The Censorship of the Church of Rome Vol 2

Another volume expressing the views of scholarly Catholic believers in regard to the present intellectual policy of the Church comes into print in 1906 while these pages are going through the press. It bears the title of The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch and is the work of two authors, the Reverend Charles A. Briggs, Professor of Theology and Symbolics, of the Union Theological Seminary of New York, and Baron Friedrich von Hügel, at present of Cambridge, England. The work and career of Dr. Briggs are, of course, familiar to all who have knowledge of the issues of later years between the creeds and dogmas of the Churches and of the difficulties of the great scholars of the present generation who have been investigating the texts and records upon which these creeds and dogmas have been based. Of these scholars, Dr. Briggs is known as one of the most authoritative and conscientious and also as one possessing the greatest reverence for the purposes and the spiritual power of revealed religion. Dr. Briggs, now a member of the Episcopal Church, has from time to time brought into expression certain ideals in regard to the development of the Church Universal. If one understands him aright, he looks forward to the reconstruction, under the new conditions of the twentieth century, of a world’s Church or Church Universal, which was so nearly realised under the very different conditions of the fifteenth century. He is, therefore, sympathetically interested in the policy of the Church of Rome and he is in close personal relations with not a few of the scholarly leaders of that Church. He has united with his friend Baron von Hügel in the production of a monograph made up of two letters, one from himself and one from Baron von Hügel, which have for their purpose the analysis and criticism of the conclusions arrived at by the recent Papal Commission in regard to the origin and the history of the Pentateuch. The report of the Commission (of the text of which I have no direct knowledge) appears to have taken strong ground against the results of the so-called higher scholarship, that is to say, of the latest investigations concerning the origin and the formation of the writings going to make up the Pentateuch. Dr. Briggs cites from the record of the Papal Commission the statement that

“certain faulty readings in the text of the Pentateuch may be ascribed to the error of an amanuensis concerning which it is lawful to investigate and judge according to the laws of criticism.... But in so doing ‘Due regard must be paid to the judgment of the Church.’ It is admitted [says Briggs], (by the Papal Commission) that investigation and judgment must be ‘according to the laws of criticism.’ If this is so, then it necessarily follows that the laws of criticism must determine the entire investigation, and not merely any definite part of it.”[197]

The Baron’s division of the monograph applies, of course, more directly to the subject of the present chapter as an expression of the views of a scholarly Catholic on the present intellectual policy of the Church. He writes as follows:

‘For you cannot teach whom you do not understand, and you cannot win the man with whom you cannot share certain presuppositions.... The cultivated non-Roman Catholic world is, in part unconsciously, often slowly yet everywhere surely, getting permeated and won by critical standards and methods. A system cannot claim to teach all the world and at the same time erect an impenetrable partition-wall between itself and the educated portion of that world.[198]... This opinion of the Biblical Commission is surely but one link in a chain of official attempts at the suppression of Science and Scholarship, beginning with Erasmus and culminating with Richard Simon and Alfred Loisy, but never entirely absent, as witness the lives of countless workers, well-known to their fellow-workers.... When and where has Rome finally abandoned any position however informal and late its occupation, and however demonstrated its untenableness? Where, in particular, is the case of its permission to hold critical and historical views even distantly comparable in their deviation from tradition to those here presented by us? But if no such cases can be found, then, surely, Rome stands utterly discredited....”[199]

“approved and confirmed by Pope Leo XIII, a Decree of the Holy Office, in the highest Roman tribunal next after the Pope himself, and which, unlike the Biblical Commission, claims directly doctrinal authority, giving a negative answer to the question, ‘Whether it is safe to deny, or at least to call in doubt, the authenticity of the text of St. John, in the First Epistle, chapter v, verse 7, “For there are three that give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.”’”[200]

The Baron closes his letter (which is addressed to his friend Dr. Briggs) with the words:

“That we can and ought, both of us, to pray, to will, and to work that the advisers of the chief Bishop of Christendom, in the manifold mixed subject-matters which they have to prepare and to bring before him, may have a vivid realisation of the difficulty and complexity, the importance and rights and duties of those other departments of life—Science and Scholarship—lest these forces, ignored or misunderstood, bring inevitable obstruction and eclipse to those direct and central interests and ideals which are the fundamental motives of all spiritual life, and the true mainspring and impregnable citadel of the Christian, Catholic, and Roman Church.”[201]

I can but feel that these utterances of sane and reverent Catholic believers of to-day are expressions of a state of mind with which the Church of Rome will have to reckon in the near future unless the realm of its believers is to be restricted to those who are the less sane and less scholarly and, to those who, to put it frankly, have a smaller measure of intellectual integrity.

