The Church Really Did Forbid the Bible from LayPeople

[Sacramentalist]

I know that there are many revisionists out there who want to calim that the Church of the late Middle Ages was fully enthusiastic about Bible-reading for laity, and placed little restrictions in this regard, but I don’t think this is true. I’ve read several books on Christian history and the Reformation, and ***all * ** of them refer to the fact that one of the calls of the Reformers was always a demand for vernacular Bibles so the laity could read them, and that this was so controversial.

It simply does not make sense: If it’s true that anybody who could read could read Latin, and so vernacular Bibles did not serve a practical purpose, then why the big demand for these from the Reformers, on the grounds that the laity should be able to read it for themselves? Wouldn’t these literate laity been able to read the Latin Bibles anyway, supposedly?

Please, don’t link me to Dave Armstrong or some other apologist. None of them have addressed this particular question.

If vernacular Bibles were as practically useless, but otherwise fully-blessed, by the Medieval Church, the Reformers would never have complained about otherwise being the case, and would never have demanded the publication of vernacular Bibles on the grounds that this would help the laity to finnaly read Scripture for themselves.

 

[scm]

Sacramentalist:

I know that there are many revisionists out there who want to calim that the Church of the late Middle Ages was fully enthusiastic about Bible-reading for laity, and placed little restrictions in this regard, but I don’t think this is true. I’ve read several books on Christian history and the Reformation, and ***all *** of them refer to the fact that one of the calls of the Reformers was always a demand for vernacular Bibles so the laity could read them, and that this was so controversial.

It simply does not make sense: If it’s true that anybody who could read could read Latin, and so vernacular Bibles did not serve a practical purpose, then why the big demand for these from the Reformers, on the grounds that the laity should be able to read it for themselves? Wouldn’t these literate laity been able to read the Latin Bibles anyway, supposedly?

Please, don’t link me to Dave Armstrong or some other apologist. None of them have addressed this particular question.

If vernacular Bibles were as practically useless, but otherwise fully-blessed, by the Medieval Church, the Reformers would never have complained about otherwise being the case, and would never have demanded the publication of vernacular Bibles on the grounds that this would help the laity to finnaly read Scripture for themselves.

I was actually talking about something related to this to my mother recently. She is 72 years old. She says that when she was a child they were “not allowed to have their own Bible.” I thought this was pretty odd, but she said that when she was a child she saw that her Protestant friends read the Bible, but she did not even have one. She said she asked her priest about this and he told her that it would be better for her not to read the Bible since she may misunderstand it.

The reason I thought this was odd is that by the time I was a child we were given Bibles to read in Catholic school.

 

[piety101]

Heavens no. The church alone had some copies of the scriptures in some churches, but even those were rare. The printing press was non existent for some 1200 years, so people recited Psalms,creeds, prayers that were passed down from generation to generation. A great deal of learning came from art work or mosaics. A great many of the common people could not even read. Educational skills were not like it is in our time.

                            Martin Luther was the first to translate the Latin bible into German and he had copies made and distributed to the people. This started the ball rolling. Before this, copies of the scriptures were housed in church buildings. 

                             Martin Luther had good intentions, but after the scriptures became copied by others succeeding him, heretical interpretations came from reading those printed copies and so denominational-ism was born. In other words Martin Luther gave birth to a Frankenstein. It was no longer sola scriptura, but rather sola interpretation by anyone who thought their ideas were right. :(

 

[Adonis33]

Just to piggy back what piety 101 said:

Remember - The Bible as we know it did not exist until the thrid century. The Bible has to be hand written. Most Churches did not have complete copies of the Bible. The only people that had complete copies of the Bible were either ectremely wealthy families - or a few lucky churches. Consider also that the Gutenburgh Press did not pint the first Bible until around the 16th century. I am estimation that families did not start purchasing complete copies of the Bible until around the early 17th centruy. (Please correct me if this is incorrect.)

Couple all this with the fact that the literate population was very small.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[Promotor_Fidei]

piety101:

It was no longer sola scriptura, but rather sola interpretation by anyone who thought their ideas were right.

