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.
You cannot simultaneously assert an answer to a question and claim to be "leaving aside" the same question. Done deliberately, this is a knavish attempt to evade scrutiny; done accidentally, this is a form of intellectual ineptitude.
we need to agree that censorship itself is a public good
Really, now; how many times are you going to attempt to stipulate what you are required to demonstrate? Are you hoping that your circular arguments will cause your opponents to become too dizzy to respond?
The pope spoke for his time and I can with greater confidence speak of mine. These are the evils he mentions:
A few highlights of the more glaring problems:
The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline -- none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil.The French Revolution, for example, was a massive anti-Catholic pogrom that killed innocent people by the thousand, desecrated holy places, and stole property."Safe"? These institutions are so fragile that they can be brought down by mere verbal opposition?
Our Roman See is harassed violently
Lacking specific examples of this "violence", one cannot evaluate this claim, either for historical accuracy or for moral integrity. (By "moral integrity" I mean the question of whether the Chruch has a legitimate complaint, in that it was the victim of measures that the Church would under no circumstances visit upon "heretical societies" if given the power to do so.)
The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off.
Again, the "rights" at issue need to be clarified. However, it seems that we need not wait long:
The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights are trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new, monstrous opinions....
The assertion of a "right" to obedience and to the absence of contrary views is an example of the modern conflation of "rights" with "whims". I find the complaint unimpressive, for reasons most easily illustrated by the following quote:
"You don't like the Goths?"
"No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!"
"Persecution?" Padway raised his eyebrows.
"Religious persecution. We won't stand for it forever."
"I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased."
"That's just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is!"
--L. Sprage deCamp (Lest Darkness Fall)
That is an example of the evils to be expected when the state arrogates to itself the right to "burn bad books" and enforce intellectual conformity.
a secret society, like, for example, the Lodge, cannot be debated
The secrecy of groups from the Scientologists to the Ku Klux Klan has somehow failed to prevent the public dissection and rebuttal of their viewpoints.
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.
No, again. Pope Gregory said that "we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books" which is, again, not true because Acts does not say anything about the Apostles burning any books. But even when we consider that Paul likely approved the burning (or even if we assume that Paul really did participate in the burning, even though Acts doesn't say this) it is an illogical leap to derive from this a general principle about destorying "bad books," especially when you consider that there was no coercion involved in the burning in Acts 19 and your general principle about censorship must involve coercion (otherwise it isn't censorship). Also, given that it was their own scrolls that the converts were burning, this was no question of "distribution" involved. I don't see why this is so hard to understand.
Censorship is a public good, just like purity of drinking water is a public good.
This is a bad analogy. As you claim later in your post, "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." This is a bad analogy because if the water is filthy, then no one has clean drinking water. However, if "bad books" are available (the analogue to your sewerage) then it is still possible to print good ones. Your analogy actually works better as an argument against censorship, because if good books are forbidden then there is nothing but "filthy water."
You want to concentrate on process, -- how is the distribution of bad books is to be accomplished...
Huh?
...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 you want me to agree with you that censorship is a public good, then you'll have to make the case for it. Oddly enough, the arguments that you've been putting forward tend to work the other way.
And once again, the existence of censorship laws cannot be taken as a given, since the necessity of these as a social good is what you're trying prove.
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.
Wait... why did the populist bloodbath called the French Revolution occur in the first place? Was it because Catholic France didn't have enough censorship laws? Or possibly there was too radical a separation of Church and State? LOL!
Gee, you don't think it had more to do with the decadence of the nobility and the clergy (whose roles often overlapped, BTW) at the expense of people who were in many cases starving to death? The same kind of decadence which is being promoted today by our entrenched leftist elites and which you claim that censorship is necessary to counter? Gosh, it worked so well in the past!
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.
Of course it can be debated. We can ask them why, in a country where we have freedom of association, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press; where there is no fear of being persecuted; why do they feel the need to keep everything so secretive? Truth does not fear the light. Censorship laws only tend to give secret societies an air of plausibility that they would otherwise lack, because then they can claim that they only meet in secret and keep their books and teachings secret because of the threat of persecution (remember that in the early days of the Church Christians often met in secret because of the persecutions).
And how do you debate the today's public school Komissariat or those champions of 1st Amendment freedoms, the pornographers?
We're discussing censorship of ideas, not pornography, so let's try to stay on topic. I'm glad you brought up the public schools, though. That's an even bigger problem than the universities, because in public schools it is children who are the captive audience. Again, the problem is not free speech, but that children are being indoctrinated with socialism and the taxpayers are paying for it.
Conservatives often confidently claim that liberalism will simply die out since liberals don't have as many children. But as Dinesh D'Souza pointed out, that won't matter as long as we're all paying for our children to be indoctrinated by socialists.
[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.
I was mostly just making an observation, but thank you for clarifying my point. A society that oppresses free thought is by definition an oppressive society. A society that keeps a modern army is not.
The US that helped defeat Hitler had a robust system of censorship of its own.
Loose lips sink ships. Do you really think you can make a comparison between wartime censorship and the type of censorship for which Pope Gregory was arguing?
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.
If I may opine, I think the fact that Madame Speaker was allowed to claim for so long, without discipline from the Church, to be a "good Catholic" in spite of her support for murdering unborn children, was a bigger scandal than what books she might have been reading. That being said, I'm very glad that the Church is beginning to address this.