It may be concluded that the general regulations of the Index and the insistence on the part of the Church of the right and the obligation of supervising the output of the printing-press and of controlling and directing the reading of the faithful, did exert a restrictive influence on the production and distribution of literature. This influence was, however, limited to the territories in which the machinery of the Inquisition was in active existence. In the regions north of the Alps and the Pyrenees, the Index regulations brought about but a spasmodic and inconsiderable interference with the distribution of the works of Protestant writers. Outside of the lands of the Inquisition, the Church had no other means of hindering the reading of heretical books than to declare the same to be deadly sin and to threaten the delinquents with such penalties as excommunication. The records of applications for dispensations present, as Reusch points out,[202] evidence that scholarly Catholics made frequent opportunity for infringing the censorship prohibitions. It would in fact be difficult to specify any territory in which the Index regulations were accepted cheerfully and thoroughly. It is certain that, even in the most faithful of the Catholic communities, bitter complaints arose from time to time on the part of the scholars in regard to the destruction of valuable literature and the resulting interference with scholarly work. There were also complaints of a different kind. Those who were interested in preserving the true faith from being undermined by heretical doctrine, came to the realisation of the fact that heretical books were, through the operations of the Index, brought to the attention of many who otherwise would never have known of their existence.

In 1549, Gabriel Putherbeus, writing to Theotimus, complains that the books prohibited by the Paris divines were being read by people to whom they would never have become known excepting through the censorship lists.[203] Gratianus Verus writes that the Index of Paul IV had had a most pernicious influence in making known to Catholic readers a long list of Protestant writings. Protestant scholars utilised the catalogues in the Index very largely as recommendations of books that were deserving of consideration. The more thoughtful Catholics were ready to recognise that, as an offset to the importance of protecting the faithful from the influence of heretical doctrines, the publication of the Index-lists brought serious disadvantages. The reading of the Scriptures was rendered unduly difficult for many to whom the instruction therein contained should prove of service. The study of the Bible, of the works of the Fathers of the Church, and of much of the literature of scholarship, was seriously hampered even for devout scholars. The pursuit of scientific studies by Catholic students and instructors was placed under great disadvantages through the prohibition and cancellation even of such works of reference as lexicons, when these bore the names of Protestant compilers. The opportunity of utilising such lexicons when specific permission had been secured from bishops or from inquisitors could not sufficiently meet the difficulty. The possibility of securing expurgated editions of books the original and complete text of which had fallen under condemnation, proved in practice to be too slight a dependence. The printer-publishers, who had been subjected to loss, and often to very serious loss, through the cancellation of the original edition, were as a rule not encouraged to make the further investment required for the printing of the “corrected” and expurgated text. It was also the case that these expurgations were frequently made very heedlessly, and with a full measure of ignorance of the subject-matter of the book, and of the precise purport of the original text. As a result, if the eliminations ordered by the censors were carried out with precision, the text as it remained presented no adequate sense. On the other hand, the insertion of any changes whatsoever, or of any new material in the expurgated text, subjected the reissue to a further censorship and to the risk of a second cancellation.

In the States in which, as in Spain and Portugal, the entire control of the censorship was left with the Inquisition, the scholars and students were practically deprived of the use of foreign literature. Writers like Pallavicini congratulate themselves that the dread of the Index (that is to say, of course, of the penalties of the Index regulations) has had the effect of checking very largely the printing and the distribution of books, and must, according to his view, have served to discourage the writing of books. It is evidently his point of view that the possible advantages from active literary production are more than offset by the resulting evils.