Indeed, Piety, I would call it “sola sinus” nowadays… Feelings Alone.

Some mainline Protestant sects are discounting the epistles of Paul. Sad.

 

[JimG]

piety101:

Martin Luther was the first to translate the Latin bible into German and he had copies made and distributed to the people. This started the ball rolling. Before this, copies of the scriptures were housed in church buildings.

Before Martin Luther was born, there was a German translation of the Vulgate available (a Catholic bible.) It was called the Mentel Bible. It was first published in 1466, using the newly invented printing press. Luther’s translation was published in 1522.

Even before Gutenberg, there were a variety of vernacular translations of various books of the bible.

 

[Church_Militant]

Sacramentalist:

Reformers was always a demand for vernacular Bibles so the laity could read them, and that this was so controversial.

If vernacular Bibles were as practically useless, but otherwise fully-blessed, by the Medieval Church, the Reformers would never have complained about otherwise being the case, and would never have demanded the publication of vernacular Bibles on the grounds that this would help the laity to finnaly read Scripture for themselves.

Again I point out a couple of inconsistencies here. If the Bibles were accurate translations, (which the reformer’s versions were not), then I think that’s what they were cryin’ & whinin’ about because the church wouldn’t let them do what they wanted. We know that Luther’s translation in German was errant and lacked all the books, having been taylored to suit his new heretical doctrines.

Additional point, since there was no Kinko’s back then just how were all these copies of vernacular Bibles supposed to get into circulation? Hand copies are slow…

Further, in view of the errors that began in 1517 and have run rampant since then in ever increasing numbers as a direct result of the idea that any man can read and accurately interpret the scriptures for himself and the myriad schisms that attend those doctrines, don’t you suppose that some such caution may have been in order?

Pax tecum,

 

[Sacramentalist]

My grandmother (now 75) grew up in Sicily. She taught Catechism, and asked her priest if she culd read the Bible. He told her not to bother; it would be too confusing.

My mother (44) went to Catholic schools all through College. She was not given a Bible in all that time, nor was she required to read it, until taking a religion class at University.

Meanwhile, no one’s answered my question. Granted, mass-production was not possible before the printing press, but afterwards there was no excuse. Vernacular translations, even approved ones, did exist, but their use by the laity was either forbidden by the Church or very strongly discouraged. And this up until not too long ago.

 

[nianka]

Church Militant:

Further, in view of the errors that began in 1517 and have run rampant since then in ever increasing numbers as a direct result of the idea that any man can read and accurately interpret the scriptures for himself and the myriad schisms that attend those doctrines, don’t you suppose that some such caution may have been in order?

Pax tecum,

I’m 48 years old, and I do remember while in Catholic school (2nd-6th grade) being discouraged from reading the Bible. The reason given was just the caution mentioned above. To avoid and/or discourage individual interpretation. We were given missals rather than bibles. The more I read about the reformation, the less this “discouragement” bothers me.
Nianka

 

[DeFide]

Read this:

geocities.com/thecatholicconvert/wherewegotthebible.html

You’ll find:

1. There were plenty of vernacular Scriptures before the reformers came on the scene for those who for whatever reason didn’t know Latin yet could read the vernacular language, and had the time and inclination in an agrarian society to read scripture on their own time. They weren’t useless, but they weren’t the standard.
2. When vernacular Scriptures (of poor quality & filled with personal theology) were printed by reformers, they sold so slowly that the secular authorities who backed the reformers had to pass laws forcing their purchase. They even had to re-bind unsold editions as new editions in hopes of getting them sold.

 

[teajay]

Sacramentalist, I am not an expert on history, and I cannot know the motives of this particular priest, but I suspect that some in the Church were cautious, perhaps overly cautious, about widespread access to the Bible.

