_Catholic Encyclopedia_ (II, 545), "she cannot, without turning traitor
to herself, approve the distribution of Scripture 'without note or
comment.'" For this reason the Roman Church has cursed the Bible
societies which early in the eighteenth century began to be formed in
Protestant Churches, and aimed at supplying the poor with cheap Bibles.
In 1816, Pope Pius VII anathematized all Bible societies, declaring them
"a pest of Christianity," and renewed the prohibition which his
predecessors had issued against translations of the Bible. (Kurtz, II,
2, 94.) Leo XII, on May 5, 1824, in the encyclical _Ubi Primum,_ said:
"Ye are aware, venerable brethren, that a certain Bible society is
impudently spreading throughout the world, which, despising the
traditions of the holy Fathers and the decree of the Council of Trent,
is endeavoring to translate, or rather to pervert, the Scriptures into
the vernacular of all nations. . . . It is to be feared that by false
interpretation the Gospel of Christ will become the gospel of men, or,
still worse, the gospel of the devil." Pius IX, on November 9, 1846, in
the encyclical _Qui Pluribus,_ said: "These crafty Bible societies,
which renew the ancient guile of heretics, cease not to thrust their
Bible upon all men, even the unlearned--their Bibles, which have been
translated against the laws of the Church and after certain false
explanations of the text. Thus the divine traditions, the teaching of
the fathers, and the authority of the Catholic Church are rejected, and
every one in his own way interprets the words of the Lord, and distorts
their meaning, thereby falling into miserable error." (_Cath. Encycl_.
II, 545.) The writer whom we have just quoted says: "The fundamental
fallacy of private interpretation of the Scriptures is presupposed by
the Bible societies." These papal pronunciamentos arc directed chiefly
against the Canstein Bibelgesellschaft and her later sisters, such as
the Berliner Bibelgesellschaft, and against the British and American
Bible Societies.