Rather, it is an old canard that "the Catholic Church did not keep the Bible from people" concocted by seemingly willfully blind devotees to Catholic-Church .
For the issue is not whether Rome kept the Bible from being printed, even sometimes in the vernacular, or from hearing the Bible being read, but whether it allowed the laity to continue being illiterate, and largely made it impossible overall or difficult for them to personally read Scripture by either not printing them in the common tongue for the laity to access, or restricted the reading of the Bible to a few who obtained the special permission needed to do so.
It is indisputable that in Apostolic times the Old Testament was commonly read by Jews (John 5:47; Acts 8:28; 17:2,11; 3Tim. 3:15). Roman Catholics admit that this reading was not restricted in the first centuries, in spite of its abuse by Gnostics and other heretics. On the contrary, the reading of Scripture was urged (Justin Martyr, xliv, ANF, i, 177-178; Jerome, Adv. libros Rufini, i, 9, NPNF, 2d ser., iii, 487); and Pamphilus, the friend of Eusebius, kept copies of Scripture to furnish to those who desired them. Chrysostom attached considerable importance to the reading of Scripture on the part of the laity and denounced the error that it was to be permitted only to monks and priests....— New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
“There was far more extensive and continuous use of Scriptures in the public service of the early Church than there is among us.” (Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, The Catholic Publication Society, 1887, page 509)
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 (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", nn. 1294-1300); 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.
With the appearance, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of the Albigenses and Waldenses, who appealed to the Bible in all their disputes with the Church, the hierarchy was furnished with a reason for shutting up the Word of God. (Philip Schaff, Bible reading by the laity, restrictions on. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II: Basilica – Chambers)
Pius IV (1499 -1565) required bishops to refuse lay persons leave to read even Catholic versions of Scripture unless their confessors or parish priests judged that such reading was likely to prove beneficial.” (Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, 1887, page 82)
During the Middle Ages prohibitions of books were far more numerous than in ancient times. Their history is chiefly connected with the names of medieval heretics like Berengarius of Tours, Abelard, John Wyclif, and John Hus. However, especially in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there were also issued prohibitions of various kinds of superstitious writings, among them the Talmud and other Jewish books. In this period, also, the first decrees about the reading of translations of the Bible were called forth by the abuses of the Waldenses and Albigenses. What these decrees (e.g. of the [local] synods of Toulouse in 1229, Tarragona in 1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular [the common tongue; the only language most could read] A general prohibition [in any language] was never in existence. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, (v3, pg. 520; http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Censorship_of_Books)
While it is claimed that a general prohibition of Bible reading was never unconditionally forbidden, yet not only was reading forbidden without special permission, but since the laity usually could not read Latin, not making much of an effort to make the laity literate, and provide the laity with much access to Scripture in their own language, much amounted to the same thing a prohibition on reading Scripture did.
The Bull Unigenitus, published at Rome, September 8, 1713, as part of its censure of the propositions of Jansenism*, also condemned the following as being errors:
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.
Council of Trent
Session XXV: Rule IV of the Ten Rules Concerning Prohibited Books Drawn Up by The Fathers Chosen by the Council of Trent and Approved by Pope Pius:
Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular, there will by reason of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good, the matter is in this respect left to the judgment of the bishop or inquisitor, who may with the advice of the pastor or confessor permit the reading of the Sacred Books translated into the vernacular by Catholic authors to those who they know will derive from such reading no harm but rather an increase of faith and piety, which permission they must have in writing. Those, however, who presume to read or possess them without such permission may not receive absolution from their sins till they have handed over to the ordinary. Bookdealers who sell or in any way supply Bibles written in the vernacular to anyone who has not this permission, shall lose the price of the books, which is to be applied by the bishop to pious purposes, and in keeping with the nature of the crime they shall be subject to other penalties which are left to the judgment of the same bishop. Regulars who have not the permission of their superiors may not read or purchase them. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/trent-booksrules.asp)
The most stringent censorship decree after the Reformation was the Papal bull “Inter Solicitudines,” issued by Pope Leo X, December 1516, which Leo X ordered censorship to be applied to all translations from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, and from Latin into the vernacular. [While its focus is on singing, its injunction against singing "anything whatever in the vernacular in solemn liturgical functions," as "the language proper to the Roman Church is Latin," would likely also apply to reading of Scripture.] (Hirsch, Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 [1967] 90).
In addition to the printed books being seized and publicly burnt, payment of a hundred ducats to the fabric of the basilica of the prince of the apostles in Rome, without hope of relief, and suspension for a whole year from the possibility of engaging in the printing, There Is To be imposed upon anyone presuming to act otherwise the sentence of excommunication. Finally, if the offender's contumacy Increases, he is to be punished with all the sanctions of the law, by His bishop or by our vicar, in such a way that others will have no incentive to try to follow His example. (Papal Bull, Inter Sollicitudines; December 1516) [Wiki Translation].
“When English Roman Catholics created their first English biblical translation in exile at Douai and Reims, it was not for ordinary folk to read, but [primarily] for priests to use as a polemical weapon.—the explicit purpose which the 1582 title-page and preface of the Reims New Testament proclaimed. Only the Jansenists of early seventeenth-century France came to have a more positive and generous attitude to promoting Bible-reading among Catholics" (Oxford University professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History, 2003, p. 406; p. 585.)
The Douay–Rheims Bible...is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English undertaken by members of the English College, Douai in the service of the Catholic Church.
Which translation we do not for all that publish, upon erroneous opinion of necessity , that the Holy Scriptures should always be in our mother tongue, or that they ought, or were ordained by God, to be read impartially by all, or could be easily understood by every one that readeth or heareth them in a known language; or that they were not often through man's malice or infirmity, pernicious and much hurtful to many ; or that we generally and absolutely deemed it more convenient in itself, and more agreeable to God's Word and honour or edification of the faithful, to have them turned into vulgar tongues, than to be kept and studied only in the Ecclesiastical learned languages. ....
In our own country, notwithstanding the Latin tongue was ever (to use Venerable Bede's words) common to all the provinces of the same for meditation or study of Scriptures, and no vulgar translation commonly used or employed by the multitude , yet they were extant in English even before the troubles that Wycliffe and his followers raised in our Church,..(http://www.bombaxo.com/douai-nt.html)
The source for that was the Catholic Encyclopedia>Scripture
Which is a concern but not a valid reason for keeping it out of people's hands.
The enemy will ALWAYS prompt people to abuse Scripture. It is not the fault of Scripture nor is it a reason to keep it from the people for whom God intended it, which is EVERYONE.
With sure a great cloud of witnesses; why do they even TRY to keep pushing this stuff?