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.
Regarding censorship being a public good indeed that is the topic of the Encyclical, but somehow I don't see that central point being rebutted. I see dark references to the nazis and some analysis of what happened in Acts 19, but not much argument on that central point (except that Baal/Satan one, to which I'll get in a moment).
can be brought down by mere verbal opposition?
Verbal opposition would have been fine, it has been there as long as the Church herself. The violations of the Church rights, imprisonment of the Pope, killing of priests, monks and nuns, looting church property were not exactly verbal opposition.
Obedience due bishops is a legal reality. One can, of course, leave the Catholic church, but a Catholic indeed owes obedience to bishops.
the evils to be expected when the state arrogates to itself the right to "burn bad books" and enforce intellectual conformity
Without defending the imbecility of the royal houses of the time, do you really think that mass murder and looting of the French clergy in the Robespierre's terror was something the clergy deserved?