(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

While I'd quite like to believe this (who doesn't love a story about kids fighting for the right to read what they want?) I find it hard to believe that a Roman Catholic school* would ban some of these. I mean, admittedly you might censor Paradise Lost, because its Christology is certainly very dubious, but getting upset about works on human evolution is more of a fundamentalist Protestant thing, and I can't imagine why any school that didn't have a Stalinist axe to grind would want to ban Animal Farm.

But.... Dante? I'm not buying it without considerably more substantiation.



* The OP doesn't specify what kind of 'strict private school' they attend, but states that "most of the books contained information that opposed Catholicism".

Comments

[legionseagle]

I was a trifle boggled by HHGTTG, also, on two fronts: first, there isn't anything particularly anti-Catholic in it (Oolon Colluphid is much more of a satire on a particular type of atheistic argument) and, secondly, it's the wrong generation - young kids these days (etc, etc)

Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[tree_and_leaf]

I suppose I could see H2G2 remaining on a banned list, had it once been put on, but I agree that I can't think of anything specifically anti-Catholic in it, or even that much that singles religion out as particularly objectionable (and there's a favourable reference to Jesus in the first chapter). There's the stuff about how Earth is created, of course, but I can think of a lot of things which (if I believed in banning books) I'd consider more objectionable. And if you were going to ban a Discworld novel, it would be Small Gods, which is an attack on a highly centralised and bureaucratised religion gone bad, with obvious references to the Inquisition. (Actually I think anyone who wants to be ordained should have to read Small Gods, as Vorbis makes a very good Awful Warning about how not to be a priest). I can't think of anything in Mort that anyone could object to (well, apart from the proliferation of gods, but then you'd have to ban the whole lot).

I've met kids who read Adams, but it's not a Thing that would strike terror into the heart of authority.

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[twistedchick]

For some, all that would be needed to ban H2G2 is the knowledge that it was written by an atheist.

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[legionseagle]

You know, I actually had to Google him to establish that he actually was an atheist (not that it surprised me particularly) and I'd heard him speak?

Re: Well, that just about wraps it up for God.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'd have guessed he was, certainly, but it's not like he was Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.

[liseuse]

I wouldn't be surprised, to be honest, based on what I've heard about Catholic schools in the US (and, well, schools in the US). Also, my Catholic schools tried reasonably hard to encourage us away from certain reading materials. And I still chuckle when I remember them telling us we were Not Allowed to go and see Dogma. Which, of course, everyone then went to see.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I could readily believe an American Catholic school taking a tough line on books you should and shouldn't be reading. But I don't believe this selection of titles.

[legionseagle]

Exactly. I mean, Connecticut Yankee???? I was pretty unusual in having read that at a Girls Grammar school thirty five years ago, and it hasn't got more accessible in the interim.

ETA Save for the fact that, like many others on that list, it's a Project Gutenberg title.

[sir_guinglain]

I also think that someone literate would be able to spell 'Catholicism'.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, in theory, though given the way even educated adults type on Facebook, I wouldn't take that for granted!

[cjbanning]

Well, I have to admit the main reason I tend to call myself an Anglican is because "Episcopalian" is too hard to spell. (I never end up spelling it wrong, exactly, but it never looks quite right to my eye when I write it down, so I just go with "Anglican" instead, which doesn't have so many vowels.)

[tree_and_leaf]

I've never had a problem with 'Episcopalian', but I have to think very hard about some words. "Bureaucracy" always takes me an embarrassing number of tries. And, come to think of it, I always struggle to remember how many 'r's there are in 'embarrassing'...

[liadnan]

I always have problems with "necessary"

[tree_and_leaf]

'Accommodation' is another good one.

[tigerfort]

It is necessary for all vicars to wear one collar and two socks, although on occasion they may instead use two collars and one sock.

[tree_and_leaf]

Heh! That's brilliant...

[kerravonsen]

I have problems with BOTH "necessary" AND "bureaucracy"!

