Links To Amazon

A reader and fellow blogger writes:

Given your expertise in responding to the nitty-gritty ethics questions on your blog, I was hoping you’d address the following for me, as I could use some assistance in thinking about this matter — some readers have raised the issue of late of my use of Amazon.com’s affiliate program, given the fact that 1) anti-Catholic material may be found on their website and 2) pornographic material may also be freely purchased on their website as well (DVD’s, videos, etc.).

Noticing that I am not the only blogger to make use of this, or that Catholic companies like Ignatius Press, Our Sunday Visitor and Tan Books employ the use of Amazon.com as a seller of their books and publications, I wonder if you’ve addressed this question in the past, or can do so now? — from an ethics standpoint, how does one navigate this issue?

Q: Can business involvement in Amazon.com, or Barnes and Noble, or another virtual or real book distributor be considered condonement of their use of other ethically questionable materials? Should I best severe ties from them altogether? I wanted to know your thoughts before making a practical decision.

The answer to the question as phrased is: It depends. It depends on what kind of business involvement you’re having with such a bookseller. If you’re putting links to pornographic items on your blog for folks to buy, then no, that’s obviously no licit business involvement.

I’m sure that’s not the kind of involvement you mean, though. I assume that it’s providing links to purely innocent (even positive) items that they have for sale and possibly getting a tiny, tiny revenue share if the person buys it.

That kind of involvement is going to be morally licit.

To see why, let’s first step back and note a few points:

  1. These booksellers sell a whole lot more than the problematic items you mention. They carry many items that are not anti-Catholic and not pornographic. In fact, they carry many items that are pro-Catholic (e.g., Benedict XVI’s previous books) and pro-chastity (e.g., John Paul II’s Love & Responsibility).
  2. These booksellers are really just online versions of the major book chains. Barnes & Noble is a major book chain, and Amazon carries the same books, CDs, & DVDs that you’d find in a typical Borders bookstore (which is, in fact, affiliated with Amazon.Com).
  3. The kind of business involvement you are talking about is going to be in the same category as the kind of involvement that an author has with these booksellers. When an author writes a book, he gives it to a publisher who tries to get it in all the bookstores it can, and (if it’s a large publisher) it gets it in the major chain bookstores, on Amazon and B&N, and people buy it and a royalty goes back to the author. If you’re providing a link to the book and the company gives you a revenue share (much smaller than an author’s royalty, as small as those usually are) then it’s essentially like a royalty going back to you. If it’s wrong for you to do this, it’s going to be wrong for an author to do it as well.
  4. Since the sending back of those royalties to you and the author depends on a person buying the product, that gets the purchaser into the moral equation. If it’s going to be wrong for you and the author to receive money though your business relationship with the bookseller then it’s going to be wrong for the puracher to give money to the bookseller, who is really just a middleman between the author and the audience. If the middleman is so morally tainted that the author (and you) can’t do business with him, then the audience won’t be able to do business with him either. They will be morally obliged to boycott him.

Now, suppose that it were morally wrong to sell or purchase books through major booksellers like Amazon. What would the consequences of that be? Well . . .

  • Per point 4, everybody is morally required to not do business with them. A boycott by all morally informed purchasers is mandated.
  • Per point 3, authors and publishers are not going to be able to place their books through these booksellers. They’ll only be able to use untained, morally pure online vendors for their books. Per point 2, the same applies to bookstores. Purchasers and authors can only work with morally pure bookstores that do not carry tainted material.
  • Point 1 is therefore neutralized. It doesn’t matter how much good the pro-Catholic and pro-chastity books, CDs, and videos might do. They can no longer be offered through in online or offline booksellers. The producers of these materials have to boycott these venues, and so the vendors become more tilted toward evil due to not having good materials and the public finds it harder to obtain good material, meaning that society as a whole tilts further toward evil since the diet of material it can buy at its local bookstore, etc., is now tilted toward evil.
  • Purchasers therefore have to expend extra effort to get morally good material, meaning that they will obtain it less often and thus be less edified. Secular and non-committed Christians won’t undertake those efforts. Even many committed Catholics will simply not make the effort, at least on occasion, and thus not purchase the products. Sales of good products therefore go down.
  • Authors thus will find it harder to make a living since there are fewer venues for their products and fewer people buying then. More authors experience economic hardship, and many publishers go out of business, centralizing more market share in the major publishers who are already publishing problematic material and therefore can’t be touched either.

