Star Trek: The Forgotten Series

While we’re talking about Trek, lemme mention something that many may remember but many may have forgot or never known about.

There’s a sixth Star Trek series that is seldom discussed today except in fearful whispers.

Despised and shunned more than Voyager, it is Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS).

It ran for two years (22 episodes) in the 1973-1975 seasons.

To quote H. P. Lovecraft: "It was horrible . . . blasphemous . . . loathsome . . . abnormal."

Or was it?

The series did indeed have clunker episodes, and a disproportionate number of them. But then so did The Original Series which ran 78 episodes and, in the words of Phillip J. Fry were "About a third of them good."

TAS had the advantages of having the original cast members (Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, etc.) doing the character voices. It had the advantage of Star Trek veterans and mainstream sci-fi writers doing scripts (Larry Niven, David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana). Its animated format allowed the creation of aliens, including crew members, who could never have been done in a live-action series at the time. It also introduced the holodeck technology that reappeared and became a fixture starting with Next Gen.

Some of the stories were very well done, including one (Yesteryear) set on Vulcan during Spock’s boyhood that was so well done details of it later became canonical on live-action shows despite the fact that the animated series has generally been ejected from continuity.

Yes, the series is regrettably considered non-canonical by most. Thus (except for events mentioned in Yesteryear) it is not included in Michael and Denise Okuda’s Star Trek Chronology. This is a pity because the two-year animated series could serve as a nice completion of the Enterprise’s famed "five-year mission" which only ran three years in the original series. Instead, the Chronology treats the five-year mission as having begun two years before TOS and ejects TAS from the timeline.

Admittedly, the series wasn’t up to the same standard. It had more clunker episodes, and even the good ones suffered from being only twenty-one minutes long (as opposed to about fifty for TOS) and aimed to a greater degree at children. Still, I have a fondness for it and, as bad as Trek has been on other occasions, I incline toward including it in the canon.

The series is currently out on VHS. Hopefully it’ll be out on DVD.

In the meantime,

HERE’S A SITE WHERE YOU CAN LEARN ALL ABOUT STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

Whither Trek? JMS Weighs In

Folks may know that DS9 veteran Manny Coto is serving this year as show runner on the now-final season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

He’s doing good stuff.

What folks may not know is that a slot as executive producer on the show was offered to Joe Michael Straczynski (JMS) of B5 fame, but he turned it down.

He did, however, collaborate on a work that was sent to UPN about how to revitalize the Star Trek franchise.

In the wake of Enterprise’s cancellation, just after midnight, he sent out

THIS NOTE TO B5 AND TREK FANS IN WHICH HE OPENLY LOBBIED THEM TO ASK UPN TO LET HIM AND DARK SKIES’ CREATOR BRYCE ZABEL CREATE A NEW STAR TREK SERIES.

Among other interesting things, he wrote:

Bryce Zabel (recently the head of the Television Academy and creator/executive producer of Dark Skies) and I share one thing in common. We are both long-time Trek fans, from the earliest days, who felt that the later iterations were not up to the standards set by the original series. (I’m exempting TNG because that one worked nicely, and was in many ways the truest to the original series because Gene was still around to shepherd its creation and execution.)

Over time, Trek was treated like a porsche that’s kept in the garage all the time, for fear of scratching the finish. The stories were, for the most part, safe, more about technology than what William Faulkner described as "the human heart in conflict with itself." Yes, there were always exceptions, but in general that trend became more and more apparent with the passage of years. Which was why so often I came down on the later stories, which I did openly, because I didn’t feel they lined up with what Trek was created to be. I don’t apologize for it, because that was what I felt as a fan of Trek. That’s why I had Majel appear on B5, to send a message: that I believe in what Gene created.

Because left to its own devices, allowed to go as far as it could, telling the same kind of challenging stories Trek was always known for, it could blow the doors off science fiction television. Think of it for a moment, a series with a forty year solid name, guaranteed markets…can you think of a better time when you take chances and can tell daring, imaginative, challenging stories? Why play it safe?

When Enterprise went down, those involved shrugged and wrote it off to "franchise fatigue," their phrase, not mine.

I don’t believe that for a second. Neither does Bryce. There’s a tremendous hunger for Trek out there. It just has to be Trek done *right*.

