Why does the Church forbid the private interpretation, of the Bible?

Why does the Church forbid the private interpretation, of the Bible?

Because numberless heresies have risen from the private interpretation of the Bible. From the time of the apostles to the present day, there have risen unlearned men,as well as men accomplished in every kind of learning,who undertook to interpret the Bible according to their own private opinions. The consequence was, that the ignorant were led into errors,for want of knowledge,and the learned,through pride and self-sufficiency. Instead of interpreting Scripture according the teaching of the Church, and learning from her what they should believe, they have tried to teach the Church false and perverse doctrines of their own. They avail themselves of the scriptures to prove their errors. They say that they have the Scriptures on their side, which are the fountain of truth. But these deluded men do not consider that the truth is found, not by reading, but by  understanding, the holy Scriptures. This arrogance in interpreting the Bible according to their fancy proceeds from pride. But God resists the proud,and withholds from them the light of faith. In punishment for their pride and want of submission to the teaching of his Church, he permits such meant of all into all kinds of errors , absurdities, and vices; he permits the holy Scriptures, which are a great fountain of truth, to become to them a great fountain of errors. So that to the maybe applied the words of our divine Saviour: “You err,not knowing the Scriptures” (Matt,xxii,29); and of St. Peter: “They wrest the scriptures to their own destruction.” (2Pet.iii,16.)

The Adamites pretended to find in the book of Genesis that they were as pure as our first parents, and need not be ashamed of being naked anymore than Adam and Eve before the fall. Arias pretended to find, in forty-two passages of the Bible, that the Son of God was not equal to the Father. Macedonius maintained that from holy Scripture he could prove that the Holy Ghost was not God; and Pelagius asserted, on the authority of holy Scripture, that man could workout his salvation without the grace of God. Luther asserted that he found in Isaias that man was not free; and Calvin tried to prove from Scripture that it is impossible for man to keep the commandments. There is no error so monstrous, no crime so heinous, no practice so detestable, which perverse men have not endeavored to justify by some passage of Scripture. St. Augustine asks: “Whence have risen heresies and those pernicious errors that lead men to everlasting perdition?” and he answers: “They have risen from this: that men understand the scriptures wrongly, and then maintain presumptuously and boldly what they thus understand wrongly.“(In Joan.tr.xviii.)

Thus, “the Gospel,” as St.Jerome observes, “is for them, not the Gospel of Christ any longer, but the gospel of man, or of the devil: for the Gospel consists,not in the words, but in the sense, of Scripture, wherefore ,by false interpretation, the Gospel of Christ becomes the gospel of man,or,of the devil.”

“My thoughts,” saith the lord, “are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways for, as the heavens are exalted above the earth,even so are my ways exalted above your ways,and my thoughts above your thoughts”(Isa.1,8,9.) Who, then, shall, by his private reason, pretend to know, to judge,to demonstrate, to interpret, the unsearchable ways of god,and the incomprehensible, divine mysteries hidden in the holy Scripture? How can I understand it,if no one explains it to me? (Acts viii.) To sum up what has been said: In the order of time, the Catholic Church precedes the Scripture. There was no time when a visible and speaking divine authority did not exist,to which submission was not due. Before the coming of Jesus Christ, that authority among the Jews was in the synagogue. When the synagogue  was on the point of failing, Jesus Christ himself appeared; when this divine personage withdrew, he left his authority to His Church, and with her His Holy Spirit. All the truths which we believe to be divine, and which are the objects of our faith,were taught by the church,and believed by millions of Christians,long before they were committed to writing,and formed what is called the New Testament. And those truths would have remained to the end of the world, pure and unaltered, had that primitive state continued that is, had it never seemed good to any of the apostolic men,as it did to St. Luke, to commit to   writing what they had learned from Christ. He did it; he says, that Theophilus, to whom he writes,   might know the verity of these words in which he had been instructed. A Catholic, therefore, never forms his faith by reading the Scriptures, his faith is already formed before he begins to read;his reading serves only to confirm what he always believed: that is, it confirms the doctrine which the Church had already taught him. Consequently, if these books had not existed, the belief in the facts and truths of Christianity would have been the same; and it would not be weakened if those books were no longer to exist.

(Michael Muller C.SS.R.; The Church and Her Enemies)