Now, a person might object: "But wait! If we got all the Catholics and Evangelicals in America to boycott with us, they’d change their policies!"

Maybe.

If you really got all the C & Es together and had an iron-clad economic blockade of these institutions, that just might be enough to get a policy change.

But let’s be realistic: We’re not going to get all of the C & Es in America to conduct such a boycott. There is no mechanism in place capable of generating a boycott that big. If someone engineers such a mechanism then we can talk about the prudence of initiating a boycott, but we can’t act as if such a boycott is in the offing until it actually is in the offing. We have to base our actions on what is achievable now and not in a possible future that may never materialize.

Well, what if we had a smaller boycott?

It’d fail.

The thing is: Anti-Catholic stuff and porn has a market. For a start, it’s the Evangelicals who are eating up a lot of the most direct and explicit anti-Catholic stuff. (Secularists won’t read James White’s latest opus.)

And as for porn, it’s apparently an economic juggernaut at the moment. I’m given to understand that it accounts for a frighteningly high amount of the traffic and economics of the Internet. I certainly have to delete an awful lot of porn spam from the comments boxes and trackbacks (though having switched my e-mail to Gmail, I no longer have to delete all the porn ads that were being dumped into my e-mail box every day; Gmail’s filtering system seems quite good).

As long as there’s a market for this stuff and–this is a point often overlooked–as long as there is an indifferentist ideology among booksellers where they say, "We don’t take sides in these debates; we let anybody put their products on our site, and that’s important to who we are" then anything but a massive, iron-clad boycott of millions of people isn’t going to achieve the desired effect.

(NOTE ‘CAUSE I KNOW FOLK’LL ASK: The indifferent ideology of eBay is part of the recent problem with them. I’ll post soon on the issue of boycotting eBay. For now, I’d ask folks not to discuss the eBay situation in the combox of this post as I want to keep the issues separate.)

So: Whadda we do until we have a bookseller boycott in the offing that could be truly effective?

Well, Catholic moral theology will not support the proposition that we are morally obliged to boycott when doing so will be ineffective. (It may not even support the existence of a moral obligation when an effective boycott is in the offing, but it certainly won’t support the existence of a moral obligation when an effective boycott ain’t in the offing.) The kind of formal cooperation or immediate material cooperation required to make a boycott morally obligatory just ain’t there.

We could, of course, impose our own personal boycotts that we know will have no chance of achieving the effect we want. In that case, the bad effects mentioned in the bullet points above will happen to the extent that people are participating in the ineffective boycott.

If I write a pro-Catholic book and say "Sorry Amazon! Y’all don’t get it!" then that makes it (a) makes it harder for folks to find it, meaning fewer will and thus fewer folks will be benefitted and (b) hurt me by making it harder for me to make a living since I’ll have spent all this time writing the book and getting less remuneration for my time investment.

Acting in my capacity as a customer, if I refuse to do business with only vendors that have morally untainted product lines then I’m going to be able to buy only the items available in Catholic bookstores. I’ll never read a non-Catholic book again because the non-Catholic booksellers all have something problematic in them. I therefore will not only (slightly) impoverish the authors who wrote the good but non-Catholic books I would have otherwise bought, I’ll (much more!) impoverish myself by living in a defensive, retreatist manner that fails to engage contemporary culture in the way that the Church has always called us to.

While I greatly sympathize with the impulse of individuals to try to boycott booksellers that sell bad material, and while organizing effective boycotts against them is praiseworthy and worth pursuing, Catholic moral theology will simply not support the proposition that as things stand now people are to have no dealings with them.

The idea that as individuals we must, in the here and now, cease having anything to do with secular booksellers (online and off) and only buy things from Catholic vendors with totally pure inventories (no problematic theology or apparition stuff in them) is Jansenistic and fostering of scrupulosity.

