no private interpritationKinda' like when they equate the Body of Christ, His Ch

[zoonance]

It does seem that Paul had a better understanding of the church than Peter did on at least on one major issue as evidenced by Galations 2:11-14.

All the Apostles were human, so it's not surprising to find disagreements among them.  However, St. Peter was still the leader.  So, even though St. Paul pointed out to St. Peter what he saw wrong in the treatment of the pagans, it was St. Peter who first ordered the baptism of the pagans (Acts 10:44-48).

all human beings are human beings.

[Amo]

The Catholic Church has never prevented the people from reading the Bible.  As a matter of fact, it was Johann Gutenberg who invented the printing press,  Gutenberg was a Catholic and the Catholic Church approved of and encouraged his printing of Bibles. Before the printing press copying the Bible was the work of Catholic monks in monasteries who actually took a pen and paper and copied books of the Bible to create additional copies.  According to a weblink deoomnisgloria.com/archives

I am afraid you are just another victim of diabolical Catholic revisionist history.  Let me share some other sources with you.

FACTS OF FAITH by Christian Edwardson Pg. 10-13

ROME'S FIGHT

Rome was awake to the inevitable result of allowing the common people to
read the Bible, and the Vicar of Croydon declared in a speech at St. Paul's Cross, London: "We must destroy the printing press, or it will destroy us

[Amo]

As for their morals and behavior, who ever will but reflect upon the
debauchery and general corruption which reigned in the eleventh century,
will easily judge, that those who renounced the communion of the Church
of Rome, and who called her the mystical Babylon, because of her false
worship, and the horrid corruption of her ministers, must needs be more
pure in their morals, and more orderly in their behavior; and indeed we find
it true in the Albigenses, as well pastors as people.

The pastors recommended to the people the having of the books of the
New Testament in their mother-tongue, and pressed the reading thereof
with so much care and application, that Raymond, Earl of Toulouse, never
stirred any whither without taking that holy book with him. This was the
certain badge and mark of all these heretics, and that whereby they
defended themselves. For which reason, the Council of Toulouse, fearing
lest their croisades should not be able to exterminate the Albigenses, as
long as they had the Bible in the vulgar tongue, took care to prohibit the
having of it in these terms;

"We prohibit the permission of the books of the Old and New
Testament to laymen, except perhaps they might desire to have the
Psalter, or some Breviary for the divine service, or the Hours of the
blessed Virgin Mary, for devotion; expressly forbidding their
having the other parts of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue.

[Amo]

ROME DESTROYED BIBLES

September 7, 1997 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, 1701 N. Harns Rd., Oak Harbor, WA 98277) - The following is abridged from the book ROME AND THE BIBLE: TRACING THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS PERSECUTION OF THE BIBLE AND OF BIBLE BELIEVERS, by David W. Cloud, Way of Life Literature, copyright

For 600 years the Roman Catholic Church attempted to keep vernacular translations of the Bible out of the hands of the people. The Council of Toulouse, in 1229, decreed that "the laity" could not possess the books of the Old and New Testament "in the vulgar tongue." Waldensian and other Bible-believing people were mercilessly persecuted and their Scriptures destroyed. The Council of Trent, in 1546, claimed that the indiscriminate distribution of the Scriptures caused more evil than good and forbade the people to possess the Bible without a written license. Those who possessed Bibles without a license were commanded to deliver them up to the Catholic authorities under threat of inquisition terrors. Booksellers were forbidden to sell any Bibles except to people who possessed a license from the Catholic church. Huge quantities of Scriptures in English, Germany, Italian, French, Spanish, and in other languages, were confiscated and destroyed throughout the 13th to the 19th centuries. Bible translators and distributors were imprisoned and burned. Even after the Catholic inquisition was outlawed in many lands in the 18th and 19th centuries, the popes continued to condemn the free distribution of Scripture. Pius VII, in 1816, condemned the Bible society in Poland and claimed that the distribution of Scripture was undermining "the very foundations of religion" and was "eminently dangerous to souls." He said, "The Holy Scriptures, when circulated in the vulgar tongue, have, through the temerity of men, produced more harm than benefit." Leo XII, in 1824, said that "if the sacred Scriptures be everywhere indiscriminately published, more evil than advantage will arise." In 1825 Leo mandated that the decrees of the Council of Trent be enforced against distribution of Scriptures. Pius VIII, in 1829, condemned the Bible societies and the free distribution of Scripture. Gregory XVI, in 1836, and again in 1844, affirmed the decrees of his predecessors. In another bull of 1845, this pope repeated his condemnation of Bible society Scriptures and denied that the Scriptures should be freely distributed to all people. Pius IX, in 1850, issued an encyclical letter which condemned the Bible societies. In 1864 this pope issued a Syllabus of Errors, in which he again condemned Bible societies, lumping them together with Communism, secret societies, and other evils, labeling them "pests of this kind." Leo XIII, in 1897, prohibited "all versions of the vernacular, even by Catholics, unless approved by the Holy See, or published under the vigilant care of bishops."

Some have downplayed the significance of this ugly history, claiming that Rome only forbade "unauthorized" vernacular versions, not all vernacular versions. This is one of those half truths which is used to hide the truth, for to state the case in such terms is to miss the truth of this history entirely. Note the following facts:

1. THE COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE (1229) AND THE COUNCIL OF TARRAGONA (1234) FORBADE THE
LAITY TO POSSESS OR READ THE VERNACULAR TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE. NO EXCEPTIONS
WERE MENTIONED. The Council of Toulouse used these words: "We prohibit the permission of the books of the Old and New Testament to laymen, except perhaps they might desire to have the Psalter, or some Breviary for the divine service, or the Hours of the blessed Virgin Mary, for devotion; expressly forbidding their having the other parts of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue" (Pierre Allix, Ecclesiastical History of Ancient Churches of the Albigenses, 1821, p. 213). The declarations of these formal Roman Catholic councils held power for centuries thereafter and were repeatedly cited as authoritative by subsequent popes and councils. In fact, these declarations have never been rescinded.

2. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH DID NOT GIVE THE PEOPLE BIBLES. To argue that the Roman
Catholic Church forbade only unauthorized vernacular versions is to argue a technicality which has no meaning in reality. Some odd exception which might have existed at some particular place in some point in history does not change this rule. The fact is that the Roman Catholic Church did not labor to give people the Bible, and wherever Rome held power, the people did not have ready access to the Scriptures. THIS IS THE BOTTOM LINE. Consider the very important ENGLISH tongue. The Roman Catholic Church did not produce a Bible in English until 1582, fully two centuries after Wycliffe made the first English Bible, and more than a half century after Tyndale made his masterpiece for the English-speaking world. Rome had done everything in its power to destroy the Wycliffe and Tyndale English Scriptures. Wycliffe's bones were exhumed and burned by Catholic authorities, and Tyndale was burned at the stake. Even after Rome finally did produce an English Bible (the Rheims-Douai), it was not widely published and made available to the people. The New Testament was reprinted by Catholics ONLY THREE TIMES and the Douai Old Testament, ONLY ONCE, between 1582 and 1750--A PERIOD OF 168 YEARS.

In Roman-dominated lands, the Bible was almost an unknown book among the common people. Consider this testimony about conditions existing in THE CITY OF ROME ITSELF as late as the mid 19th century: "The Bible in Rome is a strange and rare book. The only edition of it authorized to be sold here, is in fifteen large volumes, which are filled with Popish commentaries. Of course none but the rich can purchase a copy of the sacred Scriptures. Indeed very few of the common people know what we mean by the Bible" (J.A. Clark, Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Andrew, Philadelphia, in a letter to his congregation, dated from Rome, March 24, 1838; reprinted by Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, 1851, p. 23).

Consider the situation in IRELAND, another bastion of Roman Catholicism. In 1907 and 1908 the Irish Church Mission made a diligent search of book shops in Catholic Ireland to determine the availability of Catholic Bibles. Note the result: "In the booksellers' shops of Athlone, Balbriggan, Drogheda, Mullingar, Wexford, and Clonmel, not a Bible, or New Testament, or scrap of Scripture of the Church's authorized version, could be found--a shop assistant at Mullingar, saying, 'I never saw a Catholic Bible.' ... in Cork, with over 76,000 inhabitants, there are twenty-four Roman Catholic booksellers, of whom twenty did not keep the Scriptures, two of them asking the would-be purchaser if the Douay New Testament, of which they knew nothing, was 'a new monthly publication.' Lastly, in Dublin itself, out of four large Roman Catholic publishing and bookselling establishments, only one had the Scriptures, whilst the answer given to an inquiry for a New Testament at the depot of The Catholic Truth Society was, 'We don't keep it.' The conclusion arrived at by the commissioners who ransacked the booksellers' shops in Ireland for Bibles, was 'that in nine-tenths of the cities, towns, and villages of Ireland a Roman Catholic could not procure a copy of the Roman Catholic Bible or New Testament'" (Alexander Robertson, The Papal Conquest, 1909, pp. 166,167).

It was 1831 before the first Bible was printed in SPANISH AMERICA, and when the Catholic Church finally did allow the publication of some Scriptures there, they were so outrageously expensive that the common man could not afford a copy. "A traveler across BRAZIL in 1902, who inquired carefully into the subject, found in a thousand miles bishops and priests in plenty, BUT NOT A SINGLE COPY OF THE SCRIPTURES IN ANY LAY HOME; nor had most of the residents ever heard of the Bible, though they were able, willing, and anxious to buy a copy when it was shown to them" (Jacobus, Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles Compared, 1905, p. 235). These examples could be multiplied exceedingly.

3. FOR ROME TO CLAIM THAT IT "ONLY" FORBADE "UNAUTHORIZED" VERNACULAR BIBLES IS
TO ADMIT ITS PRESUMPTION AND WICKEDNESS. The Council of Trent did allow reading of Scripture, but
only after a license in writing was obtained from the proper ecclesiastical authority, a license which was given only in extremely rare cases. Even the Catholic clergy had to obtain a license from their bishops before they were allowed to read the Bible. Booksellers were forbidden to have Bibles in stock for sale under pain of severe punishment. This was a great wickedness. Rome does not have authority from God to forbid that people read the Bible or to require that men obtain her license before reading God's Word. The Bible was given for all people, and the Lord Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to preach the Gospel unto all nations, to every creature. Charles Elliott, in his Delineation of Roman Catholicism, 1851, made this wise observation: "The Bible is a proclamation of mercy, addressed to sinful men, in such terms as the following: 'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else' (Isa. 45:22). The Church of Rome stands by, and presumes to decide who shall, and who shall not, hear these words of the Almighty Saviour; and if any person hear them at all, it is by her permission. This is assuming a power and authority equal to that of God, and a right to control, or at least to regulate, the manner of communicating his will to his creatures. It is arrogating an authority which belongs to no creature, nor to any assembly of creatures, to decide when and to whom the Almighty shall address his overtures of mercy and grace. This claim of an authority to permit, implies an authority to prevent or prohibit, the reading of the Scriptures, whenever it shall happen that prevention is more expedient than permission. This, in general, has been the case; and if her assumed authority of permitting proves her to be in error, much more will her preventing fix that character upon her" (Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, p. 24).

