Bureaucracies are like dinosaurs because the bigger they get the smaller their brains are. Case in point is the USCCB.
Previously the USCCB went after the Verbum Domini podcast which broadcast the daily readings from the New American Bible and demanded that he stop using the NAB. Great move against a podcast listened to by people who are unable to attend Mass. They subsequently put on their site.
Permission may not be granted to post or podcast the complete NAB (or complete books of the NAB) or the daily or Sunday readings.
Now since the USCCB is the copyright holder of the NAB they certainly have the legal right to defend their copyright. It is also understandable how they might want to prevent the misuse of this translation (though in this case the translators of the NAB already did that). It seems to me reasonable that that they should grant permission to a podcast only after an investigation as to how it is used. Instead they just have a blanket NO. Go out into the whole world and spread the Gospel unless of course it has been copyrighted by the USCCB.
Now Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture reports that the USCCB is now going after websites that post USCCB documents.
We used to include many significant documents in our database from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but not any more. The USCCB goes after web sites which make use of USCCB documents, threatening legal action for copyright violations. This policy is in marked contrast to that of the Vatican, which enforces copyrights only to prevent others from releasing advance copies of documents before their official promulgation dates.
Many organizations, including Trinity Communications, have received letters from the USCCB listing the unauthorized documents displayed on their web sites, and requesting immediate removal. USCCB staff actually track this stuff down. Clearly this is within the USCCB’s rights under copyright law, but just as clearly it is a short-sighted policy which significantly limits the circulation of episcopal documents. If other web sites were allowed to post them, these documents would be substantially more widely read among the Catholic faithful.
Mark Shea says in response:
One of their many stupid, counter-productive, turf-guarding policies is to criminalize the use of USCCB documents (including the Catechism) and to waste our tithe money assigning staff to track down those nefarious Catholics out on the web who, like, quote the Catechism. One almost gets the impression the USCCB doesn’t *want* people to know what the Church teaches.
12 comments
I’ve been working on composing a Mass music setting based on chant, and have had similar problems. The chant isn’t copyrighted (something tells me intellectual property didn’t exist in the 9th century), but the TEXT OF THE MASS IS. I have to get permission from ICEL and ICET in order to do this legally.
Why can’t we go after those that change the words of the Mass, not those using them correctly?
Apparently since some bankruptcy courts are holding that dioceses can’t sell parish properties to pay their diocesan priest abuse settlements and judgments, the bishops have to make up that lost income somewhere…
Gee, I bet God sure is glad the bishops are getting their cut of the loot for HIS word…
And to think some of our tithe money goes to support this organization acting like a hyper-secretive CEO just before his company goes bankrupt. Perhaps that is more true than we know.
note: The spell check keeps trying to change the USCCB acronym into the work suck. Huh, Microsoft may have been on to something.
Is the text of the Mass in Latin copyrighted or just the English translation? If not, this could be the comeback for Latin that we’ve all been waiting for!
“If other web sites were allowed to post them, these documents would be substantially more widely read among the Catholic faithful.”
Methinks that the USCCB DOESN’T want the catholic faithful to read/scrutinise their documents. It’s not about concealing Catholic teaching, it’s about obscuring the USCCB’s deviance from Catholic teaching.
Bloggers are getting under the skins of certain bishops, and the USCCB wants to take fuel away from the fire.
Just a call to K of C’s to stand for priests, bishops, etc…
The Cardinal Newman Society also had difficulty with the USCCB’s Catholic News Service over using the abbreviation CNS. I think it’s been recently resolved.
“Finally, [Cardinal Ratzinger] led an effort for two decades to disempower national conferences of bishops, which conflicts with Vatican II’s principle of collegiality.” -Linda Pieczynski, the spokeswoman of Call to Action
Dare we hope that the USCCB be finally put in its place?
It is a strange day when a comment from Call to Action inspires instead of irritates.
Long Live the Pope!
They are acting as if they were corporate weenies.
“Finally, [Cardinal Ratzinger] led an effort for two decades to disempower national conferences of bishops, which conflicts with Vatican II’s principle of collegiality.” -Linda Pieczynski, the spokeswoman of Call to Action
Yeah, it is rather like the way the Bush cabal have siphoned powers away from Congress to the Adminsitration — so that now even a Democratic-controlled congress will not be able to limit presidential power.
The Church is not a democracy, yet Vatican II strongly called for episcopal collegiality and Episcopal Conferences, along with the triennial Synod, were to be the chief organs of this. Both have been emasculated, largely thanks to the ecclesiology of Ratzinger’s 1981 book Theologische Prinzipienlehre, a narrow and distorted work that marks a steep decline in Ratzinger’s theology.
Bush’s undermining of democracy has led to the quagmire into which the usa is now sinking. Ratzinger is giving us a similarly diminished rcc.