Part of Roman Catholicism’s false conflation of their denominational history with the Christian church comes from their claim that the Bible is a Roman Catholic book. In fact, the conflation of these histories drove the literal writing of a book, conveniently titled for the sake of my argument as, The Bible is a Catholic Book, which has been featured heavily in Roman Catholic media.
This is, of course, an untrue claim. One that is easily rejected both on a historical and ethical basis. The Bible is the product of all orthodox Christian churches, and of them, the Roman Catholic church was demonstrably the single most driving antagonistic force against the translation and distribution of the Bible as we know it today. Let’s walk through this together.
The Roman Catholic Church did not Compile the Bible
Assuming you’ve read this statement in order, and somehow managed to retain focus amidst dozens of pages of tangents, regurgitated research, and walls of scripture, you should already be familiar with the fact that the Early Church didn’t exactly begin to resemble the Roman Catholic denomination as we know it today until the early fourth century under Constantine. Even then, the concepts of Magisterium, the Papal Office, the pre-eminence of the specific Roman Catholic denomination over other orthodox denominations did not exist until at least the mid-fifth century under Pope Leo the Great.
A common myth is that the current biblical canon was first established in the Council of Nicaea, which is categorically untrue. After reading the translated proceedings from the council, there is no mention in any of the 20 canons of the formal establishment of the valid biblical scriptures. In fact, the idea of the scriptural canon being decided at the Council of Nicaea is the product of a ninth-century Greek Manuscript called Synodicon Vetus, which was compiled by an unknown author, who described the process as such:
“ The council made manifest the canonical and apocryphal books in the following manner: Placing them by the side of the divine table in the house of God, they prayed, entreating the Lord that the divinely inspired books might be found upon the table, and the spurious ones underneath; and it so happened.
It was by an expedient nearly similar, that the fathers of the same council distinguished the authentic from the apocryphal books of Scripture. Having placed them all together upon the altar, the apocryphal books fell to the ground of themselves.
We have already said, that in the supplement to the Council of Nicaea it is related that the fathers, being much perplexed to find out which were the authentic and which the apocryphal books of the Old and the New Testament, laid them all upon an altar, and the books which they were to reject fell to the ground. What a pity that so fine an ordeal has been lost!” Sources: https://books.google.com/books?id=BiQAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA7-IA1#v=onepage&q&f=false and https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/nicaea-canon/
Now, this is obviously farcical and does not exist in any other historical work. The only two other sources for this false historical claim are Voltaire, who was a deist who strongly despised the Roman Catholic church, and Dan Brown, the knucklehead who wrote the Da Vinci Code (does anyone else remember that hot mess? It had a movie). In that regard, I would not put too much stock into these writings.
The original Old Testament canon appeared to have already been codified before the time of Jesus’ ministry. Dozens of times in the four Gospels, Old Testament writings are referenced as a complete set of scriptures, both by Jesus and by the very scribes and Pharisees who questioned Him. If we widen our net a little bit, we’ll find various instances in the New Testament referring to books in the Pentateuch, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, Daniel, and Psalms.
But, if we want to be absolutely sure, we know the Old Testament canon was nearing completion by 285 BC, which is roughly the time when the Septuagint was first commissioned under the order of the Egyptian King, Ptolemy. The Septuagint was a translation of Old Testament scriptures from Hebrew to Greek. It took a little over a century to finish, making it both available and the preferred writing of both Jewish scribes and the Early Christian church.
Source: https://biblearchaeology.org/research/new-testament-era/4022-a-brief-history-of-the-septuagint
The original proto-canon of the New Testament was first established in the mid 2nd century, which consisted of the original four Gospels, Acts, and the Pauline Epistles. This was roughly around the time the orthodox churches first consolidated their teachings and scriptures amidst the proliferation of Gnosticism and Marcionism in the Early Church (Gonzalez, 2010). This, of course, wouldn’t be definitive, as various New Testament writings of varying authenticity were in circulation.
The earliest complete codified canon was likely assembled by Saint Jerome, who was a presbyter of Antioch. Under the direction of the current Bishop of Rome, Damasus, he began creating a compilation of Old and New Testament scriptures that were translated not from the pre-existing Septuagint, but back from the original Hebrew, into Latin. Jerome was known for writing commentaries, several of which were rather critical about the Apocryphal books still found in Roman Catholic bibles today.
