like.



And this is Hereford Library in England.

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/1834/29herefordcathedralchai.jpg

So, yeah, nothing unusual. I’d be willing to bet that many of those who claim that Bibles were chained to pulpits don’t even know how they were chained.

http://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Chained Books Resize.jpg

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/346/0001038.jpg
 
clem456 said:
Yep my good protestant friend has got me fired up now.
“The Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship” is what he says. He has a fondness for the Tyndale/Wycliffe stories and I guess he’s never heard of the hordes of saints, theologians, and scholars who gave him the bible he thinks Tyndale invented.:rolleyes:

I am always taken aback when I hear this charge. I realize it is ludicrous but I really need something specific when I refute him.
I have seen Henry Graham’s piece from the turn of the century. Is there anything else?
Click to expand...
How convenient. I just posted this in another thread, and realized it works just as well here:
St. Alphonsus Liguori’s History and Refutation of Heresies, beginning around page 148 (page 139 to 148, lays foundation, and goes through background), [add on] addresses Martin Luther’s errors.

saintsbooks.net/books/St…Refutation.pdf

Excerpt:
In the year 1522, Henry VIII. wrote a book in defence of the Seven Sacraments. Luther, answering him, calls him a fool, says he will trample on the crowned blasphemer, and that his own doctrines are from heaven. In the same year, he published his German translation of the New Testament, in which learned Catholics discover a thousand errors; he rejects altogether the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and the Apocalypse; he made many changes after the first edition, no less than thirty-three, in the Gospel of St. Matthew alone. In the words of St. Paul, chap, iii, v. 3, " For we account a man to be justified by Faith without the works of the law," he adds the word alone, " by Faith alone." In the Diet of Augsburg, some one said to him, that the Catholics spoke very loudly of this interpretation, when he made that arrogant answer : " If your Papist prattles any more about this word alone, tell him that Doctor Martin Luther wishes it to be so; sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas I wish so, I order so, let my will be sufficient reason for it."
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[add on]–Hence it appears rather clear that “Dr” Martin Luther took quite a few liberties with scripture–based upon his own inflated judgment of his own intellect.

Tell your friend that had the Catholic Church taken as many liberties with scripture in the first 1,500 years, as “Dr” Luther did in his translations, her bible would be so greatly removed from what the NT writers actually wrote, as to be completely unrecognizable.

Also remind her that–as Rev. Graham wrote in the book you referenced in OP–the NT scripture was always under the control of the Church–yet rather than destroy it, or conceal it–or even take liberties with it–the Catholic Church protected it–from extrinsic attacks from the Jews, the Romans, the Barbarians, the Visigoths, gnostics, etc, et. al., as well as from internal attack–from heretics, schismatics, and even some well meaning-- and preserved it, inviolate, from its inception–and shared it liberally, within practical reason based on natural limitations preceding the invention of the printing press (worth notiong–invented by a Catholic–Gutenburg–who’s first reproduction was the Bible–WITH CHURCH APPROVAL).

Truly amazing how protestants have such a grotesuely corrupted view of Church history. Sad, really. 😦

*Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum. *
 
clem456 said:
Yep my good protestant friend has got me fired up now.
“The Catholic Church discouraged scripture scholarship” is what he says. He has a fondness for the Tyndale/Wycliffe stories and I guess he’s never heard of the hordes of saints, theologians, and scholars who gave him the bible he thinks Tyndale invented.:rolleyes:

I am always taken aback when I hear this charge. I realize it is ludicrous but I really need something specific when I refute him.
I have seen Henry Graham’s piece from the turn of the century. Is there anything else?
Click to expand...
I think it’s certainly true that in some countries and in some periods of history the provision and use of translations in the local tongue was discouraged - hence bible study, and even hearing the bible read in a language that could be understood, was limited in those places and times to those educated in Latin. This was in contrast to the Orthodox Church who more universally and enthusiastically embraced translation of scripture into local languages (indeed St. Cyril invented a written version of an oral language, the forerunner of modern Cyrillic, for just that purpose).

I think we have to acknowledge that, and then explore the reasons why, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
 
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