It has long been my belief that the Church of Rome reluctantly gives the Bible mere lip service, and if the truth be told, they in reality are quite able to function and exist without the word of God.

This brief article will demonstrate how Rome understands the Holy Scripture and what is expected of her laity if and when they ever wish to delve into God's only infallible message and witness to mankind.

For the most part, I will be quoting from an official Roman Catholic source, which was used for seminarians studying in the UK for the priesthood, in the 1960s. I believe this source to be a trustworthy, accurate and faithful publication.

"The Church, then, affirms that all Scripture is the word of God, but at the same time it maintains that there is an unwritten word of God OVER and ABOVE Scripture" (¹, pg. 78.)

First of all, the following 4 points, need to be made:

1. Whenever official Catholic publications use the word Christian, they actually mean Catholic.

2. Whenever they use the word Church, they mean Catholic Church.

3. Whenever they speak about the Bible, they mean the Apocrypha also.

4. Whenever they speak of the unwritten word, they mean oral tradition also.

Now this first statement is nothing new for Rome to affirm, for they have always held to this, especially more so after the successful Reformation of the 15th century. However the Bible is never silent when it comes to vain men and their religions, not only seeking to reach God their own private way (Gen. 11:1-9; John 10:1.), but also states categorically, how God will one day put His word not only above His name (Ps. 138:2), but through the name of Jesus, who is the WORD of God, will force EVERY knee to bow and EVERY tongue to confess, that He is the Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10, 11.)

...."It is the duty of a Christian to receive the one [oral tradition] and other [written word] with equal veneration and respect" (¹, pg. 78.)

Such a declaration as this may all sound good and fair to the average naive Catholic and ignorant Protestant, but what happens when the two clash and contradict one another? And how can a Catholic treat both with equal respect, when one is superior to the other?

Sadly this duel authority is also found in Mormonism (Book of Mormon and Bible), Judaism (Talmud and Tenach) and Jehovah's Witness (Kingdom Hall and their corrupt Bible translation, NWT.)

"For twenty years after our Lord's ascension, not a single book of the New Testament was written, and all that time no Christian could appeal, as many Protestants do now, to the Bible and the Bible only; for the simple reason that the New Testament did not exist" (¹, pg. 78.)

Some conservative scholars have dated the Book of Matthew to 37AD (⁴, pg. 993), James to 44AD (², pg. 1924) and 1 Corinthians to 55AD (², pg. 1726) so the above statement isn't universally accurate, to say the least.

Interestingly they next cite Irenaeus, who oddly took the dangerous and hypothetical position that:

"The apostles had left no Scripture at all. In this case, he says, we should still be able to follow the order of tradition, which the Apostles handed down to those into whose hands they committed the churches" (¹, pg. 78.)

May I say such a view as this could have terrible repercussions, for the simple purpose that if one took the words of men to be the word of God, who could ever know for sure, whether what one was told was absolute or not. One would be forever in bondage to such men and such a precarious position as this, would cause much anxiety and concern.

As the late Len Ravenhill once put it so brilliantly, when dealing with sacred Scripture:

"Either the Bible is absolute or its is obsolete."

That is our view entirely

"A popular Protestant theory makes it the right and the duty of each individual to interpret the Bible for himself and to follow his own religion accordingly; the Catholic, on the contrary, maintains that it belongs to the Church, and to the Church alone, to determine the true sense of the Scripture, and that we cannot interpret contrary to the Church's decision, or to the unanimous consent of the fathers, without making shipwreck of the faith" (¹, pg. 78)

There is much in this paragraph that needs to be highlighted and then corrected.

Firstly, the Scripture itself always commends everyday people who take the initiative to read it, whether to check to see if it lines up with apostolic teachings (Acts 17:11); to help the child of God understand God's word (2 Tim. 2:15); to fully equip the saint to be perfectly able to walk and live the Christian life (2 Tim. 3:16) and finally to allow a universal blessing to all who read and believe it (Rev. 1:3.)

Secondly, the diversity within the many strands of Protestantism, only goes to enrich the universal method of worshipping God; such groups therefore are not ones "own religions" but just different emphasises and interpretations of divers theological positions. To make this erroneous statement about one's "own religions" is either wilful ignorance or intentional smearing.

And thirdly, one needs to read this section very carefully again, for what has just been said is this: You, Mr. or Mrs Catholic, are not allowed to have your own view as to what the Bible teachers. You're opinion must line up totally with "the unanimous consent of the fathers."

"It is not necessary for all Christians to read the Bible" (¹ pg. 79.)

This subject has long been a bone of contention between Catholics and Protestants, because the latter have long believed that such a medieval view does indeed do much damage to the average Catholic, for ignorance of Scripture, according to infallible Pope Benedict XV, is "ignorance of Christ" (Hos. 4:6.)

"Clement XI condemned the proposition that the reading of Scripture is for all" (¹, pg. 79.)

To think that the blood of Biblical Prophets and Apostles was partly shed for the word of God and its message to the world, such a statement as this therefore, is deeply offensive and insulting to Scripture and their memory.

Jude the Apostle would also say how one, "should earnestly contend for the faith which was ONCE delivered unto the saints" (Jude 4.)

"....The Councils of Toulouse (1229) and Tarragona (1234) forbade the laity to read the vernacular translations of the Bible. Pius IV required the bishops to refuse lay persons leave to read even Catholics versions of Scripture, unless their confessors or parish priests judged that such reading was likely to prove beneficial" (¹, pg. 79.)

The Scriptures, according to Paul the Apostle, had the power to make one wise unto Salvation (2 Tim. 3:15.)

"The Popes have warned Catholics against Protestant Bible Societies, which distribute versions (mostly corrupt versions) of the Bible with the avowed purpose of perverting simple Catholics" (¹, pg. 79.)

Their statement "simple Catholics" is a most honest one, for most Catholics are indeed simple to the meat of the word of God; unfortunately for them, that is how their Church likes it.

"Leo XIII granted indulgences to those who devoutly read the Scriptures (1898)" (¹, pg. 79.)

It does appear, does it not, that on the one hand Rome has to bribe her faithful to read the Bible, yet on the other hand, Catholics are only allowed to do this (with permission from their superiors) and then only providing they don't believe the Bible, or use it to correct their church with it!

Catholics discovered reading the Authorised Bible, without permission of their "masters," were nearly always excommunicated (The Index, Canons after Art 10; Council of Trent, Paris edition, 1832.)

Infallible Pope Clement VIII ordered all Catholic Bibles to be burnt, even though Infallible Pope Sixtus V had officially sanctioned their existence (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, pgs. 411, 412.)

In 1548, one lady in Leeuward was unfortunately discovered by the Catholic Gestapo to have a copy of a Latin Testament; she was put on the rack, tortured and then beheaded. Why? Because she had no right to read this book, without "permission" (Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists, pg. 412.)

The next account is a most sad one, when a Christian individual is treated with religious bullying and bigotry:

"One Baptist sentenced to death escape over a frozen lake (a certain Dirk Willemzoon.) One of the papist soldiers chasing him feel through the ice and began to scream for help. His two buddies deserted him, but Dirk came back and helped him out. Once out, the soldiers buddies showed up; they arrested Dirk and took him back into prison, and he was burned at the stake the next day" (³, pgs. 519, 20.)

The following facts only go to degrade the Catholic church even further into a hostile and Bible rejecting institution.

It was once said that when the AV translators came together to translate the Bible into the Kings English, the one thing that each of them knew firsthand, was the fact that they had lived long enough to remember the terrible purges that Rome had ordered in Britain, therefore this new and masterful text would forever separate the Whore of Rome from the true Body of Christ.