The Roman Catholic Church And The Bible
This article is from a PDF file on LutheranLibrary.org. It was published by The Converted Catholic Magazine and edited by former Roman Catholic priest, Leo Herbert Lehmann.
1. The Bible And The People
THE OFFICIAL ATTITUDE of the Roman Catholic Church, concerning the Bible is a puzzle to most people and needs clarification for all fair-minded Christians. This attitude is so hesitant and contradictory that, even on the face of it, one cannot help concluding at once that the Roman church would be very much more at ease if the Bible never existed at all. Certainly, it would make things easier for the Roman Catholic church in our day if the Bible could still be kept from the people as it was in the Middle Ages.
But the Church of Rome is now faced with the fact that no other book in the world is so easy of access to everyone. Since the Protestant Reformation the Bible has been translated into every known language, and has flooded every nation on the face of the earth. This worldwide distribution of the Bible, however, has been exclusively the work of Protestants, and meets with actual opposition from the Roman Catholic church in Roman Catholic countries. The Gideons alone have freely distributed as many Bibles as would reach, if placed end to end, from Albany to New York City.
2. Effect On Protestants Who Become Catholics
Every Protestant, clergyman or layman, who joins the Roman church, must solemnly swear to God, with his hand upon the very Bible itself, as follows1
In other words, in order to become a Roman Catholic, you must not only repudiate the true Gospel message, but you also must doubt the very book of the Gospel itself. On the other hand, Catholics who become Protestants can do so only by full acceptance both of the Gospels themselves and the message of salvation therein contained.
3. No Protestant Has Ever Confessed That He Has Become A Catholic Through The Bible.
Mr. John Moody (founder of Moody’s Investors Service), a layman who became a Catholic, declared in a review of his book (“The Long Read Home”) in the N. Y. Herald Tribune, Sept. 3, 1932:
On page 78 of his book he confesses that, as a young man, he put his Bible on a shelf where it remained unopened ever after.
It is the same with other Protestants of note who have yielded with fanfare to the authority of the Pope in preference to the authority of the Word of God. In the writings of Cardinal Newman, G. K. Chesterton, Arnold Lunn, Rev. Seldon Delaney and others who have been used so aggressively by the Roman Church in America to propagandize its teachings, you will find that the Bible was never their guide to Rome.
On the other hand:
Such, for instance, was the case with Rev. Charles Chiniquy, the famous French Canadian priest who left the Roman Church after 25 years of honest effort to teach Christ. He brought his entire congregation with him into the light of Evangelical Christianity, and for 40 more years after labored with great zeal and brought tens of thousands of Roman Catholics to accept Christ through the Bible and to renounce the unwarranted claims of the Pope of Rome.
In fact, Father Chiniquy and his congregation broke with the church of Rome expressly because of its attitude towards the Bible. In the name of his congregation he drew up, as a test, an act of submission to the Bishop of Hlinois, conditioned only on the truth of the Bible and the Commandments of God, as follows:
The Bishop refused to accept this form of submission. “Take away,” he said, “the words, Word of God and Gospel of Christ, or I will punish you as a rebel.” Upon the refusal of Father Chiniquy to do so, the Bishop replied: “You can therefore no longer be a Catholic priest.” (See Forty Years in the Church of Christ, p. 44, by Father Chiniquy). He had committed the unpardonable sin of judging the Church by the Bible and not the Bible by the Church.
The Rev. James A. O’Connor, also a former priest, labored in New York City after his conversion as a teacher of New Testament Christianity. He founded Christ’s Mission and led over 150 priests and thousands of Catholic lay people to renounce the errors of Rome and to accept Christ at his Word as found in the Gospel. Protestants, after they become Catholics, do not bother about the Bible but teach and preach the dogmas of Rome about transubstantiation, indulgences, purgatory, papal infallibility, worship of the saints and the Virgin Mary — none of which are to be found in the Bible.
4. Contradictions
It will be noted in the first place, that the Roman Church has actually decreed as an article of faith, that the Bible — from Genesis to Revelation — is the actual Word of God. Yet, the individual is made to swear, on the Bible itself, that he will not take God at His Word! He is blasphemously made to swear that he will take the word of a man instead!
Furthermore, according to the Decrees of the Council of Trent, a Catholic is solemnly bound to interpret the Bible only according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. Now, if you are too ignorant, too unintelligent, to understand the plain wording of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John when they speak directly for Jesus Christ, how can you be expected to understand Tertullian, Jerome, Augustine, etc., who had no contact with Jesus Christ, and who are far more obscure than the Evangelists? But even apart from this, there is no such thing as “the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” They all differed greatly in their interpretations of the texts of the Gospel, and their writings fill more than 200 large volumes!
5. Harmful Mixture Of Roman Catholic Tradition With Scripture
This “tradition” is nothing else but the shameful process by means of which the Papacy built up its great power over the nations of Europe. This poisonous concoction, however, comes first in everything Catholics are forced to believe and practice. None of it — the mass, indulgences, purgatory, mariolatry, fish in place of lamb chops on Fridays — is found in the New Testament. But a Catholic is condemned to hell if he does not believe and practice them all, whereas there is no need for him to know and believe in Jesus Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man. He is taught to believe instead, that the priest is the mediator between God and man.
Recently, in America particularly, Roman Catholics boast of the “permission” allowed them to read the Bible (i.e. only the approved Roman Catholic version). This has been forced upon the Catholic church, in democratic countries, by the outcry of Protestants against the historical denial of the Bible in the Catholic church down through the centuries. But like so many other seemingly Protestant innovations in the Roman church, this reading of the Bible is only “tolerated” and for the time being. Even this “permission” is limited. Catholics must read only a Papal version of God’s word, and give it only the convenient interpretation which is explained for them in the footnotes! It is like handing a thirsty person a glass of fresh water into which has been poured a poisonous concoction.
The grasp of the Bible and its distortion by the Roman church have been the means by which the Papacy attained its unwarranted power over peoples and nations. By this means it has subdued its people and kept them ignorant. It guarantees absolute obedience of the people to the priests and hierarchy. As the extravagant Romanist Bloy bluntly puts it:
The true Christian takes Christ at his word when he says:
And it was Peter — whom Roman Catholics claim was their first Pope, — speaking for the other apostles, who assured his Master:
1. From the Rituale Romanum — official Roman ritual-book used by priests in administering the sacraments.↩
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