Chapter III: Brief Description of the Laws Which Are in Force Today

The laws in force are enumerated

13. I. Today we are governed solely by:

1. The Constitution Officiorum, issued by Leo XIII, January 25, 1897.¹

2. The Constitution Sollicita ac provida of Benedict XIV, July 9, 1753, which Leo XIII wished to remain wholly in force, as he openly declares in the beginning of his own Constitution.

3. The new Index which Leo XIII, by the same Constitution Officiorum, ordered to be made and promulgated by the appended Brief Romani Pontifices, September 27, 1900.

Moreover, the Index itself, or catalogue strictly so called, has its own Preface, written by the Very Reverend Father Thomas Esser, O.P., which supplies no slight aids to the interpreter.

On the volume of the Index

The monuments thus far recounted are contained in that handsome volume which, in the year 1900, first appeared under the title Index librorum prohibitorum.² In this order:

The Brief of Leo XIII, Romani Pontifices, dated September 27, 1900;

The Preface written in the name of the Sacred Congregation of the Index by its secretary;

First Part. Apostolic Constitutions on the Examination and Prohibition of Books:

The Constitution Officiorum ac Munerum of Leo XIII;

The Constitution Sollicita ac provida of Benedict XIV;

Second Part. Index of Prohibited Books.

4. A few decrees which have interpreted the Constitution of Leo XIII, or have governed a new subject, such as the sanctions concerning sacred music of Our Most Holy Lord Pius X.

Concerning the first three sources of law, these few things must be handed down.

¹ In Bulls, the year is taken from the Incarnation of the Lord, whose beginning is March 25. Therefore, since this Bull appeared in the month of January, the year indicated was 1896, which by civil reckoning was already to be called 1897.

² One large octavo volume, XXIII-317 pp. The title reads thus: Index librorum prohibitorum, Ssmi D. N. Leonis XIII iussu et auctoritate recognitus et editus. Praemittuntur Constitutiones Apostolicae de examine et prohibitione librorum. Romae, Typis Vaticanis, MCM. Afterwards a second edition appeared, MCMI; the most recent, however, in the year MCMIV.

Of the Constitution Officiorum

14. II. The Constitution Officiorum consists of the Preamble, the General Decrees, and the clauses by which pontifical acts are customarily concluded.

Preamble

1. In the Preamble, the reason for the laws concerning harmful books is defended, the history is sketched, the necessary mitigation is demonstrated, the intention of the Pontiff is set forth, and the former law is abrogated.

General Decrees

2. The General Decrees are the chief part and systematic ordering of ecclesiastical law concerning books, on which, as on their foundation, special decrees rest.

Moreover, they are divided into two titles: the first is on the prohibition of books; the other on their censorship.

In the first title are contained general proscriptions by which, even if no special sentence comes forth, various classes of books are reproved under a general note; these Father Hilgers elegantly reduces to three kinds of works:¹ irreligious, heretical, superstitious, and immoral works; works injurious to God and the Church; and works which, without the approval of competent authority, handle delicate subjects of Christian doctrine and instruction.

This title therefore brings this advantage: the Church need not proscribe all books by a special prohibition, and can especially pass over those on which a general proscription has clearly fallen.

The other title treats with sufficient distinctness of the Prelates who are placed over the censorship of books, of the mode in which the previous examination is to be carried out, and of the books which are subject to this examination. Then it gives related admonitions for printers and publishers of books.

Nevertheless, the last chapter of this title in reality pertains to all the laws concerning books, so that it may furnish them with a suitable sanction.

Clauses

3. By the customary clauses of Bulls, these laws are intimated, it is decreed to what copies faith is to be given, and, after the ordinary threats, there is appended the day, month, and year of the Incarnation.

¹ Der Index, pp. 38, 39.

Brief summary of the Constitution Sollicita

15. III. The Constitution Sollicita ac provida chiefly treats and sets forth three things in order, by which:

1. First, there is described and confirmed the form of action by which either the supreme Congregation of the Holy Office or the Sacred Congregation of the Index examines books and reproves those which seem to be worthy of condemnation.

2. Precautions are recalled and recommended by which, as far as possible, Catholic writers are spared, especially those who have acquired a certain name for themselves, and a fitting place is prepared for their defense.

3. Consultors and relators are instructed by wise admonitions and counsels.

Those letters of Benedict XIV are worthy of every consideration; they exhibit the true mind of the Church in prohibiting books, and they contain those things which vindicate the same Church as free from many accusations.

The end intended in the Brief of Leo XIII

1. The proper intention of these letters is the promulgation of the Index itself: apostolic approval, I say, and confirmation. "This general Index of this kind," the Pontiff says, "which we wish to be held as inserted expressly in these letters, by Apostolic authority, by the tenor of the present letters, we approve and confirm, and we command it to be observed by all, everywhere, wholly and inviolably, under the penalties sanctioned in our Constitution Officiorum ac Munerum."

The Index therefore obtains the force of a universal law, which is commended to the local Ordinaries and to the Superiors of all Regulars, that they "take care, according to their powers, that it be published and observed."

Matters contained

2. Matters contained. a) After a brief survey has first been set forth of the historical progress of the laws by which the Church has taken action against evil writings, and after the additions have been related by which, at the command of various Pontiffs, the Tridentine Index was supplemented, the Supreme Pontiff declares the task entrusted by him to the Eminent Fathers of the Congregation of the Index; and this task looked to this end, that, after a most diligent review of the former Index, a new Index might be prepared, purged of errors, of more expedient use, and at the same time adapted to more benign laws. b) Therefore, as the Holy Father recalls, it was necessary to relieve the new catalogue "of not a few books, whose proscription, once necessary or opportune, has today become almost useless." c) The Supreme Pontiff congratulates both the Eminent Cardinals and the learned men whom they had called in as an aid to their work on the task happily completed.