Last year, Bryce and I sat down and, on our own, out of a sheer love of Trek as it was and should be, wrote a series bible/treatment for a return to the roots of Trek. To re-boot the Trek universe. Understand: writer/producers in TV just don’t do that sort of thing on their own, everybody always insists on doing it for vast sums of money. We did it entirely on our own, setting aside other, paying deadlines out of our passion for the series. We set out a full five-year arc.

He said that, though he had lots to keep him busy until 2007, he’d set it all aside for the chance to do the Trek series he had in mind.

A few hours later (JMS stays up crazy late at night) he sent out

THIS POST BELAYING THE REQUEST AS HE HAD LEARNED THAT PARAMOUNT PLANS TO LET THE STAR TREK TV FRANCHISE LIE FALLOW FOR A YEAR OR TWO.

He expressed hope, though, that when Paramount is ready to reactivate the franchise that his schedule will be clear and he’d get a shot at doing the show.

I don’t necessarily agree with JMS about the quality of Trek declining after Next Gen. My current impression (this may change after the DVD release of Enterprise) is that the Trek series are to be ranked from best to worst in this way:

  1. Deep Space 9
  2. Next Gen
  3. Original Series
  4. Enterprise (if the fourth season is counted)
  5. Voyager
  6. Animated

I thus feel DS9 rather than TNG was the highpoint.

Nevertheless, I think JMS doing Star Trek could be awesome.

I’m a little cautious about his use of the term "re-boot" in connection with the Star Trek universe. I’d like to see existing Trek continuity stay intact, though I have to admit that I’ve pondered where the franchise might go next, given all that has been established. They’ve written such an extensive backstory that writers may be boxed in creatively. After Voyager closed, their best chance for finding new creative room was in doing a prequel, and they botched that (until the current season). This prevents them from doing another prequel to TOS. If they go further into the future than VOY, they run the risk of having so much technological wizardry that it overwhelms the story. ("Activate a trans-warp conduit! We’ve got to get to the other side of the galaxy before the next commercial break!") So I’m at least theoretically open to the idea of a re-boot.

I suspect that most fans are not, however. Jettison all their beloved stories and intricate continuity and chronology debates and they will be far less understanding than comic book fans were when DC rebooted its universe.

On the other hand, I suspect that JMS may have been using the term "re-boot" in another sense: Just a reinvigoration rather than a complete restart from scratch.

Either way, I’d like to see him get his shot.

I think he could do for Trek what Ron Moore did for Battlestar Galactica. (Though I’m not entirely satisfied with the latter, it’s still several Quantum Leaps [pun intended!] above the 1970s version.)

So Now We Know . . .

. . . the answer to why Klingons looked different in The Original Series (TOS) than they did both before and after this, that is.

Last night’s episode of Enterprise revealed the reason.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil the answer in this post. If you haven’t seen the episode, it may be re-run on Saturday or Sunday night on your station.

CHECK YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS.

I will, however, talk a little bit about the problem.

First, the offscreen explanation for the change is clear: When TOS was being filmed, they had miniscule makeup budgets, so they couldn’t make the original Klingons look that different from humans given that they were a major race that would be appearing often.

They tried to have a little more elaborate makeup for the Klingon leaders (other starship commanders equivalent to James Kirk), but the Klingons in the background were often just black guys in Klingon uniforms.

Notably absent were the forehead ridges that got introduced . . . in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Offscreen, when Star Trek went from the small screen to the big screen they went from a small budget to a big budget that could be used on all kinds of things . . . including makeup. So the alien race of Klingons became more . . . alien.

When the change was made, fan theories about it prospered, but onscreen there remained no explanation for the change, the producers of the show hoping that the fans would recognize the makeup change for what it was (the outworking of a budget change) and would just "go with them" on this one.

Fan theories about the change included:

  1. The "human-looking" and "forehead-ridged" Klingons were two different races within the Klingon Empire.
  2. The human-lookings were hybrids with humanity, while the forehead-ridgers were purebloods.
  3. The difference was the result of a virus.
  4. The difference was due to Klingons wanting to appear more human in a particular phase of their history (e.g., we know that one character in the TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" was deliberately disguised as a human for covert ops purposes).

