Where catholics ever discouraged from reading the bible?

[danandirma]

another e-mail from the fallen away Catholic. this is his view…
The view of the RCC is that the Scriptures have been entrusted to the church, and the individuals must look to the official pronouncements of the church to know the true teaching of Scripture." Until twenty years ago and the second Vatican Council, that kind of thinking had kept the Scriptures concealed in Latin and had kept the average Catholic lay person in shameful ignorance of Scriptures. Although much of that is changing now, for centuries the Bible was kept from the people. There are writings of popes (and I can quote them for you) which say that the Bible must not be allowed in the vernacular (language of the people). That it would do more harm than good! Scriptures were for the priesthood only (They were prohibited to anyone in the laity without written permission from one’s superior To violate this was considered a mortal sin). The Latin Vulgate could not be understood by the people, only trained priests. Pope Innocent the 3rd forbade Bible reading. One would have to learn latin. The council of Valencia, the council of Trent and pope Clement Xl issued a papal bull to forbid letting people have a Bible in their own language and reading it for themselves. Clement the 11th also issued a papal bull against Bible reading.

 

[phoenix3212]

You know, the ban against translating the Bible into local languages originated from the desire to make sure people didn’t get inaccurate translations. Case in point: Luther adding the word “alone” after “faith” in his German translation of the Bible when it didn’t exist in the original texts.

 

[Fidelis]

Here is a previous thread on the topic that may or may not be helpful to you.

As you can see, it quickly degenerated into a whole lot of unsubstantiated “evidence” by someone who already had their mind made up that the Catholic Church with evil intent kept the Bible out of the hands of laymen. Good luck with *this *thread and with your friend.

 

[chaunceygardner]

The first Bibles in the vernacular were prepared by dissident Catholics or Protestants. The Catholic approved translations into the various languages appear to have occurred in response to this. So the “new” Protestants were not only reading the Bible in their own languages but their faith was based on it, rather than what was taught by someone who was able to read the Latin Bible and explain it to the people.

The fact that Protestants and others who questioned the teachings of the Church were using Scripture to back their positions made the the Hierarchy gun shy. Why would they want the laity to read the Bible if it might lead them to think “un-Catholic” thoughts. So ignorance on the part of the laity was probably considered a good thing.

Also keep in mind that 200 or more years ago few Catholic laity were literate. The best educated were often those educated by the Church itself. So for the great majority, having a bible in their own language would not have mattered.

But I think we must go back to the fear of a possible reaction if everyone started reading the Bible. It was only in the past 60-70 years that the Vatican publicly encouraged reading and studying the Bible. But it seems it does so with reservations.

Take a look at what the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation said:

It is for the Bishops…to instruct the faithful entrusted to them in the correct use of the divine books, especially of the New Testament, and in particular of the Gospels. They do this by giving them translations of the sacred texts which are equipped with necessary and really adequate explanations. Thus the children of the Church can familiarize themselves safely and profitably with the sacred Scriptures, and become steeped in their spirit.

(underlining mine).

Sounds like they were concerned that people might see dangerous ideas in those Gospels that might put some Church doctrine on “shaky ground”.

You know, they were right!

 

[EverestFox]

I think it only makes perfect sense for this to happen. Look at religion today: many of our Protestant brothers and sisters may look at a Bible (without any prior knowledge of it) and conclude that God literally made the Earth in seven Earthly days. When they attend a high-level course in college that teaches them how the Earth developed over time from a scientific standpoint, they could reject their whole Christian heritage as they felt they were “lied to” by the Bible.

 

[JRKH]

another e-mail from the fallen away Catholic. this is his view…
The view of the RCC is that the Scriptures have been entrusted to the church, and the individuals must look to the official pronouncements of the church to know the true teaching of Scripture." Until twenty years ago and the second Vatican Council, that kind of thinking had kept the Scriptures concealed in Latin and had kept the average Catholic lay person in shameful ignorance of Scriptures.