Importance of the Preface

That Preface not merely explains in what manner the Index was composed, but hands down several things from which we shall draw no small light for rightly understanding the laws of the Index. Concerning each subject separately:

Various notions

Certain errors are corrected

1. Various notions concerning the Index. a) After the proper nature of the Index has been explained, the Preface compares that special catalogue with the General Decrees: in what respects they agree, and what difference there is between the two. It warns that those who think they can know from the Index alone the books of disapproved reading are gravely mistaken, since it contains only the smallest part of them; and it declares that those do not think truly who suppose that certainly those books can be sought there which in any discipline are, as it were, outstanding in wickedness: for a special reason, generally denunciation, must be added for a book to be proscribed by a particular decree.

Which books have been removed from the Index

b) It goes through various kinds of books which have now been struck from the Index. They are chiefly: books whose defects were compensated by no mediocre usefulness; books which were noted less on account of an intrinsic reason than on account of the manner of treating the matter, or because of the necessity of protecting charity, after passions and excessive contests had been suppressed in disputing about subjects which today can now be treated with an even mind; or also on account of inserted little offices or litanies which today can be published for private use by the authority of Ordinaries; books which today, either because of the folly of the subject, are rather to be despised than reproved, or which, by their small bulk, have been, as it were, carried off by the wind; all works which, in the early seventeenth century, were struck solely by edicts of the Master of the Sacred Palace; books concerning which the Sacred Congregation of the Index itself sometimes decreed that they could or should be omitted in the next decree; and old collections of decrees of the Sacred Congregation of the Council, proscribed by the decree of April 20, 1621.

Statistical indications

Moreover, from the work of Father Hilgers¹ we borrow these numerical indications. Almost 800 works have been struck from the earlier Index. But 4000 decrees are preserved, by which either works or writers are condemned by name. Moreover, the writers whose works are collectively reproved are numbered as 108.² Of the 4000 proscribed books, 1500 are assigned to the seventeenth century, 1200 to the eighteenth century, and 1300 to the nineteenth century. For works condemned before the year 1600 are not distinctly recounted.

As regards the kinds of reproved writers, in the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth century Protestant heretics are chiefly noted, besides impious or base writers of the age which is called that of revived letters. From about the year 1649 there follow Jansenists, Gallicans, several moralists sinning by excessive benignity, defenders of the Chinese and Malabar rites, and Quietists. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the reproved works cannot be forced into a few kinds.

Of the 1330 works condemned in the nineteenth century, 500 are Italian in origin, 480 from France (together with Belgium and Holland),³ 180 from Germany, about 120 from Spain and Portugal, and 40 from England. The very few which remain are to be assigned to Poland, Greece, Denmark, and so forth.

External figure of the Index

c) The praised Preface delineates, as it were, the external figure of the Index by handing down the method observed in composing the Index and in describing books.

Aids for the interpreter

Benign mind of the Pontiff

2. Aids of interpretation. a) The Preface again emphasizes this plan of the Supreme Pontiff, by which, tempering the former severity, he wished "to accommodate the whole system of the Index to the time, according to the maternal benignity of the Church."

Exclusive force of these laws

b) While the Constitutions of Leo XIII and Benedict XIV are placed before the Index (the latter of which, it says, pertains to the censors of books rather than to the universality of the faithful), the Apostolic Constitutions are proclaimed to be published "by which the examination and proscription of evil books is governed at present." Therefore, that book is declared to be of safe reading which is reproved neither by the Index nor by these General Decrees.

We wish this to be observed by those who seem to labor so that from the ancient laws they may seek obligations and bonds by which the benefit of Leo XIII is almost raised away; for he determined that precepts in this matter should be made easier both to know and to observe.

Clause Opera omnia

c) The force of the clause marking the Opera omnia of some writer is accurately explained.

All editions and versions are prohibited of themselves

d) The author of the Preface confirms that which has already been received: when some book has been prohibited, all its editions and translations are prohibited, unless by express words the proscription is confined within narrower limits.

Volumes or fascicles later than the decree are of themselves only suspect

e) Explaining the force of a decree by which some volume of a work is condemned, when that work has afterwards had another volume, or by which a periodical booklet, afterwards continued, is condemned, he teaches us that those later volumes or fascicles are not indeed affected by a special decree, but are to be held as suspect unless the repentance of the author is established.

When mention is made of a version

f) He warns that in the new Index the version of a work is no longer indicated unless it is established that only the version is prohibited. But each book is indicated in its own language, such as it was when published. And, moreover, translations have then only been listed when, besides the work itself, the Sacred Congregation also wished to mark some translation of it by a special decree.

To what date decrees are referred

g) He adds that, in the new Index, as far as possible, the day and year on which the decrees were issued have now been placed, not, as used formerly to be done, the day and year on which they were printed and published. Hence, for example, the Catechismus spiritualis of Father Surin was formerly noted in Italian as proscribed by decree of the Holy Office of September 7, 1695; now it is noted in French as proscribed on July 20, 1695.

Clause Donec corrigatur

h) The clause Donec corrigatur is said to affect the manner of the prohibition, but not its effects.

¹ Pp. 93 and 113.

² Their works taken together seem to be near the number of a thousand.

³ Why Italian and French works stand out so much in number, there are several causes: the Catholic religion of the writers, which demands greater vigilance; more frequent use of denunciation; the intensity of intellectual life in these regions during the nineteenth century; proximity and greater knowledge of the language.