Why did the Catholic Church ban laity from reading Biblical Text?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JD27076
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

JD27076

Guest
This question was thought over.

**But why did they? Was their something in the Bible the Church feared might make people leave the Church? What was that? **

If the Bible came from the Church, if the Bible was compiled by the Church, then why would the Church not want laity to read it?

The Title is past tense, but it can easily be seen as present tense. It is past tense. I read my Bible everyday, along as my other Catholic friends.
 
JD27076 said:
This question was thought over.

**But why did they? Was their something in the Bible the Church feared might make people leave the Church? What was that? **

If the Bible came from the Church, if the Bible was compiled by the Church, then why would the Church not want laity to read it?

The Title is past tense, but it can easily be seen as present tense. It is past tense. I read my Bible everyday, along as my other Catholic friends.
Click to expand...
When you have educated people like Martin Luther doing their weird interpretations of the Bible, it makes you wonder what an illiterate peasant would come up with.
 
The simple answer is that it didn’t. That’s a myth.
 
JD27076 said:
This question was thought over.

**But why did they? Was their something in the Bible the Church feared might make people leave the Church? What was that? **

If the Bible came from the Church, if the Bible was compiled by the Church, then why would the Church not want laity to read it?

The Title is past tense, but it can easily be seen as present tense. It is past tense. I read my Bible everyday, along as my other Catholic friends.
Click to expand...
The question is where is the proof of such a fantastic claim? After all, if the church DID ban reading the Bible, there is certain to be real evidence of such a thing.
 
Farsight001 said:
The simple answer is that it didn’t. That’s a myth.
Click to expand...
I’m sorry to say that it is not a myth. But it is greatly misunderstood.

There were places and times where the Church put the Holy Bible on the list of forbidden books. The bans were always localized to specific places and always temporary.

There was one place, I believe it was somewhere in France (working from memory here), where heretics were teaching that physical creation was evil and the spirit was good. These heretics were using the Bible to teach this heresy and were using Sacred Scripture to encourage people to commit suicide. The church rightly clamped down and the ban was lifted when the controversy subsided.

There was another occasion some time in the middle ages, where people were using the Bible to teach that all oaths were evil. The feudal society of that time was based on oaths. Oaths of allegiance were what held communities together under a ruler who provided protection for his subjects. People started renouncing their oaths of alliegiance and it led to riots and food shortages. In order to quiet the social unrest caused by those who were interpreting scripture incorrectly and teaching error, the Church made an effort to stop public use of Bibles. Once order was restored, the ban was lifted. The ban was an act of mercy for a suffering population.

The “Myth” that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them gets similar treatment from both sides. Non-Catholics hear that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them and it sounds provocative. Catholics say it never happened. But it did happen. That the Church chained Bibles is not a myth. The Church absolutely chained Bibles, but they did it for the same reason the post office chains the pens to the table - so that they don’t get stolen! Bibles were hand copied, and very valuable, and no one could read a Bible if it was stolen so the Church chained them to the table just like the post office chains pens; not to prevent people from using them but so that everyone can use them.

And burning Bibles too. No myth there. In fact Protestant Churches have burned Bibles. There was a Bible published in 1795 which today is known as the “Child killer” Bible.

***But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. *(Mark 7:27)

The Child Killer bible has a typo, so that it read, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “first be filled.” Some guy who read it went out and killed his children. :eek: These Bibles were rounded up and destroyed.

My favorite is the Vexing Wives Bible from 1638 - In a KJV Bible at Numbers 25:18 it reads “for they vex you with their wives” instead of “with their wiles.” I personally think that was divine inspiration. 😃

You can have a laugh at some of these Bibles at the Bible Collector Society website curiosities page.

My point is that the church did discourage reading the Bible from time to time and in certain places, the Church did chain Bibles and Bibles were burned. But that isn’t the whole story.

-Tim-
 
A Protestant friend of mine seriously thought that Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible. I asked him why they sold Catholic Bibles at the bookstore, and was met with a puzzled frown…😃
 
Indiana_Jones said:
A Protestant friend of mine seriously thought that Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible. I asked him why they sold Catholic Bibles at the bookstore, and was met with a puzzled frown…😃
Click to expand...
And Catholic bookstores sell the ENTIRE Bible. Not an adulterated version of the Biblical Canon that Martin Luther invented in the 16th Century. Luther threw out many OT and some NT books. Modern protestant canons have restored the NT books that Luther threw out, but typically lack the OT books. These are sometimes included in protestant Bibles as the “apocrypha” (which means “hidden,” but is a silly term because they have never been hidden, and were part of all Christian Old Testaments until Luther came around, and have been continuously preserved in all Catholic Bibles).

