RELIGIOUS WORKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23220, 18 June 1937, Page 16

RELIGIOUS WORKS

NEW GERMAN CENSORSHIP Police control of religious literature in Germany has become much closer during recent weeks (says a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian). Protestant and Roman Catholic newspapers, periodicals, and circulars are often forbidden or confiscated. The authorities sometimes prevent periodicals from appearing by removing the names of the editors from the list of persons approved as editors or newspaper contributors. As the religious conflict becomes more bitter public resentment against these methods would seem to be growing, and the police are trying to avoid stirring up the public any further by "safeguarding " publications—that is to say, by giving orders that they shall not be sent out to the booksellers and newspaper stalls. In this way the impression is created —or, at least, this would seem to be the hope of the police—that the purpose is of a paternal nature to protect editors or authors against any ill-feeling they might arouse among their opponents.

This method lias, for example, been applied to the sermons of Cardinal Faulhaber, the leader of the Roman Catholics in Germany. His sermons are of a simple, eloquent, and lapidary character. When he preaches the church cannot contain the congregation, and his sermons when published are "best-sellers." When orders are placed for them with booksellers the would-be purchaser receives a note with the words " Cannot be delivered; safeguarded by police " (" Nicht lieferbar; Polizeilich sichergestellt").