Anyone with a knowledge of history can see that every time Scripture was interpreted outside of the Church, heresy arose. Marcionism, Montanism, and the Valentinians are all examples. These heresies claimed some scriptural support. Although the history is more complex, you can see how some might (inappropriately) form a crude correlation between:Access to Scripture outside of the Church = new heresies = many denied salvation :crying:
These days heresy is avoided by explaining the situation and hoping that others will see the truth. But some might still feel uncomfortable with people interpreting scripture for themselves, not because they think that they will be ‘discovered’ preaching a false gospel, but because it might lead to a misinterpretation that will place that individuals salvation at risk. These days, with our improved knowledge of the scope of salvation, people are less likely to be that cautious in discouraging access to the Bible.

In regard to Bible translations, each time the Bible is translated, it is possible that the inerrancy of the original will be diluted, because each translation require some form of interpretation of the original text and that interpretation will be incorporated into the translation. So there were probably individuals that thought “why risk introducing new errors when people can learn Greek or Latin and read the original Greek or the approved Latin translation?”. To us this seems wrong, but back in those days it might not have sounded so silly.

 

[Cockney_Clive]

Until the Printing Press was invented books, any book and including the Bible, were extremely rare. It is said that the Saxon Saint and Bishop Cuthbert only knew one Gospel, St. John, but he could recite it word for word. As a young man he had been given the task of copying it, and he had read it but had never seen the the Gospels of St. Mathew, St. Luke, and St. Mark. This would not have been an uncommon experience back in the 7th century.

As to what Sacramentalist has said. Sadly, for his Grand ma that might have been the case but this doesn’t imply that this is, or was, church doctrine. It is rather, a misunderstanding or reinterpretation of church doctrine. The Church says that the glory and the awesom Truth that is God’s Word to us, should be freely available to all. See the Vatican II Document Dei Verbum where it states that bishops ‘who have the apostolic teaching’ must give the faithful ‘suitable instruction in the right use of the divine books’.

That is the nub of the problem. It is not reading the bible *per se * that constitutes the problem, but the misinterpretations and misuses to which some people will put it. So the church teaches that, in reading the bible the ‘living Tradition of the whole church must be taken into account’… The interpretation of Scripture is subject, finally, to the judgement of the Church. To understand this, see 2 Peter 1:19-20; and 3:15-16.

So read the bible every day, hear it at Mass (what a great gift we have in our Lectionary) but read it with knowledge. Probably invest in a commentary or two, or subscribe to a magazine such as Bible Alive (we have in UK) or other monthly publication which contains the Mass readings for every day, with commentary.

 

[Aris]

Sacramentalist:

My grandmother (now 75) grew up in Sicily. She taught Catechism, and asked her priest if she culd read the Bible. He told her not to bother; it would be too confusing.

My mother (44) went to Catholic schools all through College. She was not given a Bible in all that time, nor was she required to read it, until taking a religion class at University.

Meanwhile, no one’s answered my question. Granted, mass-production was not possible before the printing press, but afterwards there was no excuse. Vernacular translations, even approved ones, did exist, but their use by the laity was either forbidden by the Church or very strongly discouraged. And this up until not too long ago.

1. There has been no ruling by the Church which forbids Bible reading. If they did how do you explain saints from the laity even as far back as the middle ages. This means that if you could not find proof that the Church issued such a ruling then the Catholic Church forbidding Bible reading is a false accusation.
2. The counterproof to that is my parents (70 yrs) and my grandparents (90 yrs) All of them had bibles even in their youth.
3. This is a classic charge by the anti-Catholics. They really think that we don’t know our Bibles because we are STILL forbidden to read the Bible.

 

[BibleReader]

The whole business of the Church wanting to keep the Bible from people is a relatively recent thing. The analyses in this thread, to the effect that no one would have THOUGHT of depriving the people of the Bible before the Reformation simply because the printing press had not yet come into its own, are correct. The printing press was invented by Gutenberg and others about 70 years before Luther hitched his rebellious horse to German nationalism, but during that 70 year period the printing press had not yet risen above the psychology of being a novelty.

Luther, himself, was largely responsible for the growth of the idea of the possibility of general public access to Scripture.

But this cuts both ways: Luther wasn’t curing a “problem.” Before Luther, the Church didn’t think, “Let’s keep that Bible away from the people.”

