Letters and Censorship

...According tc the great Catholic teachers, the value of a work o art lies simply in the rightness of its aspiration and in its sanity...

...A certain experience is the source of poetry, to be identified in a measure with the experience which is the source of mystical insight...

...Normally one may diagnose these complaints rather simply ant effectively by asking oneself if the accuser has giver signs of lucid understanding on other subjects or oc-casions...

...A literature or art which preserves authentic visio'~, or wisdom will therefore have, if the traditional Cath...

...More recently the Abb6 Henri Br6mond, approaching the matter from a somewhat different angle, gave modern criticism a theory with which it has since been industriously concerned...

...That is why heretics have normally been very earnest folk...

...But a distinction is at once in order...

...and (like every other type of surreptitious product) those shil- bngs were usually tainted...

...That rank obscenity should be discountenanced by any society aspiring to ~.he status of a healthy civilization is a platitude...

...They cannot hope to be perfectly accurate, but their opinions do coalesce into a fairly realistic impression of what is the especial danger of the age...

...More frequently it is criticism, exercised in the pulpit or through the press, "'which warns of the evil effects likely to be attendant upon certain reading habits...

...Common sense is the only satisfactory judge, and ever~ it cannot generalize for individual consciences...

...With him the early Church, therefore, con-sidered the beautiful the aftermath of a suggestion, conveyed by earthly things or shadows, of an idea which antedates nature and exists eternally, unchange- ably, in the Divine mind...

...The first has riveted his gaze upon the Divine basis of reality...

...And so they exercise the helpful and legitimate function of safeguarding the public against moral corruption...

...sidered all these things from every angle and tried tq~ reckon with the difficult problems they involve, one concludes that few hard and fast rules can be drawn...

...And here once again the deciding factor is nO', whether a play "teaches a lesson" but whether it f...

...and yet poetry is only a tentative essay of the spirit's force, which finds its proper sphere and winged flight in true mysticism...

...And as he looked about for a satisfactory ex-planation, he read appreciatively those vast reflective hymns which Plotinus had sung to everlasting Ra-diance...

...Those who have wit- aessed troops of young girls flocking to giggle at raw plays in a theatre the approach to which is lined by leering men and women of the baser sort, will under- stand, if they have their wits about them, that a police- nan or two would not be out of place on such occa-.~ions...

...These several restatements of Augustinian conviction, together with others which are to be found in modern religious poetry, the art of Beuron and other places, suffice to indicate the resoluteness with which the Catholic spirit still defends the nobility of the artistic purpose and seeks to give it a positive direction...

...So far the Catholic position is reasonably clear and understandable...

...beautiful with an inkling of everlasting life...

...It should offer guidance to the time spirit lest the unwary succumb to the suggestion which happens to correspond to the prevailing spiritual weakness...

...For this reason Catholic tradition, never satisfied with negative counsels, has upheld a lofty ideal of art, which may not always permit of realiza- tion any more than the monastic virtues can be incul- cated into all men, but which does help to keep the human eye and heart on a level with normalcy...

...In some ages the warnings have been more pronounced than in others, but a sharp lookout has constantly been main- tained...

...This conception of art is the motive behind the great patronage which the Church has patiently be- stowed upon the crafts and letters...

...AI-r, hOSt every period of state censorship has been fol-"h~wed by a violent reaction, the excesses committed 'luring which more than offset the previous gain to morals...

...anyone who devotes five minutes of his time to histor)I will see that propriety meant one thing to the averag~ subject of Queen Victoria and another thing entirely to the prophets of Israel...

...Since the teaching authority vested in the See of Peter is defined as empowered to preserve and foster the objective doctrines of Revelation, any teaching which can be analyzed as purely subjective must be repudiated by it...

...To the artist, therefore, has been reserved the function of teaching them this primal aspect of the Divine, however feeble and re-mote his images may be...

...It was a psychological problem --how to live according to a theory of grace arrived at during the course of his own spiritual development...

...and there is danger that the dust, shadows and winds encountered on the way may distort the vision...

...The result- ing improvement will be notable...

...Everybody needs to be taught how to win and use freedom...

...And in our time, when so many Augustinian reflections are being honored once again, the point has been reiterated with modifications compatible with the modern outlook...

...During the mediaeval tion that some young men of his generation were "emancipated" from religion by an excess of pietistic lore...

...Nevertheless Catholicism is peculiar in nothing so much as this: it never focuses all its attention upon one point, or one human faculty...

...held the dignity of the supreme instrument for the attainment of insight into the meaning of life...

...And though individuals may be unable to appreciate this, or insist upon aspects that are sec-ondary in importance, the central truth of a traditi~ abides and must be respected...

...Nevertheless thousands of souls do heed the advice, and as a result some are saved from degradation...

...Not that moral standards shift or change...

...When one has con...

...But he is fooling himself badly if he believes that his personal right to express a desire or to portray a vision absolves him from the duty of respecting the temper of his audience...

...Suffice it to say that he believes even the fragments of a genuine poet's work suffused with a spiritual vitality which, though immediately perceptible, does not depend upon the facts, the ideas or even the images incorporated in the text...