The Vulgate was Harshly Contested by Other Early Church Leaders Due to its Harmful Inaccuracies
In spite of his formal commission from the church of Rome, Jerome’s Vulgate was not well received by the proto-Catholic church at the time. Jerome had built a bit of artistic license in his translations that resulted in some serious alterations from the original Greek texts. Here is Saint Augustine, presenting some choice words about Jerome’s translations:
“I pray you not to devote your energies to translating the sacred books to Latin, unless you do as you did earlier in your translation of the book of Job, that is, adding notes that show clearly where your version differs from the Septuagint, whose authority has no equal. . . . Besides, I cannot imagine how, after so long, someone can find in the Hebrew manuscripts anything which so many translators did not see before, especially since they knew Hebrew so well.” (Gonzalez, 2010)
Jerome ignored the first letter, so Augustine followed up.
“A certain bishop, our brother, ordered that your translation be employed in the church he leads. People were surprised that you translated a passage in Jonah in a very different way than they were used to singing [in church] for generations. There was a riot, particularly since the Greeks claimed that the passage was wrong. . . . So you see the consequences of supporting your translation on manuscripts that cannot be verified by known languages.” (Gonzalez, 2010).
Augustine was well within the right to speak so harshly as some of these translations were truly awful:
| Verse | Greek translations | Latin Vulgate | Consequence |
| John 7:8-10: | Ye go up to the feast; I am not yet going up to the feast, for my time hath not yet been fulfilled. And having said these things to them he stayed in Galilee. But when his brethren went up, then he also went up to the feast, not openly, but as in secret. | Go ye up to this festival day, but I go not up to this festival day: because my time is not accomplished. When he had said these things, he himself stayed in Galilee. But after his brethren were gone up, then he also went up to the feast, not openly, but, as it were, in secret. | By omitting the, “yet” modifier, Jerome effectively details Jesus as lying to His disciples. |
| Matthew 6:11 | Give us this day our daily bread. | Give us this day our supersubstantial bread. | Pretty sure this false translation is partly responsible for the doctrine of transubstantiation, given that it is literally directly outlined nowhere else in the entirely of the Bible. |
| Genesis 3:15 | And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. | I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. | Jerome literally changes the child as being the one to crush the snake, to the mother being the one to crush the snake. I’m at least 50% certain the Vulgate is the reason why Marian Doctrine originated in the Roman Catholic Church alone. |
| Luke 1:28 | And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. | And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. | That sounds suspiciously close to the Rosary, doesn’t it? Make that 100% sure. |
| Romans 4:3: | For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed Elohim, and it was counted unto him for righteousness | As it is written: Abraham believed God: and it was reputed to him unto justice. | Remember when the Council of Trent condemned the belief of righteousness as a product of faith? That was also the same council where they professed the Latin Vulgate to be doctrinally inerrant. This isn’t a coincidence. |
As we know, the Vulgate would ultimately become the definitive Bible of the Roman Catholic Church for over a millennium. The doctrinal arguments between Jerome and Augustine were glossed over and the Vulgate became the official translation and incapable of being rejected.
“Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod,–considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,–ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever” (Council of Trent, 2nd Decree)
Not only would the Vulgate be considered legally above reproach, but the printing and possession of any other Bible translation was illegal. This would obviously become a problem, as the Vulgate was clearly flawed. I would also like to point out, that once again, the Roman Catholic church has forbidden anyone to question them. That is not the way of theologians, critical thinkers, or ethical leaders, that is the way of cults and tyrannical regimes.
The Roman Catholic Church did the same thing with the Magisterium, and with the Papal office. This is social engineering and a far cry from the likes of Paul and Jesus, who openly invited themselves to be tested on their doctrine.
Now in case you are wondering about the possibility that the Vulgate was the correct translation and that Tyndale was wrong, I would like to present Saint Irenaeus’s interpretation on Genesis 3:15, about the woman, child, and snake:
“He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as thou canst perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for thy head, and thou on the watch for His heel.”
Source: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/irenaeus-book5.html
Guess who’s the one prophesized to crush the serpent’s head underfoot? The child, not the mother. Irenaeus wrote this in his book, Against Heresies, which was published in the 2nd century and written in Greek. Tyndale’s translation from the original Hebrew was right, and Jerome’s was wrong.
