Polish Priests Threatened With Jail for Plagiarising Sermons

Poland's 28,000 Roman Catholic priests have been told by church authorities that they may be fined if they are discovered to have plagiarized 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". In the US, the Rev E Glenn Wagner, a former evangelical pastor, and the Rev Robert Hamm, a former minister, resigned in 2004 after admitting to lifting sermons.

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 dialog with his congregation.

The 150-page Polish guide is being sold to priests in for £6.

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.

But Przyczyna has already faced a backlash to his anti-plagiarism crusade. He told the online Catholic News Service that he had received complaints for "harassing priests and exposing their weaknesses".