Next chapter for radical right: Burn books (BARF!)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | Fr. Andrew Greeley

[weegee]

I say that as a member of and indeed a priest in a denomination that originated lists of forbidden books. I don't know whether we ever piled them up in front of cathedrals and set them on fire, but I can't imagine that a tradition that has always valued dramatic rites could miss the possibilities of an auto da fe against books. If you'd burn humans at the stake, why not books?

I thought that the Church maintained a library of such works (wasn't there one in "The Name of The Rose"?).

It was the muslims who burned down the library at Alexandria.

[popdonnelly]

Who is in favor of burning books? Why doesn’t the man talk about reality? Or is this reality for him?

[weegee]

The real argument against listing books for possible burning (or removing from a library) is that, as we Catholics learned, it doesn't work. Tell humans that they can't read something and of course they will find ways of reading it -- as the Stalinists learned from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. You could burn all the copies of Harry Potter, and young people would still read these classic stories of the triumph of good over evil. Get rid of Catcher in the Rye from your parish library and kids will pass around mimeographed copies of it. Banish The Canterbury Tales and you will enhance Geoffrey Chaucer's readership.

I guess this priest is FOR banning the Bible under the mistaken belief that it will get more people to read it.

It doesn't work in Saudi Arabia and it didn't work in the USSR.

[weegee]

I’m for banning the use of the Saudi book that calls non-muslims the offspring of pigs and monkeys. That is inappropriate for American schools. If it is to be used as a learning tool, it should used to point out modern bigotry among the muslim world.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Next chapter for radical right: Burn books

Not all books, just Greeley's.

[NTHockey]

Andy who? He’s so ‘60’s.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I spent some time studying at a Jesuit school, and was well impressed.

Father Greeley is not a Jesuit or a member of any religious order. He is a secular priest, answerable to the Cardinal Archbishop, not a religious, or member of a religious order, answerable to an Abbot or Superior.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I believe you’re right about Alexandria.

I don’t know about the Church maintaining a library of forbidden books, but I do know that the Church did preserve a lot of culture that would have otherwise been lost during the Dark Ages.

Greeley should have done a little more research here, and they he would have easily found out the answer to his question without having to “imagine” it.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

My mistake. I seem to remember seeing his name with an S.J. after it, but it must have been someone else.

[therut]

I had no idea to toady that this guy is a Catholic Priest. How does the POPE allow this hateful man to exist?

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

In the hard-copy edition of the Sun-Times, published yesterday, there was a photo of some church in 2000 burning Harry Potter books, among others, in the churchyard. I know that stuff happens, but it is rare and isolated.

Kind of reminds me years ago when I was doing an internship in D.C. There was supposed to be a joint Klan-Nazi rally someplace out there. One of my associates was very disturbed about it, but I told her about the big Nazi rally I witnessed in St. Louis — four Nazis in the back of a flatbed truck. I told her not to worry. Turns out I was more than accurate — the joint Klan-Nazi rally was one guy with a sandwich board who happened to be a Nazi and a Klan member.

[webrover]

Too many years of slappin’ his monkey. He's a freakin’ jerk loon.

[Spok]

“Next chapter for radical right: Burn books (BARF!)”

This is the crap we get from the left while Obama tries to burn down WGN in Chicago. Apparently they don’t think actually knowing what they’re talking about is necessary.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Yep. Just another example of their duplicity.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Thank you Fr. Greeley. One question though, do we burn the books before or after we round up the Jews? You seem to have much better sources than me.

[MaxMax]

1960 is alive and well, through the burning lips of anti-Americanism.

Lets burn newspapers!

[Sherman Logan]

I don't know whether we ever piled them up in front of cathedrals and set them on fire

I find it difficult to believe the good father is this ignorant of the history of his own Church. Burning of impious books in public was a common Catholic practice. A most famous one was carried out by Savonarola, the Bonfire of the Vanities, many of which were books.

Unfortunately for Savonarola, not too much later they had another bonfire, with him as the guest of honor in the flames.

[Red Boots]

I cannot believe that a priest wrote this ! Please say it ain't so !

Or that a serious newspaper published it !

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I am not a Catholic, but I understand Andrew Greeley to be a priest in good standing. As to the Sun-Times being a serious paper — well, it has its good points and its bad points. Lately, bad is winning.

[andy58-in-nh]

Have you noticed how left-wingers always accuse conservatives of plotting mass censorship (which never once occurs when they are in power) but routinely use political correctness to crush ideas they don't like and words they do not agree with? Only they call it "fairness" and "tolerance" because Liberal Fascism requires the manipulation of language to justify its anti-freedom agenda.