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Friday, November 8, 2024Faith

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Liturgical texts are protected by copyrights owned by the U.S. bishops, or more accurately, by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or USCCB.

Father Robert M.
O'Grady

During these past several weeks, the staff of The Pilot, Pilot Bulletins, and Pilot Printing have been assisting the installation committees preparing for Archbishop Henning's official welcome to the archdiocese.
Two things kept popping up: deadlines and copyrights.
Deadlines are easier. They're set with the following in mind. (By the way, this is the same process for every edition of The Pilot): Date due to press, production proof, final copy to production, final proofread, initial proof, text (this includes photos, graphics, etc.) submitted.
Copyrights are much more complicated and can be a genuine legal minefield. They also involve, as legal matters often do, moral obligations.
Copyrights protect the intellectual property of the owner. And it can extend to all kinds and forms of such property. We usually think, rightly, of this applying to books, but it also applies to other print media. It also applies to musical compositions -- lyrics and musical scores and to all kinds of media -- e.g. photography, graphics.
If you spend your time on the road or on public transportation to and from work, or even on leisurely drives or flights, you might hear at the end of your latest listening adventure about copyright. It mentions that it is to protect the author's current production, and in doing so, to encourage their future work.
A few examples from our recent collaborative efforts might help.

Assembling the worship aids for both the Vespers and the Mass meant we needed to be careful to ensure that we credited all the music used in both celebrations. That means attributing musical compositions to their authors and that we had the proper permission to use all of them. Happily, there are several licensing agencies, which cover most if not all the liturgical music we used. Though we had the permission, our "license number" had to appear in the program.
Liturgical texts are protected by copyrights owned by the U.S. bishops, or more accurately, by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops or USCCB. They will give permission, but you have to ask and note that in your publications.
The USCCB also owns the copyright of the texts of Sacred Scripture we use at Mass. Thus, whenever that is used permission is also needed.
There are some liturgical texts whose copyrights belong to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, or ICEL. As with USCCB copyrighted texts, also with ICEL texts permission is required.
Any of the texts mentioned above but in another language are also protected by international copyrights. When a worship aid is produced either totally or partially in another language, the owners of those texts may need to grant permission.
There is a bit of flexibility when it comes to "one off" use. (That would be a single event, e.g. Archbishop Henning's Installation, a wedding, or a funeral.) However, if the parish regularly inserts worship aids in its bulletin or it produces these each week, they need to ensure that they are covered by license or permission for the music, biblical, and liturgical texts. The responsibility falls to the parish not to the printer.
Sometimes, an item may be in the "public domain." If it is, then no copyright citation or persimmon is required, but again, the responsibility to ensure this belongs to the user.
A principal reason for this in the liturgy is to ensure that the integrity of all the texts that are expected to be used in the celebrations in a particular territory, in our case, the U.S., are, in fact, used. This is very much related to the unity of our common public prayer.
Related to this is an individual's editing of texts.
Neither you nor I have the freedom to edit copyrighted material. If I judge the text to be "non-inclusive," meaning as between or among human beings, or between God and human beings. This does not mean that texts may require future revision for that or other reasons, but the owner of texts determines that, not one of its users.
This may be less of an issue with music or even liturgical texts but more for biblical texts. But the legal and moral obligations, again, remain with the user.
The laws about copyrights are in fact quite complex and have some flexibility. But, as always with legal matters, it's better to err on the side of caution, i.e. check first.
There is also the moral obligation that we must observe, to the best of our ability, such laws, as they protect what belongs to another: their intellectual property.
In the online version of this article, there are three links to documents that more fully explain what I have tried to summarize in this column.