Page:The Roman index of forbidden books.djvu/66

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SUMMARY: FORBIDDEN BOOKS

lic books are sometimes reprinted or translated from other languages by Protestants, who not unfrequently change the text to suit their own errors, for instance the excellent "Imitation (Following) of Christ." The bishop's Imprimatur is always the test of orthodoxy. Books printed before the promulgation of the bull Officiorum ac Munerum in 1897 and, contrary to Rule 10, not furnished with the Imprimatur, need not be considered as forbidden, provided they are really good. (Ojetti II, p. 162.)

Note 5. The legislation of the Church concerns itself chiefly with BOOKS in the strict sense of the word, i. e. with publications which have been multiplied by the process called (type-) printing, which are too bulky to be designated pamphlets in ordinary speech, and which do not consist of detached sections but form one organic whole. Therefore neither pamphlets nor leaflets nor any publications reproduced by handwriting or authographing or similar methods will fall under the ecclesiastical prohibition unless they are expressly included, as in Rule 10, or forbidden by particular decrees. If several pamphlets treating of different subjects are bound together they will make up a "volume" but not a "book." Of course this does not free from the ban of the Church the bound volumes of the periodicals which are forbidden by Rule 9, because there is in them both bulk and unity enough to make them "books." (Noldin, S.J.