Jeffrey Miller

This is an update to an earlier post concerning copyrights and Vatican documents and how it concerns me along with a decision I have made.

First off there has continued to be discussion regarding this on Catholic blogs.

I found a paragraph on Jeff Geerling’s blog that puts succinctly one aspect of my own thoughts.

To be clear, I have no issue with the Vatican’s and USCCB’s rights to the texts of the faith (encyclicals, scripture, catechisms, teachings). I have issue with the fact that, any time someone demonstrates evangelical initiative, the first (and usually only) official Church response is: “stop that, you’re stealing a copyrighted work.” It should be more along the lines of: “you’re trying to do something awesome—we’d like to help you, here’s how you can do it without violating our copyright.”

Simcha Fisher also offers her own take starting in a humorous way:

This is how the conversation should have gone:

Brandon Vogt:  Hi, this is Brandon Vogt. I am super excited about the new encyclical, so I’d like to make it even easier for lots of people to read it.  Okay if I convert the Vatican’s PDF to a bunch of different formats?
Vatican:  Of course!  Good job, Brandon. What’s your address?  I’ll send you a basket of oranges from the Pope’s garden.

Vogt:  Thanks.

This is how the conversation actually went:

Brandon Vogt:  Hi, this is Brandon Vogt.  I’m super excited about the new encyclical, so I’ve made it even easier for lots of people to read it.  I’ve converted the Vatican’s PDF to a bunch of different downloadable formats so everybody can read what the Pope has to say!

The Vatican:  What?  How dare you?  Stop stealing from the Pope!  Take it down right now!  Shame on you.

Vogt:  What?  What?  Okay.  I didn’t ask first, and it’s your call, so I’m taking it down.  But … what is the matter with you people?

The Vatican:; What?  I can’t hear you.  Our fax machine is making too much noise.

In counterpoint Dawn Eden offers several legitimate reasons for restricting access to such encyclicals to outlets that are officially licensed to share them.

I can see the validity in much that she says, but in part they do not answer the main criticism. The USCCB and the Vatican certainly have a right to their copyright and to defend it. Now I have no legal knowledge of copyright law, but I am a blogger and so am use to talking about what I don’t know of. Still my question would be that just because something is copyrighted, does that prevent the copyright owner from granting access? I would think not. As Jeff Geerling noted and what I have seen is that in every case the USCCB does not work with anybody to grant copyright without payment. Now I don’t think the USCCB’s only consideration is monetary. But in my opinion they have been jerks about it shutting down evangelical projects done for love of the faith. No compromise is ever made. They can still defend their copyright while also having a policy of granting copyright in cases such as this. That control of the texts seem to have become more important than actually having people read them.

• By the same token, the Pope has every reason to want people who are interested in Lumen Fidei to track it down on the Vatican website (not that it’s all that difficult to find, given the site’s current pop-up ad for it). The Holy Father knows that if a reader finds the encyclical on the Vatican website, he or she may go on to explore other writings on the site. And isn’t that what all of us, as Catholics, should want people to do—to go from reading about “The Light of Faith” to delve more deeply into what Catholics believe?

I don’t really think the Pope cares all that much whether the document is read on that Vatican’s site. After all there are printed editions. I would guess the Pope’s highest priority would be that people read his encyclical and other documents. Responsive design is where a website adjusts to the device that is accessing it. Reformatting for mobile devices. The Vatican is currently using “Unresponsive design”. It does not send you to a mobile page, although there is a semi-mobile link. I looked at the encyclical on my iPhone and it just was not reformatted at all. The same is true for other documents on Vatican.va. As somebody whose day job involves a lot of web programming, it is rather embarrassing to see how documents are handled on Vatican.va.

Still with this all being said I have decided to take down “The Weekly Francis” ebook and to no longer maintain the ebook aspect of this project. Previous links to these ebooks are now broken.

Back in November of 2011 I started what was then “The Weekly Benedict” after seeing Jimmy Akin’s weekly list of links. I wanted to be able to easily read of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings and so decided I would make an ebook from these links for my own personal use. Having an ebook version meant that I was much more likely to keep up with these documents and that was indeed the case. It also meant that I could now easily highlight and note passages. As an afterthought I though I might as well offer this ebook for others since I was already going to make it for myself. It certainly turned out that many people found this ebook to be quite valuable and to help them actually read what the Pope had to say on a consistent basis. Later on I took on the job of maintaining the weekly list of links on Jimmy Akin’s site and to also reference my ebook there. I will continue to do so in regards to maintaining this weekly list of links to Papal documents, speeches, etc.

