It appears to-day to be the general practice in Catholic circles to speak of the purpose and operations of the Index with a fair measure of respect, and the authors of this later period permit themselves even to give specific commendation to the work of the Church in supervising and controlling, for the use of the faithful, the character of literary productions. Curiously enough, side by side with this increasing respect for the institution, or at least with the very considerable lessening of criticisms, protest, and antagonism against the working of the institution, there is evidence of an increasing ignorance of the details of the regulations of the later Indexes, those that are supposed at this time to be in force. The scholarly divines of the latter years of the last century had in not a few instances given evidence that they were by no means familiar with the present Index regulations or with the lists of books placed under condemnation. As late as 1890, Bishop Rass brought into print in Rome a volume by Justus Lipsius which had been condemned in two preceding Indexes; during the same period, Bishop Malou caused a new edition to be printed of a prohibited work. The vicar-general of Lorenzi printed in 1883 a treatise by Geiler von Keisersberg, oblivious of the fact that the name of the author remains in the first class of the Index. It is probably the case that there is under present conditions no such constant reference to the Index lists as guides for reading and for study as could secure for their regulations the authority which properly belongs to them under the theory of Church control. It is a question for the casuist to decide how far ignorance of the fact of condemnation of a book may serve as an extenuation of the sin of reading a volume, for which sin the penalty has been prescribed in successive Indexes of excommunication _latae sententiae_. In 1862, under decision of the Quinquennial faculties, it was ordered that bishops had authority to extend permission for the reading of prohibited books only to priests who were actually engaged in the care of souls. Laymen desiring to secure such permission must make application direct to the Holy See. This is in line with the order issued, in 1853, by the Congregation of the Index under which the Ultramontane bishops had authority to extend to ecclesiastics of assured scholarship and piety permission to utilise, during their lifetime, prohibited books having to do with matters of religion and doctrine; but no such permission could be given for books _contra bonos mores_. In every permission issued by a bishop it must be specifically stated that the authority comes from the Holy See.