Image by Dave Walker
Kate Connolly of The Guardian reports on the problem of plagiarising preachers in Poland. In particular, Polish Pastors are poaching homilies off the Internet.
In the US, and I'm sure around the world, there are many "homily services" to which a preacher can subscribe. Some of these services provide whole homilies and others a collection of ideas and illustrations on which a preacher can build. (For the record: I am not a subscriber or reader of such materials.)
As a blogger, I receive reports on my blog's cyber traffic. Although such reports never reveal the identity of who is visiting my site, I can find out other things about my readers. For instance, I receive a report on what other Internet sites referred readers to my blog. A good number of these come from Google searches and the report tells me what a particular reader Googled that resulted in landing at ConcordPastor's blog. From Wednesday through Saturday every week I note a number of readers who visit after having Googled phrases such as homily sixth Sunday Easter. I never post my homily until after I have preached it over the weekend schedule but my posts urging you to preview the Sunday scriptures always include such words as "sixth Sunday Easter" and so homily-hunters land on this blog.
Another flock of like referrals comes on Sunday and Monday but my guess is that these are folks who are looking to see how the scriptures were homiletically addressed in homilies other than the one they heard in their home parish.
While agreeing that a preacher owes the parish a basically original effort, methinks that the possibility of incarceration means the Polish Preaching Police may be going a bit too far!
(BTW: there's an error in Connolly's column. A homilist is not necessarily an "expert in the art of religious discourse." A homilist is anyone who delivers a homily.)
Poland's 28,000 Roman Catholic priests have been told by church authorities that they may be fined if they are discovered to have plagiarised their sermons from the internet, and could even face up to three years in prison.
The church has published a self-help book on writing sermons to lure parish priests away from the growing habit of stealing the words of their fellow clergy.
Father Wieslaw Przyczyna, the co-author of To Plagiarise or not to Plagiarise, told Polish media that the guide had been written to address what had become an increasingly common problem, as more churches put their sermons online and an increasing numbers of priests used the internet.
Przyczyna, a sermon expert at Krakow's Pontifical Academy of Theology, added that the book's aim was to shame culprits and prompt them to confess what they had done.
"Unfortunately the practice has become more usual than not," he said. "But if a priest takes another priest's words and presents them as his own without saying where he got them from, this is unethical and against the rules of authorship."
Responses to the self-help guide suggest that the problem also exists in other parts of the world, particularly in Britain and America, where the practice has been dubbed "pastoral plagiarism".
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Homilists - or experts in the art of religious discourse - argue that while it might be a popular view that no sermon is necessarily based on original thought, a priest should be encouraged to convey ideas in his own words to help foster better dialogue with his congregation.
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The church authorities have said they will start to carry out systematic checks in an attempt to clamp down on the practice and will rely on sharp-eared parishioners to compare online texts with those in Biblioteka Kaznodziejska, a monthly magazine that publishes sermons which have been delivered from the pulpit in Poland. Church heads are also discussing the possibility of teaching trainee priests about the concept of intellectual property.
The main culprits are said not to be older priests, who often do not have access to the internet, but their more youthful counterparts.
Young priests turn to the web when they are less than proficient at public speaking, and particularly on a Saturday night when they are panicking about having nothing to say at mass the following morning, said Przyczyna.
...-ConcordPastor
I like your visual. Perhaps, for the priests who are "borrowing" other priests sermons without attribution there should be a lie detector test added to the console. A few zaps would encourage the use of original material!
ReplyDeleteOur family want to thank you for your reflections on Pope Benedict's recent visit to the US. They have been very helpful in terms of going deeper than the sometimes superficial treatment given to such events by the mainstream media. We awaited this event with no small measure of anxiety ~ American Catholics everywhere seemed to be holding their breath, that after five years under a very dark cloud, would our spiritual leader be able to finally give the faithful something to feel positive about? Benedict did not disappoint. His honest and heartfelt words will hopefully begin a process of healing to so many discouraged or estranged Catholics. We hope, however, that his words will be followed by tangible actions and long overdue change, and that just as we Americans were open to the Pope's message, that he too, will listen to the genuine concerns of Catholics in this country.
ReplyDeleteI have a contrary view... if these priests don't feel that their time is worth creating a decent sermon, I would prefer that they borrowed one from someone who did believe that their sermon was a deep pastoral responsibility. At least the parishoners get to hear a decent sermon instead of some ramblings of a priest who just doesn't give a whit. Having sat through some of these sermons, I would definitely prefer a plagerized version.
ReplyDeleteOf course if the church really wanted to do something about this, they could implement a system of accountability for sermon quality. With no accountability now, there is no need or impetus for personal improvement or development. So it is real easy for priests to simply show up and bore us to death. In the secular world, these folks would be long gone.
Your cartoon was penned by Dave Walker of Cartoonchurch.oom where you readers can find lots more of his great cartoons.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cartoonchurch.com/