The Roman Catholic Church did not Create the Definitive Translation of the Modern Bible Either
So, if the Latin Vulgate was a flawed translation, was commissioned before the establishment of the Roman Catholic denomination, and was not present in most Bible translations today, when did the Roman Catholic Church decree it amended? Well, they never intended to. It was actually the work of early Reformers that would amend the Latin Vulgate, and many good Christian men, including those once Catholic, would be excommunicated, tortured, and killed by the Roman Catholic church in doing so.
William Tyndale was the first man to successfully create a mass-produced English Bible. Tyndale was a Catholic Priest in England, born at the turn of the fifteenth century. At the time of William Tyndale’s life, the possession of Bibles by the common man had already been outlawed by the Roman Catholic church for almost three hundred years:
“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.” (COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE, 1229 AD).
The only people who were capable of reading scripture were ordained Roman Catholic clergy, and only after they had been tutored extensively in Roman Catholic dogma. Tyndale would express his frustration over this reality around the time he graduated with a Master of Theology from Oxford and was still denied access to the Bible.
“They have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture, until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles, with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.” —William Tyndale
So, Tyndale would go on not only to become a Catholic priest, but to also become fluent in eight languages, including English, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. You could probably see where this is going.
Now, as a quick aside, William Tyndale did not actually make the first English translation of the Bible. Several English translations of the Latin Vulgate had already been illegally circulating through England at the time. The problem was, not only possession of these books was a crime, but that they were translations of the Vulgate, thus they were riddled with the grammatical and doctrinal errors stemming from their flawed source.
Furthermore, the person responsible for many of these English translations, John Wycliffe, had been sentenced a heretic. His translations were confiscated and publicly burned. After he had died the Roman Catholic church had his body dug up and his corpse desecrated.
This had happened less than a century prior to Tyndale’s work, so the Roman Catholic church was well regarded as being murderously assertive of maintaining their iron grip on scriptural possession.
Source: https://biblemanuscriptsociety.com/Bible-resources/English-Bible-History/Wycliffe-Bible and
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/murderous-history-bible-translations-catholic-murder-version-who-wrote-when/
and https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/T/toulououse-councils-of-(concilium-tolosanum).html
So, William Tyndale decided to test the water by formally requesting permission to create an English translation of the Bible. He was denied. This would serve as the beginning of his story, rather than the end, though. Tyndale was not happy in his position as a clergyman, and his unrest was forced to a peak upon being told by a fellow priest that:
“We had better be without God’s laws than the pope’s.”
Tyndale famously replied with:
“I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”
Tyndale fled to Germany to create his own unauthorized version of the English New Testament. He was a gifted polyglot, like Jerome, but with a greater dedication to preserving scripture, Tyndale corrected many of the errors in the Vulgate (and the Wycliffe Bible) by making a more authentic translation of the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures.
Predictably, the Roman Catholic Church confiscated his work, burned any copies they could get ahold of, and branded him a heretic. Fortunately for Christians, the printing press was accessible enough that Tyndale’s translations had become too copious to regulate.
Unfortunately for Tyndale, being a heretic was condemnable by death in England. So, the Roman Catholic church, after stripping him of his priesthood, conveniently handed him off to English authorities to be executed. Tyndale was burned alive, his last words being:
“Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes.”
Somewhat ironically, King Henry VIII would produce an official English translation of the Bible that was almost entirely sourced from Tyndale’s illicit works. At the beginning of the 16th century, Tyndale’s translations would become the basis of the King James Bible, based on their incredible accuracy.
Sources: https://overviewbible.com/william-tyndale/ and https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zy7nqhv/revision/3
Bible Translations in Other Languages were also the Products of Reformed Forefathers
Martin Luther would go on to break ground on the German translation. Predictably, his works were banned, he was labeled a heretic, then forced to flee the country. Of course, there was more to this story, Luther actively rejected the sale of indulgences, as well as the sovereignty of the Pope. He also published the infamous 95 theses, which would ultimately play a significant role in the dissolving of the Papal states.
Further East, Jan Hus would create the first cohesive Czech translation. His story was a little more complex than that of Tyndale or Luther, though. Hus was far more moderate than his contemporaries. Jan Hus was a man caught between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation. He did not believe in the sovereignty or divine ordination of the body of the Roman Catholic Church, but he was also was uncomfortable with John Wycliffe’s rejection of transubstantiation.
Jan criticized the sale of indulgences, the Crusade, and the current schism, an era of two ordained pope’s created by church infighting (although he ultimately supported one of them). Because of this, he was tried as a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church and sentenced to death using Wycliffe’s works to accuse him of heresy. Jan Hus would not recant Wycliffe nor denounce his own beliefs, and he ultimately died for them.