The Catholic Church has defended the WHOLE Bible, from the very first days when the Canon of Holy Scripture was established. The Catholic Church has never added to this Canon, or deleted anything from this Canon. The Catholic Church is the only TRUE “Bible Church” which can make this claim.
 
TimothyH said:
I’m sorry to say that it is not a myth. But it is greatly misunderstood.

There were places and times where the Church put the Holy Bible on the list of forbidden books. The bans were always localized to specific places and always temporary.

There was one place, I believe it was somewhere in France (working from memory here), where heretics were teaching that physical creation was evil and the spirit was good. These heretics were using the Bible to teach this heresy and were using Sacred Scripture to encourage people to commit suicide. The church rightly clamped down and the ban was lifted when the controversy subsided.

There was another occasion some time in the middle ages, where people were using the Bible to teach that all oaths were evil. The feudal society of that time was based on oaths. Oaths of allegiance were what held communities together under a ruler who provided protection for his subjects. People started renouncing their oaths of alliegiance and it led to riots and food shortages. In order to quiet the social unrest caused by those who were interpreting scripture incorrectly and teaching error, the Church made an effort to stop public use of Bibles. Once order was restored, the ban was lifted. The ban was an act of mercy for a suffering population.

The “Myth” that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them gets similar treatment from both sides. Non-Catholics hear that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them and it sounds provocative. Catholics say it never happened. But it did happen. That the Church chained Bibles is not a myth. The Church absolutely chained Bibles, but they did it for the same reason the post office chains the pens to the table - so that they don’t get stolen! Bibles were hand copied, and very valuable, and no one could read a Bible if it was stolen so the Church chained them to the table just like the post office chains pens; not to prevent people from using them but so that everyone can use them.

And burning Bibles too. No myth there. In fact Protestant Churches have burned Bibles. There was a Bible published in 1795 which today is known as the “Child killer” Bible.

***But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. ***(Mark 7:27)

The Child Killer bible has a typo, so that it read, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “first be filled.” Some guy who read it went out and killed his children. :eek: These Bibles were rounded up and destroyed.

My favorite is the Vexing Wives Bible from 1638 - In a KJV Bible at Numbers 25:18 it reads “for they vex you with their wives” instead of “with their wiles.” I personally think that was divine inspiration. 😃

You can have a laugh at some of these Bibles at the Bible Collector Society website curiosities page.

My point is that the church did discourage reading the Bible from time to time and in certain places, the Church did chain Bibles and Bibles were burned. But that isn’t the whole story.

-Tim-
Click to expand...
Wow, great info. Thanks 👍
 
Indiana_Jones said:
A Protestant friend of mine seriously thought that Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible. I asked him why they sold Catholic Bibles at the bookstore, and was met with a puzzled frown…😃
Click to expand...
Misinformation flashes like lightning, while the truth plods along slowly.
 
I had heard that too, that catholics “back in the day” were not supposed to read the bible AT ALL.
 
I, personally have seen a Bible chained to a table in a Catholic Church.
In 1958, I was ashore from a US Naval ship visiting Tarragona Spain. While exploring their Cathedral, which was built and completed around 1205, and had never been modernized. It still had an altar screen stretching the whole width of the Cathedral , located about where the Altar Rail was in US Churches. Also, there were no pews, only a few chairs. Most of the congregation stood during mass and, of course knelt on the stone floor, just as they had done for centuries. Anyway to the point of the story: I saw a beautiful hand decorated and bound Bible anchored to the altar with a fairly heavy hand wrought chain.
I remember thinking at the time, “Wow, I wonder what would happen if some of the Southern Baptists I grew up with would see this!” It came close to making all of their false claims seem real, but I realized it was there only to deter possible theft.
 
Catholics have been able to gain an indulgence by reading the Gospels since at least 1898.

483. Pious Reading of the Gospel.
i. 300 Days, once a day. ii. Plenary, once a month. I, II, IV. 483 Leo XIII, December 13, 1898.
These Indulgences are gained by reading the Gospel for at least a quarter of an hour. (Source: Raccolta, 1910 edition)

I think the following is the current indulgence:
A partial indulgence is granted to the faithful who use Sacred Scripture for spiritual reading with the reverence due the word of God. A plenary indulgence is granted if the reading continues for at least one half hour. (Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, 1968 edition, no. 50.)
 
maplebug55 said:
I had heard that too, that catholics “back in the day” were not supposed to read the bible AT ALL.
Click to expand...
It was really a reaction, or possibly an over reaction, to the so called Protestant Reformation and other events at the time.

Put yourself in the position of the Holy Father and the local ordinary, the local bishop in the early 1500’s.