When ST:TNG kicked in, a Klingon (Lt. Worf) joined the main cast, and in keeping with larger TV budgets (and better makeup techniques), the Klingons on TNG were forehead-ridgers.

The same inevitably replicated on the sequel to TNG, Star Trek: Deep Space 9. But DS9 added new wrinkles to the puzzle.

First, DS9 established Klingon characters who had originally been introduced in TOS. All those old Klingon ship captains who squared off against Kirk–Kang, Kor, Koloth? They were all back now–as old men–and played by the same actors. But they were in new makeup. Thus here’s a comparison of how Koloth looked in the two series:

Koloth1 Koloth2

Okay. Big diff.

It also ruled out one of the popular fan theories: that the diff was due to there being more than one race of Klingons.

A theory that could have explained the difference (but that I don’t know was ever posed by fans) was that the forehead-ridge appearance developed with age, so that all the Klingons seen on TOS were younger, while those seen later were . . . older. The change might even strike different Klingons at different times of life the way . . . baldness . . . strikes different human men at different times.

We have our own forehead changes, see.

Well, events continued to overtake speculation, and in the 30th anniversary episode, "More Tribble, More TroublesTrials and Tribble-ations," Lt. Cmdr. Worf establishe a new onscreen fact about the difference: Klingons are embarrassed about it. Specifically, Whorf looked uncomfortable and said: "We do not discuss it with outsiders."

When Enterprise initially hit the airwaves four years ago, it had the forehead-ridgers that we were familiar with from TNG onward.

So this left the writers of Enterprise, now that it finally got good and got cancelled, an interesting puzzle once they decided to finally do an onscreen explanation of the difference. Specifically, they needed to explain:

  1. Why the difference existed.
  2. Why characters in Enterprise’s time had the forehead-ridge appearance.
  3. Why characters in the TOS period had the human-looking appearance.
  4. Why characters from the beginning of the movies onward were back to the forehead-ridge appearance.
  5. Why characters introduced as human-looking in TOS were forehead-ridgers later on.
  6. Why it seemed to affect the whole race.
  7. Why Klingons were embarrassed to talk about all this with outsiders, and:
  8. Why the human-lookers were so . . . human . . . looking.

To my mind, the answer eventually provided last night by ST:ENT to this long-standing Star Trek mystery was a good one.

Don’t spoil it in the comments box.

I’ll reveal it before next week’s episode.

Immolation?

A reader writes:

Quick question.  I am a recent convert from Evangelical Protestantism (4 years) and my 17 year old son is the first in the family to decide to follow me across the Tiber.  However, he is still attending an Evangelical High School and is getting quite a bit of propaganda from one particular teacher.  I am confident Stephen can hold his own but he got hit with something I had not seen before and thought you could help.  He was confronted with the following:

"You are clearly mistaken when you claim that the Catholic Church does not teach that Jesus is killed over and over again at every Mass.  The fact is, the Vatican II documents state on the bottom of page 102 that Jesus is immolated at the point of consecration.  The definition of Immolated according to the Webster Dictionary is, To kill as a sacrifice; To kill (oneself) by fire.  To destroy.  Sorry, there is no way around it."

This is a good example of why you can’t do theology by reading a standard, secular dictionary.

In theology certain words are used as terms of art, which means that they have a special, technical meaning that is not always reflected in popular usage.

The phenomenon is not limited to Catholics. A number of years ago I read a book (Chosen by God) in which the Presbyterian theologian R. C. Sproul complained that a secular dictionary (Webster’s, if I remember correctly) had a Lutheran-based definition of a particular term ("predestination" or "elect" or something like that).

Though not limited to Catholics, the problem does affect Catholics in a particular way since the use of terms among Catholic theologians is often determined by what it means in another language: especially Latin.

The writers of secular English dictionaries, not being Catholic theologians (or any theologians), are focused on words’ meanings in colloquial English and often are simply unaware of the technical meaning that the term has among theologians.

This is what is happening with immolation.

It comes from Latin. (Surprise!) It is based on in + mola. In is a preposition with a fairly wide range of meaning. It can mean in, on, at, into, and other things. Mola refers to ground grain (i.e., flour), particularly when mixed with salt.

