Areopagitica

My first post is on a topic that's a bit obscure and only indirectly related to Catholicism, but this is my blog and I'll post what I want to!

I overheard (actually over-read) friends talking about Areopagitica, so I looked it up online and read it (actually heard it, in an audio recording by LibriVox).  For those of you who, like myself, hadn't heard of Areopagitica, it is a pamphlet defending a free press, written in 1644 by John Milton, the famous English author of Paradise Lost.

I wanted to write on Areopagitica for a few reasons:

• To collect and organize my thoughts.
• To record my thoughts for future reference.
• To spare others from having to suffer through this garbage.

To be clear, I want to say that I am a firm supporter of free speech and a free press.  It would be absurd to condemn a free press while I publicly say whatever I want on my own blog.  I also believe that the truth has nothing to hide, and an open discussion of all ideas will help us find that truth.  And certainly, as I notice the anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-life direction that society often seems to be heading, I'm very interested in making sure that I won't be arrested for speaking about my faith.

My complaint with Milton's work isn't that he's advocating for a free press, and it isn't that he would allow for some frightening restrictions on a free press (restrictions such as not granting freedom of speech to certain people he disagreed with).  My complaint is that his very first argument is a complete fallacy: his logic not based on a logical premise, it's based entirely on personal prejudice.  The foundation of his argument is anti-Catholicism.  In a nutshell, he says:

1. Catholics are always wrong in everything they do.
2. Catholics have engaged in censorship.
3. Therefore, censorship is wrong.

His second premise is actually presented differently: he claims that Catholics invented censorship, even though he mentions that Protagoras was banished from ancient Greece and his books were burnt, and that Julian the Apostate forbade Christians from reading heathen philosophy.

Because the first premise is unsupported anywhere in Areopagitica, the argument fails to convince anyone who doesn't start with Milton's bias.  In all fairness, Milton's audience did share his bias (as do many people today), but that doesn't excuse his intellectual laziness.  From someone of Milton's reputation, I was hoping for an argument with more intellectual vigor than "Usury must be wrong because the JEWS did it!!"

An intelligent reader, mistaking Areopagitica for an intelligent work, may accidentally think that Milton is making the following argument, which is worthy of a response:

1. Censorship is wrong (a premise to be supported by the rest of the work).
2. Catholics have engaged in censorship.
3. Therefore, Catholics are wrong.

To dispute this argument, I would like to consider the type of censorship that the Catholic Church engaged in (or believed she was engaging in).  The Church condemned and forbade heresies, that is, false ideas which are dangerous to the soul of a believer.  This can be compared to a parent who prevents his child from watching violent or pornographic material.  Every parent has not just the authority, but also the obligation to protect his child from harmful material, just as the church (the mother of all Christians) has the authority and obligation to protect all her members.

Apparently, Milton even disagreed with (or didn't consider) this form of censorship: he quotes from the letter to the Thessalonians: "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." and further from Paul's letter to Titus "To the pure, all things are pure."  He also suggests that, while the Ephesians were not wrong to privately decide to burn their personal books in Acts 19, others may have read the same works of witchcraft and benefited from it.  He doesn't say how a healthy Christian would benefit from reading witchcraft.  He also fails to mention that while everything may be permissible, not everything is beneficial (1 Cor 10:23), or that 'the eye is the lamp of the body' (Matt 6:22-23), and we must be careful not to cloud that lamp with evil.

Many Christians (Catholic and Protestant) are members of 'accountability groups' which exist to prevent members from engaging in certain behaviors or exposing oneself to harmful material such as pornography or false teachings.  No government has the authority to restrict the ideas of its people, but, as Christians, we should submit ourselves to an authority that will let us know what we need to stay away from.  Flying solo (or 'leaning on our own understanding' (Prov 3:5)) is, as always in Christianity, a recipe for disaster.

Despite the many flaws of Areopagitica, Milton does provide some valuable ideas, such as the following:

• Virtue and Truth are stronger when they must defend themselves, which won't happen when lies are silenced.
• Falsehood is spread more often through verbal teaching, which can be done without the aid of books.  Restricting books won't prevent the spread of falsehood.
• Many good books, including the Bible, contain dangerous ideas.  It would be impossible to censor all evil without also censoring much good.
• Books which would be harmful to one person may not be harmful to another, wiser person.  This argument, however, would allow for some things to be prohibited to the general public.
• Forcing right behavior (or ideas) inhibits virtue, because virtue requires the possibility of doing evil.
• The process of licensing will impede the progress of knowledge.
• If the censors are fools, censorship will be even more harmful; if they are wise, their talents would be wasted in the job of censorship.

At the end of it all, here are my thoughts: political censorship is always wrong.  Religious censorship has value when its purpose is the good of the laity and when the laity understand that purpose.  Areopagitica was as much about Milton venting his personal prejudice as it was about defending a free press.  Many of the arguments used in Areopagitica are less useful today, when free speech is not attacked by official political censors, but rather by the idea of 'political correctness.'