In a sense, the OPPOSITE is true. The earliest versions of the “rosary” were not a Rosary-like repetition of Hail Mary’s. The earliest versons of the “rosary” were public readings and discussions of all of the events of the gospels, punctuated by the public reading of each of the 150 Psalms, as a “breather.” (That’s the reason for 150 “Hail Mary’s” in the course of 15 decades for contemplating 15 “Mysteries” – the developers of the “Hail Mary” style Rosary of today were imitating those who punctuated public readings and discussions of the gospel story with 150 Psalms.)

In other words, more and more and more widely, the details of the gospel stories were being publicly promulgated by the Clergy to a non-reading public.

When Luther came along, the concept of “reading” the “Bible” as one book was “still in the womb.” He really did help to give birth to the concept.

And what was the Church’s experience, with Herr Luther?

He twisted Scripture, didn’t he? As did every other Reformer.

This all left a bad taste in the Church’s mouth. In part, the REFORMERS who clearly TWISTED the meaning of Scripture ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR the reluctance we see in the Church, AFTER the Reformation, to encourage private study of Scripture.

Clergy and nuns today who deny that after the Reformation the Church discouraged private study of the Bible are wrong, however.

 

[Katie1723]

My mother( she’s 75) once told me that many years ago, Catholics were discouraged from bible reading , esp. Revelations, because they wouldn’t be able to interpret correctly.Fortunately for her , and my father they didn’t listen and read it from cover to cover.
~ Kathy ~

 

[trailblazer]

St Francis of Assisi, Ignatious of Loyola, and many others read and taught Scripture as laypeople.

My parents who are in their 80s read Scripture to me when I was a boy and we had a Family Bible.

Even before I began reading Scripture, I knew it from weekly Mass, my father’s readings, and CCD.

It is reasonable to assume that many in the Church wanted not necessarily to restrict Scripture reading, but to help prevent people from being lead to heresy as Luther, Calvin, and others were. Never-the-less, and regardless, the Catholic Church has faithfully passed down accurate Tradition for 2000 years. The faithful were never denied Truth!

Bob

 

[1ke]

Sacramentalist:

I know that there are many revisionists out there who want to calim that the Church of the late Middle Ages was fully enthusiastic about Bible-reading for laity, and placed little restrictions in this regard, but I don’t think this is true. I’ve read several books on Christian history and the Reformation, and ***all *** of them refer to the fact that one of the calls of the Reformers was always a demand for vernacular Bibles so the laity could read them, and that this was so controversial.

It simply does not make sense: If it’s true that anybody who could read could read Latin, and so vernacular Bibles did not serve a practical purpose, then why the big demand for these from the Reformers, on the grounds that the laity should be able to read it for themselves? Wouldn’t these literate laity been able to read the Latin Bibles anyway, supposedly?

Please, don’t link me to Dave Armstrong or some other apologist. None of them have addressed this particular question.

If vernacular Bibles were as practically useless, but otherwise fully-blessed, by the Medieval Church, the Reformers would never have complained about otherwise being the case, and would never have demanded the publication of vernacular Bibles on the grounds that this would help the laity to finnaly read Scripture for themselves.

There were many vernacular bibles. I suggest the very good article at www.newadvent.org on the Versions of the Bible. It’s located under letter B, under “Bible, Versions of”.

The Church’s main concern was with validly translated versions. Some of the “reformers” (their early predecessors included) were playing fast and loose with the text to support their mistaken theoology.

The Church has a right and responsibility to prevent faulty translations from circulating.

 

[1ke]

piety101:

Heavens no. The church alone had some copies of the scriptures in some churches, but even those were rare. The printing press was non existent for some 1200 years, so people recited Psalms,creeds, prayers that were passed down from generation to generation. A great deal of learning came from art work or mosaics. A great many of the common people could not even read. Educational skills were not like it is in our time.