In ancient times it was customary to sprinkle mola on a sacrifice, and this was referred to with the words in and mola, which became inmolatio, which became immolatio, which became immolation.

According to its word origins, immolation meant "to sprinkle with mola (flour mixed with salt)" according to the ancient custom. It then came to mean "to offer in sacrifice" and, since most (not all) sacrifices were killed, it came to mean "to kill," "to destroy."

Having said that, the Catholic Church does not teach that Jesus is killed anew in the Mass. His sufferings on the Cross have nothing added to them in th Mass.

There are two explanations for this that you will encounter in Catholic circles.

(First, though, let me complain about the fact that the person who put this objection to your son apparently cited a page number in a particular edition of the Vatican II documents–as if all editions shared the same pagination! What we really need to track this down is a document name, such as Sacrosacntum Concilium, with a section or "paragraph" number.)

First, some individuals have a kind of "time warp" theory, according to which the Mass warps the events of Calvary into the present. Jesus thus does not suffer and die again, but his suffering and dying in the first few decades of the first century is made present today.

A careful reading of Church documents, however, suggests that this is not what happens during Mass. For example, the Credo of the People of God (issued by Paul VI in 1968, just after Vatican II) states:

We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence. . . .

The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is celebrated. And this existence [i.e., the glorious, heavenly existence] remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our churches. And it is our very sweet duty to honor and adore in the blessed Host which our eyes see, the Incarnate Word whom they cannot see, and who, without leaving heaven, is made present before us.

This makes it sound as if the Eucharistic sacrifice involves the Christ of the present, enthroned in heaven and not (currently) suffering on the Cross. The sacrifice is the same in the sense that the priest is the same (Christ) and the offering is the same (Christ) and the purpose is the same (our salvation), but the mode of offering is different: As other Church documents stress, the Eucharist is an "unbloody" sacrifice (one in which his blood is not shed) but in which he (as high priest) offers himself to God for our benefit, in view of his work on the Cross.

Whichever way you go–the "time warp" theory or the "heavenly existence" theory–Jesus does not suffer and die again in the Mass. One makes present old sufferings. The other doesn’t involve suffering at all but an offering of himself as he is in the present. Both involve only death and suffering in the "once for all" sacrifice in the first century.

So sorry.

Christ doesn’t suffer or die a second (or further) time in the Mass.

Just doesn’t happen.

Fortunately, some contemporary English dictionaries acknowledge the history of the word immolation such that it doesn’t always require the deah of the offering. For example, Merriam-Webster’s says:

Main Entry: im·mo·late
Pronunciation: 'i-m&-"lAt
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: Latin immolatus, past participle of immolare, from in- + mola spelt grits; from the custom of sprinkling victims with sacrificial meal; akin to Latin molere to grind — more at MEAL
1 : to offer in sacrifice; especially : to kill as a sacrificial victim
2 : to kill or destroy often by fire
– im·mo·la·tor /-"lA-t&r/ noun

The qualifier "especially : to kill as a sacrificial victim" indicates that the term does not always require the death of the offering. It can simply mean "to offer in sacrifice."

And thus Christ does not suffer or die anew in the Mass.

Them’s the facts.

United Way Query

A reader writes:

My place of employment is doing a drive to raise money for the United Way. I went to their Website, where they state a position of neutrality on abortion, yet have collaborated with Planned Parenthood on projects. Hence, I view this as an indirect support of abortion, despite their statement on their Website.

You are perceptive.

The United Way is deceptive.

MORE INFO HERE.

Therefore, I’ve decided not to contribute to the drive. However, I was asked to help with the collection of money.

Would this still make me compliant, or am I being scrupulous about this matter.

Well, if you comply with the request then you would, by definition, be compliant. That’s not what you’re concerned about though. I assume that you are wondering whether you would be morally culpable.

In this case the money is not being given directly to abortionists to do abortions but to a charitable agency that then, one way or another, gives some portion of it to abortionists. That’s poor stewardship, but then any time you give money to any fund there is a risk or even the known fact that some of it will not be used as it should be. If you were to maintain the position that you can’t have anything to do with such a fund then you’re going to end up not giving to anybody, and the good that you could otherwise do will not be done, including all the other charities that the fund would have supported, the abortionists only being a small percentage of the fund’s outlay.