20 years ago??? Vatican I was more like 40 years ago. Also I can remember as a child we had a English language CATHOLIC Bible in our house. I read it too!!!
Yes the Church does encourage us to look to the Church for teachings. This is how we keep ourselves from falling into error.

Although much of that is changing now, for centuries the Bible was kept from the people.
There are writings of popes (and I can quote them for you) which say that the Bible must not be allowed in the vernacular (language of the people). That it would do more harm than good!

All one has to do is look at the number of dirrerent anc conflicting “churches” founded in the 500 years since the development of the SS doctrine to see that the Popes had a point about harm being caused.

Scriptures were for the priesthood only (They were prohibited to anyone in the laity without written permission from one’s superior To violate this was considered a mortal sin).

The period in which this was declared was during the reformation when many spurious and inaccurate translations were being made and distributed. The Church is a fierce defender of the Holy Scriptures just as she is a defender of Her Flock of believers. Such spurious Bibles needed to be removed and only approved Translations used.

The Latin Vulgate could not be understood by the people, only trained priests. Pope Innocent the 3rd forbade Bible reading. One would have to learn latin. The council of Valencia, the council of Trent and pope Clement Xl issued a papal bull to forbid letting people have a Bible in their own language and reading it for themselves. Clement the 11th also issued a papal bull against Bible reading.

I am not smart enough on this subject but I suggest that any such claims be looked into to determine why certain rules were issued at the time. Usually such things relate to periods where the Church is battling some heresy or another.

Peace
James

 

[CalCatholic]

Personal interpretation of the Bible without the authority of the Catholic Church = 33,000 Christian denominations.

 

[DOShea]

The first Bibles in the vernacular were prepared by dissident Catholics or Protestants. The Catholic approved translations into the various languages appear to have occurred in response to this. So the “new” Protestants were not only reading the Bible in their own languages but their faith was based on it, rather than what was taught by someone who was able to read the Latin Bible and explain it to the people.

This is a common myth, with Wycliffe given as the first person to translate the Bible into vernacular (English in this case) in 1382. We all know the story… he didn’t have permission to do that and the Pope had his bones exhumed, crushed, and tossed into the river.

But there were plenty of vernacular translations earlier than that. It’s important to emphasize that every single one of these was a Catholic Bible. For reference, recall the Reformation began in 1517. Here are the vernacular translations that “didn’t” exist until Wycliffe came along:

In Saxon language:
Caedmon - 7th century
Venerable Bede, Eadhelm, and Guthlac, and Egbert - 8th century
King Alfred the Great - 9th century
Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury - 10th century

In Early English:
Orm - circa 1150
Salus Animae - 1250
Translations of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle - 1349
John Trevisa - circa1360.

Other languages are also represented
Dutch - 1270
French - 1290
German - circa 1350

Then came Wycliffe.

14 additional editions translated in to High German and 5 in Low German are dated between 1466 and 1517.
In the hundred years from 1450 to 1550, with express permission from Rome, these translations/editions appeared:

40 in Italian
18 in French
Bohemian
Belgian
Russian
Danish
Norwegian
Polish
Hungarian
Spain published editions in Spanish starting in 1478.

There was never a problem with the Bible being in the vernacular, the main issue for the Church was that it was translated accurately. By seeking to keep the Bible in Latin, the Church was ensuring that it would come to the people in the way it was intended, that is, with Teaching authority behind it. Vernacular editions, as the above list shows, were available but NOT to the general public, and for good reasons, among them the expense and the desire to avoid the problems of personal interpretation.

The problem Rome foresaw was that a vernacular edition placed into Billy Bob’s anxious hands without any sort of guidance or reference authority against which Billy Bob could bounce his interpretations would create calamity. It would result in false doctrines, schisms, and an endless chaos of numerous groups who all look at the same pages, but aren’t on the same page.

You judge if their prediction came true or not.