[Selene]

I am sorry Amos, but all your sources came from anti-Catholic sources, which is extremely unreliable in that they distort the truth in history.  As I said, it was Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press.  Gutenberg was a Catholic.  It was a Catholic who developed the printing press and it was the Catholic Church who encouraged Gutenberg to publish the Bible in mass quantities.  All you had to do was look up Johannes Gutenberg.  Below is the truth about this inventor. 

"When Johannes Gutenberg began building his press in 1436, he was unlikely to have realised that he was giving birth to an art form which would take center stage in the social and industrial revolutions which followed. He was German, his press was wooden, and the most important aspect of his invention was that it was the first form of printing to use movable type.

His initial efforts enabled him in 1440 to mass-produce indulgences -- printed slips of paper sold by the Catholic Church to remit temporal punishments in purgatory for sins committed in this life, for those wealthy enough to afford indulgences. Although Laurence Koster (Coster) of Haarlem, Netherlands also laid claim to the invention, scholars have generally accepted Gutenberg as the father of modern printing.

Gutenberg left Strasburg, presumably about 1444. He seems to have perfected at enormous expense his invention shortly afterwards, as is shown by the oldest specimens of printing that have come down to us, the "Poem of the Last Judgment", and the "Calendar for 1448"). The fact that Arnolt Gelthuss, a relative of Gutenberg, lent him money in the year 1448 at Mainz points to the same conclusion.

Before books could be mass produced, several developments were necessary.A ready supply of suitable material that could be printed on was required. Manuscript books were written on vellum and this material was used for some early printed books, but vellum was expensive and not available in sufficient quantity for the mass production of books. The introduction of the technique of making paper and the subsequent development of a European papermaking industry was a necessary condition for the widespread adoption of print technology.

Although a number of people had previously attempted to make metal type or had experimented with individual woodcut letters, it was not until a technique was devised for producing metal type in large quantities that printing with moveable type became economically feasible. Gutenberg, who had initially trained as a goldsmith, was to devise a means of producing metal type in sufficient quantities at a reasonable cost. This involved the design of a type-face and the production of molds used for making the individual pieces of type, as well as the development of an alloy that was soft enough to cast yet hard enough to use for printing.

It was also necessary to develop suitable inks for printing with the new type. The water-based inks used for hand lettering and for block printing will not stick to metal type, therefore a viscous oil based ink was required.

Finally, a press was needed for transferring the image from type to paper. Precedents existed in the presses used for making wine, cheese and paper and one of Johannes Gutenberg's innovations was to adapt these presses for the printing process. An operator worked a lever to increase and decrease the pressure of the block against the paper. The invention of the printing press, in turn, set off a social revolution that is still in progress.

Legal documents indicate that Gutenberg probably began printing the Bible around 1450. It was in this year that Gutenberg entered into a partnership with Johann Fust who lent him money to finance the production of a Bible. Gutenberg certainly introduced efficient methods into book production, leading to a boom in the production of texts in Europe -- in large part, owing to the popularity of the Gutenberg Bibles, the first mass-produced work, starting in 1452. Even so, Gutenberg was a poor businessman, and made little money from his printing system.
The history of the printed Bible with movable type is the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Fragments of earlier bibles have also been found - they are differentiated by the number of lines of text on a page. Scholars have identified several variants and attempted to work out the sequence of development on the basis of the quality of the individual pieces of type.

The oldest surviving Bible printed with movable type is often called the Gutenberg Bible (named after its printer Johannes Gutenberg), or the 42-line Bible (so called because with few exceptions, each page has 42 lines of print), or the Mazarin Bible (because the first copy to recapture attention in 1760 was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin, in Paris).

The Bible, printed at Mainz, probably required several years of work; it began in 1452 and was completed not later than 1455 and printed in an edition of about 200 copies. The text of the Bible is Latin. Colored initials and other illuminations were hand drawn after the pages were printed. The pages of the book are folio, each page is in two columns, and, with few exceptions, each column has 42 lines. The Gutenberg Bible lacks many print features that modern readers are accustomed to, such as pagination, word spacing, indentations, and paragraph breaks.

The Bible was large comprising over 1280 pages, and the text was laid out in two columns. The German Gothic type-style was modeled on manuscripts of the period. The columns of text are tightly justified right and left. This is possible because Latin words can be abbreviated by replacing letters with symbols. The printed text was black, with red and blue headers and initials being added later by an illuminator. The edition includes both vellum and paper copies. In design and workmanship, the Gutenberg Bible holds its place as one of the finest of all printed books.

As of 2003, the Gutenberg Bible census includes 11 complete copies on vellum, 1 copy of the New Testament only on vellum, 48 substantially complete integral copies on paper, with another divided copy on paper, and an illuminated page (the Bagford fragment).

The very first pages Gutenberg printed had only 40 lines per column. Later in the course of printing, Gutenberg realized the paper could accommodate 42 lines and so the pages were reset and printed again in the new format. The original pages of 40 lines were included in the very first issue of the Gutenberg Bible.

History records that Gutnberg's declining years were spent in the court of Archbishop Adolf of Nassau, to whose suite he was appointed on January 18, 1465. The distinction thus conferred on him carried with it allowances of clothing and other necessities which saved him from actual want. In all likelihood he died at Mainz in 1468.."

[Selene]

Now below is the Truth about the history of the Catholic Church.  This excerpt was taken from a website that was mentioned in my previous post:



"Did the Catholic Church forbid Christians from Reading the Bible?

Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. - - St. Jerome quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 133.

It has become an extremely common belief that the Catholic Church prevented Christians from reading the Bible and protestant reformers gave it back to the people. At this point it has become a common perception pointing to the problems of the Catholic Church. The argument goes that the Catholic Church forbid parishioners from reading the Bible, because they knew the Church was not following Scripture. And then, when Gutenberg�s printing press was invented, suddenly the people could read the Bible � and Martin Luther led them back to worship as it was supposed to be or as the Bible intended.

Historical Reality and Personal Bibles

Starting with a clear understanding of history is important to clarify the context of this claim. Very few Christians realize that for almost 400 years after the Crucifixion we did not actually have a Bible. The books that the Catholic Church eventually pulled together into the Bible were floating around at the various Churches, but there was much disagreement over which of the books were Scriptural and which were not. Some parishes (or individual churches within the Catholic Church) accepted one book or another, but many did not accept all of Scripture. Hebrews and Revelation, for example, were hotly debated during the time. And some books, like the Gospel of Thomas, which are not Scriptural, were accepted as such.

So finally the Catholic Church compiled the Bible as we know it (Martin Luther later removed some books from protestant Bibles) at the Council of Hippo. So up until that time the Bible did not exist as a single book the way we think of it today.

To further complicate matters there is one other issue: illiteracy. Americans still have trouble understanding that the vast majority of the world is illiterate even today. During the Dark Ages it was even worse, since virtually no one could read (Catholic monks in monasteries saved culture and writing in an amazing way). So even if the Catholic Church had personally given a Bible to every Christian, it would have been fruitless (and still would be today). The people learned about God through their parish priest and worshipped Him through Mass.

And yet, the Catholic Church could not have given a Bible to every Christian. Why? Because the printing press had not been invented! Until Johann Gutenberg�s wonderful invention in 1456 AD, Bibles were copied by hand. (Remember, Gutenberg was a good Catholic and the Church approved of and encouraged his printing of Bibles.) Before the printing press copying the Bible was the work of Catholic monks in monasteries who actually took a pen and paper and copied books of the Bible to create additional copies.

But the question still remains: Did the Catholic Church forbid Christians from reading the Bible?

What the Catholic Church did do.

The actions the Church actually took are the most indicative of their frame of mind. Instead of hiding away the Bible � or making changes to it during the Dark Ages when no one would have known � the Church did something different. They chained Bibles down in individual Catholic parishes.

At first, this sounds barbaric: they were chaining down God�s Word to keep people from it. However it was quite the opposite. The Church wanted Christians to have access to the Bible, but they were not able to provide personal copies of the Bible to parishioners (the ultra-rich were able to get copies). So they put a copy of the Bible in each church and made it publicly available. But they did have to chain it down to keep it from being stolen (it took copious amounts of time to create a single Bible).

Kept in the parish church, that Bible [ed: the one chained down that cost as much as $10,000 in today�s currency] was made available to lay Catholics by chaining it to the table on which it was placed, just as telephone books today are kept available for the public by chaining them to telephone booths. Does the phone company chain the Yellow Pages so that no one can use them? Quite the opposite � so that the maximum number of people can have access to them. It was the same with the Bible.
- - Karl Keating What Catholics Really Believe

The Church also did something perhaps more important: it translated the Bible into art. This sounds a little silly, but it is not. When the people cannot read, the answer is to create art that explains the Bible. Not just paintings from famous artists (which the Church cannot take credit for), but stained glass art in churches that depict scenes from the Bible. This was a way to preach the Gospel even to the illiterate. They could understand what was happening in the scenes since they were hearing the Bible from the pulpit (the Catholic mass goes through every word of Scripture in a three-year time frame).

The Church also translated Bibles into the vernacular. Often you will hear things such as �Wycliff was the first to translate the Bible into English,� but this is simply untrue. We can cite a contemporary, Saint Thomas More the Lord Chancellor of England who was martyred:

The whole Bible long before Wycliff�s day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read.� - - Dialogues III


Some even claimed that in the 1900s, the Church tried to stop people from reading Scripture, but this can be disproved:

3. Why weren�t Catholics allowed to read the Bible even the years just prior to Vatican Council II? They were, and I can speak from personal experience, since I was a schoolboy in those days. Much earlier, as soon as Bibles became more accessible and as literacy rates rose, the Church not only permitted but encouraged her sons and daughters to read the Scriptures.

When I was a parochial-school student in the 1950�s, at least one hour each week was spent on biblical studies. This was in addition to our regular catechism classes, which incorporated scriptural citations to ground Catholic teachings in the Bible. Still more time was spent on studying the Gospel passages used at Sunday Mass. - - Fr. Peter Stravinskas The Catholic Church and the Bible


So Free the People, Right?
I would like to stop for a moment and point out one thing: it is somewhat dangerous for those without any understanding to start reading and attempting to translate the Bible. It is not self-explanatory as we learn in Acts 8:30 when the Ethiopian points out that without a teacher he cannot understand the Bible.

