Open Access to the Catholic Bible and Catechism (NAB/NABRE and CCC)
After seeing about 50 responses on Twitter to a casual comment about the USCCB not being able/willing to allow open access to the Bible (NAB or NABRE translation) or Catechism of the Catholic Church to developers like me (and many others), I thought I'd simply post here all the information I have about the current situation, and what might be able to be done to remedy this situation...
[I set up this little petition just to allow people to voice support. Petitions don't help change things in the Church, but it's good to see what kind of things people would like to see happen!]
Correspondence with USCCB about licensing/access
I have contacted the USCCB twice now, asking once on behalf of the Archdiocese of St. Louis (I used to work there as Director of Web Development), and once on behalf of flockNote, Open Source Catholic, and Midwestern Mac. Both emails asked a simple question: Is there any way I could get access to the only USCCB-approved biblical translation and CCC translation so I could use these translations in mobile apps and websites?
I was hoping to see if they would offer the works under some sort of free license that would allow Catholic developers the ability to build apps including Catholic bible texts and CCC integrations (something like the Westminster Shorter Catechism in 90 Days study guide app, but for Catholics). But the responses I've received have been less than encouraging—see the forum topic Public Domain Catholic Bibles for the full details.
The gist of their responses: They have things 'in the works', and anyone can get the bible and CCC on Kindle ('for a low price...'), and they're working to allow brief excerpts (but definitely not a whole chapter or section) to be emailed to people.
Current Access to Catholic Catechisms and Bibles
Currently, there's a $17 Catechism for the Kindle (where the paperback version is $9), as mentioned by @BrandonVogt1 on Twitter. He appropriately tagged that with the #EvangelismFail tag... why is this not free in eBook format, at a minimum?
And the ONLY canonical source for these texts is the USCCB website, which is still set up like a 90s era website, with a link structure by which people can access any book of the bible, or chapter, but there's poor/no search ability, and it's hard to actually discover topical information, or find particular topics or indexes of either the Bible or the Catechism on the USCCB's website.
There are a few companies who have paid (large?) licensing fees to the USCCB to use the official translations in their software and websites—one in particular is the Logos bible software, which charges $17 on top of the fee for their software for access.
Resolution
The most helpful thing the USCCB could do is allow completely free and open access to the texts of both the NABRE and CCC by anyone. But as I see this is quite unlikely to happen (but I'd be very happy to be surprised!), I think something like the following could be more amenable:
The USCCB could have a NABRE/CCC API available to developers—could be something simple like JSON or something—and developers could send a request for, say, CCC #2150, and their API would return the contents of that section.
To gain access to this API, a developer would simply need to register an account and authorize access, getting a token in the process that would allow them to request up to one chapter of the bible at a time, and one section (or a group of sections) from the CCC at a time.
If the API tracked calls, then developers would be allowed a certain number of calls per day for free; any more than that, and the developer would need to pay some small fee per month/quarter/year.
Developers could cache the results of API calls for a certain period of time—say, 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month—so their apps and sites would be able to run faster. But data would need to be refreshed to ensure the integrity of the translation, including any textual updates.
I don't know if this is going to happen, and I don't think it will, but I pray that this might possibly be considered someday. (I've talked about this before, but got no traction).
If I, as a Catholic developer, have to continue to use old English translations of the Bible from the Vulgate, or the King James Version (not even Catholic!), I'm at a major disadvantage. Information wants to be free—and right now, some of the fundamental parts of our faith are locked up under strict licensing restrictions.
Comments
@michaelsbradley mentioned that there are two other sources for the CCC (one of which—the Vatican—should have full access no matter what):
I'd like to learn the details of SCBorromeo's licensing, as it seems interesting that a Catholic parish could get a full license while my message was dismissed when I wrote as a representative of the Archdiocese of St. Louis :-/
It's still no joy reading the text or finding topical information in any of these sources.
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
I've been saying this for years too. I have a github repo that I've used for experimenting with parsing a Douay Rheims text file and dumping it into a MySQL database.
I really do enjoy the DR translation, but it's not useable for apps that would be related to mass.
BTW, anyone that wants to play with the github repo is free to grab it here ... https://github.com/tjboudreaux/Douay-Rheims-Bible-Parser
And, of course, almost any prayer-related tool that uses a non-NAB/NABRE translation is dismissed as 'not being approved by the USCCB', because the text is not the 'official' text :(
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
The Douay Rhiems Bible has an Imprimatur.
While it has the Imprimatur, it has not been approved as able to be used in liturgical contexts (Liturgy of the Hours, Mass texts, readings, etc.).
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
I would also like to see the USCCB and ICEL make the ritual texts freely available and searchable. As a priest, I would find it immensely helpful while planning to have the Roman Missal, the rites for the various sacraments, and other official ritual texts just a click away.
