"This is one of the most absurd statements I've ever read on Free Republic. Did you post that with a straight face?"
The Catholic Church has done so by trying to keep the Bible out of the hand and the language of the common people. Thank God they failed! Did you not know that the Catholic Church BURNED people for having the Bible???
COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.
Canon 14.
We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin;
but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.
THE BIBLE PROHIBITED BY THE INDEX LIBRORUM PROHIBITORUM
Rule III
... translations of books of the Old Testament may be allowed by the judgment of bishops for the
use of learned and pious men only. These translations are to elucidate the Vulgate so that Sacred Scripture can be understood, but they are not to be considered as a sacred text. Translations of the New Testament made by authors of the first sections in this Index are not to be used at all, since too little usefulness and too much danger attends such reading.
POPE CLEMENT XI on READING SCRIPTURE
(Note: The following statements were
condemned as being error)
9. It is useful and necessary at all times, in all places, and
for every kind of person, to study and to know the spirit, the piety, and the mysteries of Sacred Scripture.
80. The reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.
81. The sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to dispense themselves from reading it.
82. The Lord's Day ought to be sanctified by Christians with readings of pious works and above all of the Holy Scriptures. It is harmful for a Christian to wish to withdraw from this reading.
83. It is an illusion to persuade oneself that knowledge of the mysteries of religion should not be communicated to women by the reading of Sacred Scriptures. Not from the simplicity of women, but from the proud knowledge of men has arisen the abuse of the Scriptures and have heresies been born.
84. To snatch away from the hands of Christians the New Testament, or to hold it closed against them by taking away from them the means of understanding it, is to close for them the mouth of Christ.
85. To forbid Christians to read Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels, is to forbid the use of light to the sons of light, and to cause them to suffer a kind of excommunication.
Sadly, there is much more should you desire to see it....