In an attempt to spread Islam, armies from the Ottomon Empire had been attacking European nations and besieging European cities for over a century. The stuation got so bad that in 1520, the army of the Ottomon Empire had advanced so far north that they had laid siege to Vienna, Austria. That was how close Europe was to falling into the hands of Islam. The Holy Father and his bishops had been dealing with the possible collapse of Christianity in the West for some time and the situation was critical.

The printing press had come widespread use in the 1400’s. To a lesser or greater extent, Bibles were now widely available for the first time in history. Before this time Bibles were copied by hand and were very expensive but now they were widely available.

Then Martin Luther steps onto the scene. He releases his 95 Thesis in 1517, tells the Holy Father to go F himself in 1520, and is excommunicated in 1521. John Calvin breaks with the Catholic Church in 1530 and pulishes his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. Others start getting in on the act and now you have a situation where people are running around with Bibles teaching all kinds of error and setting up their own Churches. Catholics are being drawn away from the sacrments and therefor away from salvation.

What would you do if you were a bishop?

People are running around interpreting scripture in all kinds of erronious ways. Catholics are being taught heresy and being drawn away from the true Church. Martin Luther is telling everyone that even an uneducated plowboy could understand scripture. So some of the bishops clamed down by trying to discourage the faithful from reading scripture and coming up with their own whacky interpretations. They were probably right to do so at the time. What else could they do?

Fast forward 500 years and ask yourself where we are now.

Some guy with a Bible takes six month course in Christian Ministry from an online university, takes out a second mortgage on his home, buys a trailer and some lights and sound equipment, hires a band, and starts his own Church in the high school auditorium. Then he starts spewing all kinds of errors like Baptism doesn’t do anything, the Pope is just an old man from Germany, and Jesus was only speaking symbolically when he said his flesh was food.

The Church was probably right to discourage the faithful from reading scripture on their own. It was an attempt to keep exegisis and interpretation within the framework of 1500 years of Christian theology. It was an attempt to keep Christian doctrine from running into the garbage dump of subjective morality. It was an attempt to preserve and protect REAL Christians spirituality - Carmelite and Franciscan and Benedictine and Dominican - and prevent it’s contamination with what has turned into today’s rock band, coffee bar and prayer journal spirituality.

The Church did try to prevent people from reading scripture. Damn straight they did. And they were probably right to do so. Discourage people from reading the Bible…? They should have ripped the Bible out of the hands of John Calvin and Martin Luther and burned them (the Bibles, not the men). They did the best they could with what they had given the times they lived in.

And up until Vatican II, this mindset persisted, that the laity should leave Biblical interpretation to the professionals. This mindset, which is based on a deep love of catholic/universal truth, expressed itself as “Don’t read the Bible” from time to time. That is one of the beauties of the Second Vatican Council, that it simply recognized that with mass media, TV, and bookstores, we could not go on this way. Who could have forseen the Internet?

But truth is truth. Yes, our Holy Church did discourage the laity from reading Holy Scripture. But it was based on a deep love for and desire to protect catholic/universal truth from heresy and error.

-Tim-
 
George_Stegmeir said:
I, personally have seen a Bible chained to a table in a Catholic Church.
In 1958, I was ashore from a US Naval ship visiting Tarragona Spain. While exploring their Cathedral, which was built and completed around 1205, and had never been modernized. It still had an altar screen stretching the whole width of the Cathedral , located about where the Altar Rail was in US Churches. Also, there were no pews, only a few chairs. Most of the congregation stood during mass and, of course knelt on the stone floor, just as they had done for centuries. Anyway to the point of the story: I saw a beautiful hand decorated and bound Bible anchored to the altar with a fairly heavy hand wrought chain.
I remember thinking at the time, “Wow, I wonder what would happen if some of the Southern Baptists I grew up with would see this!” It came close to making all of their false claims seem real, but I realized it was there only to deter possible theft.
Click to expand...
This is amazing George. I would have liked to have seen that.

A 750 year old Cathedral with a hand made Bible chained to the altar. Wow.

-Tim-
 
TimothyH said:
I’m sorry to say that it is not a myth. But it is greatly misunderstood.

There were places and times where the Church put the Holy Bible on the list of forbidden books. The bans were always localized to specific places and always temporary.

There was one place, I believe it was somewhere in France (working from memory here), where heretics were teaching that physical creation was evil and the spirit was good. These heretics were using the Bible to teach this heresy and were using Sacred Scripture to encourage people to commit suicide. The church rightly clamped down and the ban was lifted when the controversy subsided.