In our day when we look around at the Jehovah�s Witnesses, for example, whose church is entirely based on a bad translation of Scripture. Or those who believe the Bible teaches reincarnation (I�ve met people who insist this), we understand that there is a propensity to mistranslate and misunderstand the Bible. Even those who try very hard to perfectly understand Scripture disagree on the need for baptism, for example.

What I�m trying to say is that the Bible requires some help in translation and comprehension. The Church has always taught that the Bible must be properly understood and certain verses are teaching specific things. So for example we must believe from Genesis that there was an original man and woman with a soul. The Church has always strongly encouraged the faithful to read their Bibles with the understanding that the Catholic Church � as the �pillar and bulwark of Truth� (1 Tim 3:15) � can infallibly interpret certain parts of the Bible to keep people from error. This isn�t a way to prevent us from reading and understanding Scripture, but a way to keep us true to Scripture. You are allowed to believe that the world was created in 7 days or over millennia, but you must also believe that God did create man and woman specifically and uniquely.

Revelation: the Conclusion
In conclusion history teaches us that much of our perceptions can be wrong. What is commonly believed must be analyzed for Truth. The Catholic Church did the opposite of keep the Bible from the people: she encouraged them to read it and even made it available to them as she was able. Priests have always been required to have an understanding and appreciation for Scripture in order to teach it to Christian laymen and women. And the Mass is designed to read every word of Scripture � even those tossed out by Martin Luther � in a three-year period so that you are completely exposed.

The Bible is the book of the Catholic Church. Her members wrote it and compiled it in good time. And she encourages all of us to read it, since �ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."

God bless,
Jay

[winsome]

Over the years the Church, and in particular the Popes, have restrained the power of Kings by threats of excommunication and interdiction. The Church has always been concerned for the physical welfare of it's flock as well as the spiritual welfare. In the past, and perhaps even today, the Catholic Church has been the biggest provider of education and healthcare in the world.

An amazing whopper of distortion regarding the truth of the matter.  Popes have commanded kings to wipe out entire peoples who would not bow the knee to Rome, and threatened them and anyone else who would not obey with the same excommunication.  They have fought tooth and nail to prevent the education of people regarding anything they did not approve, including the word of God in their own native tongue, and the printing press, when it was used to print bibles in the same.  They burnt people and their writings, when they did not approve of the same.  Much important history was destroyed by them because of this.  How does slaughtering countless millions of people equate with health care in the world?  You have been reading far to much twisted Roman Catholic revisionist history. 

From  "Where We Got the Bible" by Father Henry G. Graham.

CHAPTER XI. Abundance of Vernacular Scriptures before Wycliff

I HAVE said that people who could read at all in the Middle Ages could read Latin: hence there was little need for the Church to issue the Scriptures in any other language. But as a matter of fact she did in many countries put the Scriptures in the hands of her children in their own tongue. (I) We know from history that there were popular translations of the Bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing, but we shall confine ourselves to England, so as to refute once more the common fallacy that John Wycliff was the first to place an English translation of the Scriptures in the hands of the English people in 1382.

To anyone that has investigated the real facts of the case, this fondly-cherished notion must seem truly ridiculous; it is not only absolutely false, but stupidly so, inasmuch as it admits of such easy disproof; one wonders that nowadays any lecturer or writer should have the temerity to advance it. Now, observe I am speaking of the days before the printing­press was invented; I am speaking of England; and concerning a Church which did not, and does not, admit the necessity of Bible-reading for salvation; and concerning an age when the production of the Scriptures was a most costly business, and far beyond the means of nearly everybody. Yet we may safely assert, and we can prove, that there were actually in existence among the people many copies of the Scriptures in the English tongue of that day. To begin far back, we have a copy of the work of Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, in the end of the seventh century, consisting of great portions of the Bible in the common tongue. In the next century we have the well-known translations of Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow, who died whilst busy with the Gospel of St. John. In the same (eighth) century we have the copies of Eadhelm, Bishop of Sherborne; of Guthlac, a hermit near Peterborough; and of Egbert, Bishop of Holy Island; these were all in Saxon, the language understood and spoken by the Christians of that time. Coming down a little later, we have the free translations of King Alfred the Great who was working at the Psalms when he died, and of Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury; as well as popular renderings of Holy Scripture like the Book of Durham, and the Rushworth Gloss and others that have survived the wreck of ages. After the Norman conquest in 1066, Anglo-Norman or Middle-English became the language of England, and consequently the next translations of the Bible we meet with are in that tongue. There are several specimens still known, such as the paraphrase of Orm (about 1150) and the Salus Animae (1050), the translations of William Shoreham and Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole (died 1349). I say advisedly 'specimens' for those that have come down to us are merely indications of a much greater number that once existed, but afterwards perished. We have proof of this in the words of Blessed Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII who says: 'The whole Bible long before Wycliff's day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read' (Dialogues III). Again, 'The clergy keep no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be either not yet approved for good, or such as be already reproved for naught (i.e., bad, naughty) as Wycliff's was. For, as for old ones that were before Wycliff's days, they remain lawful and be in some folks' hand. I myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles, fair and old which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese, and left in laymen's hands and women's too, such as he knew for good and Catholic folk, that used them with soberness and devotion.' (2) But you will say, that is the witness of a Roman Catholic. Well, I shall advance Protestant testimony also.

The translators of the Authorised Version, in their 'Preface', referring to previous translations of the Scriptures into the language of the people, make the following important statements. After speaking of the Greek and Latin Versions, they proceed:

'The godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin ... but also for the behoof and edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided translations into the Vulgar for their countrymen, insomuch that most nations under Heaven did shortly after their conversion hear Christ speaking unto them in their Mother tongue, not by the voice of their minister only but also by the written word translated.'

Now, as all these nations were certainly converted by the Roman Catholic Church, for there was then no other to send missionaries to convert anybody, this is really a valuable admission. The Translators of 1611, then, after enumerating many converted nations that had the Vernacular Scriptures, come to the case of England, and include it among the others. 'Much about that time,' they say (1360), even in our King Richard the Second's days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . ... So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England [or others] ... but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.'

This testimony, from the Preface, (too little known) of their own Authorised Bible, ought surely to carry some weight with well disposed Protestants.

Moreover, the 'Reformed' Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, says, in his preface to the Bible of 1540: 'The Holy Bible was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, which at that time was our mother tongue, whereof there remaineth yet divers copies found in old Abbeys, of such antique manner of writing and speaking that few men now be able to read and understand them. And when this language waxed old and out of common use, because folks should not lack the fruit of reading, it was again translated into the newer language, whereof yet also many copies remain and be daily found.' Again, Foxe, a man that Protestants trust, says: 'If histories be well examined, we shall find, both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wycliff was born as since, the whole body of Scripture by sundry men translated into our country tongue.' 'But as of the earlier period, so of this, there are none but fragmentary remains, the "many copies" which remained when Cranmer wrote in 1540 having doubtless disappeared in the vast and ruthless destruction of libraries which took place within a few years after that date.' These last words are from the pen of Rev. J. H. Blunt, a Protestant author, in his History of the English Bible; and another Anglican dignitary, Dean Hook, tells us that 'long before Wycliff's time there had been translators of Holy Writ.' One more authority on the Protestant side, and I have done: it is Mr. Karl Pearson (Academy, August, 1885), who says: 'The Catholic Church has quite enough to answer for, but in the 15th century it certainly did not hold back the Bible from the folk: and it gave them in the vernacular (i.e. their own tongue) a long series of devotional works which for language and religious sentiment have never been surpassed. Indeed, we are inclined to think it made a mistake in allowing the masses such ready access to the Bible. It ought to have recognised the Bible once for all as a work absolutely unintelligible without a long course of historical study, and, so far as it was supposed to be inspired, very dangerous in the hands of the ignorant.' We do not know what Mr. Pearson's religious standpoint may have been, but he goes too far in blaming the Church for throwing the Bible open to the people in the 15th century, or indeed in any previous age. No evil results whatsoever followed the reading of that precious volume in any century preceding the 16th, because the people had the Catholic Church to lead them and guide them and teach them the meaning of it. It was only when the principle of 'Private judgment' was proclaimed that the Book became 'dangerous' and 'unintelligible', as it is still to the multitudes who will not receive the true interpretation of it at the hands of the Catholic Church, and who are about as competent to understand and explain it by themselves as they are to explain or prophesy the movements of the heavenly bodies.

(3) There is no need, it seems to me, to waste further time and space in accumulating proofs that the Bible was known, read and distributed by the Catholic Church in the common language of the people in all countries from the 7th down to the 14th century. I have paid more attention to the case of England because of the popularity of the myth about Wycliff having been the first to translate it, and to enable the poor blinded Papists, for the first time in their experience, to behold the Figure of the Christ of the Gospels in 1382. Such a grotesque notion can only be due either to ignorance or concealment of the now well-known facts of history. One would fain hope that, in this age of enlightenment and study, no one valuing his scholarship will so far imperil it as to attempt to revive the silly fable. But supposing it were as true as it is false, that John Wycliff was the first to publish the Bible in English, how in the name of reason can it be true at the same time that Luther, more than 100 years afterwards, discovered it? Really, people must decide which story they are going to tell, for the one is the direct contradictory of the other. Wycliff or Luther, let it be; but Wycliff and Luther together—that is impossible.

