"The Catholic Church burned bibles" and other anti-Catholic half-truths

Yes, yes, it’s true.
Before I continue, make sure that you are sitting down. Because this may come as a shock.
Hush. Let me whisper this to you. “The Catholic Church burned bibles.” Gasp!
Yes, yes, it’s true. The Catholic Church also tied the Bible down and put it in a cage so that people couldn’t carry it home.

So, the anti-Catholics are right?!
Yep. Of course, they left out a bunch of very important details.
Huh?
It’s a partial truth.

What’s the whole truth?
The Catholic Church burned heretical bibles. And bibles with errors in them. For example:

The Tyndale bible - Even King Henry the 8th, the famous King who broke away from the Catholic Church and the Protestant Bishop Tunstall of London condemned the Tyndale bible as error filled.

The Catholic Church burned any such bibles.

What about the charge of chaining Bibles and putting them in cages?

I wonder why they don’t bring the same charge against ancient libraries and universities? They used to do the same thing. But anti-Catholics aren’t outraged about that? Why is that? Is it simply ignorance? Yeah, right.

You see, before the advent of the printing press. And even afterwards. Books were hard to come by. So, universities and libraries would provide them to their customers by providing “open” books which were either tied or put in cages where one could only reach a hand in there to turn the page. This would ensure that some selfish person wouldn’t take it home and thus prevent other people from reading them.

By the way, most universities and libraries of that era were Catholic. Yep, the Catholic Church has long been the premier Teacher of the entire world.. But, back to the question at hand.

In that same era, the Catholic Church also tied or caged the Bible in order to make it available to the most people.

Thanks to the Catholic Church, we have the Bible today

The fact is, folks, if it wasn’t for the Catholic Church, no one would have the Bible today. The Catholic Church defended and preserved the Bible from invading Pagans, Moslems and other enemies of God who destroyed the Bible at every opportunity. Then, in the time of Luther, the Catholic Church defended the Bible from being corrupted by all those Protestants who believed in “private” interpretation of Scripture. If they had succeeded in their personal and private corruption of the Word of God, we would have as many versions of the Bible as we do Protestant denominations.

Catholic Bibles are vitally important

Stick to Catholic Bibles. Please. Errors creep into Protestant bibles all the time. The reason being that they insert justification for their errors in their interpretations. And if the errors aren’t in the interpretations, they will put them in the footnotes. These might be honest mistakes, but they are mistakes none the less.

But you use the King James

Well, yes. But that’s another partial truth. The New American Bible (NAB) is my favorite. And the Douay Rheims used to be my favourite. I spelled favourite different for a reason. That’s the old spelling. Yeah, me and Dan Quayle. We still spell it tomatoe, potatoe and favour. I used to prefer the Olde English of the Douay. Especially because it has so many of the old prayers, the Magnificat and the Benedictus, that I remember fondly. The NAB has them too, but the wording is different.

I only use the King James (KJV) because, I used to run into King James only Protestants very frequently. And they refused to listen to any other versions. So, since even non-King James only Protestants will also accept the KJV, that’s what I mainly use when addressing Protestants.

Anyway, hope you liked this article. Let me know what you think in the comments.