Should there be a fee on knowledge about God

[Zaccheus]

@John121 The laborer is worthy of his hire.
Composing, printing and distributing books costs money. Those who do it are entitled to compensation.
Further you are not being denied the knowledge of God. You are having trouble affording a printed copy of one book in particular. That is not the same thing.

 

[John121]

I suppose the larger problem I have is my knowledge of heavenly things is being restricted because of money which should not be a cause of denial to the heavenly realm, you must first have knowledge of these things to ascend or be choosen by God.

I suppose the catechism states that taking bread when your starving is permitted what about getting a free book about the mysteries of seeking God.

 

[John121]

were im from the jewish Rabbi will not even speak to me and my catholic spiritual director is over 80 years old and sick so he’s absent too all I have is these books to direct me and get closer to God im not looking to impress apon men or women just God so im justifying these free ebooks because its the link im missing between humans and God.

actually there is a author of a book that costs in the hundreds second hand I wrote to her and she is sending me a copy free of charge I think God bless her.

 

[UpUpAndAway]

I suppose the larger problem I have is my knowledge of heavenly things is being restricted because of money which should not be a cause of denial to the heavenly realm, you must first have knowledge of these things to ascend or be choosen by God.

So everyone in “the heavenly realm” was wealthy and literate during their time on earth?

St. Bernadette of Lourdes. Born into a very poor family, not the brightest bulb on the light string. Yet she was chosen by God. God can choose whomever He wants.

I honestly do not understand what you are saying here. :woman_shrugging:t2:

 

[Brendea]

It almost sounds as though you are trying to justify theft.
You do not know if you downloaded that book legally and to be honest it sounds as though you don’t really care or your starting to feel guilty and trying to justify your actions by saying it should be free beacuse Its God’s word. However it’s not God’s word beacuse Its not a bible it’s not something written by a pope it’s not a catechism it is a book written by someone who can communicate with God.
I communicate with God on a regular basis and God communicates with me when he answers my prayers I also know that sometimes like all good parents he doesn’t answer them and just says No.
Do you need a book to communicate with God or can you put down your book close your eyes open your heart and pray

 

[TomH1]

I would be interested to know what you do for a living. You do not, of course, have to divulge that information. But, it would be interesting to know what you do and whether you expect to be paid for doing it.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

There’s lots of ways to find out about God that don’t cost a penny.

 

[CRV]

they seem to have there own copyright laws.

I’m not sure are the entitled to distrubte the file I looked up

I can’t find any information other then they state in term and conditions if there is a copywriter violation to report it.

I did find what I believe is the correct site. It was under their DCMA policy. zlibrary

I did a general search using the term Catholic. In the results that returned, on the first page there were 3 books published in 2016 …

I’d personally search other sites for this particular book you’re wanting, such as those I listed above. If it can’t be found, then I’d go without. There are many other ways of drawing closer to God and many books written by Saints on various ways to do so.
(Edited to add:- including some of the Catholic Classics)

 

[Vico]

… you must first have knowledge of these things to ascend or be choosen by God.

…

Contrary to New Age, per Christianity all souls will be immediately judged on death and later resurrected when the just and unjust will be sorted.

Vatican article on New Age states:

The essential matrix of New Age thinking is to be found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was particularly strong in freemasonry, spiritualism, occultism and theosophy, which shared a kind of esoteric culture. …

New Age is not, properly speaking, a religion, but it is interested in what is called “divine”.

An adequate Christian discernment of New Age thought and practice cannot fail to recognize that, like second and third century gnosticism, it represents something of a compendium of positions that the Church has identified as heterodox. John Paul II warns with regard to the “return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age : We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism – that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian”.

Per Catholic teaching we are saved by God through grace.

Catechism

35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

851 Missionary motivation . It is from God’s love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, "for the love of Christ urges us on."343 Indeed, God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” …

1987 The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” and through Baptism: …

 

[CRV]

Scribd 30 days free trial, and can be read online

BookFI you can read these online

Hathi Trust Digital Library at least has a section explaining their copyright policy. I did a general search on catholicism, and the two book titles I clicked on (@Limited [search-only]), both listed the copyright status of each to the left against Rights- public domain and Protected by copyright law.

In the general search I did above on Catholicism, I then clicked on the left “Catholic Church”, then to Author ‘John Henry Newman’ and the books listed showed A FULL VIEW which when clicked loaded the book and you could read it online.

