I don’t understand why this is such a touchy subject. The Roman Catholic Church has priests to teach laymen. The illiteracy rate during the dark ages was enourmous. Any lingua franca would have only been of use to clerics.
Even after Gutenberg, books were rare and expensive. There was little chance of an average parishoner ever touching one. this began to change when Wycliff and later Tyndale began churning out hand written english translations. It ended when Henry put bibles in every church in England with readers there to read to individuals.
The Church persecuted and killed Wycliff and Tyndale and excommunicated Henry and others involved in this process. Just like they killed thousands in the Crusades and the Inquisition. It was a different time. it was a bloody time.
Catholics today are and should be ashamed of this in the same way I am ashamed of some American History, but we are not to blame for what others did before we were born.
There have been atrocities committed in the name of both Catholicism and Protestantism. You'll no doubt be happy to acknowledge the latter, just as you insist on the former.
As far as the Church's reticence concerning individual reading of the Scriptures is concerned, firstly it has been hugely exaggerated and secondly it was entirely out of concern for the spiritual well being of the faithful when it was prescribed. The events of the last 500 years have shown that concern to be well placed. In the name of personal interpretation of Scripture, Christianity has been thoroughly splintered into a multitude of conflicting voices.
During the course of the first millennium of her existence, the Church did not promulgate any law concerning the reading of Scripture in the vernacular. The faithful were rather encouraged to read the Sacred Books according to their spiritual needs.
The next five hundred years show only local regulations concerning the use of the Bible in the vernacular. On 2 January, 1080, Gregory VII wrote to the Duke of Bohemia that he could not allow the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The letter was written chiefly to refuse the petition of the Bohemians for permission to conduct Divine service in the Slavic language. The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation of the inspired text (St. Gregory VII, "Epist.", vii, xi).
The second document belongs to the time of the Waldensian and Albigensian heresies. The Bishop of Metz had written to Innocent III that there existed in his diocese a perfect frenzy for the Bible in the vernacular. In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned ("Epist., II, cxli; Hurter, "Gesch. des. Papstes Innocent III", Hamburg, 1842, IV, 501 sqq.). After the death of Innocent III, the Synod of Toulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari (Hefele, "Concilgesch", Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods (Hefele, ibid., 918). The Third Synod of Oxford, in 1408, owing to the disorders of the Lollards, who in addition to their crimes of violence and anarchy had introduced virulent interpolations into the vernacular sacred text, issued a law in virtue of which only the versions approved by the local ordinary or the provincial council were allowed to be read by the laity (Hefele, op. cit., VI, 817).
It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV promulgated in his Constitution, "Dominici gregis", the Index of Prohibited Books. According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate. The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice.
Sixtus V reserved this power to himself or the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and Clement VIII added this restriction to the fourth rule of the Index, by way of appendix. Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors. It then became an open question whether this order of Benedict XIV was intended to supersede the former legislation or to further restrict it. This doubt was not removed by the next three documents: the condemnation of certain errors of the Jansenist Quesnel as to the necessity of reading the Bible, by the Bull "Unigenitus" issued by Clement XI on 8 Sept., 1713; the condemnation of the same teaching maintained in the Synod of Pistoia, by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" issued on 28 Aug., 1794, by Pius VI; the warning against allowing the laity indiscriminately to read the Scriptures in the vernacular, addressed to the Bishop of Mohileff by Pius VII, on 3 Sept., 1816. But the Decree issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Index on 7 Jan., 1836, seems to render it clear that henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors. The same regulation was repeated by Gregory XVI in his Encyclical of 8 May, 1844. In general, the Church has always allowed the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, if it was desirable for the spiritual needs of her children; she has forbidden it only when it was almost certain to cause serious spiritual harm.
Compare this solicitous and paternal attitude with the pulpit pimps of the 20th and 21st centuries, who untroubled by the virtue of prudence, and with little understanding of the Church fathers, simply leap to their feet and tell the gullible that "the Bible sez........" and proceed to air all manner of fantasies and half-baked theories about the Holy Books.
As for Wycliff, he was a flaming heretic, who not only rebeled against papal authority but also brazenly denied critical Catholic doctrine, especially that concerning transubstantiation as it pertains to the Blessed Sacrament. He was an apostate and a rebel who misled many.
In summary, the Church holds to the position that God is one and truth is one. Ergo, reading and interpreting Scripture must be done in the light of revealed truth and not as a gesture of rebellion against Divinely instituted authority.