There are a number of things in our world that we take for granted. We live in a world where commoners live better lives than ancient kings, and yet still we complain as if it wasn't enough. Two things we have now that we take for granted are the simple book, and the ease of access to education. Whereas now school is something required by law in most Western nations, it was once a luxury few could afford. Where now books can be mass produced in a very short amount of time, purchased for very little, and completely overlooked in light of the Kindle, books were once hand copied over long amounts of time, and were very expensive. That, of course, assumed you were even capable of reading them.
Unfortunately, that included the Bible. As Christians today, we can scarcely imagine the blood and toil that went into bringing us the Bible in our own language. Bringing it to us at all was hard enough. The Church, after all, suffered violent persecution from its inception. Satan has done his best to destroy every last word the Lord spoke, and thankfully, He has failed miserably. But many people will be surprised to discover that the Catholic Church themselves once sought to keep the Bible out of the hands of the people. This also failed, and thank God for that. But prior to the invention of the printing press, access to the scriptures was severely limited. In times past, access to a Bible almost required access to a Catholic congregation. There were, of course, a few exceptions. A smuggled translation here, an underground congregation there, Christianity has never really been as absent as the Catholic Church wants to suggest it has. But generally speaking, if you couldn't read Latin, you did not have access to the Bible.
This was no accident. Particularly in the 13th century onward, the Catholic Church has sought to keep the Bible out of the hands of anyone who might dare to study it faithfully. In 1229, the Council of Toulouse declared "We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."
Does this not sound positively frightful to anyone of faith? You can't have a Bible "unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin"? And woe betide you if a translation of it be found in your possession! Do Catholics not see the irony of this? They presumably own at least one translation of the Bible, and yet a council ruling, on which they often rely (especially when attempting to "prove" their doctrines), would have condemned them for it.
But it's not just the Council of Toulouse. In 1408, the Council of Oxford doubled down on the translation ban, declaring "It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished as an abettor of heresy and error." (Emphasis mine).
We see, then, that to give the Bible to the people was never a particularly high priority for the Catholic Church. Quite the opposite; doing so was a punishable offence! And how brutal that punishment was, as William Tyndale soon found out. Having been betrayed before he could finish translating the Old Testament, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake. How dare he, as a man who could speak 8 languages so fluently you would think any one of them were his native tongue, seek to translate the Bible into English? How heretical the word of God must be that to seek that even the boy that drives the plough should be able to read it must result in the most unimaginable death!
But there is an alternative. One that doesn't require reading to be criminalised. One that doesn't require scores of well-translated Bibles to be burned. One that doesn't require brutal murder at the hands of a political superpower. One that does not require us to say that it is aiding and abetting heresy to ensure the population has a written defence against heresy. That simple alternative is that the Catholic Church just happened to be better at the job Satan assigned it than the Roman pagans ever were.
Historically, it was difficult to oppose the Catholic Church, because if they couldn't kill you, they could still argue with you. "Excuse me, do you speak Latin? Oh, you don't? Ok, well, I do, and I'm telling you it's totally Biblical to venerate Mary." But today, the Catholic Church can neither kill you (legally, at least), nor can they argue with you. They cannot argue because no matter how many times they may tell you they are the one true Church, you can just open your Bible and show them every error. And they can no longer kill you because around 500 years ago, the Christian world was finally given the ability to do exactly that.
Because of the Reformation, we no longer have to go through people who speak a different language. The Bible is in our language. The Catholic Church can no longer capitalise on illiteracy, because the general population is no longer illiterate. They can no longer capitalise on the extreme rarity of books, because now you don't even need a book. They can no longer capitalise on their political power, because they have been politically neutered. There is now only one thing left the Catholic Church can use to maintain their numbers.
Sin.
Sin keeps many people trapped in many false religions all over the world. There are more than 7 billion people on this planet today, most of whom do not know Jesus. Unfortunately, that includes many in the Catholic Church. For example, Henry Gregory Adams, an ex-Catholic priest, said "The monastic life and the sacraments prescribed by the Roman Catholic Church did not help me to come to know Christ personally and find salvation." This seems to be a consistent testimony of those leaving the Catholic Church. And of course, why shouldn't it be? The Catholic Church is so busy venerating its Saints, bowing to the Papacy, spitting on the very idea that the word of God is sufficient to complete our faith, the focus is so rarely on getting to know Christ that Catholics rarely do. Of course, they know a Christ. There are many of those (2 Corinthians 11:4). But what of the true Christ?
There are a number of differences between the Catholic Christ and the Christ of the Bible, and this is most noticeable when it comes to salvation. In Catholicism, salvation focuses very heavily on object of salvation, whereas in Christianity, the focus is almost exclusively on He who does the saving. In Catholicism, salvation is by works. Of course, Catholics claim they believe it is by grace, but by adding works into it, they rule out that possibility (Romans 11:6). You cannot have both grace and works, and so because there are a number of things in Catholicism which one must do to be saved (get baptised, receive the Eucharist, avoid mortal sin, be absolved of mortal sins etc.), and because you can actually lose salvation even once it has been granted to you, the Catholic Church cannot claim to believe in salvation by grace, by Biblical definition.
But what's even worse is that Catholicism goes in the opposite direction as well. Whereas a Catholic can lose their salvation through mortal sin, or at the very least extend their stay in the mythical realm of Purgatory (seriously, search the scriptures, it ain't there), Catholicism actually has a built in system in which even unbelievers can be saved! According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church 847, if you haven't heard the Gospel, you can still be saved if you just seek God with a sincere heart and obey your conscience, a fact which Robert Barron recently used to suggest Ben Shapiro, as a non-Christian Jewish man, may actually be good enough to go to Heaven.
But it doesn't stop there. Pope Francis even went so far as to tell a young boy that his unbelieving father is in Heaven, even telling him he could pray to his father. In other words, through his works, the unbelieving father not only went to Heaven, but skipped Purgatory! And we wonder why so many ex-Catholics testify that their Church never helped them know Jesus? The Church that suppressed the word of God could never bring one closer to Him. But praise be to God, we don't need them to, because where Catholicism focuses very heavily on the self, the Bible is all about God, and the lengths He went to draw us to Himself. A Catholic, being raised in a works-based system, will never feel like they are good enough for God. Cardinal John O'Connor even went so far as to say "Church teaching is that I don't know, at any given moment, what my eternal future will be. I can hope, pray, do my very best - but I still don't know." And in Catholicism, a religion in which we must make ourselves good enough, he's not wrong.
The bad news is, those who don't feel like they're good enough to get into Heaven are absolutely right. In fact, in Isaiah 64:6, we are told that even our righteous deeds are filthy rags. So you're a hard worker. You're a pillar in your congregation. You give large amounts to charity, you never ignore a cry for help, you are a faithful spouse, a loving parent, an obedient offspring. You are kind to even the lowest of the animals. You clean up your community, support your troops, respect your law enforcement. All of that amounts to nothing, because the God you are trying to impress is too glorious, and you are offering it with sin stained hands. You are like a lying, cheating prostitute trying to earn back your husband's affection with a bouquet of flowers. What possible hope do you have?
And that's where we get to what Catholicism can't teach you. Grace. Grace is your hope. Because salvation isn't something you can earn by being a "good" person. Salvation is something that must be bought for you, by none other than God Himself. The good news is that this is exactly what He has done. You don't contribute anything to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary and the faith that allows you to receive it. Because of this, you can know for certain that you are saved (1 John 5:13).