Sister M. Fiorello asked her area bishop for Index permission about using Communist Manifesto in her teachings [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 45].
The Third Vatican Council will tackle the Schema on the Index [St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 93]. "In this way, Catholic college libraries will be able to get rid of all the cumbersome grilles, cages, steel rooms, and cyclone-fenced enclosures that now take up so much space. Accidental electrocutions will be only a disturbing memor."
The origin of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or the Index of Forbidden Books, began during Counter-reformation days in the sixteenth century; the idea was that Catholics were prohibited from reading literature that was deemed to be subversive of faith or morals, says Myers. "Catholic libraries kept some books off the general stacks and subject to limited distribution. When it came to college students, permission from the local bishop was required before students could read them. The Index was particularly hard on French literature of the Enlightenment and post-enlightenment periods. Bellairs, no friend of censorship, once remarked that a Frenchman would be illiterate in the literature of his own country if he paid attention to the Index. In any event, one of the earliest and most welcome reforms of Vatican II was to throw the whole thing out."
In mentioning the "grilles, cages, and steel rooms," Bellairs was remembering the collection of materials under lock and key at the Notre Dame library, briefly mentioned in his February 27, 1959 Scholastic article. Bowen confirms the library did have such an area, adding it was known by some as the Grid but cannot recall if books on the Index were located there.
"I'm sure that it was, because the University took the Index very seriously. A few members of the Holy Cross order who had responsible positions in the administration had the power, delegated by the Bishop of Fort Wayne, in whose diocese South Bend was located, to grant permission to read these books. I assume that they did so pretty freely for faculty members, but students were a different matter. During my junior year the Liberal and Fine Arts College invited a noted literary critic to give a series of lectures, and he announced that he would talk about four novels: Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, and Gide's The Counterfeiters. The college was much embarrassed because the last two were on the index. Students who wanted to read the books in order to attend the lectures had to go to Academic Dean, Father Soleta, and ask permission but he wouldn't give it unless you had already read the two Russian novels. I was among this elite company, so I received permission but I never did get around to reading the books. I wouldn't be surprised if within the grilles and grids, in addition to works officially on the index, the library also used this area to sequester other books that one or another authority figure had decided were not good for students to have access to."
(also see Legion of Decency)