(4) Now, it may seem somewhat irrelevant to our present subject, which is simply 'where we got the Bible', to wander off to foreign lands and see how matters stood there at the date at which we have now arrived; but I should not like to pass from this part of the enquiry without setting down a few facts which are generally unknown to our separated brethren, as to the existence of plenty of Bibles in those very countries which they think were, and of course still are, plunged in the depths of superstition, illiteracy and degradation. They flatter themselves with the idea that it was the knowledge of the Scriptures which produced the blessed Reformation the world over; and will tell you that it was all because the Holy Book was scaled and locked and hidden away from the benighted Papists in Continental countries that the glorious light of the Reformation never broke, and has not yet broken, upon them. There are, however, unfortunately for them, facts at hand, facts unquestioned, which explode this pious notion. The facts are these:—(i) As was shown long ago in the Dublin Review (October, 1837), 'it was almost solely in those countries which have remained constant to the Catholic Faith that popular versions of the Bible had been published; while it was precisely in those kingdoms, England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, where Protestantism acquired an early and has maintained a permanent ascendancy, that no printed Bible existed when they embraced Protestantism. Holland alone and a few cities in Germany were in possession of the Bible when they adopted the Reformed Creed.' Is it really the case then, you ask with open eyes, that these Latin countries allowed the Bible to be read and translated and printed before Luther? Listen and judge for yourself what rubbish is crammed into people's heads. (ii) Luther's first Bible (or what pretended to be the Bible, for he had amputated some of its members) came out in 1520. Now, will you believe it, there were exactly 104 editions of the Bible in Latin before that date; there were 9 before the birth of Luther in the German language, and there were 27 in German before ever his own saw the light of day. Many of these were to be seen at the Caxton Exhibition in London, 1877: and seeing is believing. In Italy there were more than 40 editions of the Bible before the first Protestant version appeared, beginning at Venice in 1471; and 25 of these were in the Italian language before 1500, with the express permission of Rome. In France there were 18 editions before 1547, the first appearing in 1478. Spain began to publish editions in the same year, and issued Bibles with the full approval of the Spanish Inquisition (of course one can hardly expect Pro­testants to believe this). In Hungary by the year 1456, in Bohemia by the year 1478, in Flanders before 1500, and in other lands groaning under the yoke of Rome, we know that editions of the Sacred Scriptures had been given to the people. 'In all (to quote from "M.C.L's" useful pamphlet on the subject) 626 editions of the Bible, in which 198 were in the language of the laity, had issued from the press, with the sanction and at the instance of the Church, in the countries where she reigned supreme, before the first Protestant version of the Scriptures was sent forth into the world.' England was perhaps worse off than any country at the time of the Reformation in the matter of vernacular versions of the Bible: many Catholic kingdoms abroad had far surpassed her in making known the Sacred Word. Yet these lands remained Catholic; England turned Protestant; what, then, becomes of the pathetic delusion of 'Evangelical' Christians that an acquaintance with the open Bible in our own tongue must necessarily prove fatal to Catholicism? The simple truth of course is just this, that if knowledge of the Scriptures should of itself make people Protestants, then the Italian and French and Spanish and Hungarian and Belgian and Portuguese nations should all have embraced Protestantism, which up to the moment of writing they have declined to do. I am afraid there is something wrong with the theory, for it is in woeful contradiction to plain facts, which may be learned by all who care to take the trouble to read and study for themselves.

(5) Now, before passing on to another part of the subject, I should like you to pause for a moment with the brief historical review fresh in your memory; and I would simply ask this: How can anyone living in the light of modern education and history cling any longer to the fantastic idea that Rome hates the Bible—that she has done her worst to destroy it—that she conceals it from her people lest it should enlighten their blindness, and that the Holy Book, after lying for many long dark ages in the dungeons and lumber rooms of Popery, was at last exhumed and dragged into the light of day by the great and glorious discoverer, Martin Luther? O foolish Scotchmen, who hath bewitched you? Do you not see that Rome could have easily destroyed it if she had been so disposed during all those centuries that elapsed between its formation into one volume in 397 A.D., and the sixteenth century? It was absolutely, exclusively in her power to do with it as she pleased, for Rome reigned supreme. What more simple than to order her priests and monks and Inquisitors to search out every copy and reduce it to ashes? But did she do this? We have seen that she preserved it and multiplied it. She saved it from utter destruction at the hands of infidels and barbarians and pagan tribes that burned everything Christian they could come across; she saved it and guarded it from total extinction by her care and loving watchfulness; she, and she alone. There was no one else to do it; she only was sent by God to defend His Blessed Word. It might have perished, and would have perished, were it not that she employed her clergy to reproduce it and adorn it and multiply it, and to furnish churches and monasteries with copies of it, which all might read and learn and commit to memory, and meditate upon. Nay, she not only multiplied it in its original languages (Greek and Hebrew), which would have been intelligible and useful only to the learned few, but she put it into the hands of all her people who could read, by translating it into Latin, the universal tongue; and even for those less scholarly she rendered it into the common languages spoken in different countries. Truly she took a curious way of showing her hatred of God's Holy Word and of destroying it. Many senseless charges are laid at the door of the Catholic Church; but surely the accusation that, during the centuries preceding the sixteenth, she was the enemy of the Bible and of Bible reading must, to any one who does not wilfully shut his eyes to facts, appear of all accusations the most ludicrous; and to tell the truth, it is ridiculed and laughed out of court by all serious and impartial students of the question. With far more justice, it humbly seems to me, may the charge of degrading and profaning the Sacred Scriptures be brought against those highly-financed Bible Societies which, with a recklessness that passes comprehension, scatter among savages and pagans utterly uninstructed, tons of Testaments, only to be used for making ball cartridges or wadding, for wrapping up snuff, bacon, tobacco, fruit and other goods; for papering the walls of houses; for converting into tapestry or pretty kites for children; and for other and fouler uses which it makes one ashamed to think of. True, the versions thus degraded are false and heretical, which may mitigate the horror in the eyes of Catholics; but those who thus expose them to dishonour believe them to be the real Words of Life. On their heads, then, falls the guilt of 'giving that which is holy to the dogs'.

[h2r77]

Question

If Peter was the first Pope and if the Pope is infallible, then why was it necessary for Paul to rebuke him in Galatians 2:11-14?

If Peter was the first Pope then why do we find James presiding at the Jerusalem council rather than Peter? (see Acts 15)

Contrary to popular belief, it actually seems to me from Scripture that James the Lord's brother rather than Peter was more likely the first head of the Church.

[Selene]

Question

If Peter was the first Pope and if the Pope is infallible, then why was it necessary for Paul to rebuke him in Galatians 2:11-14?

If Peter was the first Pope then why do we find James presiding at the Jerusalem council rather than Peter? (see Acts 15)

Contrary to popular belief, it actually seems to me from Scripture that James the Lord's brother rather than Peter was more likely the first head of the Church.

The word "infallible" does not mean "impeccible."  The two are not the same.  When Catholics say that the Pope is infallible, they are referring to his speech when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "article of faith."  The charism of infallibility is a gift to the Church, whether it is expressed through the united teaching of the bishops, through the pope defining a doctrine under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, or through the sensu fidelium - the whole Christian people being led to a belief through the "sense of faith."  Vatican I taught that in order for a statement of a pope to be considered "infallible," it must meet the following conditions: 

1.  The pope must be speaking ex cathedra, that is, "from the chair" of Peter, which means in his position as chief teacher and shepherd of Catholic Christians. 

2.  The pope must clearly define the doctrine as being a truth of faith. 

3.  It must be a definition concerning "faith or morals."

These requirements have many implications.  One is that the pope cannot speak infallibly about science, politics, economics, etc., unless the issue involved is directly related to Christian faith or morals.  Another implication is that the pope speaks infallibly only when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "Article of faith." 

As for the Council at Jerusalem, St. James was the leader of the Jerusalem Church, but at that council, James followed St. Peter's offered advice (See Acts 15:7-11). 

[h2r77]

Question

If Peter was the first Pope and if the Pope is infallible, then why was it necessary for Paul to rebuke him in Galatians 2:11-14?

If Peter was the first Pope then why do we find James presiding at the Jerusalem council rather than Peter? (see Acts 15)

Contrary to popular belief, it actually seems to me from Scripture that James the Lord's brother rather than Peter was more likely the first head of the Church.

The word "infallible" does not mean "impeccible."  The two are not the same.  When Catholics say that the Pope is infallible, they are referring to his speech when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "article of faith."  The charism of infallibility is a gift to the Church, whether it is expressed through the united teaching of the bishops, through the pope defining a doctrine under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, or through the sensu fidelium - the whole Christian people being led to a belief through the "sense of faith."  Vatican I taught that in order for a statement of a pope to be considered "infallible," it must meet the following conditions:  

1.  The pope must be speaking ex cathedra, that is, "from the chair" of Peter, which means in his position as chief teacher and shepherd of Catholic Christians.  

2.  The pope must clearly define the doctrine as being a truth of faith.  

3.  It must be a definition concerning "faith or morals."

These requirements have many implications.  One is that the pope cannot speak infallibly about science, politics, economics, etc., unless the issue involved is directly related to Christian faith or morals.  Another implication is that the pope speaks infallibly only when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "Article of faith."  

As for the Council at Jerusalem, St. James was the leader of the Jerusalem Church, but at that council, James followed St. Peter's offered advice (See Acts 15:7-11).  

The decision or judgment that was handed down at the Jerusalem Council clearly was James judgment not Peter's, proving it was James, not Peter who was head of the council.

Acts 15:19  Wherefore my judgment (said James) is, that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God;

James the Lord's brother is the more likely candidate for first head of the Church. Scripture as well as other historical readings agree.

"When I was struck by what we see in regard to church leadership in Acts 15. When we are discussing how Jesus established leadership in the early church, and how that leadership functions, this passage is crucial. The implications for the claims of some churches in regard to authority are obvious.

We ought to go all the way through Acts 15. Take note:

1. The leadership of the church in Antioch responds to a crisis involving Judaizers by sending Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem "about this question.

[zoonance]

Clearly Peter passed the baton to James.  Next.

[winsome]

Question

If Peter was the first Pope and if the Pope is infallible, then why was it necessary for Paul to rebuke him in Galatians 2:11-14?

If Peter was the first Pope then why do we find James presiding at the Jerusalem council rather than Peter? (see Acts 15)

Contrary to popular belief, it actually seems to me from Scripture that James the Lord's brother rather than Peter was more likely the first head of the Church.

The word "infallible" does not mean "impeccible."  The two are not the same.  When Catholics say that the Pope is infallible, they are referring to his speech when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "article of faith."  The charism of infallibility is a gift to the Church, whether it is expressed through the united teaching of the bishops, through the pope defining a doctrine under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, or through the sensu fidelium - the whole Christian people being led to a belief through the "sense of faith."  Vatican I taught that in order for a statement of a pope to be considered "infallible," it must meet the following conditions:  

1.  The pope must be speaking ex cathedra, that is, "from the chair" of Peter, which means in his position as chief teacher and shepherd of Catholic Christians.  

2.  The pope must clearly define the doctrine as being a truth of faith.  

3.  It must be a definition concerning "faith or morals."

These requirements have many implications.  One is that the pope cannot speak infallibly about science, politics, economics, etc., unless the issue involved is directly related to Christian faith or morals.  Another implication is that the pope speaks infallibly only when he explicitly defines a doctrine as an "Article of faith."  

As for the Council at Jerusalem, St. James was the leader of the Jerusalem Church, but at that council, James followed St. Peter's offered advice (See Acts 15:7-11).  

The decision or judgment than was handed down at the Jerusalem Cuoncil clearly was James judgment not Peter's, proving it was James, not Peter who was head of the council.

Acts 15:19  Wherefore my judgment (said James) is, that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God;

James the Lord's brother is the more likely candidate for first head of the Church. Scripture as well as other historical readings agree.

If you read the preceeding passage you will see that it was Peter who made the definitive decision about the issue.

