Index Librorum Prohibitorum

[M.SIGGA]

Although the Congregation of the Index ended in the 20th century, does anyone in the Church today still respect the old Index? I read a lot of this stuff while attending my really conservative Catholic high school and I was shocked to find out that all my honors English class assignments are all listed on the Index of Forbidden Books!?! I have also studied and read a lot of these authors in college and for my own pleasure. Even the Hunchback of Notre Dame is on here!?! Check out the list and reply what you think about it.

from: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/Mediator of Meh/indexlibrorum.html

Rabelais (CW)

Montaigne (Essais)

Descartes (Méditations Métaphysiques et 6 autres livres, 1948)

La Fontaine (Contes et Nouvelles)

Pascal (Pensées)

Montesquieu (Lettres Persanes, 1948)

Voltaire (Lettres philosophiques; Histoire des croisades; Cantiques des Cantiques),

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Du Contrat Social; La Nouvelle Héloïse)

Denis Diderot (CW, Encyclopédie)

Helvétius (De l'Esprit; De l'homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son éducation )

Casanova (Mémoires)

Sade (Justine, Juliette)

Mme De Stael (Corinne ou l'Italie)

Stendhal (Le Rouge et le noir, 1948),

Balzac (CW)

Victor Hugo (Notre Dame de Paris; Les misérables jusqu'en 1959)

Gustave Flaubert (Mme Bovary; Salammbô)

Alexandre Dumas (divers romans)

Emile Zola (CW)

Maeterlinck (CW)

Pierre Larousse (Grand Dictionnaire Universel),

Anatole France (prix Nobel en 1921, CW à l'Index en 1922),

Andre Gide (prix Nobel, CW à l'Index en 1952)

Jean Paul Sartre (Prix Nobel (refusé), CW à l'Index en 1959).

"One could ask what did the study of literature look like in religious schools?"

Other Authors Listed

Peter Abelard,

Erasmus

Nicholas. Machiavelli

John  Calvin

John Milton

Malebranche

Baruch Spinoza

John. Locke

Bishop Berkeley

David Hume

Condillac

d'Holbach

d'Alembert

La Mettrie

Condorcet

Daniel. Defoe

Jonathan. Swift

Swedenborg

Laurence. Sterne

Emmanuek. Kant

H. Heine

J. S. Mill

G. D'Annunzio

H. Bergson.

"Without any surprise, the Index also conatined many theologians and translators of the Bible, and historians of religion. For example:

Richard Simon (17-ième siècle) whose Histoire critique du Vieux Testament inaugured the critical study of sacred texts (taken up by  E. Renan and many others) and A. Loisy, (excommunicated in 1908).

Source:  for this Information:

http://www.union-fin.fr/~bcourcel/LivresInterdits.html

Another list on the net includes the following:

"In 1966 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ceased publication of the INDEX but claimed that it still served as a "moral guide in so far as it reminds the conscience of the faithful they must avoid writings which can be dangerous to faith & morals." Today the Church may issue an "admonitum," a warning to the faithful, that a book might be dangerous. It is only a moral guide, however, without the force of ecclesiastical law."

The following have been condemned in the INDEX for being immoral or heretical or both.

SOME NOVELISTS IN THE INDEX

AUTHOR

Samuel Richardson (ENG)

Laurence Stern (ENG)

Stendhal (FR)

Victor Hugo (FR)

George Sand (FR)

Honore de Balzac (FR)

Eugene Sue (FR)

A. Dumas pere (FR)

A. Dumas fil (FR)

Gustave Flaubert (FR)

Gabriele D'Annunzio (IT)

Alberto Morovia (IT)

SOME NON-FICTION WRITERS IN THE INDEX

Thomas Hobbes (ENG)

Rene Descartes (FR)

Francis Bacon (ENG)

Michel de Montaigne(FR)

Benedict Spinoza(NETH)

John Milton (ENG)

Joseph Addison (ENG)

Richard Steel (ENG)

John Locke (ENG)

Emanuel Swedenborg (SW)

Daniel Defoe (ENG)

David Hume (SCOT)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (FR)

Edward Gibbon (ENG)

Blaise Pascal (FR)

Oliver Goldsmith (ENG)

Immanual Kant (GER)

Giovanni Casanova (FR)

John Stuart Mill (ENG)

Ernest Renan (FR)

Emile Zola (FR)

Andrew Lang (ENG)

Henri Bergson (FR)

Benedetto Croce (IT)

Jean-paul Sartre (FR)

[hyperdulia again]

my personal theory is that the index was discontinued because there was nothing left to read...

i own every author whose name was on that list, before i stopped reading it...