The Bible in the language of the people

This past Sunday's sermon on Pentecost touched on the need for the Gospel to be preached (and Bibles made available) in the language of the people.  It may seem obvious today, but it was not always the case.  From 1567 to 1773 there was not a single Bible printed in Italian for the people of Italy to read.  Why such a lack?  Because Pope Paul V had banned its use by the laity in Italy.  He went so far in his zeal against the Bible to proclaim, "Do you not know that so much reading of Scripture ruins the Catholic religion?"  The Roman Inquisition went to to confiscate and BURN publicly copies of the Bible in Italian.  Regular readers of my blog know of my commitment to ecumenical unity and my wife's Catholicism, you also know that all denominations have skeletons in the closet we'd rather forget.  That being said, for a Pope, the shepherd of his flock, the deny his people the Word of God because he was afraid of what they might do with it goes beyond stupidity to cowardice and negligence.  I continue to pray that my Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ will feel the Holy Spirit burning within them and encouraging them to read the Word of God.  In my sermon on Sunday I reminded my congregation that they have a duty to always compare what I preach/teach to the Word of God.  As the body of Christ, we all have an obligation to study God's Word ourselves and determine if those who tell us what it says are accurate or not.
In the end, the Bible has triumphed over all those in history (and the world today) who have tried to silence it.  Wycliffe Bible Translators are working on 1500 translation projects at this moment in hopes of finishing the last needed translations so that all of the world's 6000+ languages will have at least some of God's Word in their own tongue by 2025.  Likewise, Gideons International distributed about 70,000,000 Scriptures last year (about 1.6 Billion total in their 100+ year history).  The text of our Bible study for this coming Wed. morning is appropriate - "For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." (I Peter 1:23)