Nor did I say that it was.
However, up until 1476 it was not possible for ordinary people to own copies of the Bible, so any assertions that the Church prevented ordinary people from reading Scripture before then are pretty ignorant.
Assertions that “the Catholic Church” tried to prevent people from reading the Bible should be backed up with some kind of evidence. Individual priests who said they didn’t think it was a good idea for people to read the Bible on their own do not constitute “Church teaching,” any more than the claims of some self-aggrandizing televangelist can be put down as representing “Protestant theology.”
The OP for this 3-year-old thread pointed out that one anti-catholic author asserted that a thirteenth-century council placed the Bible on a list of books one needed permission to read that wasn’t created until the 16th century. These kinds of lies and calumnies get repeated over and over.
If you have evidence of an actual attempt by the Church to prevent people from reading Scripture, present it. If you don’t, stop bearing false witness.
Sally
Well, I found this entry that speaks to the question of whether or not that Toulouse council took place and cites the sources of that.
COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.
The Council of Toulouse, which met in November of 1229, about the time of the crusade against the Albigensians, set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry), to search out and try heretics. Twenty of the forty-five articles decreed by the Council dealt with heretics and heresy. It ruled in part:
Canon 1. We appoint, therefore, that the archbishops and bishops shall swear in one priest, and two or three laymen of good report, or more if they think fit, in every parish, both in and out of cities, who shall diligently, faithfully, and frequently seek out the heretics in those parishes, by searching all houses and subterranean chambers which lie under suspicion. And looking out for appendages or outbuildings, in the roofs themselves, or any other kind of hiding places, all which we direct to be destroyed.
Canon 6. Directs that the house in which any heretic shall be found shall be destroyed.
Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.
Source: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Edited with an introduction by Edward Peters, Scolar Press, London, copyright 1980 by Edward Peters, ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195, citing S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents [illustrative of the history, doctrine and rites, of the ancient Albigenses & Waldenses], London, Rivington, 1832, pp. 192-194.
Additional Sources:
Ecclesiastical History of Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, Pierre Allix, published in Oxford at the Clarendon Press in 1821, reprinted in USA in 1989 by Church History Research & Archives, P.O. Box 38, Dayton Ohio, 45449, p. 213 [Canon 14].
Additional Sources:
Ecclesiastical History of Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, Pierre Allix, published in Oxford at the Clarendon Press in 1821, reprinted in USA in 1989 by Church History Research & Archives, P.O. Box 38, Dayton Ohio, 45449, p. 213 [Canon 14].
The History of Protestantism, by J. A. Wiley, chapter 10 cites:
• Concilium Tolosanum, cap. 1, p. 428. Sismondi, 220.
• Labbe, Concil. Tolosan., tom. 11, p. 427. Fleury, Hist. Eccles., lib. 79, n. 58.
Some Catholics may doubt that there even was a Church Council in Toulouse France in 1229. The following quotes are offered as corroborating evidence:
After the death of Innocent III, the Synod of Toulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari: “prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis permittatur habere” (Hefele, “Concilgesch”, Freiburg, 1863, V, 875).
Source: The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Scripture.
and here’s the quote from pope innocent III :
Pope Innocent III stated in 1199:
… to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum 770-771)
Source: Bridging the Gap - Lectio Divina, Religious Education, and the Have-not’s by Father John Belmonte, S.J
As for my own opinion, I think it’s important to say that what was more effective was the unspoken “directive” that I remember in my years as a catholic, wherein I got the “feeling” or message that I didn’t need to read the bible- I had the priests etc, to tell me what was true and not- that I was not trusted to be able to understand what I would read in it. Of course, at that time, I wouldn’t have understood the bible, cuz I didn’t have the spirit.
After I became born again and got the spirit, reading the bible became a process of letting God open up its meaning to me;as He saw that I was ready to receive the particular life-changing Word.
