“Yes, I erred.”
You certainly did. I did not.
“The Catholic Church spent hundreds of years suppressing vernacular translations, and Trent came in the middle. So sorry...”
The Catholic Church spent zero years suppressing vernacular translations in themselves and Trent didn’t do it either.
“After all, they had banned them in England in 1408,”
Who is “they”?
“nearly 150 years before Trent. My bad. Forgive me.”
Only if you show real repentance. Look it up in the Douay Rheims.
“The Catholic Church did much worse than what I suggested when I said Sorbonne was following Trent.”
No. You made an error – an embarrassing one. The Catholic Church did not.
“Trent followed Sorbonne, and it also followed, as both of us know, 200 years of suppression.”
Not by the Catholic Church and not in regard to vernacular translations in themselves. As the Protestant scholar Alister McGrath, wrote in 1987: there was “no universal or absolute prohibition of the translation of scriptures into the vernacular was ever issued by a medieval pope or council, nor was any similar prohibition directed against the use of such translations by the clergy or laity.” (Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, page 124).
“In discussing ONE SENTENCE I wrote, I got suckered in to suggesting trent began the suppression.”
Oh, so Obamacare is a failure because of Republicans rather than because it was just a bad idea? No one here was suckered into anything. You posted the error. No one forced you to make it. Also, you did not “suggest” that Trent began the “suppression”. Here is EXACTLY what you wrote: “but as an example of the measures Catholics, operating in accordance with the Council of Trent, took to suppress vernacular translations - and WHY they did so.”
“Operating in accordance with” is not a suggestion of something. You are flatly stating it happened when it was, in fact, physically impossible.
“Yet we both know it had gone on for hundreds of years prior...”
Ah, mind reading. Not allowed by the mods here. And, also, I do not know what you are claiming.
“Of course, TECHNICALLY vernacular translations were allowed. All one needed was permission - which was never given to commoners.”
Sure it was. As stated by Miriam Usher Chrisman in Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530, page 4: “The German Bible, first printed in 1466, went through 14 editions before1518 and was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” She goes on to mention: “The overwhelming preponderance of scriptural quotation among the artisans confirms the existence of a strongly established Bible culture at the artisan level well before the Reformation.” (page 11) Now, granted, she was speaking of Germany and not England, but Wycliffe was in England and not Germany. Clearly people had access to Bibles.
“So there were a few copies of Wycliffe’s translation signed off individually, yet others were punished for having excerpts of the same translation. It wasn’t the translation, per se, that was objected to, but commoners owning them and reading them.”
No. As noted in Scripture Studies decades ago, Kenyon, in his early editions of Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (page 206) not that “There is no doubt that the Lollards (as Wycliffe’s followers were called) were persecuted, but it does not appear that the possession, use or manufacture of an English version of the Bible, was one of the charges specially urged against them. The subject is not raised in the extant list of articles upon which the suspected were to be questioned. One is glad that it should be so, that the leaders of the English Church should not have been hostile to an English Bible...” He changed that in later editions. I don’t claim to know why. Did he discover proof to the contrary? I don’t know. Anyway, my point is that it seems that there isn’t even unanimity on the idea that the Lollards were persecuted for possessing an English Bible. Why should I then assume “commoners owning [Bibles] and reading them” was “objected to”?
“As both Oxford in 1408 and Trent in the mid-1500s said, INDIVIDUALS could get permission, on a case by case basis.”
And, again, I have to point out to you that Trent said nothing of the kind. Your own source made that abundantly clear. This is the second time I believe I have pointed that out to you.
“ If you had enough money & power, and were firmly enough caught in the Catholic Church, you could own and use a vernacular translation - but the common man could not - for the reasons Schaff listed.”
False. As stated by Miriam Usher Chrisman in Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530, page 4: “The German Bible, first printed in 1466, went through 14 editions before1518 and was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” She goes on to mention: “The overwhelming preponderance of scriptural quotation among the artisans confirms the existence of a strongly established Bible culture at the artisan level well before the Reformation.” (page 11)
See that? Ordinary men and women. ORDINARY. Understand?
“If someone was impressed when Bill Clinton parsed the meaning of “is”, they will be impressed with the argument that the Catholic Church allowed vernacular translations - provided almost no one ever got to touch, see or read one.”
ORDINARY men and women: “The German Bible. . . was often listed in the inventories taken at the death of ordinary men and women.” OFTEN. See that?
“Contrast that with Tyndale, who was refused permission to translate by the Catholic Church, but who went ahead and did so.”
If Tyndale was refused permission it was because he was already considered a heretic - and rightly so – by at least one bishop. Why would a bishop grant permission to a man accused of heresy to translate the Bible for the faithful?
“His goal WAS to allow commoners to read the scriptures, and he rejected the arguments by the Catholic Church that common men were not allowed to read the Word of God.”