Sources: https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/today-in-history-jan-hus-burned-at-the-stake-600-years-ago/ and https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/german-literature-biographies/jan-hus
Every attempt to made to translate the Bible into a more accessible language, and every attempt to put Bibles in the hands of the public, was met with overtly malicious antagonism from the Roman Catholic church. Chances are, the Bibles you own today are a product of Tyndale and exist entirely in spite of the Roman Catholic Church, not because of it.
The Roman Catholic Church Actively Conspired to Keep the Bible Out of The Hands of the Public
So, I want to take another look at some of these statements from the Roman Catholic church designed to suppress the general publics’ access to scriptures. Below are three passages detailing literally centuries where the they sealed away scriptures for the possession of their clergy alone.
(1) “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.” (COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE, 1229 AD).
(2) “This synod ordains and decrees, that, henceforth, the sacred Scripture, and especially the said old and vulgate edition, be printed in the most correct manner possible; and that it shall not be lawful for anyone to print, or cause to be printed, any books whatever, on sacred matters, without the name of the author; nor to sell them in future, or even to keep them, unless they shall have been first examined, and approved of, by the Ordinary; under pain of the anathema and fine imposed in a canon of the last Council of Lateran: and, if they be Regulars, besides this examination and approval, they shall be bound to obtain a license also from their own superiors, who shall have examined the books according to the form of their own statutes.
As to those who lend, or circulate them in manuscript, without their having been first examined, and approved of, they shall be subjected to the same penalties as printers: and they who shall have them in their possession or shall read them, shall, unless they discover the authors, be themselves regarded as the authors.” (Council of Trent, 2nd Decree)
(3) “To be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum)”
Just as William Tyndale had lamented, for hundreds of years the only way to get steady (and legal) access to scriptures in much of the world was through joining the Roman Catholic clergy or being a professor of their doctrine. This meant that the interpretation of Christian doctrine available to the public was only available after it had been passed through a contorted funnel of historical revisionism, mistranslations, and extra-biblical church dogma. In other words, as long as they alone were biblically literate, the Roman Catholic Church was free to contort Christianity to fit their ends, however they pleased.
No one could question them, and why would they? For most people, their only glimpse of Christian literature was what was dispensed to them by the Church through art, Roman Catholic readings, and through the words of their clergy. Even if one did get ahold of scriptures, most people could not understand the Latin they were written in.
When John Wycliffe first started translating and distributing English bibles underground, people began becoming biblically literate and realizing that Roman Catholicism and Christianity were very different animals. Wycliffe and many of the Christians who had gotten ahold of his Bible translation began to question and criticize the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on the Eucharist, Purgatory, prayers for the dead, and confession, using the Bible itself as their authority.
“I profess and claim to be by the grace of God a sound (that is, a true and orthodox) Christian and while there is breath in my body I will speak forth and defend the law of it. I am ready to defend my convictions even unto death. In these my conclusions I have followed the Sacred Scriptures and the holy doctors, and if my conclusions can be proved to be opposed to the faith, willingly will I retract them.” (Wycliffe)
These people, who the Roman Catholic Church would classily refer to as Lollards, would have quite an impact on the church at the time. They needed to put an end to this movement as soon as possible, and the most efficient way to that was to slander (and later attempt to murder) Wycliffe.
“This pestilent and wretched John Wycliffe, of cursed memory, that son of the old serpent… endeavoured by every means to attack the very faith and sacred doctrine of Holy Church, devising… to fill up the measure of his malice… the expedient of a new translation of the Scriptures into the mother tongue…’ (Archbishop Arundel, 1411)
The Pope himself would actually go on to issue no less than five Papal Bulls against Wycliffe. As you can see below, they were full of the mercy and grace of Christ, and definitely not the product of panic and malice from a man desperately trying to hold on undeserved political power:
“It hath, in truth, been intimated to us by many trustworthy persons (who are much grieved on the subject), that one John Wickcliff, rector of Lutterworth, in the diocese of Lincoln, professor of divinity (would that he were not rather a master of errors), hath gone to such a pitch of detestable folly, that he feareth not to teach, and publicly preach, or rather to vomit out of the filthy dungeon of his breast, certain erroneous and false propositions and conclusions, savoring even of heretical pravity, tending to weaken and overthrow the status of the whole church, and even the secular government (Pope Gregory IX)”
Note that the term “secular government” was to be taken with a grain of salt, as England was an ecclesiastical fiefdom under the Papacy at the time. Deriving both political power and money from their entanglement with the government, the Roman Catholic Church had a lot to lose if John revealed them to be lying.