The difficulties for students and readers were of necessity increased by the lack of any consistency or uniformity of policy on the part of the Congregation of the Index, of the Inquisitions (whether in Rome or in Spain), or of the Magister Palatii. In fact, with the inevitable change in the personnel of these authorities, it is difficult to see how any absolutely consistent policy could have been maintained through a term of years. The men representing different Orders were, as Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, etc., committed to differences of dogma and of interpretation which seemed to them to be vital. As the opportunity came into their hands, it was inevitable that they should do what was in their power to discourage the production and to lessen the distribution, not only of the works of avowed heretics, but of the books of writers of different schools of thought and of faith within the communion of Rome. The contests between the Orders were carried into the work of censorship and found their expression in the varying lists of the Indexes of successive decades or of different centres of Church authority. There may be ground for wonder, not that the interference with the literature of these Catholic countries was so considerable, but that the Catholic scholars of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century were able, under such hampering restrictions, to leave any literary monuments of continued value. The results of the censorship system can of course also not be measured by what may be termed the direct action, the value of the scholarly books destroyed, the interference with the work of scholarly readers, the property losses caused to the printer-publishers and the booksellers, and, through them, to the community. We must bear in mind also the restrictive influence on literary production and on intellectual development. Many works that might have stimulated and enlightened the world were undoubtedly, after some sharp activities of the censors, destroyed in manuscript rather than, in being brought into print, to bring risk to their authors of loss of position, of banishment, or of excommunication. In other cases, writers of individuality and distinctive force decided to cancel their proposed books in the initial stage of lecture notes, rather than, in bringing the material to completion and into print, to risk loss of position, banishment, or excommunication. In the States that accepted the authority of the Index, and particularly in the territories in which this authority was exercised by the Inquisition, the existence of the Index and the machinery of the censorship acted as a blight on literary production and distribution and constituted a serious bar to the interests of higher education and to intellectual development. Such a restriction on the natural operations of the mind, enforced through a long series of years, must have had a repressing effect also on character and individuality, besides tending to the development of deceit and the impairment of manliness.

“In concluding my summary of the influence of the Church on the literature of Europe, I find myself,” says Dejob, “considering one hypothesis. What might the result have been for the Church and for Europe, if the college of Cardinals, in place of considering the nationality only of candidates for the tiara, had made its selections purely on the basis of merit and capacity? What might have happened if, for instance, the papal throne had been filled by a series of Popes from France?... Imperial Rome had the wisdom to select its successive rulers from the diverse provinces that came within its rule, and in so doing, it unquestionably widened and strengthened the foundations of the Empire. Christian Rome might assuredly have secured similar results from a similar world-wide policy. A Bossuet or a Massillon selected for the pontificate would certainly have governed the Church with a spirit at once more serious and more comprehensive, and would have rendered enormous service to the interests of Catholicism and of Europe. The spirit of Popes of such calibre would have kept within bounds the continued disputes on smaller matters of doctrine which have wasted the force and narrowed the intelligence of so many excellent Christians. They would not have been able to prevent the diffusion of philosophical ideas, but I feel confident that faith, as represented and defended by them, would have been assailed with less bitterness and with less effectiveness.... The Church, like France itself, should have been able to remain serious without becoming Puritan; and to develop intellectual brilliancy without any compromise of the foundations of faith or of morality.

“I may admit that we have here only an hypothesis but it is fair to remember, in thinking how the influence of France might have served the highest ideals of the Church, how large an evidence during the past two centuries the French spirit has given of earnestness, of moral discipline, of wholesome force. It has preserved with a hatred of hypocrisy, an aversion for servility, a large liberality of thought, and it is such a combination of qualities that should have been made of the largest service to the Church and to the world.”[204]

As has been indicated in the preceding narrative, there has been through the centuries not a little varying in the policy of Roman censorship and in the enforcement of its regulations according as one or another Order or school of thought secured the control of the Papacy, or of the machinery of the Inquisition and of the Congregation of the Index. This control, however, has remained, not only for the Papacy, but also in great measure for the Roman Inquisition and for the Congregation of the Index, in the hands of Italians. The result has been, of necessity, from generation to generation, to force into a conformity with local Italian standards the literary activities, and the intellectual development, of the faithful throughout the world. There is certainly ground for the conclusion that under this policy, the Index (including under this term the whole system of censorship) came to constitute one of the more important of the influences which have worked through the centuries towards the narrowing of the Church Universal (the magnificent ideal of the Middle Ages) into the organisation known in our twentieth century as the Church of Rome.