I say that, not to encourage you to give to the United Way (I, myself, will not give to them until they change their policy on abortion; I’ll give my money elsewhere) but to point out the remoteness of your act from the evil that you may foresee the fund will do.

Remoteness is important in moral theology. Since there is a human will (the fund manager) intervening between the donor and the recipient, the donor’s cooperation is not as direct as if he were himself giving money to an evil cause.

In Catholic moral theology, remote cooperation with evil is sometimes permissible. It has to be because, since humans are sinners, remote cooperation with evil is unavoidable. That guy you paid ten dollars for the pizza may use the money to buy a porn magazine. You can’t control that. You have to make an up or down decision on whether you’re going to do business with someone, and you are not responsible for micromanaging every aspect of what they do with the money you give them.

A key is whether you are, with your will, endorsing the evil that someone else will (inevitably) do with the money you give them (either as a payment or a donation). If you endorse the evil then your cooperation with it is formal, and this is never permitted. If, on the other hand, you do not endorse the evil then your cooperation is only material, and remote material cooperation with evil is permitted . . .

. . . for a proportionate reason.

If you have a proportionate reason (e.g., you’ll suffer in some way at work if you don’t honor the request to collect the money) then, since the act of collecting money is morally licit in itself and since only a tiny portion of it will be used for evil and since you are not directly supporting evil (it’s only remote cooperation, remember) and since someone else will collect the money if you don’t, it seems to me that in that case it would be morally licit for you to collect the money.

So I wouldn’t say that you are being scrupulous. It’s good that you’re trying to think these things through.

Hope this helps!

Eucharistic Adoration Query

A reader writes:

Hi Jimmy, A few of us in our parish are trying to get Eucharistic Adoration established in our parish (Prince of Peace) and it has been a difficult road so far. We have a new pastor (6 mo) who is a Cannon Lawyer but is willling to listen to us. In the past our previous pastor wouldn’t even consider it. Our parish doesn’t even own a monstrance.

Our parish has a huge debt (almost a million dollars) left by the previous pastor and we are not allowed to have any sort of fund raising for a monstrance until this is eliminated. Msgr.wants all resources to go the reduction of the debt.

Sorry for the long backgroud story, here is my question. They (the Worship commission and Msgr.) maybe willing to let us have once a month adoration (with Eucharist in the ciborium) if we can show them just how we will open and close our day and who will be responsible for this. Where can I go to find the proper prayers for the opening and closing of Adoration?

Okay, permit me to be pedantic for a moment. What you’re talking about isn’t just Eucharistic adoration. I know that people always say that, but technically what you’re talking about is Eucharistic exposition. You can have Eucharistic adoration any time you like by simply adoring Jesus in all the Tabernacles of the world. You don’t even have to open your eyes or get out of bed to do that. You are wanting the Eucharist to be exposed for the adoration of the faithful–which is great! I’m just pointing out a terminology issue. Sometimes people semi-consciously absorb the idea that they can’t adore Jesus in the Eucharist if it isn’t exposed, which is not true.

As to what prayers need to be said, the document that needs to be consulted is called Holy Communion and the Worship of the Eucharist Outside of Mass, which is contained in The Rites, vol. 1 (a book well worth getting) or you can just

DOWNLOAD IT OFF THE DIOCESE OF FARGO’S WEB SITE. (WARNING! Evil file format [.pdf]!)

When one consults the document, one finds this:

EXPOSITION

93. After the people have assembled, a song may be sung while the minister comes to the altar. If the holy eucharist is not reserved at the altar where the exposition is to take place, the minister puts on a humeral veil and brings the sacrament from the place of reservation; he is accompanied by servers or by the faithful with lighted candles.

The ciborium or monstrance should be placed upon the table of the altar which is covered with a cloth. If exposition with the monstrance is to extend over a long period, a throne in an elevated position may be used, but his should not be too lofty or distant. After exposition, if the monstrance is used, the minister incenses the sacrament. If the adoration is to be lengthy, he may then withdraw.