 

[David_Zampino]

There is also that small little point regarding illiteracy!

Throughout the Middle Ages, most people were! A Bible translated into the vernacular still could only be read, in many cases, by other scholars – not by the common people. And, prior to the invention of the movable-type printing press, each copy of the Scriptures – in whatever language – was hand-copied. There were not a whole lot of copies to go around!

The notion that somehow the Church wanted to keep the Scriptures away from the people is, on its face, an absurd idea. Remember, the Scriptures are a product of the Church!

 

[Rbt_Southwell]

The first Bibles in the vernacular were prepared by dissident Catholics or Protestants.

Erasmus had bad manuscripts; this is why the “authorized” (for use in Church of England services ONLY) was RETRANSLATED from Vatican manuscripts in the late 1800s.

Protestants were nationalistic-minded; all those benefices and all those hospices and lands and farms for the crown! Before Luther changed the Bible to fit his own PERSONAL view, there were 8 translations into various forms of German (Low, Middle, High) already in existence.

Google this and you will find it from the official Deutschland travel board.

Languages were written down by early CATHOLIC missionaries so that the Bible could be written in them for purposes of spreading the Gospel.

This is why Vietnamese has western alphabetics in its language: the French Jesuit and Dominicans made it into a written language from an oral language.

Cyrillic and Germanic are two other examples. And the Romance languages attest to the historical fact that LATIN (the lingua franca of commerce and religion) was the language of the liturgy of the ONE, HOLY and APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

All you Protestants are Johnny-come-latelies in the “what Bible is the accurate translation” game, and don’t get us started on you faulty Textus Receptus (based on post Resurrection collations and writings at Jamnia with the Rabbis to re-organize a fractured, fallen away Judaism: thanks to Catholic Christianity)

Robert

 

[NHInsider]

The notion that Catholics were discouraged from reading the Bible until Vatican II is just ignorant. Leo XIII promulgated a 30-days indulgence to encourage ordinary people to read the Bible - in 1898! And the Scriptures were proclaimed in the local vernacular at Latin Masses long before Vatican II allowed the prayers to be in the vernacular. And of course, missals had the Latin on one page and the vernacular on the facing page for decades before that.

This is just another one of those things “everyone knows” that are flat-out untrue.

What is true is that Catholics have NOT been good about making Scripture reading a part of their devotions (hence the need to encourage them). Most are content to hear the Scripture proclaimed at Mass and need to be prodded to take more personal responsibility for deepening their knowledge.

Was it St. Augustine or St. Jerome who wrote “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” ? Whichever - neither one is exactly a modern voice. . . .

 

[patrick457]

The first Bibles in the vernacular were prepared by dissident Catholics or Protestants.

Let’s see the whole history of Bible translations into English. For some time before his death in 735 the Venerable St. Bede did a translation of John’s Gospel into Anglo-Saxon (which was eventually lost, unfortunately).
Alfred the Great (849-899), king of Wessex from 871 to 899 had a number of passages of the Bible circulated in the vernacular.
In approximately 990, a full and freestanding version of the four Gospels in idiomatic Old English appeared, in the West Saxon dialect; these are known as the Wessex Gospels. Seven manuscript copies of this translation have survived; they apparently had some currency. At about the same time as the Wessex Gospels, the priest Ælfric of Eynsham (ca. 955-ca. 1010) produced an independent translation of the Pentateuch with Joshua and Judges. His translations were used for the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch.

