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>>The Catholic Church hid scripture..even from its priests before Luther. Some early Catholic Theologians did not even read it. The people only "heard it" in a foreign language (latin)

Everything you think you know about Catholicism was taught to you by hate-mongering, screeding propagandists.

For most of church history (1500 years), bibles weren't available commonly simply because there was no mass publishing invented yet. For that history, people learned what was in the bible from their priest, and yes, every pastor had a bible, and could read it well, and the countryside teamed with religious who could teach. Which was OK, because it was thought only right that people should learn from educated people. In fact, for 3,000 years, the Jews omitted vowels and spaces to make it impossible for anyone to read the Bible without a rabbi.

When Luther began publishing the Bible in the vernacular, he actually omitted 7 books of the New Testament which are currently in the Protestant bible (Revelations, James, etc.) for the precise reason that they refuted directly his assertions... He reasoned they so baldly contradicted his beliefs that they must be fraudulent. Given the omissions, the purposeful mistranslations and tragic translational errors (ever hear of the "Devil's Bible"?), and the ease at which bible verse can be taken out of the bible (Satan himself quotes scripture!), is it any wonder the Church suppressed the distribution of Protestant bibles?

The use of Latin was not to enable people from being misinformed about what was contained in the bible. It wasn't only the bible that people used latin to study. It was the language of philosophy, science, history, and every other subject. And for a good reason. "Vulgate" meant the language of the common people, and until long after Gutenberg, far more poeple were literate in Latin than in all other languages in Europe combined. The use of a common language prevented theological misunderstandings, as had tore the Latin and Greek churches apart. It persisted through the 1960s, and to this day, Catholic schools still teach Latin to their students.

And I have to laugh at people who find something sinister about insisting on Latin while so many Protestants insist on using a Jacobian bible whose language they don't even realize how poorly they understand. And it's not even due to the ignorance of the reader: Jacobian English isn't even standardized enough to avoid theologically devestating ambiguity.

Let me first apologize in advance if I'm being nit-picky also, but if we are striving for accuracy here, let's dump the word "Revelations" and use either "The Revelation of St. John the Divine" or simply "The Revelation". Our bishop recently jumped us for sloppiness in announcing, "A reading from the Book of Revelations" so now I can't forget it. It's not good to be on the wrong side of the bishop.

In fact, for 3,000 years, the Jews omitted vowels and spaces to make it impossible for anyone to read the Bible without a rabbi.

Are you serious? Wherever did you acquire such a strange idea?

The Hebrew scriptures are written without vowels because that is the way Semitic languages are written.