Because of this, the Roman Catholic leaders realized that the Bible itself was a legitimate threat to the multitude of extra-biblical teachings they have cultivated over the centuries to keep people dependent on their church. Hence why they put so much effort into not only suppressing the Bible, but conditioning people that it was a sin to doubt or question them:
If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema (Second Council of Nicaea).
“We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Unam Sanctam, 1302).
“The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.” (CCC, 100)
The Roman Catholic Church Does Not Respect Scripture
We know by the Lollard movement, and how the Roman Catholic Church chose to deal with it, that scriptural literacy was a legitimate threat to the political and religious stranglehold Roman Catholic leaders had in the Medieval Church era. As I have established ad nauseam throughout the prior chapters of this statement, there are a lot of deviations between scriptural and Roman Catholic Christianity. For them, a mass-produced Bible would be a Pandora’s Box that could threaten their literal existence. Christianity was never meant to be as immense, wealthy, and politically powerful as the Roman Catholic church had become. Taken literally, the scriptures would show a very clear divide between the orthodox Early Church of the first few centuries and the Roman Catholic Church now.
Since two hundred or so years of murder, book burnings, and political coercion were incapable of stopping the Word of God from spreading through the laity, they needed to enact damage control as quickly as possible. This would ultimately come to a head at the Council of Trent.
The Council of Trent would enact three counter-offensives against the growing Reformist body within them. First, was to establish the erroneous Latin Vulgate as the only authentic translation. Because of that, they could decree that anyone possessing a non-vulgate Bible would be subject to the same punishment of the authors and printers, which, as we’ve established above, would include, torture, imprisonment, ex-communication, or even death:
Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, It decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall,–in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church,–whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures,–hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published. Contraveners shall be made known by their Ordinaries, and be punished with the penalties by law established.
As to those who lend, or circulate them in manuscript, without their having been first examined, and approved of, they shall be subjected to the same penalties as printers: and they who shall have them in their possession or shall read them, shall, unless they discover the authors, be themselves regarded as the authors.” (Council of Trent, 2nd Decree)
Second, they would assert that salvation was imparted through sacraments and that they alone were the only ones capable of imparting those sacraments:
CANON I.-If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord; or, that they are more, or less, than seven, to wit, Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Order, and Matrimony; or even that any one of these seven is not truly and properly a sacrament; let him be anathema.
CANON IV.-If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification;-though all (the sacraments) are not indeed necessary for every individual; let him be anathema.
CANON X.-If any one saith, that all Christians have power to administer the word, and all the sacraments; let him be anathema.
CANON XIII.-If any one saith, that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, may be contemned, or without sin be omitted at pleasure by the ministers, or be changed, by every pastor of the churches, into other new ones; let him be anathema.
Now, submission to the Roman Catholic Church would be wholly necessary for salvation. This would also reaffirm their ability to divinely condemn and punish people through their expanded doctrine on penance:
CANON III.–If any one saith, that those words of the Lord the Saviour, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained, (z) are not to be understood of the power of forgiving and of retaining sins in the Sacrament of penance, as the Catholic Church has always from the beginning understood them; but wrests them, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, to the power of preaching the gospel ; let him be anathema.
CANON VI.–If any one denieth, either that sacramental confession was instituted, or is necessary to salvation, of divine right; or saith, that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the Church hath ever observed from the beginning, and doth observe, is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be anathema.
CANON XV.–If any one saith, that the keys are given to the Church, only to loose, not also to bind; and that, therefore, priests act contrary to the purpose of the keys, and contrary to the institution of Christ, when they impose punishments on those who confess; and that it is a fiction, that, after the eternal punishment, has, by virtue of the keys, been removed, there remains for the most part a temporal punishment to be discharged; let him be anathema.
Lastly, and perhaps most profitably for the Roman Catholic Church, would be the insinuation that the truth and rules of Christian doctrine would not just be wholly contained in scriptures, but also in unwritten traditions. Mind you, tradition being asserted as a source of spiritual authority long preceded the Council of Trent, but this renewed assertion would become particularly nefarious:
“This truth and rule are contained in written books and in unwritten traditions.”