Now we go to translations in German. Charles the Great (aka Charlemagne) during his reign promoted Frankish biblical translations in the 9th century. There were Bible translations present in manuscript form at a considerable scale already in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century (e.g. the New Testament in the Augsburger Bible of 1350 and the Old Testament in the Wenzel Bible of 1389). There is ample evidence for the general use of the entire vernacular German Bible in the fifteenth century.
In 1466, the Mentel Bible, a High-German vernacular Bible was printed at Strassburg. This edition was based on a no-longer-existing fourteenth-century manuscript translation of the Vulgate from the area of Nurenberg. Until 1518, it was reprinted at least 13 times.
In 1478-1479, two Low German Bible editions were published in Cologne, one in the Niederrheinish or West-Westphalian dialect and another in the dialect of Lower Saxony or the East-Westphalian dialect.
In 1494, another Low-German Bible was published in Lübeck, and in 1522, the last pre-Lutheran Bible, the Low-German Halberstaedter Bible was published.
In total, there were at least eighteen complete German Bible editions, ninety editions in the vernacular of the Gospels and the readings of the Sundays and Holy Days, and some fourteen German Psalters. All this before Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Luther even produced their respective translations!

And mind you that this is just a few selections! Now tell me how you know that all these men are actually dissident Catholics.
I would not deny that the first COMPLETE translation of the Bible into Middle English is by John Wycliff (most if not all of the English translations that existed before him were often only portions of Scripture that were more popular; he and his co-translators were the first people to undertake the translation of the complete Bible), but saying that he and his ilk were the first people ever to render the Scriptures in the English tongue is a gross oversimplification.

The Catholic approved translations into the various languages appear to have occurred in response to this. So the “new” Protestants were not only reading the Bible in their own languages but their faith was based on it, rather than what was taught by someone who was able to read the Latin Bible and explain it to the people.

You are partly correct that, in the light of all the controversies and ‘troublemaking’, prior review and approval of Bible translations became necessary, at least in medieval England.

I think that the Protestant faith is not really “based” on Scripture per se, but on someone’s idea on how Scripture means. I find it nigh impossible to actually determine accurately and correctly what the Bible teaches just by reading it without your next-door neighbor arriving to a different conclusion than you did. There’s also the factor of translations. Unless you have some mastery of the original languages (even if barely), how can you know that your translation is not fitted to suit one’s agenda?

The fact that Protestants and others who questioned the teachings of the Church were using Scripture to back their positions made the the Hierarchy gun shy. Why would they want the laity to read the Bible if it might lead them to think “un-Catholic” thoughts. So ignorance on the part of the laity was probably considered a good thing.

Uh, ignorance? Tell that to Fr. George Leo Haydock (1774-1849), who produced the well-known Haydock Commentary for precisely the same reason: “the fact that Protestants and others who questioned the teachings of the Church were using Scripture to back their positions.” Fr. Haydock lived in a time when the Penal Laws against Catholics were still in force (his was actually born into one of the oldest Catholic Recusant families and in the heart of Catholic resistance to the Penal Laws - Cottam in Lancashire) and wanted to show that Catholics can fight back against this onslaught, and use Scripture - their own book - while doing so! If Fr. Haydock was of your opinion and wanted Catholics to be ignorant of their own heritage then he just made a whole waste of his time.

 

[Randy_Carson]

another e-mail from the fallen away Catholic. this is his view…
The view of the RCC is that the Scriptures have been entrusted to the church, and the individuals must look to the official pronouncements of the church to know the true teaching of Scripture." Until twenty years ago and the second Vatican Council, that kind of thinking had kept the Scriptures concealed in Latin and had kept the average Catholic lay person in shameful ignorance of Scriptures. Although much of that is changing now, for centuries the Bible was kept from the people. There are writings of popes (and I can quote them for you) which say that the Bible must not be allowed in the vernacular (language of the people). That it would do more harm than good! Scriptures were for the priesthood only (They were prohibited to anyone in the laity without written permission from one’s superior To violate this was considered a mortal sin). The Latin Vulgate could not be understood by the people, only trained priests. Pope Innocent the 3rd forbade Bible reading. One would have to learn latin. The council of Valencia, the council of Trent and pope Clement Xl issued a papal bull to forbid letting people have a Bible in their own language and reading it for themselves. Clement the 11th also issued a papal bull against Bible reading.