[cjbanning]

I could maybe see it happening in a heavily evangelical region, where possibly certain Protestant notions creeped over into folk Catholicism?

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, maybe, I suppose. Though in that case, the kid's parent should be asking for a discount on the grounds of pig-ignorant teachers!

[twistedchick]

I'd be very interested to know what flavor of Catholic school that was -- different teaching orders vary wildly in their willingness to expose students to ideas outside of Catholicism, and local diocesan schools can vary based on the diocese and the bishop's personal leanings. Franciscans (in my experience) don't care what you read as long as you learn something from it, but that's not a universal thing. However, I have heard that the old Index of Forbidden Books was starting to be updated; it included such things as The Three Musketeers because of its anti-clerical comments about Richelieu.

Also, as a reporter I have written about book-banning efforts -- and those who are most interested in banning books generally don't read them for content or context. They flip through page by page and look for the specific use of whatever words they find offensive, or concepts they find offensive, and if they find any they want the book removed. These are people who are afraid of ideas, afraid of independent though, and afraid of creativity.

[liadnan]

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was formally abolished by Paul VI in 1966 during a reorganisation of the curia, it had been a dead duck for most of a generation by then. I know of no proposals to revive it and would be staggered if anyone in a position to push for it had the remotest intention of doing so.

Darwin never made it though De Chardin came a bit close.

I don't think even my onetime friend now notorious for running a very conservative Catholic boarding school at Chavagnes in France would have a real problem with any of that lot. Well, maybe Twilight and Anne Rice. 25 years ago he lent me Auel though.

But... "Catholic" is something of a fluid term depending on where one is standing. Both the SSPX (they who think Benedict and JPII are dangerous liberals and Vatican II flirted with formal heresy, particularly on religious liberty) and the SSPV (they who think that the SSPX are dangerous liberals and that there probably hasn't been a real pope since at least Pius XII, possibly since the condemnation of Jansenism) run private schools in the US and I can easily see them objecting to all that list. That might be what lies at the bottom of it.

[legionseagle]

As an explanation why a school *might* ban that particular list of books I suppose, just about. As an explanation why the kids don't get them from the local library, doubtful. I'm with tree_and_leaf here; there's something about that list which pings me as off, and what pings me is that it's not a list of books which I'd expect kids to be panting to read in the first place. It feels middle-aged.

[sara]

Well, my kid's school library has restricted Jeff Smith's Bone, and that's a public school. So I don't put it past any school to ban any book, frankly.

[kindkit]

Yeah, I think somebody grabbed a list of "books that have sometimes been banned" off the internet and composed this letter around it. I can't imagine what's in the Commedia that "opposes Catholicism," unless somebody's really het up about the depiction of fourteenth-century popes.

[tree_and_leaf]

That strikes me as the most likely explanation, actually.

[kivrin]

I, too, found it hard to swallow, not only because of the odd selection but also because my mother teaches at a Catholic girls' school which bans no books but which would certainly crack down on unauthorized locker use and would immediately investigate anything causing as much hubbub as this post suggests is going on.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, good point!

[lilacsigil]

I did in fact run a banned books locker at my Anglican high school, but the books in the locker were Dungeons and Dragons and/or fantasy-related (in the early 90s when the Satanism hysteria was high!) novels, zines, game manuals, art books etc. So while I'm a bit dubious about that booklist, it's certainly possible to run a neat little library out of a locker!

[coughingbear]

I first heard about this on Twitter, and someone quite quickly posted a link to a discussion about it being a hoax, on reddit. (I am using P's laptop, and for some reason the equals sign key is not working, so I can't embed a link, but if you google "catholic school locker banned hoax" it's one of the first few results.) Apparently the poster had asked for a list of banned books on Yahoo Answers just a few days before posting the locker library story - which originally went up a couple of years ago, and has been reposted several times since.

So yes, I think your instincts are wholly correct and it is a deeply implausible list/story. Even Antonia White's convent in Frost in May didn't ban Dante, though the play version was somewhat bowdlerised version, IIRC.