On a Simpsons episode from eons ago, the halftime performer was "Hooray for Everything."

The only control the Church - which defined the canon in the first place - wanted was prevention of the inevitable anarchy that would and did occur as soon as people started altering texts and pronouncing that all one ever need is to read the Bible and interpret it on his own. There are now some 30,000 protestant "churches" as a result. What the sins of Pope Alexander or anyone else has to do with so-called "control by Latin" is beyond me. Heck, Pope A ought to be a hero to those who tout Luther as the end-all and be-all. After all, it was Luther who said, "Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders." Truly inspiring, that.

As for Luther, he tried to remove not only those Old Testament books which to this day are misnamed "the Apocrypha," but also New Testament books such as Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation (can you imagine a Protestant without that book today?). He also falsified Rom. 3:28 by adding the word alone (by faith alone)," when the only place "faith" and "alone" truly appear side by side is in James where it expressly states that salvation is "NOT by faith alone." And again, there was already an approved German translation before Luther.

Protestant propaganda wrapped around a grain of half-truth, spouted by one fixated strictly on the English language. In point of fact there were authorized translations of the Bible in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian, all even before the printing press. The old canard that translating the Bible into the vernacular was treated as heresy falls completely apart in light of those undeniable facts. Nevertheless, the myth remains, with the sole example given as the experience of William Tyndale for making an unauthorized translation into English in the 1500s. For this to even come close to supporting the charge that Latin was used as control, one would have to disregard that English was hardly the only language spoken by common folk at the time. The truth is that Tyndale's version was condemned not because it was in English but because it (1) was not subject to review and approval for accuracy and in fact contained errors, and (2) it contained introductory essays basically to the effect of "the Catholic Church sucks." But eventually there became available an English translation authorized by the Catholic Church and published before the King James version.

And for those worried that the common folk might have got left out of the chatter because they couldn't read or understand Latin - well, they couldn't read their own vernacular or anything else either. They couldn't afford books (which didn't become widely available until after the invention of the printing press, of course) and they wouldn't know how to make sense of the markings in them if they could. But homilies - which would typically discuss the day's scripture readings as they applied to day-to-day life - were always in the local tongue.
That the use of Latin remained in the liturgy for centuries after people became more widely literate, books became affordable and native translations more practical to undertake, does not alter the fact that the use of Latin actually began as a facilitator of communication rather than an inhibitor of it. Critics of the use of Latin in later centuries also seem oblivious to the fact that during those later times, people had bible translations in the vernacular and followed along at mass with missals which translated the Latin used by the priest. So Latin was not an impediment to understanding then, either.

"Why do you think the original lectures where in latin; where in some times and places latin was not understood by the common people, some workers in the field and not having the time to learn latin"

Lame!!! In a world of many languages but limited wealth and hence, limited literacy, it was much easier for a Church serving people of diverse tongues to communicate across boundaries by using one common language, Latin. At the time Latin became the Church's official language, it was akin to today's English - understood by more people in more places than any other language. And it remained a common language among the educated for centuries. Thus, say, an Englishman and a German could correspond in Latin despite having different native tongues. Each had to learn only one additional language to communicate with educated folks anywhere else.

Not to mention boring. Before I read Zinn, I had no idea history could be so dull.

"What happened to Winona Rider?"

She was in Star Trek 90210.

Amen. Beautiful cinematography and brilliant direction to boot. The "truck scene" is endlessly clever in its execution.

Classic!