Reread And Banned Books

I regard every work by Poul Anderson as worth multiple readings. Star Prince Charlie (with Gordon R. Dickson) and For Love And Glory are two works acquired comparatively recently and so far read only once. Both should be reread. We know from experience that, even when the prospect of rereading a particular work remains unappealing, the text itself always yields much to discuss. We have recently demonstrated this with The Winter Of The World, Vault Of The Ages and The High Crusade.

I have reread and re-posted about SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers and Conquistador. I may or may not reread his Change series. If not, then my current reading of the concluding volume, The Sky-Blue Wolves, will be my last encounter ever with the politics of the High Kingdom of Montival and its Chancellor, Father Ignatius. That would be quite a thing.

Ignatius proposes banning a book. The High Queen thinks that, under the Great Charter, she cannot ban books; however, the Cardinal-Archbishop can put this one on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum locally and petition the Pope to do so universally. The Wiccan High Priestess says, perfectly reasonably, that her people, the Mackenzies, do not hold with banning any kind of book. However, the work in question is indeed some sort of supernatural threat in the Changed world, e.g., we might suspend freedom of speech if we knew for certain that a particular speaker was not just a persuasive propagandist but a powerful and malign hypnotist.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, Finnegans Wake is on the Index and a Jesuit character has access to it only because of his Order. Was the Wake banned and did anyone take such prohibitions seriously?