I suggest that we take as our model in these matters our current, wonderful holy father, Pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict XVI has a string of book contracts with Ignatius Press and other publishers and these publishers get his books carried by non-religious booksellers. Revenue flows back to them from these booksellers, and every now and then they cut a royalty check and send it to Benedict XVI (or whoever he may have designated as the recipient of his royalties–maybe a religious order or charity or relative), and he’s totally jake with that.

He may or may not know that his books are on Amazon, but he certainly knows that his books are being sold through non-religious booksellers who also carry problematic materials. He knows how the publishing industry works, and while he no doubt deplores the bad material the vendors carry, he wants the vendors to sell his stuff so it can get out there and do good.

If he can allow his books to be sold through such venues then it seems to me that it’s okay for us to buy them from such sellers or to provide links to them.

LIKE THIS ONE. GO GETCHA SOME GREAT BENEDICT XVI BOOKS! YEE-HAW!

The Gates Of Sh'ol

Recently I posted a scan of Matthew 16:18 from the Pshitta, the standard Aramaic version of the New Testament.

I circled the word kepha the two times it appeared, so that folks could see with the own eyes (even if you don’t read the script) that in this version Jesus does say "You are kepha and on this kepha I will build my Church."

Fine and dandy.

But afterwards I was looking at the verse and translating mentally and I noticed something else that was interesting.

Y’know how in the latter part of the verse in traditional English translations Jesus says "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Well, in Greek what he says is "the gates of hades" will not prevail against it, which some modern translations have also picked up on.

The distinction is significant because in contemporary English the word "hell" means one thing: the place of the damned. That’s not the case in older dialects of English (e.g., the one in use when the Douay-Rheims and King James versions were translated). In that day, "hell" could mean the same things as "hades," which in Greek simply refers to the place of the dead, not specifically the place of the damned. ("Netherworld" might be a good English translation since that doesn’t indicate specifically where the damned go.)

The Hebrew equivalent of hades is sh’ol, which also just refers to the place of the dead.

(You may have seen this word spelled sheol, but this is bad because it leads English-speakers to want to pronounce it /SHEEE-ol/, which is wrong. The /e/ is only a half-vowel. The spelling sh’ol gives you a much better sense of the correct pronunciation, /sh-OL/. Same deal with Pshitta being spelled Peshitta. Makes English speakers want to say /PESH-it-ta/ when it’s really /p-SHEET-ta/.)

So what caught my eye was this: In the Pshitta, Jesus says the gates "of sh’ol" will not prevail against it. Here’s the text again with this word circled as well (the one on the third line):

The character that is on the front of this word (this script is read right-to-left, remember) is a prepositional prefix that means "of" (as in "of sh’ol"), but I’ve circled the word for sh’ol itself (which is here spelled sh-y-o-l in Aramaic).

Cool, huh?

The Gates Of Sh’ol

Recently I posted a scan of Matthew 16:18 from the Pshitta, the standard Aramaic version of the New Testament.

I circled the word kepha the two times it appeared, so that folks could see with the own eyes (even if you don’t read the script) that in this version Jesus does say "You are kepha and on this kepha I will build my Church."

Fine and dandy.

But afterwards I was looking at the verse and translating mentally and I noticed something else that was interesting.

Y’know how in the latter part of the verse in traditional English translations Jesus says "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Well, in Greek what he says is "the gates of hades" will not prevail against it, which some modern translations have also picked up on.

The distinction is significant because in contemporary English the word "hell" means one thing: the place of the damned. That’s not the case in older dialects of English (e.g., the one in use when the Douay-Rheims and King James versions were translated). In that day, "hell" could mean the same things as "hades," which in Greek simply refers to the place of the dead, not specifically the place of the damned. ("Netherworld" might be a good English translation since that doesn’t indicate specifically where the damned go.)

The Hebrew equivalent of hades is sh’ol, which also just refers to the place of the dead.

(You may have seen this word spelled sheol, but this is bad because it leads English-speakers to want to pronounce it /SHEEE-ol/, which is wrong. The /e/ is only a half-vowel. The spelling sh’ol gives you a much better sense of the correct pronunciation, /sh-OL/. Same deal with Pshitta being spelled Peshitta. Makes English speakers want to say /PESH-it-ta/ when it’s really /p-SHEET-ta/.)