The truth was I knew there could be a copyright problem doing this. In the ebook I took care that each document displayed the copyright information and that this was also spelled out at the start of the ebook. From the start my intention was that if I did get a complaint from the Vatican I would certainly comply. Although truth be told it was more along the line “it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission” considering how I had seen this handled in the past.

When the kerfuffle Brandon Vogt started when the USCCB and the Vatican contacted him and I saw his post I started to evaluate what I was doing. When I put out last weeks edition of “The Weekly Francis” I was conflicted about doing so. My thought then was if asked to take this down I would. I now realize how stupid the justification was. Really I know knew for sure what the USCCB and Vatican response was to ebook reformatting and really my immediate response should have been to do what I have done today.

Just because I dislike the heavy-handed way the copyright issues is being handled, it does not entitle me to violate copyright “to do good.” Just because I think they are being shortsighted jerks on this doesn’t mean that I get to be a jerk in disregarding them. In other areas of my life I have been very careful regarding copyright. In my early stages of conversion I had trashed hundreds of cassettes I had pirated along with software I had also pirated. Wouldn’t you know it that was when Napster first appeared on the scene to tempt me (but not successfully).

I know Brandon Vogt is working on a fuller reaction to this situation. He had asked me permission to reference my publication of “The Weekly Francis” ebook as an example. He did not want to “out” me. This aspect really triggered my rethinking about this. If I can’t be above board about doing something, then I shouldn’t be doing it at all. I’m hoping that with Brandon’s much higher profile that the whole situation will be getting more attention triggering an approach more concerned about evangelization than seemingly tight-fisted control. That copyright can be protected and individuals involved in the new evangelization can seek permission regarding worthy projects.

Maybe in the future I will be able to continue “The Weekly Francis” ebook or better yet that the Vatican have a similar project offered in multiple languages. In the meantime I will be still making this ebook for my own consumption, but will not be offering it to others via any channel.

For those disappointed at no longer having this resource I will be working on creating some instructions and ideas how people can use the weekly list of links to Papal documents and to be able to read them formatted for their devices. Instructions will include how you can make your own ebooks or how to use services like Instapaper, Readibility, and Pocket to easily view these documents.

On Wednesday, June 27, the United States Supreme Court handed down two decisions—on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Amendment –that eviscerated legal marriage in the United States. The following Sunday thus offered Catholic priests a matchless opportunity to articulate the Church’s definition of what marriage is, and what it is not. Indeed, since the decisions had such civilizational import, such articulation was less an opportunity than an absolute obligation.

One priest did choose to address the issue. At San Francisco’s St. Ignatius Church, the 9:30 AM Mass on Sunday, June 30 was celebrated by the church’s pastor, Fr. Gregory R. Bonfiglio, SJ. But rather than presenting Church teaching to his audience, rather than, for instance, stating the simple truth that properly ordered sexuality leads to the creation of new life, while sodomitical relations lead, as San Franciscans know all too well, to physical death and to spiritual death, Fr. Bonfiglio chose to read a letter written by Fr. John D. Whitney, SJ, of St. Joseph’s Church in Seattle. In the letter, which is titled “Why Am I In The Parade?” and which runs to 1,098 words, Fr. Whitney justified his presence in Seattle’s “Gay Pride” parade. The letter was published in St. Joseph’s June 23, 2013 parish bulletin. Given the content of the letter (Fr. Whitney absurdly equated Church teaching on homosexuality with Old Testament dietary restrictions, and ignorantly repeats the long-debunked assertion that the word “faggot” derives from “faggots” of wood), and the timing of Fr. Bonfiglio’s homily, the Sunday immediately after the legalization of counterfeit “marriage,” the homily can be seen as nothing less than support of homosexual “marriage.”

During Fr. Bonfiglio’s reading of the letter, the Church was eerily quiet. At least one parishioner was seen leaving the church in tears. When queried she said “It’s not his church! It’s the Catholic church! I should be able to just go to Church! I want to go to a Catholic Church!”

Via the California Catholic Daily and A Shepherd’s Voice

This is a such a sad lament. Unfortunately not that rare of a lament.

