[Conservative til I die]

The Roman Church of Luther’s day thought that the private possession of the Bible was a matter of sedition and the reason for that was that the church of Luther’s day wanted to be the dispenser of truth…that is, it wanted to be the sole interpreter of truth and allowing common lay people to possess and interpret the Scripture for themselves struck hard against the authority of the church.

As is typical, the author leaves out most of the story. The reason Bibles were chained up was because before the printing press, Bibles were very expensive to produce, and becuase of the expense and the related man-hours needed to produce one --by hand-- they were of great value, and ripe for theft.

Some who tried to translate the Bible were punished because these versions were corrupted. Of course, as others have pointed out, the Bible was produced in the vernacular by the Church before Protestantism existed.

You know, it makes me wonder when a religion rests its whole foundations on a) obsessing over the Catholic Church rather than finding its own identity and b) making up falsehoods to prove its case. Why would I, as a Catholic with some knowledge, ever want to convert to a religion such as this?

[HarleyD]

As is typical, the author leaves out most of the story. The reason Bibles were chained up was because before the printing press, Bibles were very expensive to produce,

I don't think the author left out "most of the story". Everyone knows before the printing press Bibles were expensive. I feel the author should talk more about the Renaissances and the humanism that was sweeping the Church but so far he hasn't. This is a 20 page article and there is only so much one can talk about at this time.