So what caught my eye was this: In the Pshitta, Jesus says the gates "of sh’ol" will not prevail against it. Here’s the text again with this word circled as well (the one on the third line):

Matt1618c_1

The character that is on the front of this word (this script is read right-to-left, remember) is a prepositional prefix that means "of" (as in "of sh’ol"), but I’ve circled the word for sh’ol itself (which is here spelled sh-y-o-l in Aramaic).

Cool, huh?

Singing The Eucharistic Prayer

A reader writes:

About 6-8 months ago I contacted one of the apologist at Catholic Answers regarding our Priest singing the Eucharistic (presidential) Prayers. The woman apologist (I don’t remember her name) consulted with you and the answer came back that it was acceptable. She even stated that you had researched it and found accompaniment for the prayers. [Actually, I already knew about the accompaniment. What I did was look it up and show it to her–ja] Since that time I have found in the GIRM para. 32 (The prayers and other parts pertaining to the Priest) that in fact this is not allowed. In fact on the Catholic Answers website in Redemptionis Sacramentum para. 53 reiterates the same point as the GIRM. Where did you get your information about singing the Eucharistic Prayers? This is becoming a huge issue in our church and I want to make sure I’m correct before pressing the correction of this problem.

It’s understandable why, but you appear to be misreading RS 53 and GIRM 32. Let’s look at them to see where the difficulty is. First, here’s Redemptionis Sacramentum 53:

While the Priest proclaims the Eucharistic Prayer “there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent”,[GIRM 32] except for the people’s acclamations that have been duly approved, as described below.

You’ll note that the passage states that there is to be no other prayers or singing going on while the priest proclaims the Eucharistic Prayer. It doesn’t say that he isn’t to sing (or that he isn’t to pray). This is a restriction on what other people can do during this time (note that to the general rule that the people say or sing nothing it makes an exception for the acclamations of the people that are prescribed during this time). It is not a limitation on what the priest does (unless he wanted to play a musical instrument while proclaiming the Eucharistic Prayer, God forbid).

You’ll also note that the passage being quoted is the other one you mention, GIRM 32. Here’s the text of that:

The nature of the “presidential” texts demands that they be spoken in a loud and clear voice and that everyone listen with attention. Thus, while the priest is speaking these texts, there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent.

This is just making the point that they want the presidential texts delivered loud enough for everyone to hear, that they don’t want any competing noise so everyone can pay attention. Nothing here excludes the priest singing.

Now, you might think that that something does because this passage refers to the presidential texts being "spoken," which you might conclude excludes singing. Except that it doesn’t. Just a bit further down the road the GIRM clarifies that it’s going to use words like "say" and "proclaim" to be inclusive both of singing and recitation. Here’s GIRM 38:

In texts that are to be spoken in a loud and clear voice, whether by the priest or the deacon, or by the lector, or by all, the tone of voice should correspond to the genre of the text itself, that is, depending upon whether it is a reading, a prayer, a commentary, an acclamation, or a sung text; the tone should also be suited to the form of celebration and to the solemnity of the gathering. Consideration should also be given to the idiom of different languages and the culture of different peoples.

In the rubrics and in the norms that follow, words such as “say” and “proclaim” are to be understood of both singing and reciting, according to the principles just stated above.

Now, you might say "Wait! GIRM 32 didn’t use the word ‘say’ or ‘proclaim.’ It used the word ‘spoken’!" Leaving aside that GIRM 38 says that this applies to words such as "say" and "proclaim" and that "speak" is a word that goes in that category, you would be right. The English translation does use a different word.

Which is why it’s good to look up the Latin.

In the IGMR 38 (IGMR being the Latin GIRM), it says:

In rubricis ergo et in normis quae sequuntur, verba «dicere» vel «proferre» intellegi debent sive de cantu sive de recitatione, servatis principiis supra propositis.

And here’s the relevant bit from IGMR 32:

Natura partium «praesidentialium» exigit ut clara et elata voce proferantur . . .

