THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE BIBLE.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3354, 16 April 1868, Page 3

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE BIBLE.

To the Editor of the Daily Southebk Cross. Sir,— lt was with much surprise that I read the statements of " One of the Laity" in your issue of Tuesday, relative to the course pursued by the Church of Koine respecting the reading of the fcscriptures. That the Church to which he belongs did in former times keep the Bible from the people, is manifest from the authoritative writings of her dignitaries, and even from the testimony of the Roman Catholic Bible from which he quotes when he furnishes the extract he gives us from the letter of Pope Pius VI. On the title-page of this book it is distinctly stated that the Koman Catholic Old Testament, in the English language, was hrst published by the college at Douay in a.d. 1609, and that the New Testament was first published by the college ab Rheims iv a.d. 1582. Now these dates are subsequent to the Reformation in England, previously to which the religion of Rome was in the ascendant in England, and this for centuries, and during this time Rome furnished no English Bible to her English-speaking people. On this subject I will just cite another extract from a work written by a, Roman Catholic s«int, canonised in A.D. 1839, and of whose writings it was testified, by tbe Pope and body of Cardinals, that he never wrote one word worthy of censure, and whose productions are, in consequence of this, of the highest authority in the Church of Rome in the present day. Ibe work I mean is that of St. Liguori on the Council of Trent. In the edition of this work published, by Duffy, Dublin, A.D. 1846, iv page 31, we read that, at the Council, Cardinal Maadruccio suggested that the Scriptures should be published in the language of the people. "But this was not deemed expedient, and it was thought sufficient to have them published in Latin," and this, because, as was alleged, "many passages of the Bible are so obscure and equivocal that, should they fall into the hands of the people, they might suggest errors or at least pernicious doubts." , „ . .. Proofs o£ this kind could be multiplied ad infinitum, but these are surely enough to prove that the Church of Rome kept the Bible from the people until the light of the Reformation, bursting out on every side, imperilled that darkness in which the nations of Europe had been enshrouded for centuries. Athrst Rome tried to suppress all editions of God s Word in the language of the people, and, not to enlarge on this subject, I would only mention that Tonstal, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Durham, bought up and burnt the first edition of the New Testament in English, published by William Tyndale, and that afterwards William Tyndale was strangled and his body burnt. These measures did not suffice for the extinction of light; the Reformation still grew and gained strength ; the blood of martyrs became the seed of the Church, and Rome was unable to suppress the Bible. This led her to change her tactics j she herself would now give the people an edition of the Bible, and she would " excite " them to read her edition only, when this course should be deemed necessary to keep them from Protestant versions, or for some other similar cause. They would, as the letter of Pope Pius VI. says, excite them to the reading of the Scriptures in such a way as to swerve not from " the laws of the Congregation of the Index," the fourth of which says :— " The reading of the Bible by all persons in general does more harm than good." That the Roman Catholic Bible is supplied to meet the Protestant circulation is plain from many sources, and among the rest from the preface by John Mac Hale, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, Ireland, to the edition of the Roman Catholic New Testament published^under his npprobation m 1846, where he says, "Aware of the manifest dangers to faith and morals that are found in corrupt versions of the Bible, as well as in the Scriptural fragments that are insidiously issued among the people, exhibiting strange and inaccurate novelties of language, in which you look in vain for the sound forms of Catholic doctrine, we have not ceased to deplore this great evil, and to labour for its correction. It occurred to us that the publication of genuiue veiaionsof the Vulgate, under competent authority, with explanatory notes r would be found among the most efficient means to neutralise the poison of these counterfeit productions. Again, where the Bible is furnished by the Church of Rome, she strenuously seeks to neutralise its effects by teaching that it must not be understood by the people ; they may read, and musb take no meaning from what they read, but must go to the Church for her meaning ; and for this they go in vain, for ahe has no authorised meaning to supply. Ibis leads many Roman Catholics to say, " Though the Bible is allowed to us, we seldom or never read it, for of what use is it to us to read it when we cannot understand it ?" And so the Church of Rome s gift of the Bible to her people is » delusion, as she takes such measures even now as effectually keep it from the great mass of them. — I am, &0., [We consider this correspondence closed.— Ed. P.S.C.]