I don’t think his real goal was to “allow commoners to read the scriptures” since that was already happening. I think his goal was to push his own Lutheran like heresy. After all, he decided he was going to do whatever he wanted. That is not a man interested in the common man, but a man interested in his own designs.
“Boast, if you will, that the Catholic Church PERMITTED a few hundred to read the Word of God,”
I never said that, nor boasted that. If you’re going to say I boasted about something don’t you think you should get your facts straight – unless you simply don’t care about the facts.
“while Martin Luther and Tyndale ensured that MILLIONS could do so.”
Except that Martin Luther didn’t do that because he never published a complete translation and delegated books which disagreed with him to an unpaginated appendix. Tyndale too never finished the whole Bible so he didn’t ensure “that MILLIONS could” read the Bible either. Those are the facts, but I doubt any anti-Catholic would care.
“The difference, of course, is that Luther and Tyndale understood what access to the Word of God meant - a rejection of the deceitful theology the Catholic Church was built on.”
Luther actually seemed to conclude that his own work to ensure “access” to the Bible helped create chaos.
“No priests in the New Testament. No Purgatory. No indulgences. No transubstantiation. No Bishops. No Pope. No temporal power. The foundation of the Catholic Church - what makes it the Roman Catholic Church - doesn’t exist in scripture, and indeed is contradicted directly by it.”
Actually no. You are as wrong there as you are on so many things.
“No priests, offering a sacrifice by the authority of Bishops and the Pope. Without that, there IS no Catholic Church. And that is why Luther and Tyndale WANTED people to read the scriptures for themselves, and the Catholic Church fought to prevent it.”
Nope. And you still can’t prove what you claimed.
You can parse the meaning of “is” with Bill Clinton, but PROTESTANTS translated the scripture into the vernacular and placed it in the hands of commoners. The Catholic Church did not.
Allowing a few hundred to be distributed, sometimes requiring dispensation of the Pope, is hardly the same as distributing hundreds of thousands. If you cannot see the difference between 100 and 100,000...well, everyone else can.
““but as an example of the measures Catholics, operating in accordance with the Council of Trent, took to suppress vernacular translations - and WHY they did so.”
Applying that to the Sorbonne Index was an error. Applying it to the Papal Index makes a true statement. My ONLY error was applying it to Sorbonne, rather than allowing that the Sorbonne ban mirrored the common practice of the Catholic Church over hundreds of years.
“Tyndale too never finished the whole Bible so he didn’t ensure “that MILLIONS could” read the Bible either.”
He finished the New Testament personally, and was working on the Old when his efforts were interrupted by his death under the direction of the Catholic Church. His translation was continued, and most of it was incorporated when Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament:
“Coverdale based his New Testament on Tyndale’s translation. For the Old Testament, Coverdale used Tyndale’s published Pentateuch and possibly his published Jonah.”
“Miles Coverdale (see below) continued Tyndale’s work by translating those portions of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) which Tyndale had not lived to translate himself, and publishing the complete work. In 1537, the “Matthew Bible” (essentially the Tyndale-Coverdale Bible under another man’s name to spare the government embarrassment) was published in England with the Royal Permission. Six copies were set up for public reading in Old St Paul’s Church, and throughout the daylight hours the church was crowded with those who had come to hear it. One man would stand at the lectern and read until his voice gave out, and then he would stand down and another would take his place. All English translations of the Bible from that time to the present century are essentially revisions of the Tyndale-Coverdale work.”
Henry VIII then had the Coverdale Bible distributed throughout England. And, indeed, much of Tyndale’s New Testament found its way into the KJV.
Of course, there aren’t many who would be proud that the Catholic Church condemned Tyndale to death as a heretic, although I suppose a few are happy about it.
“I don’t think his real goal was to “allow commoners to read the scriptures” since that was already happening. I think his goal was to push his own Lutheran like heresy.”
Tyndale and his associates managed, after his death, to make it possible for anyone who could read English to read the scripture for themselves in England. This came well over 100 years after Thomas Arundel, “by divine permission archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and legate of the apostolical see” ordered:
“The translation of the text of Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another is a dangerous thing; as blessed Jerome testifies, because it is not easy to make the sense in all respects the same; as the same blessed Jerome confesses that he made frequent mistakes in this business, although he was inspired: therefore we enact and ordain that no one henceforth do by his own authority translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other by way of book, pamphlet, or treatise. Nor let any such book, pamphlet, or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wicklif aforesaid, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in whole or in part, in public or in private, under pain of the greater excommunication, till that translation have been approved by the diocesan of the place, or if occasion shall require, by a provincial Council. Let him that do contrary be punished in the same manner as a supporter of heresy and error.”
In between 1408 & Tyndale, no one received permission to publish Wycliffe’s translation and no one received permission to produce a new one. Tyndale asked, and was denied.
It was obviously in the power of the Catholic Church to get the Scriptures into the hands of commoners, but it refused, and punished those who tried. Burning Tyndale at the stake was hardly a bright and shining moment in Catholic history.