As you can see, IGMR 32 uses a form of proferre. Specifically, it’s the third person plural present passive subjunctive form: "they are to be proclaimed."

So the speak/proclaim distinction is an artifact of the English translation. The Latin makes it clear that "proclaim" is being used in both cases.

The only other possible scruple I could see someone having here is that GIRM 38 refers to the "norms that follow" and one might interpret this exclusively of GIRM 32 since it is numerically earlier. That, however, would be chopping matters more finely than the authors of the text intended. They simply do not write law with that level of rigor over there. This is being written for liturgical professionals, and they expect the reader to have a sense of how things are done in the liturgy. Singing the Eucharistic Prayer has a looooong history, and so they expect the intended reader (a liturgical professioal) to recognize that the use of proferre in GIRM 32 doesn’t exclude it–particularly when people sing the Eucharistic Prayer all the time and GIRM 38 says proferre includes singing AND one other important fact . . .

. . . the Missal contains sheet music for singing the Eucharistic Prayer.

In fact, it contains a lot of sheet music. Enough to sing all four Eucharistic Prayers (plus other texts). Since seeing is believing, I thought I’d scan the first page of Eucharistic Prayer I so you can see for yourself.

So here it is  (click to enlarge), freshly scanned from the pages of my copy of the Sacramentary. You’ll note from the image that it even includes singing the words of consecration (just like in the Eastern churches).

In view of all this, it sounds as if what your priest is doing is just fine and well within the tradition and law of the Church.

Hope this helps and that it reassures folks!

Eucharisticprayeri_1

While We're At It . . .

I thought, while we were talking about the Aramaic underlying Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter . . . ") that I’d show you this verse  in the standard Armaic translation of the New Testament.

Many Catholics have heard that "kepha" is used in both places in this verse ("You are Peter \[kepha] and on this rock [kepha] I will build my Church . . . "), but few have seen it with their own eyes.

So I scanned it and here ’tis:

The standard Aramaic translation of the New Testament is known as the Pshitta or Peshitta (pronounce it the former way, not the latter). It is not generally regarded as an Aramaic original to the New Testament, but it is based on very early Aramaic versions that were utilized to produce a standard edition and, indeed, it uses kepha in both slots in this verse.

Because of the unfamiliarity of the scrip for most folks (NOTE: It’s read right-to-left instead of left-to-right), I’ve circled the word kepha both times it appears in the text so folks can tell that it does appear twice.

While We’re At It . . .

I thought, while we were talking about the Aramaic underlying Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter . . . ") that I’d show you this verse  in the standard Armaic translation of the New Testament.

Many Catholics have heard that "kepha" is used in both places in this verse ("You are Peter \[kepha] and on this rock [kepha] I will build my Church . . . "), but few have seen it with their own eyes.

So I scanned it and here ’tis:

Matt1618b

The standard Aramaic translation of the New Testament is known as the Pshitta or Peshitta (pronounce it the former way, not the latter). It is not generally regarded as an Aramaic original to the New Testament, but it is based on very early Aramaic versions that were utilized to produce a standard edition and, indeed, it uses kepha in both slots in this verse.

Because of the unfamiliarity of the scrip for most folks (NOTE: It’s read right-to-left instead of left-to-right), I’ve circled the word kepha both times it appears in the text so folks can tell that it does appear twice.

Hollow Peter???

A reader writes:

Do you know of a place I can go to get an authoritative definition of the Aramaic word Kepha (Or however you would transliterate Simon Peter’s Aramaic name meaning rock). I am in an online dialogue with some folks who say that Kepha in Aramaic means hollow rock and therefore would not be a suitable foundation for a Church. Therefore, Jesus could not have said, "You are Kepha and upon this Kepha I build my Church."

