Could someone please clarify this...?

Pika_Chu

I've been told over and over that the Catholic Church was trying to prevent people from reading the Bible a long time ago, by keeping it in Latin, so people wouldn't understand it. 'Cause they hate Jehovah, etc, etc. Can someone please clarify this so I can refute it? I mean, I understand that people knew what was in the Bible back then despite this. There are numerous writings and works of art that depict biblical concepts from time periods wherin the church still controlled a lot of things. And some of these were written in Latin too. People probably knew Latin back then, and the Pope was supposed to have the Holy Spirit to understand this stuff and pass it down through the ranks, as if he got the info from God himself anyway (irony, anyone?). And has anyone else noticed how nice the Watchtowers have been when they talk about Martin Luther? He's praised for wanting to translate the Bible into German(?), yet he also invented, like, a whole branch of "Bablyon the Great," so that wouldn't make since. And the Church is evil for not wanting him to translate or something. Like, that would be tantamount to independent thinking or something... But how do I explain this to a fanatical JW? Should I even try? Would they see the irony? Would they understand maybe the Church could have had a good reason for this, and if not, that the WT is guilty of almost the same thing, not letting us interpret the Bible for ourselves (not languages, of course, but INTERPRETATIONS, none the less)?!

jgnat

Literacy is a modern invention, after Gutenberg. Once the publishing of books and tracts became inexpensive, the investment in literacy by ordinary people also became worthwhile. What followed shortly after was the publication of materials in local languages. What followed after that, of course, is private reading and private interpretation.

Latin has a few other things going for it. It is a "universal" language transcending borders and dialects, so it is still in use in the sciences, for instance. Inherited from Rome, it was the language of the educated and the aristocrat. I can recall in my early grades when Latin was finally dropped as a mandatory. Our university now only requires fluency in a "second language". You can see the advantage for a universal, catholic Church. All priests, no matter how far flung, all speak a common tongue. Latin is also a dead language. There are no native speakers. More about latin in the Catholic church: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09019a.htm

The Catholic Church recognizes the bible as inspired, "However, all revealed truths are not contained in the Bible (see TRADITION); neither is every truth in the Biblerevealed, if by revelation is meant the manifestation of hidden truths which could not other be known." ...we are dependent upon the Church for our knowledge of the existence of this inspiration. She is the appointed witness and guardian of revelation. From her alone we know what books belong to the Bible. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm

looloo

pika chu , have you ever seen the sisters of magdeline a true story set in ireland , i watched it last week and found it shocking how much the catholic church had such control over people and the evil nuns were capable of to young girls who were unwed mothers / fallen women etc .. i would recomend watching that to a jw and ask them to see the irony if they make a comment .

Perry

The primary purpose of the papacy in my opinion was to nulify the New Testament Contract while making people feel religious. It is the same with Cults today. Keeping people from reading the bible was one of the milder tactics used. Infant baptism made salvation a matter of what your parents did an not what you personally did with Jesus.

99 % of ancient NT biblical manuscripts are not "Catholic". Despite the murder of perhaps 50 million bible believing Christians in Europe, countless mauscript burnings, the Textus Receptus survived and florished.

Learn More Here: http://www.wordfamine.com/History.html

Pahpa

It's plain that the policy of the church today differs from that in history.

Whenever an organization has authority over its members, it does not

want to relinquish its control. In the case of the Catholic church, it

wanted members to be totally dependent upon the church for inter-

pretation of scripture. Likewise, sects like the Watchtower discourage

personal Bible study so that members rely on their "governing body"

for "the truth." The end result is similar. It is the threat of excommunication

or disfellowshipping for "independent thinking."

kjw53

Actually there is a big difference the Catholic clergy burned humans alive for trying to translate Gods word into the language of the day-they burned humans alive for what they said was heresy-they burned women alive after shaving their private parts looking for devil marks-because they used herbs to heal and were called witches- In the crusades they attacked jewish villages along the way to kill muslims, for supplies killing every single human that lived in those towns including children-babies, they wiped the aztecs or mayans off the face of the earth for practicing fornication while the clergymen were the # 1 attendees at the brothels back home. Catholocism-the tree trunk-many branches came off of her and here is what Gods word says--A good tree produces good fruit- a rotten tree produces rotten fruit.

rebel8

Right--'should you even try'.

If you are really trying to reason with a jw and you feel doing so is worthwhile, my guess is responding to the underlying sentiment would be more effective. The underlying sentiment being, "We are the one true religion because it's obvious all other religions are not."

I mean, if you were able to disprove this one thing, then what has been accomplished? Not much.

I guess my retort would be to ask why they are using the Bible created by the Catholic Church and discarded books the Catholics disregard too. Why do they agree with the Catholics on which books to discard? (Though Catholics retained more books.)

Then ask why the wts currently uses a translation done by a spirit medium.