The first English translation of the Bible appeared in the 8th century and at the time of Martin Luther, there were 14 German translations available. The idea that the Church has prohibited Christians from reading the Bible is a myth.

The Church has prohibited the faithful from reading unauthorized versions or translations which contained errors and omissions.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

One can never underestimate the catastrophic damage done to the Church’s OLD venerable VERNACULAR translations of Scripture which were stored in the Ancient Medieval Monasteries of England, ALL OF WHICH were sacked, looted and burned by Henry VIII’s command for the benefit of his Protestant toadies. They burned ANYTHING including Bible manuscripts that were found in Monasteries as evil and popish. Imagine the proofs Catholics would have today, if that wholesale destruction of History had been avoided? Then what would the Protestants have to say???

 

[patrick457]

Okay, a continuation:

But I think we must go back to the fear of a possible reaction if everyone started reading the Bible. It was only in the past 60-70 years that the Vatican publicly encouraged reading and studying the Bible. But it seems it does so with reservations.

Take a look at what the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation said:

(underlining mine).

Sounds like they were concerned that people might see dangerous ideas in those Gospels that might put some Church doctrine on “shaky ground”.

You know, they were right!

Technically, there’s a good reason for doing so. The Bible is a very hard book; it’s not a newspaper you can pick up and expect to understand fully at one sitting - the Bible is a book; unless your copy of the Bible is somehow sentient and can actually talk, it won’t interpret itself for you. It would be like a kid who barely knows how to add and to subtract trying to read an Algebra textbook which does not go into detail how to do all the equations which the authors expect the target audience to already know, and yet expecting to fully comprehend it.

The Bible might be the Word of God (and it is), but it’s still written by humans, humans who lived in a culture and time different from yours or mine and thought differently from you or me, so forget about injecting one’s own prejudices and cultural thinking into it, unless you want to open a whole new Pandora’s box.
It’s a good and commendable thing to read the Bible, but many people forget that they need to take a grain of salt while doing so. In order to understand and fully appreciate Scripture reading, you need the necessary tools and outside help.

And yes, I am aware of people who read the Bible and see ‘dangerous’ ideas; take for example those ultra-radical folks who wish to somehow prove their agenda, be it that the Bible contradicts itself or that God has a split-personality disorder. They attempt to read their Bible by themselves (one of the more unfortunate fruits of Sola Scriptura), ‘succesfully’ find another evidence to add to their checklist, and then sound the horns: “You know what? When I picked up my Bible and read it, I read that passage in Book A as having the meaning of bla-bla-bla, so it apparently contradicts Book B, which in my reading apparently meant yap-yap-yap!”
Not what you were expecting, eh?

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Look at the most famous Scriptural debate in History; between Jesus and Satan. The devil had craftily misinterpreted Scripture to tempt Jesus. What makes sola Scripturists believe they are better than Jesus? How do they PRESUME to have the Holy Spirit as their guide in all their readings? If they did, there would NEVER be any arguments about Scripture, as everyone would AUTOMATICALLY be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Ah, but suddenly they say there are “some” conditions. ooh. Now who do we believe?

 

[patrick457]

Look at the most famous Scriptural debate in History; between Jesus and Satan. The devil had craftily misinterpreted Scripture to tempt Jesus. What makes sola Scripturists believe they are better than Jesus? How do they PRESUME to have the Holy Spirit as their guide in all their readings? If they did, there would NEVER be any arguments about Scripture, as everyone would AUTOMATICALLY be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Ah, but suddenly they say there are “some” conditions. ooh. Now who do we believe?

From all this we get three lessons: “The devil can also quote Scripture”, “One can make the Bible’s words mean just about anything one wants it to mean”, and “If each and everyone of those who read the Bible and interpret it differently from the other are all correct, the Holy Spirit must have a split-personality disorder.” There’s got to be only one true interpretation. Not two, not three, not three billion six thousand four hundred and eighty-four, but one.