You don't understand it because you won't see the facts here. No matter how much of history is truth, you still cannot recognize it.
In defense of my church, we will discuss Wycliff's death. Why then did she condemn Wycliff, one of her own priests, for translating it into English, and forbid her people to read his version of the Sacred Scriptures?? Because John Wycliff's version of the bible was not a correct version, and because he was using it as a means of corrupting the people's faith and of teaching them false doctrine; and it seems to me at least that that was a perfectly good reason for condemning it. For, please observe, that while the church approves of the people reading the Scriptures in their own language, she also claims the right to see that they really have a true version of the Scriptures to read, and not a mutilated or false or imperfect or heretical version. She claims that she alone has the right to make translations from the original languages (Greek or Hebrew) in which the Bible was written. She declares she will not tolerate that the people should be exposed to the danger of reading copies of Scripture which have changed or falsified something of the original Apostolic writing; which have added something or left out something;
Her people must have the correct Bible, or no Bible at all.
At first, he caused notoriety by taking part with the State against the claims of the Pope in regard to tribute money and benefices. But of course in a few years, went even further and began to oppose the church not only in matters of policy or government, but in things of faith. Being accused of preaching novel and uncommon doctrines, he was at the instance of Pope Gregory XI, summoned before the archbishop in 1378, and inhibited from teaching any further on the matters in dispute. No more proceedings were taken against him until 1381 when again he started. He attacked the Friars and Religious Orders with great bitterness; impugned transubstantiation, and seemed to advocate the theory that was peculiarly Luther's, ridiculed Inndulgences and flooded the country with pamphlets and tracts reeking with heresy. He was a "Lollard". The Lollards were a religious sect which rose in Germany in the beginning of the 14th century, and differed many points of doctrine from the Church of Rome, more especially as regards the Mass, Extreme Union, and Atonement for Sin.
Now, I ask any unprejudiced person, was this the kind of man to undertake the translation of the Bible into the common language of the people? Was he likely to be trusted by the church at that time to produce a thoroughly Catholic and free from all error or corruption---a man, notoriously eccentric, guilty of heretical and suspicious teaching, attacking the church in its authorities from the Pope down to the Friars. The question answers itself.
You may cry out that Wycliff was right and Rome was wrong in doctrine; that he was a glorious reformer and 'morning star of the Reformation' but this is not the point.
Wycliff was heretical in the eyes of Rome; that he produced a version for the purpose of attacking the Catholic church of that day, and of spreading his heresies; and to blame the church for forbidding him to do so. and for condemning his version, is about as sensible to blame an author for interdicting someone else from publishing a copy of his work that was full of errors and absurdities. The Catholic church certainly will NEVER allow a version of Holy Scripture (which is her own book) like that of Wycliff to go forth unchallenged, as if it were correct and authoritative
Once you grasp the Catholic Church's doctrinal position in regard to the Bible and the Rule of Faith, you will have no difficulty in accounting for her uncompromising hostility to versions like wycliff's, and for her action in condemning the Bible Societies which spread abroad a mutilated, corrupt, and incomplete copy of the Holy Scriptures with the design of undermining the faith of Catholics.