There was another occasion some time in the middle ages, where people were using the Bible to teach that all oaths were evil. The feudal society of that time was based on oaths. Oaths of allegiance were what held communities together under a ruler who provided protection for his subjects. People started renouncing their oaths of alliegiance and it led to riots and food shortages. In order to quiet the social unrest caused by those who were interpreting scripture incorrectly and teaching error, the Church made an effort to stop public use of Bibles. Once order was restored, the ban was lifted. The ban was an act of mercy for a suffering population.

The “Myth” that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them gets similar treatment from both sides. Non-Catholics hear that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them and it sounds provocative. Catholics say it never happened. But it did happen. That the Church chained Bibles is not a myth. The Church absolutely chained Bibles, but they did it for the same reason the post office chains the pens to the table - so that they don’t get stolen! Bibles were hand copied, and very valuable, and no one could read a Bible if it was stolen so the Church chained them to the table just like the post office chains pens; not to prevent people from using them but so that everyone can use them.

And burning Bibles too. No myth there. In fact Protestant Churches have burned Bibles. There was a Bible published in 1795 which today is known as the “Child killer” Bible.
***But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. ***(Mark 7:27)
The Child Killer bible has a typo, so that it read, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “first be filled.” Some guy who read it went out and killed his children. :eek: These Bibles were rounded up and destroyed.

My favorite is the Vexing Wives Bible from 1638 - In a KJV Bible at Numbers 25:18 it reads “for they vex you with their wives” instead of “with their wiles.” I personally think that was divine inspiration. 😃

You can have a laugh at some of these Bibles at the Bible Collector Society website curiosities page.

My point is that the church did discourage reading the Bible from time to time and in certain places, the Church did chain Bibles and Bibles were burned. But that isn’t the whole story.

-Tim-
Click to expand...
I’m sorry, I have to question the authenticity of some of your claims regarding banning of reading the bible by the church. Do you have an ACTUAL source for these claims other than “working from memory”?

And preemptively, one must understand that even if such were true, it would only affect the infinitisemally small portion of Catholics who were able to read and wealthy enough to afford the MASSIVE cost of a Bible (approximately $120,000 or more in today’s money)… Not to mention the fact that the mass itself contains LARGE amounts of scripture, so even if reading scripture were banned locally for a time, people (literate or not) would still get large amounts of exposure to scripture.
 
TimothyH said:
I’m sorry to say that it is not a myth. But it is greatly misunderstood.

The “Myth” that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them gets similar treatment from both sides. Non-Catholics hear that the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them and it sounds provocative. Catholics say it never happened. But it did happen. That the Church chained Bibles is not a myth. The Church absolutely chained Bibles, but they did it for the same reason the post office chains the pens to the table - so that they don’t get stolen! Bibles were hand copied, and very valuable, and no one could read a Bible if it was stolen so the Church chained them to the table just like the post office chains pens; not to prevent people from using them but so that everyone can use them.
Click to expand...
In actuality if the charge is “the Church chained Bilbes so that no one could read them” --then it is a myth and false charge. The reason they were chained, as you correctly point out, was to stop them from being stolen–not to keep people from reading them. The charge is never simply “the Church chained Bibles”. So I maintain that the charge “the Church chained Bibles so that no one could read them” is indeed false.

And burning Bibles too. No myth there. In fact Protestant Churches have burned Bibles. There was a Bible published in 1795 which today is known as the “Child killer” Bible.
***But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. *(Mark 7:27)
The Child Killer bible has a typo, so that it read, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “first be filled.” Some guy who read it went out and killed his children. :eek: These Bibles were rounded up and destroyed.

Yes, but again the charge implied is that we burned valid Bibles–not ones that didn’t contain dangerous typo’s or outright heresy. I not sure a Bible translated so poorly as to be heretical can properly be called a Bible. The accusation is that we burned Bibles to keep them out of the hands of people so that they wouldn’t know what was in the Bible (even though it was read to them at Mass) that somehow this shows that we feared the Bible and were hostile towards it–and that I think is a false charge.

My point is that the church did discourage reading the Bible from time to time and in certain places, the Church did chain Bibles and Bibles were burned. But that isn’t the whole story.

-Tim-

Peace,
Mark
 
promethius said:
I’m sorry, I have to question the authenticity of some of your claims regarding banning of reading the bible by the church. Do you have an ACTUAL source for these claims other than “working from memory”?

And preemptively, one must understand that even if such were true, it would only affect the infinitisemally small portion of Catholics who were able to read and wealthy enough to afford the MASSIVE cost of a Bible (approximately $120,000 or more in today’s money)… Not to mention the fact that the mass itself contains LARGE amounts of scripture, so even if reading scripture were banned locally for a time, people (literate or not) would still get large amounts of exposure to scripture.
Click to expand...
If memory serves Stephen Ray has a book about this topic.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top