That it is in support of so-called “gay pride” also reflects that such a homily is also driven totally by pride. The arrogance of pride where the revisionist decides what is Church teaching and takes it on themselves to correct the Church.

A rejection of the teaching authority of the Church the Magisterium. Instead we get the “Me-gisterium” and the effect common in Protestantism to decide on your own apart from any authority. You would think that those who exercise the office of the “Me-gisterium” would realize the individualist relativism this implies. That is you might think this if you had not observed reality and that those who dissent from the Church are very upset if you dissent from them. The vanity of the “Me-gisterium” is that they are prophetic and are correcting the Church. They consider themselves brave to be going with the secular flow, despite the fact that the true prophets always went against it. <insert mandatory quote from Chesterton “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” > For the members of the “Me-gisterium” repentance is not really required, but it is the hierarchy of the Church that needs to repent. Sola Scriptura the error of Protestants has been one-upped by the revisionists and reduced to just “Sola” – oneself. When appeals to Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture are made they are not to explain, but to explain away. Whether the topic is homosexual acts, abortion, contraception, women’s ordination – it all has the common root of an arrogance filled pride.

Want to learn what the Church teaches? Well don’t pick up a Catechism but instead listen to a self-appointed member of the “Me-gisterium.” Yeah that’s the ticket – or at least a toll pass on that infamous highway to warmer climes.

Still the lament of this women tears at me:

“It’s not his church! It’s the Catholic church! I should be able to just go to Church! I want to go to a Catholic Church!”

May the revisionists and members of the “Me-gisterium” hear her cry and the call to repentance.

On Friday when Lumen Fidei was released it was nice to see early on that morning that Brandon Vogt had converted that encyclical for use in multiple e-readers along with PDF. I was just about to do the same thing myself.

In the last couple hours, I’ve received a litany of emails from both the USCCB and the Vatican accusing me of “[violating] both civil and moral law” and “stealing from the pope” (actual words used) by making the encyclical available in other formats. They’ve ordered me to remove the documents with full knowledge that this would prevent hundreds of people from reading it who otherwise wouldn’t read the encyclical online or in print.

In my view, this is tragic and unjust. It’s valuing profit over catechesis, and I have to believe Pope Francis (and Pope Benedict) would be extremely perturbed. Their goal and the goal of the Church is to evangelize—to spread the message of Jesus Christ, especially through papal encyclicals—not to make a dime off each copy printed.

This annoys me on so many levels.

First my vanity took a bit of a hit (although being such a large target it is easily hit). I have been converting Vatican documents for quite awhile plus I put out first “The Weekly Benedict” and now “The Weekly Francis.” I have never had a complaint from any official sources.

The tone of the reaction to Brandon Vogt reminds me of St. Teresa’s humorous lament to God “If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!” To accuse him a stealing is just so unjust.

The Vatican and other Church structures are usually rather slow to adapt to a changing situation. So-called new media and the internet requires a revisit of the paradigms of the past. I can certainly understand a protection of copyright and in a world where this was just about printed materials it made sense. There is a need to some extent to control documents to ensure that a document printed contained the original source with no alterations.

When it comes to making documents available, the Vatican does a fairly good job in that they are made available to read on their site at no cost. In a world where phones, tablets, and dedicated electronic text readers there is a serious downside to reading their documents on these devices, especially longer documents.

Unfortunately the Vatican instead of using CSS to format their documents they use Table formatting. Putting all the text in a single row/column at a specified width. Thus the text does not flow correctly at smaller screen resolutions. The Vatican in the case of this new encyclical also offered a PDF version, which is also very difficult to read on any mobile device smaller than a 10″ tablet.

The solution of course is to offer the document in a known e-book format such as ePub which can be read on a multitude of devices along with a mobi (Kindle) version. Thus making documents available to a large segment in a format where chances are good they will actually read it. These ebook version allow text to flow correctly regardless of screen size.

So Brandon Vogt steps in to fill an obvious hole and gets slapped down and accused of stealing. Somehow I get the feeling that if Pope Francis was told about this specific case he would not concur and in fact this would only reenforce his attitude towards the Curia and other forms of Church bureaucracies.

The [New Liturgical Movement] blog has been talking about problems with the Church’s heavy-handed use of copyright for years in regards to hymns and they discuss this specific case here.

