Control of scripture
Initially, the first priests controlled access to the relatively rare copies of the scripture.
When the Gutenberg press made copies available to all, they discouraged reading it by the myth that only trained experts, the priests, could properly read it. They narrowed it further by saying only a committee of priests could interpret it, and that papal declarations were infallible no matter how senseless they were.
The Reformers said that all men could read the Bible for themselves and were responsible for interpreting it. So the Jesuit priest Loyola started to teach that Faith and Science were seperate realms. The Universities were set up to teach secular truth, while pushing divine truth to the side.
Since people came up with their own interpretations, often contradictiong each other, small offshoots of the Reformation established their own popes who declared which doctrines were true.
At the end of the 20th Century, there was so much confusion among denominations, that a group of theologians, scholars and pastors declared themselves to be the priests of Evangelicalism and produced the Chicago Statements as the standard of Biblical truth.
