Religion: Newly Indexed

Nowadays the Vatican rarely bans the work of specific authors. It is left to local bishops or Roman Catholic readers themselves to decide what books fall into forbidden categories. Last week, nonetheless, the Vatican proscribed the work of two widely read modern authors, and added their books to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (TIME, April 28). The authors:

ANDRÉ GIDE, French novelist who died last year at 81, author of The Counterfeiters, Les Caves du Vatican, Theseus, etc., one of the topflight literary figures of the 20th century. The official decree banning Gide’s work did not give a reason, but the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano offered an interpretation: “He lived as a nonChristian, even as a deliberate antiChristian. The taste for profanity . . . was carried by him to blasphemy . . . His art had a feeling of his lasciviousness . . . The work of Gide from beginning to end is all orchestrated on a tone of ambiguous seduction . . .” It was a great pity, said L’Osservatore. “The gifts he possessed, both of interior intelligence and of rich poetry, render the condemnation all the more painful … all the more necessary.” ALBERTO MORAVIA, Italian novelist, 44, author of The Woman of Rome, Conjugal Love, The Conformist, etc. Said L’Osservatore Romano: “[Moravia] describes in detail obscene and immoral things . . . It is extremely painful that an author should show an almost exclusive interest in the lower aspects of life.” Said Author Moravia of his new listing: “I am in good company.”