"You Can't Read the Bible on Your Own" ... Is That Precise?

How to Study the Bible as a Layman
Decrevi Determined to be Catholic @thecatholicman | 5 août 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS6a_FNmucA

0:10 I've heard from Robert Sungenis, the textual apparatus and cultural explanations and whatnot are top notch BUT it unfortunately includes the modernist view of Genesis 1 through 11 in the comments.

6:59 Ah yes, in France (and presumably Belgium and Switzerland) there is a Magnificat in French.

14:16 "you can't interpret the Bible on your own"

Magisterial and pre-Vatican II source, please?

1) You can't interpret prophecy of the OT without knowing the NT is certain: the Ethiopian Eunuch.
2) You should take care not to read Scripture as unlearned and unstable (St. Peter singled out some passages in St. Paul's Epistles)
3) If you interpret the Bible on your own and come up with something contrary to what the Church hath held and now holds or also to the consensus of the fathers, you are wrong.
4) If a whole set of communities have as basic principle,_everyone_ interprets the Bible on his own, it can't achieve unity.

I've featured: Acts, II Peter, Trent session IV, Pius XI (was it Mortalium Animos?).

BUT: none of these says in so many words that no Christian can interpret the Bible on his own. They just say there are pitfalls if he does and passages he won't get. Not that he absolutely can't. Christians are obviously now in a better position to interpret OT prophecy because we have the NT.

Now, let me be precise. In a matter where a Christian who already is a Catholic (I've converted) actually has access to the interpretation of the Church (over centuries and two millennia, as per Trent IV), he cannot on his own say "no, I'll interpret it in the opposite way" ... Ephesians 2 verses 8 to 10, notice I said 10, not 9, indicate justification is not from good works prior to justification, but involves signing up for good works. If I tried to deny this aspect, relying on a common Protestant interpretation of Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, and then tried to gloss over verse 10, for one thing, it wouldn't be on my own, I would be overrelying on Protestants instead of believing my own better judgement, but for another thing, in such a context NOT relying on the Church would obviously be fatal ... as well as not common to a conclusion agreeing with the Church, if we happen to read that without access to Catholic doctrine.

Now, the Catholic Church has NOT dogmatised how Genesis lines up with archaeology. That's the ONE item where I've actually done some original interpretation, notably identifying Nimrod's Babel of Genesis 10 and more story details 11 with Göbekli Tepe, I'm highly confident, I have not spoken against the position that the Church hath held and holds, as well as, I double-checked, the interpretation of the text is not uniformly "one vertical piece of ground fixed architecture." In Postilla in libros Geneseos, St. Thomas (or a contemporary, but I think it's a youth work of his) suggests the reading "city wall with many towers forming a skyline" rather than "skyscraper" ... this means, the idea that Nimrod was intending a rocket, but incompetent, and that God stopped him to give Wernher von Braun a chance is NOT going against universal tradition.

Also, I'm very well aware that the spiritual reward of reading Genesis is not acquiring a carbon 14 conversion table, but I'm equally aware that Genesis 1 to 11 are historic fact, theologically, and scientifically, that if one can date an item with organic matter independently of the carbon date, that functions as a calibration of the carbon date. I think a historic overview with archaeological support is very helpful when the historic truth of Genesis 1 to 11 is under attack. As I've heard that Study Bible does attack the historic reliability of those chapters. Obviously the older Haydock comment (also Catholic, c. 100 years older than Scofield's ineptitudes) doesn't attack it.