Why did the Catholics change what the Bible says?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic AnswerThe Catholic Church wrote the New Testament, decided which books were to be included in The Bible, and has preserved the Bible for nearly twenty centuries. The Catholic Church has in no way changed anything in the Bible. The individuals who started the protestant revolt in the 16th century, however, did change what the Bible says, they threw out whole books from the Old Testament, and what they would not change in the text, they changed in meaning. AnswerThe Catholic Church did not write the Bible, as most of scripture (what we would term the Old Testament) was in existence long before the formation of the Catholic Church. The canon of the Old Testament, according to many Jewish writings, was formulated mostly by Ezra and the Great Synagogue. It is believed that this collection (which we term the Old Testament) was in the form we know at he time of Jesus. And Catholics, as well as all other churches, accept this Old Testament as scripture in its entirety, and have not changed it in any way.

The NEW Testament, however, was not always as it was. Twenty of the twenty-seven books were deemed authentic by the early Church (the 'homologoumena') as their providence was without question. However the remaining seven (Hebrews, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, James, Revelation--were disputed for a time by particular churches, and were therefore styled "Antilegomena" (or disputed). By the start of the fourth century they were accepted by many churches but not finally accepted until the end of that century.

The main controversy comes with what Protestants would call 'the apocrypha', and which Catholics include in scripture. This is a collection of fourteen books namely, 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the rest of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.

Protestants call the disputed books the 'Apocrypha', meaning 'hidden', because they were deemed to be of unknown authority and maybe even spurious. As an example, divine authority is claimed by none of the writers, and by some it is virtually disowned (2 Mac. 2:23; 15:38). The books also contain statements that disagree with history (Baruch 1:2, compared with Jer. 43:6,7), and are self-contradictory, and opposed to some of the doctrines that are formulated from scripture. Very few of the early Church fathers regarded these books as canonical, nor were they included in any list of canonical writings during the first four centuries after Christ's birth. It wasn't until the Council of Trent, in 1545, that they were definitely declared to be an integral portion of Holy Scripture as acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church - long after the beginning of the Reformation.

So, the Catholic's didn't 'change' what the Bible says but equaly did not write the scriptures not protect them. The story of the formation of the canon of scripture is a lot more complex than that.

Answer 2

Roman Catholic AnswerYour question is a little skewed. The Catholic Church received the "Old Testament" from the Jews. The Catholic Church, in its members, wrote the books of the New Testament, and then in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Catholic Church decided which books that were claiming to be Scripture actually were Scripture. Those are the exact same books that we have to this day, because when the Church defined which books were of the Scriptures, and which weren't, then the Church zealously guarded this precious treasure for the next thousand years. And then along came Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII, and the other heretics in the 16th century who decided that they didn't like some of the beliefs in the Old Testament, so they threw those books out of the Bible!

In other words, the Catholic Church is the author and guardian of Sacred Scripture, she has guarded and copied it for two thousand years, using it to preach and teach. The Catholic Church never changed anything in the Bible, for that you would have to look at the various heretics.