6The apostles and the presbyters met together to see about this matter. 7After much debate had taken place, Peter got up and said to them, "My brothers, you are well aware that from early days God made his choice among you that through my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8And God, who knows the heart, bore witness by granting them the holy Spirit just as he did us. 9He made no distinction between us and them, for by faith he purified their hearts. 10Why, then, are you now putting God to the test by placing on the shoulders of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11On the contrary, we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they.

[Amo]

I am sorry Amos, but all your sources came from anti-Catholic sources, which is extremely unreliable in that they distort the truth in history.  As I said, it was Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press.  Gutenberg was a Catholic.  It was a Catholic who developed the printing press and it was the Catholic Church who encouraged Gutenberg to publish the Bible in mass quantities.  All you had to do was look up Johannes Gutenberg.  Below is the truth about this inventor.

"When Johannes Gutenberg began building his press in 1436, he was unlikely to have realised that he was giving birth to an art form which would take center stage in the social and industrial revolutions which followed. He was German, his press was wooden, and the most important aspect of his invention was that it was the first form of printing to use movable type.

Yes Selene, of course all Protestant historians are liars, and the Catholic internet site which you are quoting from is telling the God's honest truth.  Here is some info from a once Catholic monk that disagrees with you.

There is a book entitled The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Joseph McCabe). This book is about how the Catholic Church has basically rewritten much of the history in regard to itself, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author gives many examples from the various additions of the Encyclopedia. He also gives the following warning to his readers.

" But I give here a mass of evidence of the corrupt use of the great power which the Catholic Church now has: a warning of what the public may expect now that that Church has, through its wealth and numbers, secured this pernicious influence on publications, the press, the radio, and to an increasing extent on education and even the cinema. "

Here is a bit more that he had to say on the subject.  A little lengthy, but of great importance none the less. 

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopedia
"It will be gathered from a large number of articles in this Encyclopedia that the great gain of the adoption of scientific methods in modern history and of extensive discoveries in archaeology is offset by a lamentable falsification owing to concessions to religious writers or sectarian influence. It has gravely increased the difficulty of the Rationalist education of the public that, just when science has generally succeeded in silencing "the drum ecclesiastic" (in Huxley's phrase), history is increasingly listening to it. Recent issues of the leading encyclopedias have permitted very serious alterations of historical articles or invited clerical writers to contribute articles on subjects on which they could not be expected to be impartial or accurately informed. Serious attempts have been made even to impose the new spirit of accommodation upon teachers of history in universities, colleges, and the national schools. Poynter tells of an amazing plot of this nature in his Roman Catholics and School History Books (1930). However one may analyze the motives or the influences, conscious or subconscious, the evil begins with a number of professors or writers of history of some distinction, especially in the United States. [See, for example, the articles Arabs; Christianity; Dark Age; Democracy; Middle Age; Monasticism; Papacy; Philanthropy; Reformation; Rome; Thirteenth Century; and subsidiary articles mentioned in them.] The intellectual and moral status of pre-Christian civilizations is vindicated against ancient calumnies by virtually all modern authorities; yet in the case of Rome, while Protestant writers like Dr. E. Reich and Sir S. Dill have been generous in stating the truth, a number of recent historical writers, men who show no command of classical literature and the inscriptions, have used language in conformity with the old prejudices. This encourages theological writers to repeat their discredited claims that the Gospels brought a new and higher type of religion and ethic into the contemporary Roman world; that the Christians generally exhibited a superior type of character which attracted thoughtful Greeks and Romans; and that the acceptance - in reality enforcement - of the Christian religion was followed by a social and moral improvement. But greater evil is done by a falsification of the social history of the Christian, or at least the Catholic, era. In this respect Catholics have had a remarkable success in adulterating history. On the plea that the Protestant and Rationalist historians of the last century were moved by a prejudice against Catholicism, or that the development of psychology and of economic and social science gives the historian a new equipment for the study of earlier peoples, some historians [/u]- this does not apply to the Cambridge Mediaeval History - profess to give a new and sounder estimate of the period of solid Church influence. The title given to the first half, the Dark Age, is, largely on the quite false ground that it means the whole of the Middle Ages, declared to be unjust, and the second part, the Renaissance in the broader sense, is described more or less in harmony with the claims of Catholic writers. The historians in question betray that they have no command, as the historians of the last century had, of medieval literature. They ignore completely the immense literature which tells the licence and coarseness of life of the clergy, monks - all that they say of monasticism is to give a description of the ideal of a Benedictine abbey or describe Francis of Assisi - and people of all classes; and they profess that it is a mark of liberality to follow Catholic writers on the work of Gregory VII or Innocent III, the Massacre of the Albigensians and the Hussites, the Inquisition and the Reformation (See Coulter's Sectarian History, 1937). Admirable as it is to trace neglected social, political, and economic factors in this stretch of history, the deliberate suppression of its many evil features falsifies history and the sociological valuation of institutions. The same tendency is seen in the deliberate depreciation of the Arab-Persian civilization, which conceals the real source of the European Renaissance and confirms the preposterous claim that the Roman Church inspired it. Even in the modern period we find the same grave departure from the canons of history in the undiscriminating condemnation of the French Revolution, the suppression of the terrible injustices of French life which led to it, and especially the concealment of what Lord Acton called the savagery of the Roman Church in its fight against progress from the fall of Napoleon to 1870 (in Spain and Russia until recently). This falsification of history, at least by the suppression of facts and of relevant but distasteful contemporary documents, is one of the most unfortunate features of modern culture. The scores of articles in this Encyclopaedia in which it is exposed show that a new and thorough history of the Christian era is urgently needed.

[Amo]

Catholic Encyclopaedia, The.

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

A very pretentious work in fifteen large and sumptuous volumes (1907-12), which was financed by the wealthy Catholics of the United States. In the Introduction it promises "the whole truth without prejudice" and says that in ascertaining the truth "the most recent and acknowledged scientific methods are employed." In reality it often employs the worst tricks and vices of Catholic propaganda, so that it can safely be consulted only for illustrations of these and for details of undisputed Catholic teaching, ritual, and administration. In Biblical matters - one need not read farther than "Adam" - it is almost always Fundamentalist; in biography (of saints, Popes, etc.) it is childishly credulous; in history, particularly the history of the Papacy and of the crimes and vices of the Middle Ages, it is monstrously untruthful; in quoting authorities it is gravely deceitful; and in scientific articles (evolution, etc.) it is little above the level of the American Baptists. An exposure of its historical methods will be found in McCabe's Popes and their Church (4th ed., 1904, pp. 97-109), but specimens occur in many articles of this work. Another feature of interest is that the writers are almost entirely priests or professional propagandists, which reveals the extraordinary poverty of the Church in distinguished lay scholars. Hilaire Belloc is entrusted with only one short article ("Land Tenure"), and that on a "safe" subject. The peculiarities of Catholic Truth exhibited in the work are so singular that, in order to confuse the non-Catholic who might compare the articles with those of ordinary encyclopaedias, the American and English Catholics went on to secure an important influence in the writing of the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the new Encyclopaedia Americana. [See Encyclopaedias.]

[winsome]

Yes Selene, of course all Protestant historians are liars, and the Catholic internet site which you are quoting from is telling the God's honest truth.  Here is some info from a once Catholic monk that disagrees with you.

There is a book entitled The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Joseph McCabe). This book is about how the Catholic Church has basically rewritten much of the history in regard to itself, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author gives many examples from the various additions of the Encyclopedia. He also gives the following warning to his readers.

" But I give here a mass of evidence of the corrupt use of the great power which the Catholic Church now has: a warning of what the public may expect now that that Church has, through its wealth and numbers, secured this pernicious influence on publications, the press, the radio, and to an increasing extent on education and even the cinema. "

Here is a bit more that he had to say on the subject.  A little lengthy, but of great importance none the less. 

J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopedia
"It will be gathered from a large number of articles in this Encyclopedia that the great gain of the adoption of scientific methods in modern history and of extensive discoveries in archaeology is offset by a lamentable falsification owing to concessions to religious writers or sectarian influence. It has gravely increased the difficulty of the Rationalist education of the public that, just when science has generally succeeded in silencing "the drum ecclesiastic" (in Huxley's phrase), history is increasingly listening to it. Recent issues of the leading encyclopedias have permitted very serious alterations of historical articles or invited clerical writers to contribute articles on subjects on which they could not be expected to be impartial or accurately informed. Serious attempts have been made even to impose the new spirit of accommodation upon teachers of history in universities, colleges, and the national schools. Poynter tells of an amazing plot of this nature in his Roman Catholics and School History Books (1930). However one may analyze the motives or the influences, conscious or subconscious, the evil begins with a number of professors or writers of history of some distinction, especially in the United States. [See, for example, the articles Arabs; Christianity; Dark Age; Democracy; Middle Age; Monasticism; Papacy; Philanthropy; Reformation; Rome; Thirteenth Century; and subsidiary articles mentioned in them.] The intellectual and moral status of pre-Christian civilizations is vindicated against ancient calumnies by virtually all modern authorities; yet in the case of Rome, while Protestant writers like Dr. E. Reich and Sir S. Dill have been generous in stating the truth, a number of recent historical writers, men who show no command of classical literature and the inscriptions, have used language in conformity with the old prejudices. This encourages theological writers to repeat their discredited claims that the Gospels brought a new and higher type of religion and ethic into the contemporary Roman world; that the Christians generally exhibited a superior type of character which attracted thoughtful Greeks and Romans; and that the acceptance - in reality enforcement - of the Christian religion was followed by a social and moral improvement. But greater evil is done by a falsification of the social history of the Christian, or at least the Catholic, era. In this respect Catholics have had a remarkable success in adulterating history. On the plea that the Protestant and Rationalist historians of the last century were moved by a prejudice against Catholicism, or that the development of psychology and of economic and social science gives the historian a new equipment for the study of earlier peoples, some historians [/u]- this does not apply to the Cambridge Mediaeval History - profess to give a new and sounder estimate of the period of solid Church influence. The title given to the first half, the Dark Age, is, largely on the quite false ground that it means the whole of the Middle Ages, declared to be unjust, and the second part, the Renaissance in the broader sense, is described more or less in harmony with the claims of Catholic writers. The historians in question betray that they have no command, as the historians of the last century had, of medieval literature. They ignore completely the immense literature which tells the licence and coarseness of life of the clergy, monks - all that they say of monasticism is to give a description of the ideal of a Benedictine abbey or describe Francis of Assisi - and people of all classes; and they profess that it is a mark of liberality to follow Catholic writers on the work of Gregory VII or Innocent III, the Massacre of the Albigensians and the Hussites, the Inquisition and the Reformation (See Coulter's Sectarian History, 1937). Admirable as it is to trace neglected social, political, and economic factors in this stretch of history, the deliberate suppression of its many evil features falsifies history and the sociological valuation of institutions. The same tendency is seen in the deliberate depreciation of the Arab-Persian civilization, which conceals the real source of the European Renaissance and confirms the preposterous claim that the Roman Church inspired it. Even in the modern period we find the same grave departure from the canons of history in the undiscriminating condemnation of the French Revolution, the suppression of the terrible injustices of French life which led to it, and especially the concealment of what Lord Acton called the savagery of the Roman Church in its fight against progress from the fall of Napoleon to 1870 (in Spain and Russia until recently). This falsification of history, at least by the suppression of facts and of relevant but distasteful contemporary documents, is one of the most unfortunate features of modern culture. The scores of articles in this Encyclopaedia in which it is exposed show that a new and thorough history of the Christian era is urgently needed.

