Chapter II: The Present Usefulness of Laws of This Kind

The Church's right of making these laws

10. By its sanctions concerning the prohibition and censorship of books, the Church wishes to provide for the spiritual safety of the faithful, while it strives to punish or restrain evils, and indeed to forestall them. No one among Catholics will be able to deny that this is its inviolable right.

The past usefulness of the laws

And formerly indeed, so long as the rulers of the state agreed as one with the sacred power,¹ the usefulness of proscriptions was great: evil books were morally removed from commerce.

So happy a fruit can no longer be hoped for today. On the contrary, it happens that by its very proscription a book acquires a certain reputation and fortune. This may be a reason why the Church prefers that many works perish in silence rather than, by its mark of censure, to procure celebrity for them.

¹ Constitution Officiorum, preface.

And present usefulness:

11. Yet beware lest on that account you hold the general or special decrees of the Index to be useless. And indeed:

For the faithful,

1. They constantly inculcate the salutary principle concerning the danger which exists in the reading of many books. And this not ineffectively.

Even now there are not lacking, especially among Catholic young people, those whom the prohibition of the Church restrains from reading evil writings, so that by the benefit of laws of this kind they preserve purity and virtue unharmed.

For writers,

2. Next, for many writers these laws are a bridle by which they are kept back from not a few excesses. For most Catholics dread the reprobation of the Index; therefore, lest they be affected by that mark, they write much more cautiously and temperately than they would if they were permitted to set forth all things with impunity.

Indeed, since because of a mark of this kind profits are often made smaller, or positive losses of fortune are sustained, it happens that even those who are little inclined toward the Church do not dare to offend faith or morals, and publish books that are more corrected. It is enough to recall in mind how a more chastened edition of several dictionaries appeared, such as those which borrow their name from Littré or from Larousse.

For the Church

3. By disapproving books, the Church not rarely manifests its mind concerning various doctrines and directs the good along the right way, even before solemn judgments concerning doctrine can prudently be made. This is especially profitable to the Christian commonwealth.

4. Moreover, by previous censorship, which is imposed on certain kinds of books, the faithful are rescued from many dangers of deception. The Church also has a means of providing for its own name, which, from ill-timed or ridiculous writings, can be exposed not only to the hatred but also to the mockery of enemies.

The true reason why these laws are often less pleasing

12. Observe, moreover, with how great a force of words, in our Parliaments, men inveigh against certain books which defend principles contrary to modern principles, as they say. Nor would they allow such things to be read aloud in public schools. Therefore let them not wonder that the Church pursues the documents of revealed faith with a similar love and zeal to that by which they wish to honor "revolutionary" principles. That affected tolerance of many, by which they claim liberty for dogmatic error and moral evil, seems, when all is finally said, to be drawn rather from a certain doubting and skepticism than from a benign moderation of mind.