…the [recent Margaret Farley] episode raises anew the question, always lurking in the cathedral, of who decides what we\u2019re allowed to read, and how we\u2019re supposed to read it. In religion, who controls the books?<\/p>\n
In the Reformation, Protestants were persecuted for making the Bible available in vernacular translations, so that laypeople, in addition to priests, could read it. But translation was just one battleground in the war over who controls religious literature. And while the battles have been particularly fierce in the Catholic Church, they are not unique to Catholicism, or Christianity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe papacy was not the first to begin this idea of censoring books,\u201d\u009d said John W. O\u2019Malley, a Jesuit priest and historian at Georgetown University. \u201cThe indices of books that were prohibited, at the universities of Paris and Louvain and so forth, started in the 16th century. It all began with printing.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n