[Amo]

Exceepts from -

Papacy, The.
J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia

In a famous sentence Hobbes (Leviathan, Ch. 47) describes it as "the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." The description, though often regarded as flippant by historians who have not made a critical study of Papal history, is nearer to the truth than Hobbes knew. Since the Papacy does not mean the rule of the Roman diocese by its bishops, but the rule of the entire Catholic Church - it emphatically insists on its right to rule even the Greek and Oriental Churches - it did not exist until after the fall of Rome, and its establishment was in the highest degree facilitated by the general ignorance and demoralization which followed the collapse of the Empire. This is the first point of importance in connection with the nature and history of the Papacy, and the evidence is misrepresented by Catholic apologists with the kind of audacity which one is compelled to regard as untruthfulness. We have then to inquire how, between 400 and 1300, the Popes constructed a power which is unique in the history of religion, and to examine the character of the men who exercised this power and claimed so close a relation to God that they bore the title of "His Holiness," the nature and range of their influence on civilization, and the means by which a power based upon admitted forgeries and false historical statements is maintained, and to what extent it is maintained, in the modern world.........................................

      (1) In the most pretentious and most authoritative presentment of the Catholic position, the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the important article on the Popes is written by the English Jesuit, Fr. Joyce, and he summarizes the first four centuries in these words: "History bears complete testimony that from the earliest times the Roman Church has ever claimed the supreme leadership, and that that leadership has been freely acknowledged by the universal Church." Under pressure, the Jesuit, and the hierarchy which sponsors the Encyclopaedia, might plead the vagueness of the word "leadership" (instead of power), but the character of the statement may be judged from the fact that from the time when Rome, in the last decade of the second century, first asserted its authority over other Churches until the fall of the Empire, the claim was in every single case repudiated, generally with scorn, and no section of the Eastern half of the "Universal Church" ever admitted it.......................................

By this time the curious pun about Peter and the rock had been successfully interpolated in Matthew (xvi, 18), and the Bishop of Rome, Victor, had the new and peculiar distinction of being a friend of the most important person in the imperial palace, the Emperor's very wanton mistress, Marcia. The Asiatic bishops rejected the claim and "bitterly reproached Victor," Bishop Eusebius tells us. [See Victor.] Tertullian, in Africa, apparently refers to this when in his treatise On Chastity (c. 1) he refers, with heavy irony, to the Pope as claiming to be "the Supreme Pontiff, that is to say the Bishop of Bishops." It was not until more than fifty years later that the Popes - Cornelius (251-3), Stephen (254-7) - ventured to reassert the claim. They tried to dictate to the bishops of the African province, which was then next in importance to the Roman. Here the attitude of the apologist is amazing. He quotes Cyprian, the head of the African Church and the most saintly bishop of that age, as one who recognized Papal supremacy because, before the quarrel began, he spoke of the Roman as "the principal Church" and "the source of sacerdotal unity": an expression of its importance as being in the imperial city and as the centre from which Africa had been Christianized. But, while every Catholic writer on the subject quotes this and represents it as a recognition of the Papal claim, none of them tell how, when the Popes made their claim, Cyprian repudiated it with anger and scorn in his letters (especially LIV, LXVII, and LXXII). In the last of these he writes in the name of the eighty African bishops, and says in plain and very ironical Latin: "None of us regards himself as the Bishop of Bishops or seeks by tyrannical threats to compel his colleagues to obey him." Pope Julius, in 340, attempted to give orders to the Eastern bishops, and their reply, says the ecclesiastical historian Sozomen, was "full of irony and not devoid of serious threats" (Ecclesiastical History, III, 8). Pope Damasus repeated the attempt in 382, and the reply was equally disdainful (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, V, 9). That was the last word of the Greek Church on the matter, and the Popes had to be content to assert themselves in the West. Every Catholic writer quotes Augustine as admitting the claim and closing a controversy with the words "Rome has spoken." These writers must know that what Augustine actually said was that the case was closed because the African and the Roman Churches had jointly reached the same conclusion, and that Augustine and his African bishops repudiated the Pope's claim of authority as scornfully as Cyprian and the Greeks had done

      (Labbé, Collectio Conciliorum, 419 and 424). Finally, Pope Leo I, in 445, the African Church being now in ruins under the Vandals, tried to assert the claim in the one comparatively free western province outside Italy, southern Gaul, and its great leader, Hilary, replied to him, the Pope says (Letters, X, 3), in "language which no layman even should dare to use and no priest to hear." Leo got the last miserable representative of the Emperors to declare that the Pope had this authority, but the Empire fell, and there was no prelate left outside Rome of sufficient strength or ability to resist. Until Western Christendom was shattered, in the fifth century, every single Papal assertion of supremacy was heatedly repudiated and rebuked...................................

The Lombards annexed a very large part of the Papal estates, and by a series of forgeries which would have been possible only in an age of the densest ignorance [see Donation of Constantine and Papal States], the Popes of the eighth century got them restored and enormously enlarged by the Franks. The "temporal power" (the possessions) of the Papacy here reached its greatest extent, and its further history is one of incessant and bloody conflict. In the ninth century Pope Nicholas I tried to use a similar collection of forgeries, the Forged Decretals , to augment the spiritual or ecclesiastical power of the Papacy, and from the great French prelate, Archbishop Hincmar, met a scornful resistance such as the early claims had met. But the age was one of deepening gloom and barbaric violence, and the death of Nicholas, in 867, was followed by ghastly outrages in Rome which inaugurated the Rule of the whores and a century and a hall, with a few short intervals of comparative decency, of unparalleled corruption. Thirty Popes occupied the sodden "throne of Peter" in a single century, and the theory of a leadership of the world was forgotten. In the end a body of reformed monks persuaded the Roman (German) Emperors to interven - with the vices of the Emperors themselves they did not interfere - and one of these, Hildebrand, became Gregory VII , and gave the Papal theory of power almost its greatest expansion. The Pope was the absolute ruler of the world, in secular as well as religious matters. But Gregory's reckless use of armies, armed mobs, and forged documents provoked a reaction and a contempt of Papal anathemas. The Romans themselves drove him into exile,......................................................

The thirteenth century , which Innocent inaugurated, is one of the loosest (sexually) in history, and it reeked with cruelty and injustice, especially in Italy. Its Papal history ended in the extraordinary scandal of the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and this was followed by the depravity of the Papal Court at Avignon (1309-77), the disgusting Popes of the Great Schism (1378-1414), under whom even the best Catholic historian, Pastor, says, "the prevailing immorality exceeded anything that had been witnessed since the tenth century" (History of the Popes, I, 97), and the Popes of the Renaissance (1450-1650), when, considering the new enlightenment of Europe, the Papacy sank to a lower depth than ever and, except during a few short periods, remained in its corruption longer than ever. [See articles on each of these phases.]..................................

      (3) The phrases "Holy See" and "His Holiness," which Catholic pressure or intrigue now compels even the daily papers to use, represent a third aspect of what one is tempted to call the great imposture of Catholic literature on the Papacy. The faithful, who are graciously permitted to know that there were "few bad Popes," are reconciled to this on the singular ground that the Church never claimed "impeccability" for its Popes. It is one of the peculiar growths of the semi-Fascist atmosphere of the Church, with its prohibition to read critics under pain of eternal damnation, that a Catholic regards each Pope as "the Vicar of Christ," elected by the Holy Ghost and in intimate relation with the Deity, yet considers the inclusion in the series of a number of corrupt men as a matter of no consequence. This can be effected only by representing the vicious Popes as very rare occurrences in a unique succession of wise and saintly men. In point of historical fact no other religion of which we have adequate knowledge - Brahmanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, or Islam - presents such a spectacle of corruption in its higher spiritual authorities and their elections to office as does the history of the Popes. No one questions that many of them were able men, or, on the Catholic standard, holy men, but Catholic accounts of them are monstrous. They give the title of "martyr" to nearly every Pope to the year 310, while even Catholic historians like Duchesne admit that at the most only two out of thirty were martyrs. They give the distinction of "Saint" to every Pope except one to the year 530, whereas four-fifths of them are obscure men of unknown character, and the only three whose character is clear to the year 440 - Victor, Callistus, and Damasus - were very far from saintly. Of ninety Popes, to the year 870, the great majority are of unknown character, and a number of the remainder, who do "stand out" in history - not the official Pontifical Book, which makes martyrs with such fluency and canonizes recognizable bad characters - are there on account of their vices or crimes (Symmachus, Vigilius, Pelagius, Stephen II, Stephen IV, and Paschal I). Then came the Rule of the Whores and the Iron Age, nearly two centuries of chronic and incredible degradation of the Papal Court, during which the vilest types of men [see John XI; John XII; John XIV; etc.] became "Vicars of Christ." For other" monsters of vice," as the contemporary documents call them, see Avignon; Boniface VIII; John XXIII; and Renaissance. But these are only the particularly vicious types. We may sum up the biography of the Popes (and the "holiness" of the Papacy) by saying that, of the 260 Popes one-fourth are of unknown character and half the remainder had grave defects of character. At least thirty were sexually loose men (in half a dozen cases paederasts) and a dozen are credibly charged with murder and mutilation. If moreover, we judge them from the Catholic point of view, more than one half of the 200 Popes, from the year 300 to 1650, were notoriously guilty of vices that are held to be worse than sexual irregularities: simony, nepotism, and protecting the corruption of the Papal Court and the clergy.................

The scientific conquest of the death-rate led to a rapid increase of population, and, while more advanced countries met this by industrial progress and the control of the birth-rate, the Church forbade any such control, under the usual "pain of hell," in impoverished Catholic countries, and from these (Ireland, Italy, and Poland particularly) tens of millions of Catholics were drafted into the British Empire and the United States. This caused an illusion of growth in the richest and best-educated countries in the world, and gave the Popes, for the first time since the Reformation, a large power of political bargaining and a new prestige. What vast and continued losses this new situation concealed will be shown under Statistics; and an article on the Roman Catholic Church will describe the methods (business organizations, intrigue, censorship, untruthful literature, etc.) by which the Popes retain so many adherents even in advanced countries,

[winsome]

Amo,

I don't see the point of all this copy ands paste from rabidly anti-catholic sources.

