Pope Francis: "listen to another person's voice"
For much of March, many in this world watched and wondered: would Pope Francis live or die. The 88-year-old pontiff was hospitalized for weeks on end with double phenomena.
Perhaps it was this touch-and-go that prompted a professor of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island, Joëlle Rollo-Koster, to write the essay that The Conversation issued on March 28th: “From censorship to curiosity: Pope Francis’ appreciation for the power of history and books”.
Whatever the reason, the piece resonated: nowadays, threats to academic freedom and book bans mount. And not only in America. This fact of life causes one to appreciate all the more…or it should…the import of an athenaeum brimful of books, such as that in Southminster-Steinhauer’s Library & Lounge. Books there are about religion, construed broadly; books there are meant for true believers, for heretics, and folks in between.
Whatever the content of these books, their thrust, this pope, Rollo-Koster suggests, would not reject them, censor them, ban them. A lot of his predecessors would have done so. “[S]ome popes have closed their eyes to…learning and history that threatened their vision of the church,” she points out. “I appreciate Francis’ contrasting approach: a religious leader who embraces history and scholarship, and encourages others to do the same.”
What follows is the bulk of her essay—about a state in which books were proscribed and the reading of them outlawed. It’s history. But it could be, as well, the future. To avert such an offing, we must stand on guard. Please.
Ken Fredrick
For 400 years, the Catholic Church famously maintained the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a long list of banned books. First conceived in the 1500s, it matured under Pope Paul IV. His 1559 index counted any books written by people the church deemed heretics–anyone not speaking dogma, in the widest sense.
Even before the index, church leaders permitted little flexibility of thought. In the decades leading up to it, however, the church doubled down in response to new challenges: the rapid spreading of the printing press and the Protestant Reformation.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation, which took shape at the Council of Trent from 1545-1563, reinforced dogmatism in its effort to rebuke reformers. The council decided that the Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible, was enough to understand scripture, and there was little need to investigate its original Greek and Hebrew version.
Bishops and the Vatican began producing lists of titles that were forbidden to print and read. Between 1571-1917, the Sacred Congregation of the Index, a special unit of the Vatican, investigated writings and compiled the lists of banned readings approved by the pope. Catholics who read titles on the Index of Forbidden Books risked excommunication.
In 1966, Pope Paul VI abolished the index. The church could no longer punish people for reading books on the list, but still advised against them.... The moral imperative not to read them remained.
Historian J. M. de Bujanda has completed the most comprehensive list of books forbidden across the ages by the Catholic Church. Its authors include astronomer Johannes Kepler and Galileo, as well as philosophers across centuries, from Erasmus and René Descartes to feminist Simone de Beauvoir and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Then there are the writers: Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, David Hume, historian Edward Gibbon, and Gustave Flaubert. In sum, the index is a who’s who of science, literature and history.
Compare that with a letter Francis published on November 21, 2024, emphasizing the importance of studying church history–particularly for priests, to better understand the world they live in. For the pope, history research “helps to keep ‘the flame of collective conscience’ alive.”
The pope advocated for studying church history in a way that is unfiltered and authentic, flaws included. He emphasized primary sources, and urged students to ask questions. Francis criticized the view that history is mere chronology–rote memorization that fails to analyze events.
In 2019, Francis changed the name of the Vatican Secret Archives to the Vatican Apostolic Archives. Though the archives themselves had already been open to scholars since 1881, “secret” connotes something “revealed and reserved for a few,” Francis wrote. Under Francis, the Vatican opened the archives of Pope Pius XII, allowing research on his papacy during World War II, his knowledge of the Holocaust, and his general response toward Nazi Germany.
In addition to showing respect for history, the pope has emphasized his own love of reading. “Each new work we read will renew and expand our worldview,” he wrote in a letter to future priests, published July 17, 2024.
Today, he continued, “veneration” of [computer and cell phone] screens, with their “toxic, superficial and violent fake news,” has diverted us from literature. The pope shared his experience as a young Jesuit literature instructor in Santa Fe [Argentina], then added a sentence that would have stupefied “index popes”: “Naturally, I am not asking you to read the same things that I did,” he stated. “Everyone will find books that speak to their own lives, and become authentic companions for their journey.”
Citing his compatriot, the novelist Jorge Luis Borges, Francis reminded Catholics that to read is to “listen to another person’s voice. … We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us!”