Bear in mind this particular book you are wanting may not be listed on any of the sites I have suggested searching on, but surely it is better to read it legally? ie online and out of copyright - in the public domain.

Perhaps you could tell us the name of this particular book?

 

[whatistrue]

as it does not cost them any money to distribute the book to me at all !

That is incorrect. The servers, storage, network infrastructure, power, HVAC, physical facilities, staff to manage the systems, etc. all cost money. The actual incremental cost to transfer a single copy is not large, but it is also not zero, and the overall cost to maintain the infrastructure is definitely not zero, even if the “site” is some schlub with an old PC and some extra disks hosting it in his living room. But the main issue I have with this is that it appears from other posts that the site which had this copy may not have been legally entitled to store or distribute it.

 

[porthos11]

There are better books that don’t cost a pretty penny. Stop fixating on it.

If you want to improve your relationship with God stick with the Bible and read St Theresa of Avila or St John of the Cross. Not Jewish mysticism.

 

[HopkinsReb]

If you don’t charge for any information on God, you can’t have many professional writers on the topic. It’s a nice enough thought, but the fact of the matter is that it costs money to make books.

 

[JoeShlabotnik]

Perhaps the person should donate part of the money they make to a charitable group or to the Church.

 

[TheLittleLady]

As Scripture tells us, a workman is worthy of his hire.

A sin that cries to heaven is to deprive a worker of his wages.

The author, publisher, editor, distributor, the copyright holders determine the price of the book. To take it from them without permission is stealing.

 

[LawyersGunsAndMoney]

OP, why are you convinced you need this book in particular? There are a million Catholic books on prayer you could read. You don’t need an obscure Jewish text. It’s not like a book of magic spells or something.

 

[DeniseNY]

Sounds a bit like entitlement

 

[Joe_5859]

Look at Luke 8:1–3. Even Jesus and the Apostles didn’t work for free. They needed other people to provide for their material well-being so that they could continue doing what they were doing. The author of this book (whoever he is) cannot continue devoting his life to the study of theology and/or spiritual matters if no one pays him for his time. None of us should expect everyone else to foot the bill so we can mooch everyone else’s spiritual wisdom for free.

I get what you’re saying. Certainly our salvation should not be (and is not) dependent on our ability to pay. But your salvation does not depend on this one particular book.

In our present day and age, we have immediate and free access to an embarrassing amount of knowledge, information, literature, etc. the likes of which the vast majority of people who have lived upon this earth couldn’t even fathom. Without violating any copyright laws, you can hop online and read the Bible in dozens of different translations. You can read the Catechism, the Compendium of the Catechism, the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, the Baltimore Catechism, and the Catechism of the Council of Trent. You can access a plethora of Church documents, the 37 volume set of writings of the Early Church Fathers, the old Catholic Encyclopedia, and Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. You can go to the Catholic Answers main page and read thousands of articles on contemporary Catholic issues. You can go on YouTube and watch Fr. Mike Schmitz or Bishop Barron. And all of this just scratches the surface of what’s available.

There is no reason whatsoever why you would need to illegally steal a religious book just because you want to. If money is an issue, there is way more than enough free stuff available than any one of us could possibly read in our entire lifetime.

Don’t rationalize stealing books. Not to mention the fact that those same websites where you download stuff illegally are notorious for passing on malware and computer viruses. For that reason alone, I don’t understand why anyone would want to risk it.

 

[CRV]

Perhaps the person should donate part of the money they make to a charitable group or to the Church.

That would be commendable if the author did that. Not all authors are successful, and I would think a lot just make ends meet, as not all books are highly successful.

But this thread was about the morality of the poster d/l a pdf file of a certain book in order to read for free as buying a print copy is out of their price range.

In my opinion, the fact that you can’t afford to buy the book, doesn’t mean that you can d/l a copy that is in breach of copyright law with the justification that otherwise one couldn’t read it. Breaching copyright law is theft - a sin. Morally I would think a person is bound in justice to buy a legit copy or if it is out of copyright and a free version can be found, then that is fine to download. But that’s just my opinion.

 

[Fauken]

The man who also digitized the book or scanned it using a printer they had to buy and a computer to save and upload the .pdf should also be paid. Along with the person who wrote the .pdf software.

@John121, just to give you an idea, I’m a professional software developer. The software I use just to make software is $500, and that’s just for one aspect of the program. And we haven’t even started discussing how much my time is worth. Software development is not cheap. The same goes for distributing that PDF.