Indeed, I think we can be pretty certain that Paul was glad about it (as for Apollos, he was in Corinth). But again, that is not the point. The problem is that Gregory was attempting to use Acts 19 to justify censorship on an Apostolic basis. Here is the relevant portion of the encyclical:
15. Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?
16. The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books.[23]
The fact is that the burning of scrolls in Acts 19 has nothing to do with the censorship that he advocates.
All these disctinctions of ownership and coercion are simply not addressed by the encyclical.
A major oversight on Gregory's part!
It seems to be written from the assumption that the state is engaged in some form of control over the press; the Church on her part sees it fit to advise the state on how to exercise proper censorship.
No, State control over the press is not a given, because it is the alleged justness of censorship that he is trying to prove. And to bring the Holy Apostles into his argument the way that he did was shameful.
The thrust of the argument is that some books are "bad". They remain bad no matter who owns them. They are to be detroyed as a matter of sanitation.
Ideas can be bad, and books can contain bad ideas, but books are still just ink on paper. And bad ideas can be defeated in argument by good ones. So if the Church's arguments really are superior to all others then why the need for censorship?
On the other hand, the Pope speaks approvingly of legal authority, so from that alone we can presume that pogrom of private property by some vigilante book-burning mob is note what His Holiness was contemplating.
OK.
Let us not forget that the near-absolute freedom of the press, as well as the radical separation of Church and state are very recent and on balance, I think, unsuccessful social experiments. The mass slaughter of the 20c, the corrupt decadence of our time bear out the grim predictions Pope Gregory XVI so presciently made in 1832.
Regarding the mass slaughter of the 20th century, that was done by regimes that made copious and violent use of state censorship to keep people from questioning the myths they were being told in order to cover up the horrible reality.
Do you honestly think that censoring books will make people behave morally? The problem is not freedom of speech, or freedom of the press. The problem is when leftist fools are made tenured professors in taxpayer-funded institutions so that we end up paying them for spouting their bad ideas uncontested to captive audiences. These pinkos certainly have the right to express their so-called "thoughts," but they don't have any "right" to their silliness being subsidized.
Indeed.
Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief?Frankly, Gregory's rejection of the correct course --opposing ing bad ideas with the Church's (presumably) good ones -- is just plain lazy. Isn't that one of the Seven Deadly Sins?
--Robert Ingersoll
Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?In fact, every sane man takes precisely that position. For instance, it is only the insane green extremists who insist on prohibiting the use of DDT in place of the rational course of making it available and providing medical care to individuals who overdose on it or prove unusually susceptible.
But it does. It establishes the fact that a "bad book" (leaving aside the important question of who decides whether it is bad) is better off burned, that is, not distributed. This establishes a barrier to distribution of bad books a good. Censorship is a public good, just like purity of drinking water is a public good. You want to concentrate on process, -- how is the distribution of bad books is to be accomplished, and that is an important question, but before we do that, we need to agree that censorship itself is a public good. It is not an oversight to put the horse in front of the carriage and discuss the important things first, even more so when obedience to laws is urged in the same encyclical.
if the Church's arguments really are superior to all others then why the need for censorship?
The pope spoke for his time and I can with greater confidence speak of mine. These are the evils he mentions:
Depravity exults; science is impudent; liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men, but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline -- none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil. Our Roman See is harassed violently and the bonds of unity are daily loosened and severed. The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude. The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights are trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new, monstrous opinions, which openly attack the Catholic faith; this horrible and nefarious war is openly and even publicly waged. Thus, by institutions and by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corrupted and a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities, and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous, and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship's hold, a congealed mass of all filth.
Note that he does not just bemoan academic exercises of philosophers and scientists. The evil he is talking about is not something one can debate and score an intellectual victory. The French Revolution, for example, was a massive anti-Catholic pogrom that killed innocent people by the thousand, desecrated holy places, and stole property. How do you debate that? The evils of nazism and Communism were still a century away but the seed of these evils was sown at the French Revolution and the subsequent unrest that ensued after the Napoleonic wars.
The intellectual, purely academic component can indeed be debated. But a secret society, like, for example, the Lodge, cannot be debated -- it is secret for a reason. And how do you debate the today's public school Komissariat or those champions of 1st Amendment freedoms, the pornographers?
the mass slaughter of the 20th century, that was done by regimes that made copious and violent use of state censorship
That is true, but irrelevant. Naturally, an oppressive society will also oppress free thought. It is like saying that because Hitler had a modern army the US should not have one. The US that helped defeat Hitler had a robust system of censorship of its own.
Do you honestly think that censoring books will make people behave morally?
Television and porn today, primarily, although a return of the Index would be good to guide the certain "ardent" Catholics in Madame Pelosi's mold too. Well, no, just like making sure there is no sewerage in the drinking water is not going to make everyone a picture of health overnight. But protecting the filth in the water, -- and that is what the freedom of speech in the US has defacto become is sure to geve nearly everyone dysentery. I agree, of course, that defunding the entrenched left would be also a very good idea.