During World War II, chaplains found that the fastest-moving Catholic pamphlet was one called “Of Dirty Jokes.” Presumably, some of the boys thought it was a collection.

Where do we stand today in regard to obscene books? The history of the freedom of expression has always been a tension not between good and bad people, but between those who would stamp out everything they found objectionable, and those whose greed stifles good taste, vision and moral integrity. The infamous Anthony Comstock of Boston gave his name to the first, a new form of the Puritan Inquisition. The publishers of the girlie magazines can stand as the classic type of the second. Neither adds stature to American’s mental or moral health.

The solution might be to be put both the Comstock’s and the drug store purveyors in the same confinement. They might have much in common-namely an unhealthy absorption in sex.

Two Facts

It is essential in any civilization that men have the freedom to use their skills to express best the thoughts and motives within them. To censor everything one disapproves can kill the creative instinct in man. It can block new restless ideas that society needs. And there is probably no better way to produce a soft, complacent, insensitive generation.

The pages of the Bible describe every possible sin. But the tone is always realistic, and the vision keeps these irregularities in their right focus. The same, in the opinion of most mature people may be said of writers from Chaucer, Rabelais and Shakespeare down to Graham Greene, William Faulkner, and J. D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye).

Are there limits to this freedom of expression and its counterparts, the freedom to read? Only because man is both spirit and body, will and passions. No man can go the whole way in his enjoyment because his reason must assert itself over his emotions, and his sense of responsibility must regulate his rights.

Just as the scholar searches for truth, and the artist for beauty, so every man must find goodness in his life. If he is dedicated to a celibate way of life, goodness has a different dimension than for a married couple. A man wed to a woman loves and speaks and acts in a particular way toward her, not someone else. The young adult’s scope of freedom in reading is much greater than the child because his power of discrimination is greater. And the mature adult out of his experience can express himself and delight his spirit in ways that his earlier years lacked. Freedom is curbed in order that man may flourish. When it isn’t measured by a man’s particular responsibility then his spirit can corrupt or shrivel or even die.

Role Of The Courts

The Supreme Court, according to a recent news story, is still agonizing over a definition of obscenity. “And by the end of the last term, it appeared that the justices were only slightly closer to agreement than in the past.” In recent years-

Girlie magazines have been approved.

Only “hard-core” pornography can be regulated.

The “pitch” of the pornographer is as important as his product.

And lately, the Court seems to be giving up on any regulations of adult obscenity and is concentrating on the young.

We do not envy these nine men, honest and conscientious, but with varying focus on what is right and wrong. At any rate, our painful wrestling with this subject, in the American process of review, is far better than the extremists want.

Would we prefer a Gestapo to sniff, bug, accuse and destroy every piece of reading, film or art that disagrees with the chief Comstock’s personal taste. Would we prefer a totally unlimited flow of filth in which publishers made the money and whether children, teen-agers, adults made their own beds of rubbish.

Four Dallas cases (on movies) and one New York case (on sale to minors) will be up. The men of the court deserve our prayers and understanding. They are trying to spell out just what their earlier definition –“contemporary community standards”—means.

Role Of The Church

The Church’s role is more complex that the courts. It must be concerned with human freedom, creative efforts, man’s ongoing search for what is beautiful, true, realistic inspiriting. It must fight prudery and excessive caution.

But if it is to form the mature Christian, it must guide. To bury faith in a napkin and approve a cafeteria-view of moral standards would be an abdication of the Church’s function. To be silent just to be accepted as modern would be to betray Christ’s image of the pure of spirit.

What puts the Church today in a more difficult position to judge is the world’s exaltation of all liberty and the world’s rejection of the virtues of chastity and filial respect.

As our “city” becomes more “secular”, too many Catholics not only reside in the world but adopt its standards. Our homes and our social life often need cleansing.

The home can have a happy familiarity with a late best-seller, a social drink, a wholesome education of children in the ideals of sex. But it will soon lose its Christianity on a steady diet of dirty books and magazines (especially the slick ones), too much alcohol and a cheap indoctrination into the mystery of sex.

The same with friends with neighborhood clubs, shops and offices. The line can never be set by a Supreme Court which must rule for millions. It must be set by personal, family and school standards.

A Catholic Viewpoint

Although a little outdated, the book, “Catholic Viewpoint on Censorship,” is a good American summary of the way Catholics came to think of this whole subject. Father Gardner, the author, is still remembered for his defense of “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” when many wanted it suppressed because of passages that were objectionable to them.

Like racism and our cities’ crime, pornography is an urgent social issue of our times. The courts must speak. The Church must speak. Parents and teachers must speak. The child has a right to be free, but he has also a right to be free from filth. These young minds and hearts are the victims when either the Anthony Comstocks or the dirt-peddlers carry the day.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop Of Atlanta