No, they did not. If you believe this myth, then simply show me any credible source on when and where the Catholic Church outlawed it.
I wouldn't say they outlawed it, rather, they wouldn't let any catholic layman read it. Only the clergy and the pope could, and even then it was in Latin.
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I'm not aware of any provisions which forbid the clergy from letting layman read the bible.
The problem was was that back then, books were incredibly expensive, most people couldn't even afford basic ones because they were all hand written. Something as large and comprehenive as the bible would have taken an enormous amount of time and money to copy. In the past, pirates, raiders and looters would actually take books with them because they were so valuable.
The only people that would have access to something as valuable as the bible back then would be scholars and they'd know Latin anyways. So, peasants that probably couldn't read didn't have regular access to the bible because of its value, so what? What would a bible like that cost in today's money? $200,000, $300,000? You are just going to let everyone in town thumb through it?
People would still have access to the word of God by what they were taught at Church and told at every Mass.
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I grew up in the Catholic Church. In my grade school days, we had access to the "Catholic" Bible. It was called the Douay-Rheims Bible and it was written in scholarly archaic English which I found difficult to even get interested in, much less understand.
We technically had access to the Douay-Rheims. Copies could be purchased at Catholic bookstores.
I don't recall ever being told that I could'nt read it; but, on the other hand, I was never encouraged to read it, either.
I don't believe that our local parish priests read it, either. The sermon topics that they preached, including Scripture quotations, came in print form from the hierarchy through the local bishop. I spent nearly 50 years as a Roman Catholic and in all that time, I can only recall three priests who knew the Bible.
It was by subtle inference, not by any official declaration, that we lay people in the Catholic Church came to accept that only members of the hierarchy could understand Scripture. Thus, any interest I had in reading the Bible was squelched.
I believe that, like the Pharisees who battled Jesus, members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in that day, were in a "circle the wagons" mode, striving to protect their positions; their places of honor.
Praise God that the winds of change are blowing through the Catholic Church at long last.
