Article — Vermeersch, On Forbidden Books
Article 17
All books of Indulgences, summaries, booklets, sheets, etc., in which their grants are contained, are not to be published without the license of competent authority.
Which authority is competent
87. 1. From the declaration of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, August 7, 1897,1 competent authority must be understood according to the norms of the prior law, to which by this pronouncement the present article seems tacitly to have referred us back; but the norms can be exhibited briefly thus:2
Concerning apostolic Indulgences
The catalogue of Indulgences which individual Supreme Pontiffs commonly annex to crosses and things which receive the Apostolic Blessing (les Indulgences papales) cannot be published or again edited without license of the Holy See.3
Concerning summaries
New Summaries, or collected Indulgences from various grants, must be approved by the Sacred Congregation set over Indulgences and Sacred Relics.4
Yet for summaries of confraternities which are customarily erected by the Superiors of Orders, and of archconfraternities or primary congregations which exist outside the City, the approval of the Bishop of the place where the Orders or archconfraternities have their principal seat suffices.5
Summaries already approved and particular Indulgences, provided these are established from an apostolic Brief or Rescript, can be published by the authority of the Bishop.6
The law of Benedict XIV is recalled
Benedict XIV gave more severe decrees concerning the spreading of indulgences, since he wished no summaries or books of indulgences to come to light unless approved by the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences. Wherefore where our article has: "without the license of competent authority," he had written: "without the license of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences." But afterwards a more benign usage prevailed, confirmed by the decrees themselves of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences. Pennacchi discusses the history of this discipline.
What if censure has been omitted?
2. Yet if, the due review having been omitted, these books, summaries, etc., are published, they are not proscribed. Pennacchi7 proves this broadly, and it follows from the general canon which we handed down above. The distinguished Palmieri, on this place, is of the same opinion.
What of images destined for remembering death, first Mass?
3. Images composed for the pious memory of a deceased person, or of a priest's first Mass (souvenirs pieux, de 1° Messe), although they contain one or another prayer which they praise as endowed with an Indulgence, are not sheets of Indulgences. Wherefore, as usage sufficiently proves, they are immune from this rule.8
1 C. Gennari, Monit., cited place, p. 67, had thought that the old Decrees were abrogated, and that nothing was now required except the license of the Bishop.
2 Pennacchi, cited work, n. 55, pp. 319, 327, hands down the documents at length.
3 Thus Leo XIII (Rescr. auth. S. C. Indulg., pp. 345-348); thus our Most Holy Lord Pius Pp. X, August 28, 1903, A. S. S., t. 36, pp. 125-128.
4 Authentic Decrees of the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, n. 383.
5 Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, January 8, 1861 (Decr. auth., n. 388).
6 Authentic Decrees, n. 383.
7 Cited work, n. 55. Against this, Hollweck, p. 36, note 3, and p. 37, on account of the reason rejected above in n. 52: because the article is contained in the chapter concerning the prohibition of books.
8 Hollweck, p. 36, note 3. Thus also Boudinhon, cited work, p. 155.