Well, Protestants have encouraged Bible-study for centuries, being the ones who translated God's word into native languages, unlike RCs for whom Scripture is a rather recent addition to their reading schedule.
>>Spare me your ignorance. Protestants taught me the importance of reading the Bible, but not the importance of reading it correctly. Every Protestant is his or her own Pope. Scripture readings have been part of the Mass and the Divine Office for centuries, long before there was such a thing as a Protestant. Luther, Tyndale, Wycliffe, etc., they didn't translate the Bible, they published mistranslations every bit as egregious as the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation.
>>Liberal Protestantism is simply the logical progression of private interpretation. I just love Protestant mythology. Having been one myself, I can attest to the fact most Protestant conceptions of Catholicism are shear, uninformed bigotry.
The Protestant Deformers did nothing except to destroy the unity of Christ's Church and rent it asunder. Christianity has never recovered from their sins. Luther rejected Church authority over scripture, Luther's heirs of the enlightenment then rejected the authority of scriptures and the existence of God.
I find it interesting that Presbyterian Scotland, Lutheran Germany and the French philosophes who were influenced by the Hugenots all were in the avante garde of the de-Christianization of Europe during the "Enlightenment."