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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Council of Trent on Scripture

Candy has posted the first chapter from Charles Chiniquy's book. In this chapter, a short, scary priest accuses his father of reading the Bible in French, allowing his child to read the Bible, and then tries to take the Bible to burn it. The priest says that it is prohibited by the Council of Trent.

I'm not whether the Council of Trent supposedly prohibited one or all of these charges, but none of it is found in the actual council. On the contrary, the Council Fathers wrote that the Catholic Church "receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety, and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament."

The fourth session of the Council is the one which deals with Scripture. It does speak against false translations, people writing notes (for Bibles) which falsely interpret Scripture, and other measures which are aimed against the various reformers which were trying to use the Bible to back up their position. It is not prohibiting pious Catholics from reading the Bible.

As often as Candy writes against corrupt translations of Scripture, I would think that she can understand the position of the Church on this, even if she falls into the opposite side in matters of interpretation. She feels that people can be led astray by false interpretations of Scripture, and here, the Catholic Church agrees.


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2 comments:

Tracy said...

Nice job Kelly!

Sal said...

I found "The Two Chiniquys" post the most useful of the listed links.
It establishes that his anti-Catholicism grew with time, for whatever reasons- publicity,$$$,or real conviction.

Excellent as always, Kelly.