It is true that, in general, literacy was limited. However not nearly to the extent that you imply here. There were many men from all walks of life educated at the universities that were flourishing in Europe and at monasteries. Many noblewomen were educated at convents. Illiteracy was not as rampant as you would make it out to be. I point you to the excellent work of Regine Peroud, Warren Carroll, and Thomas E Woods for a much less skewed view of history (and especially Catholic history).

piety101:

Martin Luther was the first to translate the Latin bible into German and he had copies made and distributed to the people. This started the ball rolling. Before this, copies of the scriptures were housed in church buildings.

Au contraire on both of these statements. First, Luther made his translation in 1522. Extant German translations go back as far as the 7th century. There are 9 complete extant folios from prior to 1522, dating back to 1477. There are fragments extant back to the 7th century.

On the second point, please see many extant prayer books, gospels, and entire bibles currenlty housed in the following museums: The British Museum, the Vatican Museum, the Cluny Museum and Louvre in Paris. They are private bibles, the personal possessions of many different people from many different walks of life. Yes, many copies were house in Churches, however anyone with money to commission a bible, book of gospels, etc, could and did do so-- from the various monasteries.

piety101:

Martin Luther had good intentions, but after the scriptures became copied by others succeeding him, heretical interpretations came from reading those printed copies and so denominational-ism was born. In other words Martin Luther gave birth to a Frankenstein. It was no longer sola scriptura, but rather sola interpretation by anyone who thought their ideas were right.

Martin Luther gave birth to a defective translation with mistakes in it and a heretical interpretation of the Scriptures. Yes, others followed his path.

 

[puzzleannie]

piety101:

Heavens no. The church alone had some copies of the Martin Luther was the first to translate the Latin bible into German and he had copies made and distributed to the people. This started the ball rolling. Before this, copies of the scriptures were housed in church buildings.

no Martin Luther was not the first to translate the Bible into German, the first German bible to be printed was under Catholic auspices.

There were vernacular versions of portions of the bible printed in English and other languages as well before the Reformation. since, outside monasteries, few people even among the upper classes could read before printed works became widely available and affordable, there was no reason for the average person to possess a bible. What is true in your post is that many of the first vernacular translations were done by dissenters with the specific intent of challenging Catholic dogma, especially on the Eucharist, the ordained priesthood and the sacraments.

Some of these translations were produced by heretics such as the Cathars and Albigensians in the Middle Ages, succeeding ones by pre-Luther Protestants like Wycliffe and Tyndale. These were quite rightly supressed and denounced by the Church for their errors in translation and transcription, deliberate in most cases. Spreading a false scripture and distorting the revealed Word of God is a far graver sin than restricting the unlettered faithful to hearing scripture proclaimed and taught.

Even Satan quoted scripture, to Christ Himself no less, to further his evil designs. for a heretic to deliberately propagate a defective form of the bible is a huge crime. To the society of Europe as it was orderd in the late medieval period, this represented not only a threat to the Truth and the Church, but to the entire social order and was justly condemned.

 

[1ke]

Sacramentalist:

My grandmother (now 75) grew up in Sicily. She taught Catechism, and asked her priest if she culd read the Bible. He told her not to bother; it would be too confusing.

My mother (44) went to Catholic schools all through College. She was not given a Bible in all that time, nor was she required to read it, until taking a religion class at University.

Meanwhile, no one’s answered my question. Granted, mass-production was not possible before the printing press, but afterwards there was no excuse. Vernacular translations, even approved ones, did exist, but their use by the laity was either forbidden by the Church or very strongly discouraged. And this up until not too long ago.

I would suggest that you have a particular view and not a global view of the teaching of the Church regarding the bible-- you have the experience of two people. I can very quickly produce two people with a very different experience:

My future mother in law is 76 years old and she read it in her home. My fiance is 44 and he grew up reading the bible. Cradle Catholics.

I would also suggest that many older Catholics fail to recognize that they were taught the Bible within the context of Catechism and Mass. Remember, the Church is not “sola scriptura” therefore the Bible is taught within the context of the Deposit of Faith, not as the Deposit of Faith. The Catholic Church has a different approach to educating people in the faith, because there is much more to the faith than the Bible alone.