Utter Rubbish
The deuterocanonical books that Protestants leave out of their Bibles are Tobit, Judith, 1&2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and parts of Esther & Daniel.
Trent listed the books and then stated:
"But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition...."
The
"old Latin vulgate edition" is the one produced by Jerome
at the end of the 4th century.
Going back in time from Trent, the Ecumenical Council of Florence 1438-1445 Session 11:
It professes that one and the same God is the author of the old and the new Testament — that is, the law and the prophets, and the gospel — since the saints of both testaments spoke under the inspiration of the same Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, whose titles are as follows.
Five books of Moses, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Joshua, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, two of Paralipomenon [Chronicles], Esdras, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms of David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezechiel, Daniel; the twelve minor prophets, namely Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; two books of the Maccabees; the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; fourteen letters of Paul, to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, two to the Thessalonians, to the Colossians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two letters of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude; Acts of the Apostles; Apocalypse of John.
The Eastern Orthodox Churches which broke away from the Catholic Church in 1054 also include these books in the their canon, as do the Oriental Orthodox Churches who broke away after the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
Prior to that the Council of Rome in 382 also listed the Deuters as canonical. This was confirmed by the local councils of Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419.
See this site for the Decree of Galasius
The Catholic Voyager: The canon of scripture, Damasus, and the "Gelasian Decree"
Another Protestant resource confirms Jurgens and the timeline I have posited above:
A council probably held at Rome in 382 under St. Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the 'Gelasian Decree' because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent. (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., p. 232)
The
Catholic Encyclopedia on the
New Advent site (
NEW ADVENT: Home), in it's section on the status of the canon in the Church in the first 3 centuries states this:
"St. Irenæus, always a witness of the first rank, on account of his broad acquaintance with ecclesiastical tradition, vouches that Baruch was deemed on the same footing as Jeremias, and that the narratives of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon were ascribed to Daniel.."
and
"Origen employs all the deuterocanonicals as Divine Scriptures, and in his letter of Julius Africanus defends the sacredness of Tobias, Judith, and the fragments of Daniel, at the same time implicitly asserting the autonomy of the Church in fixing the Canon"
and
"St. Hippolytus (d. 236) may fairly be considered as representing the primitive Roman tradition. He comments on the Susanna chapter, often quotes Wisdom as the work of Solomon, and employs as Sacred Scripture Baruch and the Machabees. For the West African Church the larger canon has two strong witnesses in Tertullian and St. Cyprian. All the deuteros except Tobias, Judith, and the addition to Esther, are Biblically used in the works of these Fathers."
So it is clear that these books were considered canonical from very early times.