94. In the case of more solemn and lengthy exposition, the host should be consecrated in the Mass which immediately precedes the exposition and after communion should be placed in the monstrance upon the altar. The Mass ends with the prayer after communion, and the concluding rites are omitted. Before the priest leaves, he may place the blessed sacrament on the throne and incense it.

ADORATION

95. During the exposition there should be prayers, songs, and readings to direct the attention fo the faithful to the worship of Christ the Lord.

To encourage a prayerful spirit, there should be readings from scripture with a homily or brief exhortations to develop a better understanding of the eucharistic mystery. It is also desirable for the people to respond to the word of God by singing and to spend some periods of time in religious silence.

96. Part of the liturgy of the hours, especially the principal hours, may be celebrated before the blessed sacrament when there is a lengthy period of exposition. This liturgy extends the praiseand thanksgiving offered to God in the eucharistic celebration to the several hours of the day; it directs the prayers of the Church to Christ and through him to the Father in the name of the whole world.

Also, one should note that the document provides that:

91. The ordinary minister for exposition of the eucharist is a priest or deacon. At the end of the period of adoration, before the reposition, he blesses the congregation with the sacrament.

In the absence of a priest or deacon or if they are lawfully impeded, an acolyte, another special minister of communion, or another person appointed by the local Ordinary may publicly expose and later repose the eucharist for the adoration of the faithful.

Such ministers may open the tabernacle and also, as required, place the ciborium on the altar orplace the host in the monstrance. At the end of the period of adoration, they replace the blessed sacrament in the tabernacle. It is not lawful, however, for them to give the blessing with the sacrament

From this one may conclude (a) that laity may expose and repose the Blessed Sacrament (just in case there were to be any confusion on this point, as there sometimes is) and (b) there are no specific prayers that are required.

That being said, you might want to check out the book Order for the Solemn Exposition of the Holy Eucharist. It may contain useful resources as well, though I have a little hesitancy in giving it a full thumbs up because I haven’t looked at it myself and the publisher (Liturgical Press) sometimes includes non-authoritative documents alongside authoritative ones without adequately noting the difference. Still, if I were engaged in setting this up in my parish, I’d get a copy . . . but then read it carefully with an eye to what’s definitely authoritative and what might not be.

We have people lined up (2-3 per hour) who want to participate.

Cool!

I was told this was" presumptious" on my part to line up people when it hasn’t been approved yet.

Ihh. You’re doing a feasibility study.

We wanted once a week from 10-4pm to start but it looks like they may approve only once a month.

Well, you take what you can get and then try to build from there.

Good luck!