Please can you explain the value of it because to me it seems to have none.

This is not "objective evidence" as required by rule 1.3 nor is it "discussion" which is what the forum is supposed to be for.

[Amo]

This is the "once Catholic monk" who wrote a book called Twelve Years in a Monastery, which was described by Kenneth E Hedrickson ( a highly respected history professor) as lurid and sensationalist Catholic bashing.  Not exactly an independent source.

He also accused the Columbia Encyclopedia of bias towards the Catholic Church. Seems to have had a rather large chip on his shoulder.

He didn't just have a large chip on his shoulder, something about spending twelve years as a Catholic monk, made him decide to become a devout atheist.  This certainly does not mean that everything he wrote was a lie.  Lets face the facts, the institution of Rome would burn all the people who challenged her authority, and their writings when she had the power to do so.  Now the same institution asks all to believe her totally contradictory version of history, over that of countless others in relation to her, since she lost the power to burn the same.  I am sorry, but I find it much more likely that those who were willing to burn people and writings which they disagreed with, are also much more likely to be the ones rewriting and lying about history in relation to themselves.

There is much more to be said and quoted concerning this problem, yet I will await a response in order to allow time for your defense.  After all, it is the truth we are seeking, not just to prove who is right or wrong in their own eyes.  The truth requires that both sides of an issue be allowed free examination.  Although Rome has a long history of disregarding the same, far be it from me as a Christian to do the same.

[winsome]

This is the "once Catholic monk" who wrote a book called Twelve Years in a Monastery, which was described by Kenneth E Hedrickson ( a highly respected history professor) as lurid and sensationalist Catholic bashing.  Not exactly an independent source.

He also accused the Columbia Encyclopedia of bias towards the Catholic Church. Seems to have had a rather large chip on his shoulder.

He didn't just have a large chip on his shoulder, something about spending twelve years as a Catholic monk, made him decide to become a devout atheist.  This certainly does not mean that everything he wrote was a lie.  Lets face the facts, the institution of Rome would burn all the people who challenged her authority, and their writings when she had the power to do so.  Now the same institution asks all to believe her totally contradictory version of history, over that of countless others in relation to her, since she lost the power to burn the same.  I am sorry, but I find it much more likely that those who were willing to burn people and writings which they disagreed with, are also much more likely to be the ones rewriting and lying about history in relation to themselves.

There is much more to be said and quoted concerning this problem, yet I will await a response in order to allow time for your defense.  After all, it is the truth we are seeking, not just to prove who is right or wrong in their own eyes.  The truth requires that both sides of an issue be allowed free examination.  Although Rome has a long history of disregarding the same, far be it from me as a Christian to do the same.

lurid and sensationalist Catholic bashing is not exactly and objective source of information about the Catholic Church

[Amo]

Amo,

I don't see the point of all this copy ands paste from rabidly anti-catholic sources.

Please can you explain the value of it because to me it seems to have none.

It is in relation to what I deem to be false information from Selene.  If claiming that something is rabidly anti-catholic, meant that it was not the truth, I would agree with you.  However, since the claim means nothing but that you as a Catholic think it is anti-catholic, this has no bearing at all upon whether it is the truth or not.  I think sharing the truth is important.  I don't care what someone labels this or that information, I care if it is the truth or not.  If it is not true, then present your argument to that effect.  I will not be convinced from the mere suggestion of anti-Catholicism.  The claim in and of itself proves absolutely nothing.  

[Amo]

lurid and sensationalist Catholic bashing is not exactly and objective source of information about the Catholic Church

Again, you speak as though, just because you said it, it is true.  This is no argument or defense, but only an accusation.  I can just as easily say that calling Protestant historians liars is Protestant bashing, and try to get the powers that be to censor your ability to present your case to that effect.  I care nothing about censoring and controlling what you will, or will not say.  Please do speak your mind, and present your evidence.  Lets get down to the bottom of the truth of the matter here, instead of trying to silence the opposition.  The scripture is true,

John 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Got to go now.  As one famous Catholic actor once said though, I'll be back.

[winsome]

Amo,

I have no intention of ploughing through that tirade of anti-catholic abuse, which anyone who genuinely wanted an honest discussion would not have posted.

His extreme bias is shown by his mocking attitude to scripture
By this time [end 2nd century] the curious pun about Peter and the rock had been successfully interpolated in Matthew (xvi, 18)

Do you not accept that Mt 16:18 is genuine? Or are you aligning yourself with this man?

As to lurid and sensationalist catholic bashing, these are not my words but those of an eminent historian.

[Selene]

The council at Jerusalem was about circumcision. St. James was the leader of the Jerusalem Church.  But St. Peter and St. John also acted as leaders on an equal with James (See Galatians 2:9).  Galatians 2 speaks about the same council at Jerusalem in Acts 15.  St. Peter was speaking as an equal with James.  St. James became the leader of the Jerusalem Church and St. Peter was the leader of the Roman Church.  In Acts 15, St. Peter spoke first and silenced the assembly.  St. James then spoke and agreed with St. Peter's advice.

The word "Pope" comes from a Greek word "papas."  It means "bishop," "patriarch" or "father." St. Peter was the first bishop of Rome.  A Pope is a bishop.  Below is a weblink showing all the Popes (or Bishops) of Rome going all the way back to the Apostle Peter.  

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm

[Selene]

Yes Selene, of course all Protestant historians are liars, and the Catholic internet site which you are quoting from is telling the God's honest truth.  Here is some info from a once Catholic monk that disagrees with you.

There is a book entitled The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Joseph McCabe). This book is about how the Catholic Church has basically rewritten much of the history in regard to itself, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author gives many examples from the various additions of the Encyclopedia. He also gives the following warning to his readers.

Now, where in my post did I say that all the Protestant historians are liars?     I said that the sources you provided are anti-Catholic sources.  As for the sources I provided, didn't you notice that not one of them bashed any of the Protestants?  It only refuted what is said about the Catholic Church.  Also, haven't you noticed that the article I posted on Johannes Gutenberg said nothing about the Protestants.    I only posted it to show you that Gutenberg who invented the printing press was indeed Catholic.  He printed the Bibles and made it available to the populace. 

[mclees8]

Yes Selene, of course all Protestant historians are liars, and the Catholic internet site which you are quoting from is telling the God's honest truth.  Here is some info from a once Catholic monk that disagrees with you.

There is a book entitled The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Joseph McCabe). This book is about how the Catholic Church has basically rewritten much of the history in regard to itself, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author gives many examples from the various additions of the Encyclopedia. He also gives the following warning to his readers.

Now, where in my post did I say that all the Protestant historians are liars?     I said that the sources you provided are anti-Catholic sources.  As for the sources I provided, didn't you notice that not one of them bashed any of the Protestants?  It only refuted what is said about the Catholic Church.  Also, haven't you noticed that the article I posted on Johannes Gutenberg said nothing about the Protestants.    I only posted it to show you that Gutenberg who invented the printing press was indeed Catholic.  He printed the Bibles and made it available to the populace. 

selene. you saY Gutenberg was a catholic. Did he print he Bible in other languages for the Catholic church. Why  then did the Catholic church not want the population to have them.

Maybe i am comming in late on this and don't have all the facts yet. Curious

God bless

[mclees8]

Yes Selene, of course all Protestant historians are liars, and the Catholic internet site which you are quoting from is telling the God's honest truth.  Here is some info from a once Catholic monk that disagrees with you.

There is a book entitled The Lies and Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Joseph McCabe). This book is about how the Catholic Church has basically rewritten much of the history in regard to itself, found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The author gives many examples from the various additions of the Encyclopedia. He also gives the following warning to his readers.

Now, where in my post did I say that all the Protestant historians are liars?     I said that the sources you provided are anti-Catholic sources.  As for the sources I provided, didn't you notice that not one of them bashed any of the Protestants?  It only refuted what is said about the Catholic Church.  Also, haven't you noticed that the article I posted on Johannes Gutenberg said nothing about the Protestants.    I only posted it to show you that Gutenberg who invented the printing press was indeed Catholic.  He printed the Bibles and made it available to the populace. 

selene. you saY Gutenberg was a catholic. Did he print he Bible in other languages for the Catholic church. Why  then did the Catholic church not want the population to have them.

Maybe i am comming in late on this and don't have all the facts yet. Curious

God bless

No need to answer the question. I found the article posted and read it.

[h2r77]

Clearly Peter passed the baton to James.  Next.

Peter never had the baton to pass.

[Selene]

After the Bible was translated into English, then with the help of the printing press, it was mass produced in the English language.  The Bible that the Catholic Church used at that time was written in Latin.  The Bible was translated from Greek into Latin by St. Jerome at the end of the fourth century, which is what the Catholic Church used because Latin was the main language at that time. 

The Catholic Church have always wanted the population to read the Bible, which is why they encouraged Gutenberg to publish the Bible in mass quantities.  Before the printing press was invented, Catholic monks wrote the entire Bible by hand, which was very tedious and slow.  How can the Catholic Church give every citizen a Bible when they were unable to produce it in mass quantities before the printing press was invented?   Furthermore, the illiteracy rate at that time was extremely high.  So, the Catholic Church translated the Bible into art so that those who were unable to read would be able to learn about the Bible not only from the Mass, but also through pictures.   

[Selene]

No need to answer the question. I found the article posted and read it.

Okay!  Too late, though.   

[Amo]

After the Bible was translated into English, then with the help of the printing press, it was mass produced in the English language.  The Bible that the Catholic Church used at that time was written in Latin.  The Bible was translated from Greek into Latin by St. Jerome at the end of the fourth century, which is what the Catholic Church used because Latin was the main language at that time.

The Catholic Church have always wanted the population to read the Bible, which is why they encouraged Gutenberg to publish the Bible in mass quantities.  Before the printing press was invented, Catholic monks wrote the entire Bible by hand, which was very tedious and slow.  How can the Catholic Church give every citizen a Bible when they were unable to produce it in mass quantities before the printing press was invented?   Furthermore, the illiteracy rate at that time was extremely high.  So, the Catholic Church translated the Bible into art so that those who were unable to read would be able to learn about the Bible not only from the Mass, but also through pictures. 

In the year 1215 Pope Innocent III issued a law commanding "that they shall be seized for trial and penalties, WHO ENGAGE IN THE TRANSLATION OF THE SACRED VOLUMES, or who hold secret conventicles, or who assume the office of preaching without the authority of their superiors; against whom process shall be commenced, without any permission of appeal

[Amo]

JOHN WYCLIFFE (1324-1384), the father of the English Bible, is an example of how Rome treated the Bible in these days.