This website seems to agree with the "hollow rock" definition.

http://www.htmlbible.com/sacrednamebiblecom/kjvstrongs/FRMSTRHEB37.htm

Okay, two problems:

  1. The page you reference is an online version of Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary. Now the thing about Strong’s is, it’s not a scholarly dictionary. It gives brief glosses on words and is based, frankly, on outdated scholarship and has a lot of flaws. I really wish people would stop trying to appealing to it in apologetic controversies, because it’s simply too unreliable to try to get precise nuances out of. Unfortunately, it’s old enough (outdated scholarship, remember?) that it’s a public domain text and so it’s all over the Internet and people cite it constantly.
  2. You’ll note that the word in question (#3710) does not have "(Aramaic)" at the front of the definition (compare it, for example, to #3706). That tells you that the dictionary is attempting to offer a definition for the Hebrew word keph. Now the thing is: You can’t rely on a definition of a Hebrew word to tell you what an Aramaic word means. Hebrew and Aramaic may be cognate language, like English and German are, but you can’t use words in one language as a sure guide to the meaning of similar-sounding words in the other. The German word bitte sounds like the English word bitter (especially in a non-rhotic English accent that drops the final /r/), but they mean very different things. (Bitte means "please," not "acrid tasting.") In the same way, you can’t appeal to the definition of a Hebrew word as a reliable method of determining the meaning of an Aramaic term. So even assuming Strong’s is right on the meaning of the Hebrew keph, that can’t be used to settle arguments about the meaning of the Aramaic kepha.

The reader continues:

I have seen a translation of the bible into Aramaic where they used Kepha for Simon’s new name AND for the rock that Jesus builds His Church, but I was hoping to find some sort of Aramaic Dictionary that I can easily obtain that has a definition closer to "big rock".

I can help you here, but I have a caution: I’d drop the "big rock"/"small rock" thing. While this distinction existed in at least one dialect of classical Greek several centuries before the time of Christ, the distinction was gone by the first century. It is also exceedingly hard to recover something like size distinctions at this remote date in history since we can’t survey a swath of native speakers to ask them to clarify their usage. From what we can tell now, petros, petra, and kepha all just meant "rock" in the first century, and it isn’t productive to try to argue size differences one way or the other.

That being said, the most exhaustive Aramaic-English dictionary that is commonly in use today is A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Syriac is a major Aramaic dialect) by R. Payne Smith, which was edited down from a longer work (Thesaurus Syriacus) by his daughter, J. Payne Smith.

So. . . . Here’s the definition for kepha in Smith:

KephadictNow, you may not be familiar with the Aramaic script that the dictionary uses, but you should be able to see that the basic meanings of the term are "a stone, rock."

It is also used elliptically (i.e., as shorthand) for "a stone vessel, column, idol, a precious stone." This means, for example, that speakers might be referring to a stone cup (a kind of vessel) and say, "Hand me that stone."

From there the entry starts to give examples of the term used in phrases ("he was stoned") and compound constructions ("a millstone").

As you can see, though, in no case is a definition anywhere close to "hollow rock" given, either for the term itself or for anything else the entry covers.

The idea that kepha means "hollow rock" is simply bogus.

Mr. Peter?

A reader writes:

I thought I had seen it all regarding arguments against Petrine Primacy until a day or so ago. In arguing the case that Peter’s name change was not significant, a Protestant gent asserted that since his text says that Simon ‘was surnamed’ Peter, that Jesus did not give the Apostle a new name but rather just decided to call him by his already given surname.

Is there evidence that first century Jews used surnames in the sense we do today? I find it difficult to fathom that Jesus would decide that he would do something as petty as calling someone by a different name for the mere reason that He did not like the original name. Thanks.

The guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First century Palestinan Jewish nomenclature didn’t work that way. They didn’t have family names the way we do, they had patronyms–which is to say, they were distinguished from others of the same personal name by an appellation designating them as the son (or daughter) of their father.

Thus Peter’s birth name was Simon bar-Jonah, or "Simon the son of John," and Jesus bestowed the name Peter on him, as we see in John 1:42:

He [Andrew] brought him [Simon] to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).

There also is no history of anybody prior to Peter having kepha (the original Aramaic form of the name) as a name, either as a personal name or as a surname (since they didn’t have surnames in first century Palestinian Jewish culture).

This custom of using patronyms to distinguish indiviuals with the same personal name is still used in many places in the world today, including other Middle Eastern cultures.

MORE INFO ON JEWISH NOMENCLATURE.

MORE INFO ON PATRONYMS.