Note 549 — Chapter II · LIMITATION OF JURISDICTION OR RESERVED CASES

It remains to be remarked that the ten rules of the Index itself are not touched by this ordinance of the Bull, but that the Excomm. lat. sent. attached at the end of the regul. X falls away, as it was not directly attached by the Council of Trent itself, but by Pius IV. Consequently the reading and keeping of heretical books, or of such as are condemned by a decree of the Congregation of the Index remains, indeed, still forbidden in the future, but the punishment of the now specially reserved excommunication is incurred only in two cases: (a) when the author of the book is an apostate or a heretic, and the book, moreover, not only contains heresy, but ex professo defends it, and (b) when the latter, be the author who he may, is, with exact specification of the title, forbidden by a Papal Brief, or a Bull, or an Encyclical Letter. Although the Constitution Officiorum ac Munerum of Leo XIII (25 Jan., 1897) has considerably mitigated the prohibitions of Clement VIII, Alexander VII, and Benedict XIV, in regard to the reading and propagating of noxious literature, nevertheless the warnings against the intellectual and moral dangers of bad books, which the Index Congregation addresses to Catholics, retain their full force. The confessor should of course remember that the censures attached to the reading of forbidden books are applicable only where there is a conscious violation of the prohibition; furthermore, that not only ignorance, but also a general consuetudo lessening the danger to faith or morals, constitute a mitigating circumstance which demands wise discrimination on the part of confessors who apply the laws of the Index. Few Catholics in English-speaking countries know what books are on the Index, and that fact itself is a reason for moderate judgment.