On Vatican Copyrighting

I dislike the notion of the Vatican's new copyright policy. Perhaps I am being an unpragmatic idealist, but isn't the realm of religion where one is expected to be so? I certainly want the Church to be able to pay the Vatican electric bill, but copyrighting papal writings? Look, I know that my years in Catholic school required tuition, and that they aren't giving bibles out on street corners. But did they charge admission to the Sermon on the Mount? Do they really want to treat encyclicals as intellectual property and not something that should be public domain and easy to access? All this will do is make some short term money and give anti-Catholics a huge opportunity to bring up the selling of indulgences and funding sexual abuse settlements.

Now I know that the little guy may not be "billed." But if they charge publishers for this, costs get will get passed on. If this is so important, let God invoice us. 

Update: Looks like this may be much ado about nothing, but will they report it? From the Catholic World News:

Some English-language reports on the dispute in Italy have suggested-- inaccurately-- that the Vatican would forbid quotations from the encyclical, or charge fees to journals that reproduced passages from the work.

Vatican officials explain that their goal is not to limit access to the Pope's words, but to prevent "premature" publication of leaked documents, and to guard against exploitation of the Pope's name.

We'll see how this plays out. I remain skeptical.

Comments

[Jay]

Remember also that everything is published to the internet and given out freely. If the Vatican really was looking at this as a money issue, that wouldn't happen.

God bless,
Jay