There was no German vernacular translation. There wasn’t a good English one, and the only attempt at translating the Bible into English was by Wycliffe & his friends.
The Catholic Church actively opposed allowing commoners access to scripture. It was against their policy for hundreds of years.
Dear Mr. Rogers. Untrue. In fact, there were 20 of them published in either High or Low German prior to Luther
The Church preserved and protected the Bible, Keeping it free from men who would change the Word of God. Guy's like Luther, who wanted to remove the Epistle of James because it contradicted his personal view on salvation.
The Church would often chain the Bible - Primarily because they were so valuable. Think about it - would you keep your wallet and your wife's jewelry box on your front steps? No, you protect your mere possessions. Think how the Church strove to protect the Word of God!
We would not have the Bible without the catholic Church, who kept it from error through the ages, who assembled and copied the Bible, and who defended Christianity, Europe and civilization from the Muslim invasions.
Heresies were dealt with from the beginning of the Church, and the Church has dealt with those introducing false teachings through the ages.
Paul warned us this would happen, "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Tim. 4:3–4).
Martin Luther was one of these men Paul warned us about. He so wanted to believe in his view of salvation by faith alone that he tried to remove James from the Bible. "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone." James 2:24. You have to go through mental and verbal gymnastics to say the clear language of the Bible does not really say what it really says. This is one reason the Catholic Church protected the Bible in the early days. A hand written copy would be guarded as a treasure because of its rare nature, but more importantly to prevent false copies from circulating and supporting heresy.
Fortunately, we have Christ’s promise that heresies will never prevail against the Church. They will arise, endure sometimes for centuries, like Protestantism, but we can be confident in Christ’s promise that the Church will always teach the Truth.
The New Testament was published in English by the (Catholic) English College at Douay in 1582, and the Old Testament in 1609. The King James Version was published in 1611; therefore, the Catholic Church was the first to publish the Bible in English.