When did it become common for Catholic laity to have a Bible

[AmbroseSJ]

I find this question interesting.

Unlike many protestant and non-denominational churches, the Catholic Church cycles through the Bible in three years. Attending Daily mass and Sunday, a person could hear the Bible, almost the whole Bible at least.

So, listening to the Word of God was something everyone could do.

So, since many people were illiterate until the printing press, once that started up I could guess many educated people would own one. Even today, how many people own one vs reading it.

It is good to remember that the 3 cycle liturgical readings didn’t take effect until after 1970. Before that, the Liturgical readings for everyday of the year were fixed (and usually listed within Catholic Bibles.)

The question of owning vs. reading the Bible is a good one.

It is helpful to remember, again, that Protestants only have the Bible to guide them. They don’t consider their own churches infallible, and in fact, consider it their duty to switch churches whenever they detect error or whatever other discrepancies they consider problematic. Catholics on the other hand have the Infallible Catholic Church to guide them. Therefore reading the Bible is (in contrast to Protestants) an important devotion or guide to supplement the Liturgy, teachings and Sacraments they receive. IOW, a good faithful Catholic is not required to read the Bible in the same way a Protestant is. But it would be a mistake to think that Catholics, therefore, don’t need to read the Bible. It is just for different reasons that a Catholic reads the Bible.

In a lot of ways, Protestants are like Muslims. They are entirely guided by “the Book.” They don’t have a living, visible, Divine Institution that guides and teaches them. That is why, like the Muslims, they are all over the map in regards to interpretations of “the Book.”

In all the world, there is only ONE Faith that is guided by a Divine Institution: The Catholic Church.

 

[Church_Militant]

I would venture that it became more common for Catholics to own Bibles after Gutenberg’s press was invented because that ultimately led to a much less expensive way of transmitting the written word. In fact, the first thing he printed was a Catholic Bible.

Catholic vernacular versions and portions had been around a good while and predated Luther’s birth so those too became more common and affordable from that point on.