In case the connotations of that statement seem a little too ambiguous, here is how it was established in the original draft:
“This truth [of the Gospel] is contained partly in written books, partly in unwritten traditions.”
This meant that Protestants would allegedly follow an incomplete Christianity, which as the Council had previously established in their sole claim to valid doctrine and sacraments, would result in spiritual death for all non-Catholics.
Now, when there was a conflict between scripture and tradition, the Roman Catholic Church would always win by default. Only the Roman Catholic clergy can interpret scripture, and tradition could amend scriptures to say whatever the Church wanted. It was an ingenious idea to counter a reformation born of intellectualism, literacy, and critical thinking with circular reasoning and alarmism.
In that regard, it wouldn’t matter how sure Protestants were that the Roman Catholic Church had twisted scriptures, because even the slightest doubt that the Protestant was wrong would invite in a near-universally conditioned belief that the Roman Catholic Church alone was the way to salvation. In fact, why meditate on the scriptures at all when the Council of Trent produced its own catechism to tell you what Christianity really was, anyway?
So, let’s bring back the table of doctrinal clashes from the Sola Scriptura chapter:
Due to limitations of the site editor, the below table may not be properly formatted for everyone. For a full sized version of the table (with even more content!), go here: Scripture vs Tradition.pptx
Roman Catholicism has Cultivated a Culture That Discourages Biblical Literacy
Short of Saint Germanus, every one of those quoted traditions came from after the 11th century. Whether you agree with my counter-arguments or not, the impact of Roman Catholic tradition is indisputable. Several of these doctrinal clashes, particularly those of iconography and submission to Christ alone, are far too different taken either at face value or by reasonable stretch. These were among some of the very same arguments that mobilized the Lollards and early Reformers. Tradition needed to be removed from being a subservient vehicle for scripture and to being of similar or greater weight if the Roman Catholic Church was going to successfully defend their denominational practices.
Today, suppression of the scripture is pretty much a non-issue. Pew Research center conducted a national survey in 2014 about various beliefs and practices of American Christians, drawing from a sizable sample size of 35,000 people. When it came to the frequency of reading scripture per week, Catholics came at the very bottom of the list amongst Christians. Only 25% of Catholics read their Bible at least once a week and 52% professed to seldom, or even never read their Bibles outside of Mass. Compare this to Evangelical Protestants, 63% of which read their Bibles at least once a week.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/frequency-of-reading-scripture/
This means that for at least 50% of Roman Catholics, their only exposure to the Bible is from four small passages they read weekly at Mass: an Old Testament reading, an Epistle, a Gospel story, and a psalm. Keep in mind, these passages are only two or three verses in length, and they are only read once a week to the majority of Catholics. Predictably, this does not add up to a very large percentage of the Bible being covered yearly. Compounding this, sermons at Catholic Mass occur in three-year cycles, with the lectionary being reread and unchanged between them.
So, how much of the Bible is covered in a single three-year Lectionary cycle? Well, for the weekly Mass attendee, only 40.8% of the New Testament and 3.7% of the Old Testament. So, fifty percent of Roman Catholics will go their entire lives possibly being exposed to less than half of the Bible. We know half of the Bible isn’t genealogies and Israelites repeating the same mistakes, so, there is a lot of important history and context missing, much of which would become integral to understanding the New Testament.
Sources: https://restlesspilgrim.net/blog/2014/03/23/lectionary-statistics/ and https://www.usccb.org/offices/new-american-bible/liturgy
The Roman Catholic Church Leverages Scriptural Ignorance to Its Benefit
If you leaf back to the first half of this statement, you’ll see the majority of my assertions based in New Testament scripture have been reinforced by pertinent Old Testament scripture. The Bible is a different book when read as a cohesive whole, and not in smatterings of separate passages. Ultimately, the Roman Catholic Church would leverage this scriptural illiteracy with their elevation of Tradition to exalt their aberrant doctrine over scripture as the Word of God.
So as the first of many examples, when Pope Francis exercised Magisterium with his councils to amend the Catechism with the death penalty being inadmissible in light of the Gospel, most didn’t raise an eyebrow at the obvious doctrinal clash with the scriptures. This is because, statistically, there is a 96.3% chance that each of the following OT verses to not to have been brought up in Mass liturgy:
Genesis 9:6: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
Exodus 21:23-25: But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Exodus 22:18 “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.