Wycliffe, the vicar of St. Mary's Church at Lutterworth, completed the English New Testament in 1380 and the Old Testament in 1382. He rejected many of Rome's heresies, including the doctrine that the people should not have the Bible in their own language. Here is one of the powerful statements that he made to the Catholic authorities: "You say it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English. You call me a heretic because I have translated the Bible into the common tongue of the people. Do you know whom you blaspheme? Did not the Holy Ghost give the Word of God at first in the mother-tongue of the nations to whom it was addressed? Why do you speak against the Holy Ghost? You say that the Church of God is in danger from this book. How can that be? Is it not from the Bible only that we learn that God has set up such a society as a Church on the earth? Is it not the Bible that gives all her authority to the Church? Is it not from the Bible that we learn who is the Builder and Sovereign of the Church, what are the laws by which she is to be governed, and the rights and privileges of her members? Without the Bible, what charter has the Church to show for all these? It is you who place the Church in jeopardy by hiding the Divine warrant, the missive royal of her King, for the authority she wields and the faith she enjoins

[mclees8]

Rule 1.3

You will only post negative statements about another individual's belief or religious organization (including non-Christian religions) with objective evidence provided. Members are allowed to say "The doctrines X church is false because of Y scriptures and Z other relevant evidence."

Using rhetoric without evidence only disrupts logic even if it is true. We're not here to defeat another's faith in something, but to edify one another by the  word of God, history, and other evidence. And if I'm pointing at you, I have three fingers pointed back at me; again all, we be brethren. Allow your words show your love for one another.  

Yes i will try to respect.  My thanks goes to Amo who seems to have provided what I did not have and it speaks much to things I have spoken.  Jesus made many claims about the Pharisees. These were based  not on facts and evidence or documentation but what he knew. They hated him for it and crucified Him . I have only made claims based on what i see when compared to scripture and base much on God given commonsense. For this they cry fowl. I have said things that i know are true.  Yes we are trying to get at the truth, I am not biased for I see much evil and false hoods in the Protestant denominations. If i spoke of them I do not think that Catholics would cry fowl. I am not against any catholic but the institution itself only. What i have read here only solidifies my claims and even more so for i see the way they ruthlessly  abused their power and
authority.  I can only think of the Parable of the farmer who planted a field. but the workers came and told the the farmer that someone came and planted weeds in the field during the night. He said do not disturb the weeds for you may pull up what is good along with the weeds.   I see how this may be speaking of me.  But it is Satan who has sowed confussion and has done very well.

God bless

[Selene]

Yes we are trying to get at the truth, I am not biased for I see much evil and false hoods in the Protestant denominations. If i spoke of them I do not think that Catholics would cry fowl. I am not against any catholic but the institution itself only. What i have read here only solidifies my claims and even more so for i see the way they ruthlessly  abused their power and
authority. 

How has the Catholic Church today abused their power and authority?  I can understand the abuses of the past, but that was the past.  Afterall, even the former Pope John Paul II recognized that the Catholic Church was in the wrong regarding the Crusade wars and even apologized for it.  The sex scandals was also wrong and the Pope also apologized for that as well.  I would think that recognizing a wrong and apologizing for it would be the right thing for the Catholic Church to do.  You may dislike the institution, but the Catholics respect it because it is the Church that Christ built.  As a matter of fact, Jesus even told the Jewish peole of His time to respect the seat of Moses (See Matthew 23:1-3).

Matthew 23:1-3  Then addressing the people and His disciples Jesus said, "The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses.  You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach."

In the same way, we respect the chair of the Apostle Peter.  Of course, we also recognize that our priests are only human and are not impeccable.  So what exactly has the former pope  John Paul II and the current Pope Benedict XVI done? 

[Selene]

Pope Leo X (1513-1521), who railed against Luther’s efforts to follow the biblical precept of faith alone and Scripture alone, called the fifth Lateran Council (1513-1517), which charged that no books should be printed except those approved by the Roman Catholic Church. “THEREFORE FOREVER THEREAFTER NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PRINT ANY BOOK OR WRITING WITHOUT A PREVIOUS EXAMINATION, TO BE TESTIFIED BY MANUAL SUBSCRIPTION, BY THE PAPAL VICAR AND MASTER OF THE SACRED PALACE IN ROME, and in other cities and dioceses by the Inquisition, and the bishop or an expert appointed by him. FOR NEGLECT OF THIS THE PUNISHMENT WAS EXCOMMUNICATION, THE LOSS OF THE EDITION, WHICH WAS TO BE BURNED, a fine of 100 ducats to the fabric of St. Peters, and suspension from business for a year” (Henry Lea, The Inquisition of the Middle Ages).

Pope Leo XII (1823-29) issued a bull to the Bishops in Ireland, May 3, 1824, in which he affirmed the Council of Trent and condemned Bible distribution. “It is no secret to you, venerable brethren, that a certain Society, vulgarly called The Bible Society, is audaciously spreading itself through the whole world. After despising the traditions of the holy Fathers, and in opposition to the well-known Decree of the Council of Trent, this Society has collected all its forces, and directs every means to one object,--the translation, or rather the perversion, of the Bible into the vernacular languages of all nations. ... IF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES BE EVERYWHERE INDISCRIMINATELY PUBLISHED, MORE EVIL THAN ADVANTAGE WILL ARISE THENCE, on account of the rashness of men” (Bull of Leo XII, May 3, 1824; cited from Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, 1851, p. 21). This Pope re-published the Index of Prohibited Books on March 26, 1825, and mandated that the decrees of the Council of Trent be enforced against distribution of Scriptures (R.P. Blakeney, Popery in Its Social Aspect, p. 137).

Pope Gregory XVI (1831-46) ratified the decrees of his predecessors, forbidding the free distribution of Scripture. In his encyclical of May 8, 1844, this Pope stated: “Moreover, we confirm and renew the decrees recited above, DELIVERED IN FORMER TIMES BY APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY, AGAINST THE PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, READING, AND POSSESSION OF BOOKS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES TRANSLATED INTO THE VULGAR TONGUE” (James Wylie, The Papacy, 1867, p. 182). This encyclical was delivered against Bible societies in general, and mentioned in particular the Christian Alliance, which was formed in 1843 in New York for the purpose of distributing Scriptures.

Pope Pius IX (1846-78) in November 1846 issued an encyclical letter in which he denounced all opponents of Roman Catholicism, among which he included “those insidious Bible Societies.” He said the Bible societies were “renewing the crafts of the ancient heretics” by distributing to “all kinds of men, even the least instructed, gratuitously and at immense expense, copies in vast numbers of the books of the Sacred Scriptures translated against the holiest rules of the Church into various vulgar tongues...” What a horrible crime! Distributing the Scriptures freely to all people! It was Pius IX who had himself and his fellow popes declared “infallible” at the Vatican I Council in 1870.

Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) published an “Apostolic Constitution” in 1897 which stated: “All versions of the vernacular, even by Catholics, are altogether prohibited, unless approved by the Holy See, or published under the vigilant care of the Bishops, with annotations taken from the Fathers of the Church and learned Catholic writers” (Melancthon Jacobus, Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles, p. 237).

Amos, I cannot find anything in Catholic literature that says all this in your post.  Let's take a close look at some of the things you wrote.   So instead of copy and past, why don't you list your source?  Here is what the Popes ACTUALLY wrote, which is recorded in Catholic literature.  Funny isn't it....that the same popes you listed saying that they banned pepole from reading the Bibles turned out that they said the opposite thing.  This is what happens when you browse through only anti-Catholic websites.  Didn't it ever occur to you  to get the information from a Catholic website instead?  After all, the Catholics should have the Pope's encyclicals: 

Pope St. Pius X-- “Nothing would please us more than to see our beloved children form the habit of reading the Gospels - not merely from time to time, but every day.”

Pope Pius XII--“Our predecessors, when the opportunity occurred, recommended the study or preaching or in fine the pious reading and meditation of the sacred Scriptures. “...This author of salvation, Christ, will men more fully know, more ardently love and more faithfully imitate in proportion as they are more assiduously urged to know and meditate the Sacred Letters, especially the New Testament...”

Pope Leo XIII--“The solicitude of the apostolic office naturally urges and even compels us…to desire that this grand source of Catholic revelation (the Bible) should be made safely and abundantly accessible to the flock of Jesus Christ”
“...For sacred Scripture is not like other books. Dictated by the Holy Ghost, it contains things of the deepest importance, which in many instances are most difficult and obscure. To understand and explain such things there is always required the 'coming' of the same Holy Ghost; that is to say, His light and His grace...It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of holy Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred... and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration is not only essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.”

Pope St. Gregory I--“The Emperor of heaven, the Lord of men and of angels, has sent you His epistles for your life’s advantage—and yet you neglect to read them eagerly. Study them, I beg you, and meditate daily on the words of your Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God, that you may sigh more eagerly for things eternal, that your soul may be kindled with greater longings for heavenly joy”.

http://faithofthefathersapologetics.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-dont-catholics-read-bible.html 

The Catholic Church have always encouraged its members to read the Bible.  What it discourages is the INTERPRETATION of Scripture.  Only the Catholic Church has the authority to interpret Sacred Scripture.

[Fallen Knight]

Please forgive me all. I lead a Christian "life". By that I mean I don't waste alot of time arguing with blind pride filled protestants who are motivated by their own unchristian pride and hatred, rather than any search for the truth of God

Let me just quote Mclees8 here regarding Ignatius of Antioch

To quote Mclees :  "No he was not Roman Catholic this is only in your head.  The church was the church then and was never referred to as the RCC by any bishop of that time. some may have fancied Rome only because Peter and Paul established churches their but that did not make all the churches of Asia Roman Catholic or look to the church of Rome as supreme. try to fool some one else. All the apostles were given the same authority but it was not a mater of pride of position. Or even a certain location."


It's only in my head is it Mclees???  Once again, your complete lack of historical proofs to back up your claims, followed by your unsubstantiated untruthful claims truthfully makes me wonder what "spirit" is actually leading you.

It is NOT from The Holy Spirit, I know that much.

Let me quote you some Ignatius Macca

"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils"


If you actually knew what you were talking about Macca, you wouldn't make such claims.

Ignatius' belief in the Eucharist outdates your claim regarding the Catholic church by 200yrs.

Once again, Macca, please go away and study some more before coming onto threads such as this and spruiking your anti-Catholic ( read anti-Christian )  rubbish.  You only look more and more foolish everytime you post.


Would you like me to quote some writings on The Virgin Mary and Papal authority which also outdate your claims that the Catholic Church didn't start until the 300's?

Or would you finally accept my advice to go away and study the truth, before claiming you know it?

Pax Tecum
Fallen Knight