An Introduction
Part 4

A History of Church Censorship

●  The following are excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Censura Librorum:
"In general, censorship of books is a supervision of the press in order to prevent any abuse of it. In this sense, every lawful authority, whose duty it is to protect its subjects from the ravages of a pernicious press, has the right of exercising censorship of books. This censorship is either ecclesiastical or civil, according as it is practiced by the spiritual or secular authority, and it may be exercised in two ways, viz.: before the printing or publishing of a work, by examining it (censura prævia); and after the printing or publishing, by repressing or prohibiting it (censura repressiva). This is the double meaning of the classical word censura, especially as used in the legislation of the Roman Church. Later on, however, particularly in civil law, censura denoted almost exclusively censura prævia. Wherever the abolition of censorship in past centuries is referred to, only the latter is meant."

 ●  Just following the above statement is an apparent attempt to make church censorship seem mild when compared to what are referred to as the "more severe press-laws":
 "The reverse of censorship is freedom of the press. In all civilized countries, however, that have abrogated the censura prævia, freedom of the press is by no means unlimited. It abuse may, in the worst cases, be condemned and punished according to common law, and the old censorship has nearly everywhere been replaced by more severe press-laws."
 "During the Middle Ages prohibitions of books were far more numerous than in ancient times. Their history is chiefly connected with the names of medieval heretics like Berengarius of Tours, Abelard, John Wyclif, and John Hus. However, especially in the thirteenth and fourteen century, there were also issued prohibitions against various kinds of superstition writings, among them the Talmud and other Jewish books. In this period also, the first decrees about the reading of various translations of the Bible were called forth by the abuses of the Waldenses and Albigensians. What these decrees (e.g., of the synod of Toulouse in 1129, Tarragona in 1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular." (Catholic Encyclopedia: Censorship of Books)

●  Pope Innocent III stated in 1199: “to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted.” 

●  From the Council of Toulouse of November 1229, which set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition, comes the following edict found in Canon 14:
"We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."

●  From the Council of Tarragona of 1234, Canon 2:
"No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned lest, be he a cleric or a layman, he be suspected until he is cleared of all suspicion."

●  In 1408 the Third Synod of Oxford, England, banned unauthorized English translations of the Bible and decreed that possession of English translations had to be approved by diocesan authorities. The Oxford council declared:
"It is dangerous, as St. Jerome declares, to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things. We therefore command and ordain that henceforth no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately, under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be punished as an abettor of heresy and error."

●  William Tyndale completed a translation of the New Testament from the Greek in 1525, which the Church of England tried to confiscate and burn. After issuing a revised edition in 1535, he was arrested, strangled, and then burned at the stake October of 1536.  Ninety percent of the New Testament found in the 1611 King James Bible was taken from Tyndale’s work.  

●  In 1543, the English parliament forbade the use of any English translations other than the "Great Bible". Tyndale's New Testament was specifically prohibited and later Wycliffe's and Coverdale's Bibles were also banned. It was decreed a crime for any unlicensed person to read or explain the Scriptures in public. Many copies of Tyndale's New Testament and Coverdale's Bible were burned in London, even though the authorized "Great Bible" contained the work of both men.

●  In the Index of Trent (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) of 1559, Pope Pius IV compiled a list of the forbidden books and officially prohibited them. This is an excerpt from that Index:

Rule I
All books which were condemned prior to 1515 by popes or ecumenical councils, and are not listed in this Index, are to stand condemned in the original fashion.

Rule II
Books of arch-heretics - those who after 1515 have invented or incited heresy or who have been or still are heads and leaders of heretics, such as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Hubmaier, Schwenckfeld, and the like — whatever their name, title or argumentation — are prohibited without exception. As far as other heretics are concerned, only those books are condemned without exception which deal ex professo with religion. Others will be permitted after Catholic theologians have examined and approved them by the order of bishops and inquisitors. Likewise, Catholic books written by those who subsequently fell into heresy or by those who after their lapse returned into the bosom of the Church can be permitted after approval by a theological faculty or the inquisition.

Rule III
Translations of older works, including the church fathers, made by condemned authors, are permitted if they contain nothing against sound doctrine. However, translations of books of the Old Testament may be allowed by the judgment of bishops for the use of learned and pious men only. These translations are to elucidate the Vulgate so that Sacred Scripture can be understood, but they are not to be considered as a sacred text. Translations of the New Testament made by authors of the first sections in this Index are not to be used at all, since too little usefulness and too much danger attends such reading.

Rule IV
Since experience teaches that, if the reading of the Holy Bible in the vernacular is permitted generally without discrimination, more damage than advantage will result because of the boldness of men, the judgment of bishops and inquisitors is to serve as guide in this regard. Bishops and inquisitors may, in accord with the counsel of the local priest and confessor, allow Catholic translations of the Bible to be read by those of whom they realize that such reading will not lead to the detriment but to the increase of faith and piety. The permission is to be given in writing. Whoever reads or has such a translation in his possession without this permission cannot be absolved from his sins until he has turned in these Bibles.

Rule VI
Books in the vernacular dealing with the controversies between Catholics and the heretics of our time are not to be generally permitted, but are to be handled in the same way as Bible translations. ...

●  Here it is made obvious that the censorship, specifically of the Apocrypha, started from the very beginning of the Universal Church:

"Thus, in the first Christian centuries, the so-called apocrypha (q.v.) above all other books appeared to the faithful as libri non recipiendi, books which were on no account to be used. The establishment of the Canon of Holy Writ was, therefore, at once an elimination and a censuring of the apocrypha." The two documents referring to this, both from the latter half of the second century, are the Muratorian Canon (q.v.) and the Apostolic Constitutions (see Hauler, Didascaliæ Apostolorum fragments, Leipzig, 1900, p. 4). (Catholic Encyclopedia: Censorship of Books) 

●  In a March, 2005 interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, and a close friend of Pope John Paul II, made the following statements on censorship:
"Don't buy this. Don't read this because this is rotten food,"
"A lot of novels do good but this book is rotten food ... it does harm, not good,"  
"It's impossible to pull the book off shelves of general bookstores ... but certainly not selling it in Catholic bookstores would be a good first step,"
"I am happy that a lot of people have been put on the alert and that I have sounded the alarm of vigilance against the spread of this book,"
"I have arrived too late. Millions of copies have been sold. I can't hope to slow down sales but at least to prompt a critical response,"

The church has made many statements indicating that censorship has not been a practice of the church since 1966, but just the previously cited statements from one of the highest officers of the church prove this is only rhetoric. There is much more evidence showing a clear history of censorship in the church and this will be covered more clearly in a later edition of this series.