Deuteronomy 21: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So, you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
I mean, even if we just square this off to the New Testament, you still have Peter overseeing the death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5). Paul goading Festus to put him to death if they could prove he had committed any sins worthy of the penalty (Acts 25:11), Paul reminding everyone that the wages of sin are death (Rom 6:23), and Jesus quoting one of the death penalties against the Pharisees (Mat 15.4).
Of course, I could understand preaching against mere men carrying out the death penalty. But this is specifically about government, what does Paul say about that?
Romans 13:1-4: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Here is the amended Catechism:
Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide”. (2267)
Listen, a punishment being morally reprehensible because it violates the inviolability and dignity of a person is not something that you are going to find anywhere in the Bible. This sounds very clearly like the product of modern progressivism. Church tradition has to replace scripture to keep the Roman Catholic Church palatable to the newer generations. However, if this happened in a Protestant church, we’d default to our knee jerk reaction to basically everything that challenges the Christian worldview: vindictive Bible beating, halfhearted boycotts, and finally, schism.
Not only would this be a departure from the scriptures, but Francis would actually double-back against Catholicism’s own Tradition under Pope John-Paul:
“This is a departure from what the document, approved under Pope John Paul II in 1992, says on the matter: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
Source: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2018/08/pope-francis-changes-teaching-on-death-penalty-its-inadmissible/
Two divine representatives of Jesus wielding infallibility on matters of doctrine and faith, have arrived at different conclusions. The death penalty is either inadmissible, or it is admissible in the right circumstances. Given that Francis made an absolute statement, this is in irreconcilable conflict with John-Paul’s. This foolishness is another direct refutation of the Roman Catholic claim of preserving the doctrines of the Early Church:
Has the Catholic Church ever changed its teaching? No, for 2000 years the Church has taught the same things which Jesus taught.” (Catholic Catechism for Adults).
“It is a historical fact the Catholic Church, from the twentieth century back to the first, has not once ceased to teach a doctrine on faith or morals previously held, and with the same interpretation; the church has proved itself infallible.” (My Catholic Church).
Protestants are ready and willing to mold their denominations around their interpretation of scripture, while the Catholic church readily molds scripture to fit around their tradition. Ideally, neither practice would exist, but at the least, sola scriptura sets a hard baseline, unaltered for centuries, that can unite Protestants of various denominations around the world and over many generations. Roman Catholics cannot, as they’ve altered the meanings of Christian doctrine frequently and significantly over the ages.
In fact, concerning the Second Commandment, the Catechism literally details how it altered the commandment in the Catechism to remove the charge against making graven images:
They, of course, justify this with a council, rather than with scripture:
Basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons – of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son of God introduced a new “economy” of images (Catechism, 2131).
This is a clear example of the Roman Catholic church overwriting scripture with their Tradition. There is literally no evidence for the claim that Jesus, taking the form of a man, meant that God was now no longer against the creation of images of things in Heaven or on Earth, especially with the intent of using these images for veneration.
Not to mention that I’ve have shown veneration to be indistinguishable from worship for Catholics by virtue of Marian doctrines and prayers, both in my prior chapter on Prayer and in my future chapter on Rejecting Roman Catholic Marian Doctrine.
So, in summary:
- The Roman Catholic church did not create the definitive translation of the bible, the Reformer Tyndale did.
- The Roman Catholic church actively murdered bible translators in an attempt to keep scriptures sealed away from the common people.
- The Roman Catholic church taught that the Bible did not contain all that necessary truth for salvation.
- The Roman Catholic church dissuaded scripture reading by asserting only the clergy could interpret them.
- Modern Catholics largely do not read their Bibles consistently, Roman Catholic Mass doesn’t even cover half of its contents.
- The Roman Catholic Church has repeatedly altered Christian doctrine by overwriting scripture with their Tradition.
In that regard, the Bible is most certainly not a Roman Catholic book. It doesn’t take any stretch of logic to see why Evangelical Protestants are so far more biblically literate than their Catholic brethren.
Protestants believe all spiritual truths can be found in the Bible, Roman Catholics do not. Protestant forefathers risked imprisonment, torture, and even death to attain the Bible, while the Roman Catholic church actively persecuted them to keep it suppressed. Protestants temper their denominational doctrine with the scriptures, while the Roman Catholic church tempers scripture with their denominational doctrine. The Bible may not belong to any specific denomination, but if any Christian church were to make a claim to it, the Roman Catholic church would be the least of them.