...Nor did even the English Puritan Parliament "stucceed in stamping out the disease of play-acting...

...Txe question is rather: how does the theatre of today or yr terday, of here or yonder, look at the Church ? Is it i~- bued with the spirit of Christ or is it hostile to him...

...Am so we may venture to make the following somewha~ paradoxical statement: the Church, negatively en gaged in safeguarding its faithful from impulses to ward the doing of evil which may be garnered fron literature, is positively interested in upholding th, separation of morals from literature...

...Prac- tice would seem to indicate that it is seldom prudent .o demand more than the few sanitary measures, which can be put into effect noiselessly and almost automat-]cally, normally prescribed by modern governments...

...Whenever people look to art for this service, so illustrious and dignified, they can hardly think of it in terms of mere animalistic por- traiture or lewd sportiveness...

...In our time few Catholic moralists pin much faith state supervision...

...When the uproar is amateurish, it is usuall'.' also pathological...

...Your cheap movie moralizes throughoul~ ever so many titles, and yet the boy who looks at it isl driven to imitate the prowess of Jesse James...

...Some people have been corrupted by obscene~ jokes...

...Some day the religious press will catch up with the vast majority of the clergy and realize that it is silly to provide a frame for such rant...

...It tells us that there are states of creative activity which mystic and artist seem to share, though not for precisely the same purpose...

...less some people ought to abstain from art altogether, as others should keep away from wine or politics...

...When we come to the ques- tion of determining whether or not a book can incite to passion or moral degradation, matters become ex- ceedingly complex...

...The following paper makes no effort to arrive at a complete solution of the problem, but ana-lyzes Catholic negative and positive teaching...

...Here is a mem- orable respect for reason and the universe of reality with which that reason is concerned...

...Sometimes, of course, a community will be faced with a problem out of the ordinary...

...Both are "suprarational" in the sense that they are induced neither by logic nor by cosmic actuality...

...During genera- tions when the doctors, following the lead of Imman- uel Kant, transferred the content of thought and knowledge to the inward man, the philosophy of the Church, ignored, despised and even frankly hated, up...

...On the other hand it h~s,l produced the loftiest and most awesome forms of dram~t,r and here one must think not only of Christmas and Pals...

...All men approach the verities of faith through a lane of personal experience...

...One may well believe that this Augustinian con-ception established, for a succession of deeply Chris- tian souls, a sort of affinity between the mystic and the artist...

...It is, of course, obvious that merely erecting walls around people will not save them from contamination...

...Though official pronouncements on the matter are fewer than is sometimes believed, one is justified in thinking that the Church has wrestled with litera- ture at least as frequently as with any other human activity...

...It has warned the faithful again~ certain dramatic productions, and even drove out "relig-ious" folk-plays which once had their stage in fhe ve:~, nave of the sacred edifice...

...Nothing in the careful thought of Paul Elmer More and the other protagonists of reactior, from unbridled feeling but finds its adequate statement in the vast serenity of Christian speculation which circles round the axis of Saint Thomas...

...The sage declared long ago that what is one man's meat may prove to be another's poison...

...There are fiery sermons to the writer in dozens of encyclicals and homilies...

...It has therefore continued to respect deeply the rights of reason...

...Because he clung firmly to this starting-point, he ended by arriving at a set of convictions completely at vari- ance with those sponsored by Catholic tradition...

...This Zeitgeist can be divined by men of ex-perience, vision and right standards...

...and from this point of view theory developed within the shadow of the Church joins hands, relatively at least, with what notable modern advocates of the life of reason have proposed as the normal standards of literature...

...An individual ar-tist can easily make a plausible defense of a production which exerts a baneful influence upon others...

...The con-tention is that censorship, however exercised, is only a prelude to a realization of what is good and beautiful, and that the value of art lies in the rightness of its aspiration and in its sanity...

...But though this whole problem needs to be dealt with prudently, it cannot be tossed aside with a laugh...

...It is characteristic of the Church not to rely upon blanket decisions to regulate the matter, but to dispense pri.~ rate spiritual counsel to those who ask for it...

...Painters and poets were held to be endowed with a gift for presenting- reality of a sort which intelligence as such could not reveal...

...sion plays, biblical drama and Calderon, but also of tl~e daily Divine sacrifice itself, which is the very essence ~< drama applied to continue the life and death of Chri[st throughout the centuries...

...The strictures of Socrates and Plato are familiar to every student of the classics, and Roman censors were some-times very outspoken...

...Censorship, tkerefore, ought to be a kind of mentorship...

...Doubt...

...and it possesses the power to take our gaze away from meanness to-ward the lustrous immortal deeps...

...Nat-urally enough this anxiety increased after the advent How morals and art are related is not an easy matter to determine...

...To what extent the state ought to exercise control ~.ver letters and the arts is not easy to determine...

...Here the subjective factor is paramount, for the reason that all the forces making for decision~ free will, temperament, training, experience~differ with individuals...

