Page:The Roman index of forbidden books.djvu/22

14 One of these is, that this Index contains all the books forbidden by the Church, and that there are no others which we are obliged to avoid. From the foregoing remarks, it must, on the contrary, be concluded that there are many other books forbidden by the laws of the Church. The worst of them are not in this special Index at all, because they fall under the general decrees.

It is by no means the intention of the Roman authorities to catalogue all the literary virus that has been vomited forth by printing presses all over the world in the course of four and a half centuries. By means of the general laws laid down in the "Officiorum ac munerum" we are in all cases able to see our duty.

There are especially two purposes for which books are prohibited separately and by name.

Whenever there is a doubt about the nature of a book, recourse may be had to Rome; sometimes the Roman authorities appointed for this purpose, will take up the