The Church has made some movements in reaching out towards some bloggers and trying to put the so-called “new media” to use. It would be nice if the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization looked at this situation specifically. What I think needs to happen is that the Vatican should use some form of a Creative Commons license. Certainly a situation where Catholics in good faith and at no cost are helping the distribute information and documents should be encouraged. Trying to control this has no real upside and mostly downside.

The other thing I would like to see happen is for the Vatican to release these documents in e-book formats themselves. Really what I would like to see is more cooperation in regards to these documents with the laity. Certainly those in charge of making these documents available have enough work to do, but I am guessing there are a lot of Catholics who would love to be able to help out in converting documents to e-book versions. They definitely need some help with quality control since the English version had some formatting problems with the footnotes. In fact it would be nice to have some contact information to be able to point out problems or for example to be able to ask why the General Audience of 5 June 2013 still has not been translated?

I consider the way Brandon Vogt was treated to be rather Pharisaic. Although I totally agree with how he responded in taking down the content. I am thinking about my own situation with The Weekly Francis ebook. If I was told by the Vatican to cease and desist I would since if you are only obedient when you want to you are not obedient at all. Maybe I have been going too much with the “It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Still something like The Weekly Francis e-book is a project that the Vatican should be doing in multiple languages. It certainly takes me considerable time each week to track recently translated documents, provide indexes, and collate into the various e-book formats. If I had to stop it would certainly free up my time, but I do this because I know so many people are thus enabled to read the words of the Holy Father without having to spend a good deal of time in document tracking and subsequent conversion.

It will be interesting to see the fallout over this and if common sense will prevail in the end.

Note: The blog title I used is taken from the “New Litugical Movement” posts on the same subject. It expresses the subject better than anything I could come up with.

News came out yesterday that the Obama administration decided to wait until 2015 to enforce the employer mandate of the “2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Of course it is “just a coincidence” that this would be after the mid-term elections.

The enforcement being delayed at least adds some breathing room for some aspects of ObamaCare. Unfortunately there appears not to be any delay regarding the HHS Mandate and the direct attack on religious freedom.

The HHS mandate that compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions is moving ahead, as revised on Friday. Not only is it moving forward, but the revisions the Obama administration handed out do nothing to quell the pro-life concerns. (source)

If this is an accurate assessment, then the HHS Mandate starts to be enforced on August 1st.

Although this article from Steven Ertelt at LifeNews.com provides no collaborating information for this assertion. The article also makes the mistake of saying it was the individual mandate that was delayed, when it was the employer mandate. Individuals are still required to buy insurance or pay a government fine (January 1, 2014). Still I do think it looks like the HHS Mandate so far is not part of the delay. Forcing Catholics and others to pay for contraception and sterilization has been an important priority for this administration.

One a related note it is rather bizarre to see this delay by the Obama administration being announced in a blog post on the U.S. Treasury site. The tile of the post I think deserves an award for most self-serving post title of the year “Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.” Yes when you are told something is going to be done in a “careful, thoughtful manner” get prepared for the tire tracks on your back.

With the constant attack on the reality of marriage one of the responses is the idea to separate “civil marriage” and being “married in the church”. That churches should get out of the marriage business.

Recently Msgr. Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. has again proposed this. I greatly admire Msgr. Charles Pope and his postings, but I can’t fully agree with him here. In the first part of his post he proposes that we set aside the word “Marriage” and use “Holy Matrimony” exclusively. That the word marriage has become so corrupted and what the Church means by marriage and what the state means by marriage are quite different things.

I am all for using the term “Holy Matrimony” more and to return to a understanding of the Conventional aspects. Using words and phrases that better project the reality of something is certainly something we should do. I am though tired of having words taken from us and having to deduct them from our vocabulary. While I like the use of “Holy Matrimony” I will use marriage as a shortcut term in this post. Also for purposes of this post “two people” is used to mean “one man and one women.” I wonder what we will have to start using as caveats in years to come?

A secondary but related proposal is that we begin to consider getting out of the business of having our clergy act as civil magistrates in weddings. Right now we clergy in most of America sign the civil license and act, as such, as partners with the State. But with increasing States interpreting marriage so differently, can we really say we are partners? Should we even give the impression of credibility to the State’s increasingly meaningless piece of paper? It may remain the case that the Catholic faithful, for legal and tax reasons may need to get a civil license, but why should clergy have anything to do with it?