I have permission from the USCCB for my Catechism search tool which is, if I dare say so, the most robust I've seen. You can search it by word, by Scripture reference, by section, and by paragraph number.
I also have a variety of resources on the Roman Missal available at the same web site.
Very nice tool! I'm wondering; could you share more information about any of the licensing details, like how permissive it is, who you contacted about it, etc.?
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
Certainly:
On October 14, 2008, I received an email from Mary Sperry (Associate Director for Permissions at the USCCB), which I have edited slightly. This was in reference to an older version of my Catechism search tool at a different web site.
I replied that day:
Mary Sperry responded within the hour:
A week later, I submitted the following request (again, slightly edited):
A month later, I received an email reporting approval:
Perl/PHP programmer. Author of a three-volume series on the Mass.
I wonder if they'd be amenable to that for the NABRE; it seems not, as far as I can tell. However, I've heard from other developers that they've had trouble getting approvals for the CCC :-/
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
Also, some technical stuff about the tool:
1. First version was written in Perl; second (current) version is written in PHP.
2. Supports Google-ish keyword searches ("this" -"not that")
3. Supports regex searches too (~pattern)
4. Required the development of a Scripture reference parser (2 Kgs 1:3; Mt 5-8; 1Jn 3:10-4:6)
Perl/PHP programmer. Author of a three-volume series on the Mass.
I just posted without logging in. Oops.
I have USCCB permission for my Catechism search engine here: http://www.catholiccrossreference.com/tools/
I also have resources on the Roman Missal at the same web site, although they are not as extensive as Fr. Cory would like. ;)
My Catechism search engine uses a plain-text index of Scripture verse to CCC paragraph. I also have XML files for each paragraph, and there's a 3.1 Mb combined file for all 2800+ paragraphs (but I use the individual files, because I only need to load the files I need). Putting everything in a database would certainly speed things up, I'm sure, but the web host where the CCC search engine resides does not have database support.
I'd be happy to develop a simple API for accessing the data, with or without a database.
Perl/PHP programmer. Author of a three-volume series on the Mass.
I have also run afoul of the licensing/copyright issues in the past. I also once owned a Word doc of the complete Catechism that was given to my back in 1994.
I think some of the reasoning behind the licensing amounts to (a) they want to control who uses/displays the text to ensure that it's not abused or flawed or faulty and (b) the licensing fees help to cover the costs of translating and printing the books (or keep them lower) not just in this country but in all English-speaking countries.
According to Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth, executive director of the International Committee on English in the Liturgy, this is why there's a licensing fee on reproduction of the Roman Missal. He was interviewed on the radio show I work with, The Good Catholic Life, and in it he said the fees subsidize the printing for poor countries like India, so that every priest in every little parish can get a new Roman Missal.
It might be something similar in this case too. That said, I wish there was a way that they could see that the old copyright/licensing model is stifling evangelization and just don't work in this era of apps and web sites.
Just posted to front page and reset the post date; forgot to do this initially... Whoops!
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
Just 1 Word has an app for the NABRE in its bible collection and I picked it up about 2 months ago after searching a long time for one for my iPad. It's a decent app that also allows you to download other translations (some free, some pay) and conncets to a online version that will sync your notes, highlights, etc to the cloud. So far it's been very helpful to me but it's not Catholic based for sure.
I, too, would love to see the CCC and Revised Roman Missal become searchable apps and yet I understand why granting that permission is going to be hard for the keepers of the faith. The more we show the value of it for evangelization, the more they will seriously consider it but remember they do move at a snail's pace. Keep up the good fight, Jeff!
I am confused. Can one just use on-line or in printed form the CCC as it is given in ENglish at the Vatican's website? There the only notice about copyright is for the Latin edition (this is on an ENglish language page--presumably they don't care?
It seems like they're at least more open about CCC rights than the NAB/NABRE. I'm not sure if you can just lift the text and use it for whatever you want, though.
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
I am not sure that Jesus intended for their to be a copywrite on the Bible? Thanks Jeff for advocating for this important issue. I think that if the USCCB is serious about the New Evangelization, they should make the RSV, NAB, and Cathechism for free and easy access. I could see a 99 cent app to help cover development costs. Note: (you reply box will not accept my web page address: www.calltoholiness.us probably because of newer type internet extensions?)
Try entering an http:// before the address, and see if that works... it's pretty strict :)
Web developer from St. Louis, MO. Personal website: Life is a Prayer.
When Cathnet.org was more active, we had received permission to use the CCC from the Vatican itself. I'm not the one that set that up, but I remember there being some sort of requirement that we have a pair of bishops or something like that overseeing what we were doing with it (something the individuals in Australia were able to do.) It sounds like it's easier to go through the USCCB.
For the NAB, I've heard that a large part of the problem has to do with how many different groups were involved in the translation. I don't know how true that is nor not, however. I could imagine the same problem might apply to the RSV. Does anybody know more about this?
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