Posted on 01/29/2010 4:41:16 PM PST by NYer
Did Martin Luther save the bible from the Roman Catholic Church? Was John Wycliff the first to translate the Bible into the English language in 1382 so the regular-Joe could read the Bible too?
Many people answer yes to these questions. The same people also commonly accuse the Catholic Church of things like “hiding the Bible from the people.” And not letting the laity read the Bible for themselves in fear that the people would learn how wickedly warped and un-biblical the teachings of the Catholic Church truly were. So, naturally, for these reasons the Catholic Church kept Bibles locked up, hard to find and in languages nobody could understand.
This absolutely ridiculous, academically inept, historically false and blatantly ignorant point of view oozes with irony. Here are just a few reasons why:
1) Throughout much of Church history, if you could read, you could read Latin. The Church translated the Bible into Latin in the first few centuries of its inception so that all who could read would be able to do so.
2) The Church distributed the Bible in every country it was in and in the common language of the people from the 7th down to the 14th century and beyond.
3) “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.” (Where We Got The Bible)
4) There were 27 versions of the Bible in the German language before Martin Luther’s version came out.
5) It was almost solely in those countries which have remained most Catholic that popular versions of the Bible had been published; while it was precisely Protestant countries (like England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway) that no bible existed when they embraced Protestantism (Dublin Review - Oct 1837). So there is no evidence that access to a Bible in the vernacular caused people to become more protestant. If anything, it made them become more Catholic. It was the spread of such “traditions of men” as private Judgment and Sola Scriptura which caused the spread of Protestantism and further division within the Body of Christ.
The reasons many people still didn’t have access to a Bible was not because of the Catholic Church (The Catholic Church supported access to it). One of the main reasons was the high cost and labor to produce and/or obtain one. That changed drastically with the printing press, of course.
So why then did the Catholic Church reject and forbid the use of protestant “bibles” such as the one published by John Wycliff? It was not because they were in English or another vernacular. It was not because they were being made available to the laity. It was because they were corrupt versions of the Bible. They were bad translations. And were often being used to spread false doctrine. It’s that simple.
If the Catholic Church had wanted to destroy or alter the Bible, it could have done so at just about any time in its long history. The Catholic Church is the reason we even have the Bible today. It is the institution that protected and preserved it. It would have been easy for those in the Church to destroy original documents and come up with something else if they didn’t like what the Bible taught. But they didn’t do that because of their love for Scripture and genuine desire to share it with the entire world.
If you can read, thank a teacher. If you can read a Bible, thank the Catholic Church.
And yes, it's pretty much always warm in St. Simons. They had snow there ONCE - some time in the early 80s iirc. People made videos and SOLD them!
Hope you're doing o.k. with the snow. We got nothing - only a cold rain. Need to call daughter & make sure she's having fun. She meant to take her sled back to college with her, but didn't . . . they'll probably all have to steal trays from the cafeteria.
Ralph McInerny, the mystery writer and philosophy professor, has died. Rats! He was only 81, should have taken better care of himself.
(my mom is 84 and my dad is 86, and they certainly have lived large!)
We used the cafeteria trays (on the Interstate ramps!) when San Antonio got the snow in, iirc, January of 1985. Davidson is hillier than my area. If they’ve got this ice-mix, they’ll have plenty of sliding.
We’re huddled inside playing card games and listening to Jimmy Buffett.
There is a huge hill right behind the Davidson 'Commons' a/k/a 'the cafeteria', it runs all the way down to fraternity row. I'm sure it's covered with undergraduates right now.
At least she took her snow pants back to school!
I know, I was joking. But people who write books I like should live longer.
I always felt that C.S. Lewis died too young and we could have gotten a lot more books out of him!
My daughter had to read it and hated it too. Nobody in her class liked it.
The best ones are almost paper thin, very delicate, but with enough ginger to clear your sinuses, lol. Just the right balance of sweet and burn. They don’t ship well, being so fragile. There are some pretty decent online recipes so you can bake your own, if you want.
The most evocative Moravian thing for me is their beeswax candles. That scent really transports me to a warmer, better place, safe and loved in childhood.
There were a couple of people on the obit thread saying positive things about it. Others liked some of Salinger’s short stories. Who knows, they might be good ... I’ve got other things to read.
I remember that snow. My dad was in Jamaica on business and it even snowed there; he called to tell us about the snow, and that they were ringing all the church bells down there, running around saying it was the end of the world.
You’re right about shipping...the ones I’m munching on are all broken. They are, after all, “The World’s Thinnest Cookies”.
And later, I’ll munch on the cheese thingys she sent. Makes me pine for NC from out here in CA.
You’re right about shipping...the ones I’m munching on are all broken. They are, after all, “The World’s Thinnest Cookies”.
And later, I’ll munch on the cheese thingys she sent. Makes me pine for NC from out here in CA.
Someone on WDTPRS called him the last of the Old Guard of Notre Dame Catholics.
***2” of ice? You’re very fortunate to still have electricity.***
About an inch of ice here and eight inches of snow. I still have electriciy, all I have to do is stick my head out the door, and if I hear the a hum of the wires I know that BipolarBob is on the job! (private joke).;-D
Where are you? I’m about 30 miles south of the VA border, northwest of Greensboro.
Largely, I do. Remember though that heretic means "one who disagrees with the Catholic Church". It is not a swear word, it is a technical term that I apply in its primary meaning.
Protestantism is heresy.
Now, there is a finer point sometimes made: that there is a difference between informed heretic -- one who sticks to a heresy while fully informed of both the correct teaching and the nature of the heresy, -- and a follower of a heresy who never had a chance or desire to learn and make an informed judgement.
This difference speaks to the culpability of an individual believer. The informed heretic leads into heresy; the uninformed one merely follows. But the belief is still either is or is not heretical. The moral obligation is still on the uninformed heretic to get himself better informed.
In America, as in most majority-protestant countries, it is difficult to become fully informed of the heretical nature of Protestantism, since it is only the Church that would be doing the teaching. The Church, however, is caricatured to the point beyond all recognition. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said on his TV program, (I paraphrase), very few Protestants disagree with the Catholic Church. Nearly all, however, disagree with what they think the Catohlic Church teaches. The problem is, the Catholic Church also disagrees with what the Protestants think the Catholic Church teaches. Since then, things went significantly downhill: it is hard to imagine a Catholic bishop having a regularly scheduled program on a major TV network today, while American society is on its way to losing its Christian character altogether.
Very often, in the process of conversion, the convert says: -- "How is this theology Catholic? I always believed that!"
So, to summarize, when I call someone whom I barely know a heretic, I of course have no way of knowing how well informed his adherence to the heresy is. If a conversation develops, for example, on FR, I often see great commonality of intuitive Catholic belief, -- that would be because Protestantism exists on a Catholic foundation, -- and I see a fierce resistance to a few poorly understood sticking points. So for the most part these are not well informed heretics, they just hold to heretical beliefs.
And the funny thing about it was that it missed Atlanta almost completely. Most of the snow was to our south and east, we just got a dusting while they were building snowmen in St. Simons.
***Where are you?***
NW Arkansas.
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