Music Copying

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you have or could write on your blog on the subject of copying music–covering all aspects.  Some of the experts on the EWTN website have touched on it, but they are not really up on all the technology.
Hoooo-eeee! All aspects? ‘Fraid not on a blog. The field’s too big. But I’ll do what I can to answer the points you raise in your e-mail.
I definitely don’t want to do anything sinful.  However, if some form of copying is ok, I would like to do it.  I always thought it was ok to tape some songs from the radio onto a cassette tape.   Now I’m not so sure.
They have sold cassette recorders for years and blank tapes.  For years I have been taping Christmas music and classical music from the radio for my own listening pleasure.  Also, I have taped with my VCR some musical programs shown on PBS (like operas) and saved them for future viewing over the years.  Now I’m wondering  if I’ve been stealing for years.  Are we allowed to tape like this?
You definitely can record songs off the radio or TV (whether to a cassette or any other medium) for your personal use. This was settled a coon’s age ago by a legal case that defined such personal use of broadcast material (TV shows included) as kosher under U.S. copyright law. This is not considered stealing. (Perhaps one of the lawyers reading the blog can fill in the case citation in the comments box.) When technologies like the cassette recorder and the VCR were introduced there were lawsuits trying to get their manufacture stopped, and the lawsuits failed. It’s okay to record off radio or TV for personal use.
I recently read somewhere (during a Google search), that companies or artists (I don’t remember which) get part of the money from blank tapes.  Does this cover any stealing aspect?
To the best of my knowledge, this is not happening. You may have read someone’s proposal for how to address the current situation, but I have no evidence that this is being done. While it initially sounds plausible and might work for purposes of satisfying the recording companies, it would be harder to get royalties to the artists on this basis. Fights would errupt over whether a given artist’s fans are taping him more and therefore he needs a bigger chuck of the pie than some other artist with equally large record sales but who (it is claimed) has fans who copy him less.
I have learned that it is wrong to share music with family or friends.  In other words, I can lend someone my original CD or tape that I bought, but I can’t make a copy for them.
You can’t make a copy for someone else. You can lend them the original recording that you bought and you might be able to lend them a back-up copy you made for yourself (perhaps a lawyer reading could clarify this), but it is my understanding that you would not legally be allowed to simply give someone a copy you made with no intention of getting it back.
These new inventions like the ipod–how does the music get on them?  Are these ok?
In principle, they’re fine. They’re simply new recording & playback devices like cassette players or VCRs. As to how the music gets on them, there are several ways, but the most basic two legal ways are:
  1. You buy a CD in a store and then you "rip" it on your computer (i.e., convert it to a file format that your computer knows, such as .mp3 format) with a program like iTunes (comes with the iPod), which then transfers it to the iPod. Since this is making a personal copy from something you bought, it’s allowed.
  2. You go to a music purchase service like musicdownloads.walmart.com and pay for a copy of the song, which you then download and transfer to the iPod. Again: You’re paying for it. A royalty is going to the record company. So it’s all perfectly legal.
Where some folks get into trouble is they download songs from music services that don’t send a royalty to the record company (like Napster when it first started out, though it has now been revamped after being sued mercilessly and is now clealry kosher), which gets the record company hopping mad and claiming that this is illegal behavior. Whether it is illegal behavior is hotly disputed, but the courts have not been casting a friendly eye on the groups doing this.
Another way people get in trouble is ripping their CDs and simply giving copies of the files to friends, which is analogous to making a cassette copy of an album you bought and then giving the cassette to a friend so he doesn’t have to buy the album for himself and the record company and the artist that produced the album get bupkis.
What about the new satellite radios (like Sirius) where we pay a monthly fee?  Can we tape and save music from them for our personal use, since we are paying for it?  Or are we "stealing" from the artist because we are not buying the song.
My understanding is that, as a broadcast medium, you can tape whatever you want off sattelite radio. Sattelite radio is equivalent to a pay TV service such as cable. If you’re paying for it, you certainly can copy off it for personal use.
You might get into trouble, however, if you had hacked a sattelite or cable service, though. Descrambling something that you aren’t paying for might be regarded as stealing–whether or not you then make tapes from it.
I am trying to grow in holiness, and I don’t want to do anything that is, in essence, stealing. 
Good for you. That’s exactly the right attitude to have.
Hope this helps, and God bless!

Teenage Book Recommend?

A reader writes:

I’m one of the refugees from Mark’s blog.  I’ve really enjoyed your blog as well, even some of your more "bizarre" stories (what the heck is a "chupacabra" anyway? Reminds me of my children’s favorite magic word "abachugaba"….but I digress.)

My question for you has to do with my teen.  She’s 18, and doesn’t have the strongest faith.  She is "interested" in a 19 yo boy, who doesn’t have ANY faith, but is open to Catholicism (and is baptized, btw).  Do you have any ideas for a book or two to keep on hand should any real questions come up?   He’s rather immature, so the Catechism isn’t going to cut it yet.  One of my favorite books for info about what Catholics believe is "The Faith Explained" by Fr. Leo Trese, but again, this isn’t for someone to cut their teeth on.

In regard to your first question, a chupacabra is a legendary create credited with sucking the blood from goats and other small livestock (e.g., chickens). The name is Spanish for "goat sucker" (chupa="it sucks" cabra="goat"). I don’t believe in chupacabras, but I have a taste for X-File-like material and find it interesting to entertain the question of whether some of the creatures mentioned on the blog might be part of the things inspiring the chupacabra legend.

As to your second question, I don’t know of how much help I can be. Not being married (unfortunatly), I don’t have any kids of that age (or any age) and so I haven’t researched the books that might be good for them. In the age that we’re talking about, though, they may be ready for easier-to-read books written for adults. I might give him a book of conversion stories like Surprised by Truth.

Other suggestions, folks?