The Hindu : Front Page : Church cracks down on pulpit plagiarism

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Saturday, Apr 26, 2008
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Church cracks down on pulpit plagiarism

WARSAW: There’s a new commandment for Polish priests: Thou shall not lift. The Roman Catholic Church in this nation has published a new book that tells priests how to find inspiration in already published sermons without breaking the law by lifting passages verbatim.

The book, To Plagiarise or Not to Plagiarise? is an attempt to set boundaries in the wake of pulpit plagiarism claims that have hit not just Catholic clerics in Poland but ministers from other Christian denominations in the United States.

Temptation is just the click of a mouse away as more and more churches post their sermons online, not to mention the availability of books and church-sponsored magazines that provide inspiration for sermons.

There is a thin line between drawing inspiration and lifting the text outright, said the Reverend Wieslaw Przyczyna, one of the book’s editors.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, the Rev. E. Glenn Wagner, a former senior evangelical pastor at Calvary Church, admitted lifting parts of sermons and resigned in 2004. Also, the Rev. Robert Hamm, the former senior minister at the United Church of Christ in Keene, New Hampshire, admitted to similar accusations and resigned.

Paul Hasser of the Centre for the Liturgy of St. Louis University in Missouri said he remembered seeing priests reading their Sunday sermons directly from a book when he was a boy. “That bothered no one then,” said Mr. Hasser, who runs the centre’s sermon website.

But with the quick dissemination of sermons on the Internet, and the involvement of copyright law, times have changed. Now, in Poland, a priest caught using a plagiarised sermon can face stiff fines or even as long as three years in prison, though no one has actually been charged or sentenced.

Rev. Przyczyna, a sermon expert, said that existing sermons can be used — “but according to rules” that forbid a word-for-word citation without properly acknowledging their source. “You need to give a clear signal: The text is not mine,” he said. — AP

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