...One need only bid him notice the ines-timable damage done to the good name of France by a literature of smudgy amours, or ask him to read Madame Bovary carefully...

...Most of the protest has arisen less out of Catholic dread that a book might incite readers to perverse deeds than out of Catholic reverence for revealed truth...

...What is here offered is part of a book--The Catholic Church and Current Litera-ture-to appear soon in the Calvert Series, published by the Macmillan Company.--The Editors...

...Just as a man may know precisely how the celestial machinery produces a sunset without being able to see appreciatively the intoxicating wealth of an evening sky, so humanity may learn the truths of faith without being awed by their majesty or unutter- able harmoniousness...

...Thus there is no point in asJ ing how the Church "looks at the theatre," for it thinJ of all created things in one and the same way...

...The literature under discu~ sion may reek with lascivious suggestion and yet dis- tinguish carefully between good and evil, or virtue anc[- immorality...

...If we now try to think of these matters in terrrts of actual practice, some assistance may be derived from the following discussion of drama by Leo Wei, mantel, greatest of German Catholic playwrights, t A glance at what happened in the centuries past shox~rs clearly that the Church has taken a stand regarding i~- dividual theatrical phenomena, but never on the theatre as a thing in itself...

...others have been ruined by sermons...

...It is to be an aid to contemplation rather...

...The Church, therefore, is always on the alert to correct individualistic notions of tenets of faith, especially when these haunt the minds of.such as are in a position to exercise leadership...

...We are r far from conceding that there is anything like relatiw ity of right and wrong...

...But though these cases can be dealt with in-dividually, it seems impossible to base any general rule upon them...

...They hope rather to contend against evil tendencies with counsel and education, ~radually promoting abhorrence of vice that assumes the dress of art...

...But the public ear is constantly cocked for scandal, and so Catholic litterateurs in par- ticular are always being hounded by sensitive scenters of vice...

...All who live in the bonds of civic union must be awake to all things *.hat serve to common need...

...In other words, they were considered contemplatives of a definite kind...

...olic sense is right, something different from a moral purpose, and yet be "ennobling" in the strictest way The hope, in this case, is not so much to make cleal the value of an ethical maxim or to "encourage' virtue, but to lift men above the dead level of dros, to an area wherein the spirit is unencumbered...

...Almost any excited stickler can, in our time .9 .9 , , .r get a hearing because his or her moral susceptlbdltle, ~ have been ruffled in some manner by a book...

...But there are epochs when the lines must be drawn far more tightly, and when laxity only means cutting a sluice in the dam which checks the onrush of passion and surrender...

...the second is concerned with the inner side of reality itself...

...In short...

...When the two are blended in one man, humanity achieves all that contemplativeness can givema rare occurrence, but one which posits a kind of goal to Catholic art...

...I have no intention of outlining the conception of "pure poetry" or to "poetry and prayer" as these are defined in his well-known books...

...Sometimes ecclesiastical authority Specifically condemns a book or play as perverse, or :.~lculated to endanger the soul...

...Accordingly the origin of poetic art--and, to a lesser degree, of all imaginative literature--is not reality, or objective circumstance, but rather a vision of beauty, a response to something brighter than nature, to which Plato gave the provisional name of "idea...

...Nor does it come into being without a cause...

...Time and place create conditions which establish a kind of social personality, from the moral point of view...

...n, , m LETTERS AND CENSORSHIP By GEORGE N. SHUSTER F EAR lest the literary art prove a source of moral decay is as old as_ civilized mankind...

...Not.' long ago newspapermen were smiling at a book which.~ though written to expose and denounce the sins o~: various French novelists, managed to become the most objectionable volume of the year...

...This "something" is, therefore, "pure" poetry as distinguished from the other subsidiary elements which may be termed "impure...

...time people were edified by legends which would shockr not a few modern souls, even i as they shocked conteml porary theologians...

...When Saint Augustine, trained to appreciate the pleasure which comes with gazing upon artistic loveliness, wrote out the fulness of his understanding of Christian living, he did not fail to take the beautiful into ac-count...

...Un, fortunately there are all sorts of self-appointed ad- visers...

...Renais-sance Italy proudly adorned churches with images which were destined to make New- man blush.9 Henri Gh~on, the' French convert playwrigh i and poet, records the convic of Christianity...

...I~ootleg theatricals earned many a shilling...

...This effort is exceedingly difficult, is often received with a series of sneers, and is bound to be subjective in a measure...

...History therefore presents us with many seeming contradictories...

...Art is a premonition of, an insight into, the ineffable Splendor of which terrestrial prettinesses are only dim reflections...

...than to action...

...Their "ideas" were not concepts or static truths, but rather "visions" incorporating what was termed "splendor veritatis"--the splendor of truthm as differentiated from the mere existence of truth...

...Psychology, to begin with, has come to differentiate between the states of mind which tend upward or downward--toward ecstasy or toward leth- argymfrom the condition of normal comprehension...

...Luther's starting-point, for example, was not at all the moral question of indulgence selling...

...People simply do not expect a great deal of moral vigilance from their governments...