Index of banned books

Corrado Gnerre

Dear friends, there are many accusations against the history of the Church. Among these is the issue of censorship, the one remembered as the Index of Forbidden Books. An argument like this is used to attack the Church and accuse it of being the enemy of cultural progress. What do you think?

Dear …, I will answer your question with pleasure. Moreover because, personally, I have already had the opportunity to delve on this topic.

I will straightway state that the Index of Forbidden Books was not obscurantism or grim censorship, as progressive culture says instead.

Let’s see why.

This Index was the list of books that the Holy See indicated as dangerous to faith and morals. There were the books that the faithful could neither read nor keep, unless they had received a particular permission.

The Catholic Church has always condemned dangerous books. Before the fifteenth century, it limited itself to requiring that dangerous writings be handed over or burned; but after the invention of printing and especially after the Reformation, these books spread so much that the Catholic Church decided to make a catalog of those copies that could not be read or studied.

Index of Forbidden Books is not censorship and obscurantism as indicated by the progressive culture. We will reason out why.

Firstly, the Church has a duty to guide the faithful and when you say that a certain book can cause you to lose faith or corrupt your heart, you are doing an act of goodness and paying attention to the salvation of your children. Especially the simplest ones who can more easily be manipulated and conquered by lies.

Secondly, true freedom is not knowing everything, but having the freedom to fulfill and save yourself. When the doctor prescribes the diabetic not to be able to eat sweets, he certainly forbids it, but who would dream of saying that it is a wrong prohibition or an unjust deprivation of freedom?

Thirdly, when it is said that the Index would have been an obstacle to the dissemination of literary and scientific culture because it would have closed access to numerous masterpieces and works of scientific value, it is totally a false statement. Very few masterpieces hit by the Index: the works of Antiquity were discarded “propter pulchritudinem formae,” that is, “for their literary beauty”.

Fourthly, those who came to attend higher studies or had a high culture to enable them to control, discern and understand the contents of a book, obtained all possible permits.

Of course, dear …, moreover the Index, like many other things from the past, must be contextualized, above all it must be understood by inserting it in a cultural context that was afraid of cultural and religious pluralism, especially as a consequence of the outbreak of the Reform religious wars which, due to the Reformation, followed.

Having said that, an important consideration must also be added; that is, that literary and scientific culture cannot become the ends of life, because, like art, they must always be subjected to the judgment of the higher laws of morality. The truth is not true because it is beautiful; it is beauty that is beautiful because it is true, that is, because it is in tune with the truth.

And then – let’s be serious – what does the Catholic Church still need to do to show how much you love and have loved art? All that we can still admire today is for the overwhelming majority the fruit of his message and his evangelizing work.

Rather it must be said that the Church if she had the possibility to choose, she certainly would choose an act of charity that not all the books of this world. Why? Because her ideal is the “saint”, not the man who studies for the sole love of studying.