Article 22

Let no one from among Catholics, especially from among ecclesiastical men, publish anything in newspapers, or sheets, or periodical booklets of this sort, unless a just and reasonable cause persuades.

Force of the article

94. By this article there is promulgated a wise admonition, by which at last we are referred back to the general principles concerning cooperation. Now:

Whether it is good in itself to increase these sheets with honorable articles

1. As Arndt¹ skillfully observes, those are vehemently deceived who, while they regularly send to bad periodicals lucubrations of an honorable but indifferent subject, which are commended by scientific merit or elegance of speech, think that they are performing this useful work: that they may furnish to the readers of these periodicals some honorable food. For they bring it about of themselves that the name of those periodicals is increased, and that the minds of the upright abhor them less. Wherefore only a graver cause can excuse this cooperation, if the influence has not been notable.

A just cause can exist

2. Yet, when occasion has been given, to write something to be inserted in those newspapers, especially something which yields to the honor of Religion and the confusion of calumny, for example, if you use the right of responding to some attack, can be the best counsel. Wherefore Leo XIII wisely made no absolute prohibition.

What of announcements to be published

3. In itself it is also to be disapproved that, by announcing certain things through those newspapers, you give them an occasion of profit. Yet, according to circumstances, this can more easily be lawful. Cf. also Lehmkuhl, Theol. mor., I, 665.

¹ P. 237, n. 175, 9.