No sir, the icons & art were/are not in fact the "unprinted Word of God". They were nothing more than images of errant fanciful thoughts and downright pagan idols. The world is far better off with those errors destroyed.
And perhaps you view the past as a "highly illiterate world", but the fact is that copies of the NT letters, together with the Hebrew texts, existed and were read & circulated in nearly every city of the known world. Your organization survives on an imaginary preeminence the way the emperor who had no clothes pictured his regal robes. We invite you to experience a "reformation moment" and come out of this cultish den into the light of Jesus Christ, alone...if you are permitted.
That is a point on which you and the Islamic world agree, but disagree the vast majority of Christians. I suppose you equally condemn any media other than the written word such as music and movies depicting the Biblical stories. How joyless your world must be.
"And perhaps you view the past as a "highly illiterate world", but the fact is that copies of the NT letters, together with the Hebrew texts, existed and were read & circulated in nearly every city of the known world. "
You are ignoring that there was a lingua franca, Greek that enabled persons to read those writings or that there were many, many fraudulent and heretical versions in circulation at that time. (note that the Septuagint was one such collection in circulation for the majority of the world's Jews who could not read Hebrew and the growing Christian community.) When the need for a new vernacular was recognized the Church produced the Vulgate, whose very name revealed its intended audience.
No it is not the Catholic Church that is in the dark shadow of the reformation.