>> What fantasy world are you living in? Most people only got to about the 3rd grade in those days, being able to read English, but certainly not much Latin. <<
You’ve got two wrong presumptions:
1. It’s not that most of the countryside was poorly educated. It’s that they were completely uneducated. Those who were educated were often very well educated.
2. It’s not that they learned English, and then learned Latin in the higher levels, like now. Latin was the basic education; English was so rarely part of a basic education, that there was no standardization in spelling, grammar, etc; usually anyone writing in English was merely trying to transcribe the sounds of common speech.
>> Of course, it also helps that you could not even own or read a Bible on your own unless you had permission to do so by a Bishop. The cost of putting together a Bible, whether in Latin or English, is the same, so it does not follow that this is a real excuse for the RCC forbidding translations in the common language for people to actually understand. <<
No-one was forbidden to own a bible; that’s the Black Legend I referred to. But a bible cost far more than anyone but a nobleman could afford. Every Catholic church, however, as a matter of canon law, had a public bible that anyone could peruse. If you wanted to take such a bible home with you, yes, you’d better have permission of the bishop, or be able to pay for a years’ salary of a well-educated monk.
>> A Latin Bible belched out by a Priest is meaningless to 99 percent of the congregation, and they have to rely on the Priest’s interpretation and translation on the spot, instead of reading an English or other scripture in the common language. <<
Not exactly. “Glosses” (from the Latin word, for “tongues”) were translations written between the lines of Latin Bibles. Latin Bibles commonly had glosses of the liturgical readings, which included nearly all of the New Testament, the Psalms, and the passages of the Old Testaments which were referenced by the New Testament. The priest would read the gloss, and then would preach a homily, or interpretation and implementation of the readings. When people say there was a lack of English bible, they mean that there were few entire bibles written in English; there were however many, many glosses.
>> Of course, thanks be to God, we no longer have to get permission from the Bishop or the RCC to even use a Bible! <<
Yes, you can thank a Catholic for working with the Church to make bibles affordable so that you didn’t need to read the church, library, university or seminary copy.
... and while we’re at it, let’s not forget that the university was a Catholic invention made to ensure the biblical literacy of anyone who was educated. That’s why we call university teachers, “professors”: they professed the bible!
“You’ve got two wrong presumptions:
On the contrary, aren’t you just making assumptions in the hopes of getting us to believe that anyone could read Latin who could read at all? And therefore, anyone who was literate could read the scripture freely? Actually education in those days consisted of lessons in English grammar, taught in such a way to prepare them for later lessons in Latin. But, not everyone who could read English also read Latin. And even then, everyone spoke and understood English, so why could it not be read to them?
Of course, the illogical thing about these assumptions of yours is that, if no one could read them even in English in the first place, why prohibit the Bible? Isn’t it because the church decided it was too dangerous to allow the vernacular to the common people, since they, according to the judgment of the church, were too stupid to understand it rightly?
“Every Catholic church, however, as a matter of canon law, had a public bible that anyone could peruse.”
But certainly not STUDY, unless you were willing to go through the hoops of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, were these Bibles in English, or were they in Latin?
One more thing, on literacy rates in England in the 16th century:
“Before the PROTESTANT REFORMATION, education was very closely controlled by the Catholic Church, and was limited to elite groups–men in holy orders. Further, literacy in Latin rather than in vernacular languages was the goal of these elites. However, by the middle of the sixteenth century, while many schools and teachers still maintained links to organized religion, a number of new schools arose due to the efforts of private individuals, parishes, guilds, and the like. This secularization of education meant that literacy was less and less the preserve of elite social groups; the deliberate spread of (first Latin, and then vernacular) literacy throughout the social body played an important role in the maintenance of religious orthodoxy, both Catholic and Protestant, but it also came to be seen as a political tool for state building, for the maintenance of morality, and for equipping the population with valuable skills. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (c. 1469–1536) and Martin Luther (1483–1546) were especially important in drawing attention to such political and governmental possibilities. James Bowen, in A History of Western Education, estimates early sixteenth-century literacy rates in England to have been less than 1 percent; yet by the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) he suggests it was getting close to 50 percent. The Reformation, then, was a major spur to education and to literacy”
http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Ke-Me/Literacy.html
Another reason to thank the Reformers.