Frankly, I am uncomfortable signing DC Marriage licenses, and do so only because my Ordinary has indicated we should continue doing this. I am happy to obey him in this and defer to his judgment in the matter. There is a reason his is the Ordinary and I am not. That said, I have told him what I think. But for now, it seems clear we must stay the course and still sign them until the Bishop says, no more.

I think this idea only ends up reinforcing the secularization of the reality of marriage. Despite the governments misunderstanding of marriage this does not change the ontological aspects of marriage. Two people married under a “Justice of Peace” can incur a “Natural” marriage and for example two baptized Protestants can contract a “Sacramental” marriage in the same circumstance. Note: I specifically left out an example regarding Catholics in this example as Catholics are obliged to the canonical form of marriage (excepting the circumstances where an indult has been granted by he local ordinary).

This two tier idea of secular marriage and religious marriage would only deconstruct marriage even more.

Ed Peters’ replies to Monsignor Pope’s post and puts it much better than I can:

… Marriage (and I’m talking about marriage, not Matrimony yet) is part of the natural law and, I think, one just does not walk away from the natural law. Marriage was not abolished by Jesus, it was (under certain circumstances the Church has worked out over the centuries) raised by Him to the level of a sacrament we call Matrimony. But before anything else, Matrimony is marriage, and it never ceases to be marriage, and if whatever we’re talking about is not marriage then it CANNOT be Matrimony.

This is serious stuff: the Church proclaims some infallible doctrines regarding marriage (like, e.g., that marriage consists of the union of one man and one woman) and she proclaims some infallible doctrines about Matrimony (like, e.g., once Matrimony is consummated, it cannot be dissolved by any power on earth, something not true of marriage). Both institutions, natural marriage and its Christian perfection, are objects of doctrinal solicitude, which tells me, there’s something pretty important about both.

The vast majority of the world enters marriage (not Matrimony), and if the Church stops defending and promoting marriage, she abandons most of the human race to whatever havoc the Evil One feels like waging in its regard. But there’s still more wrong here with dumping marriage.

Many Catholics enter, with the Church’s approval, not Matrimony (as in the sacrament), but marriage only (as in the natural union). To suggest that we deal from now on only with Matrimony leaves Catholics in marriages (not Matrimony) with no recognition or support. Every way you look, this is a bad idea.

Look, I wish everybody were Catholic, that all marriages were sacramental, and that we could spend our time helping Catholic married couples better live out their vocation. But as long as marriage is ABSOLUTELY essential to the Church’s teaching on Matrimony, as long as most human beings enter marriage and not Matrimony, and as long as some Catholics live in marriage and not Matrimony, the Church has to stay in the marriage business and defend marriage itself.

Earlier this year I was reading C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” where he espoused a two-tier understanding of marriage that just ignores the natural law. The argument he put forth was rather embarrassing. Recently I found an article which quotes what Lewis wrote about this along with a letter where J.R.R. Tolkien replies to his friend’s argument.

On a side note I do love Christianity Today posting an article titled “Why C.S. Lewis Was Wrong on Marriage (and J.R.R. Tolkien Was Right)”

Sometimes you can find a truth spelled out in a novel quite accidentally.

Case in point I am reading this SF thriller trilogy where one of the plot points involves alien nanotechnology. When injected into humans these swarms of nanobots repair any damage and brings the person to perfect health.

There is a side-effect mentioned in the novel as a negative. When these nanobots are introduced into a population the “problem” is that chemical contraception stops working. Vasectomies are healed as would other forms of surgical sterilization. Abortion also becomes much harder as the child heals faster than they can kill it. This is remarked rather off-handily in the novel and is really not part of the plot.

This is also probably an unintended insight into the nature of contraception, sterilization, and abortion. The fact that none of this is related to a required medical procedure and instead of bringing a body to health mutilates it or uses hormonal tricks to break a functioning system. Medicine has been corrupted not to mean a remedy or a cure, but to include disrupting or removing a functioning system for reasons other than health.

This distinction seems to be lost more an more. This is obvious by the fact that you so often hear that if medical insurance pays for Viagra then it must also pay for birth control pills. That one restores function and the other removes function is lost in the haze of false equality.

No distinction is made between health and what are bodily hacks. We will probably seem more and more forms of bodily hacks falsely grouped under the category of healthcare. They will also more than likely be ironically named. For example reproductive healthcare is mostly aimed and making sure you don’t reproduce.