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Magisterial Authority and Theological Authorship: The Harm of Plagiarism in the Practice of Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2022

M. V. Dougherty  and
Joshua P. Hochschild
M. V. Dougherty
Affiliation:
Ohio Dominican University
Joshua P. Hochschild
Affiliation:
Mount St. Mary's University
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Abstract

The disclosure of serial plagiarism in the extensive theological and journalistic publications of Thomas Rosica, CSB, former Vatican spokesperson and sometime media attaché of the Holy See Press Office, attracted significant media attention in early 2019. This article examines a selection of Rosica's hidden sources, focusing on how passages from magisterial church documents appear without attribution in his theological works. Our examination of this unusual case of plagiarism highlights important facets of authorship and authority in the practice of theology as well as the key role of attestation in magisterial teaching.

Keywords

plagiarismmagisteriumauthorityhermeneuticsinterpretationauthorship
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , December 2021 , pp. 404 - 455
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Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2022

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References

1 This is the operative definition of plagiarism governing the account in this article: “(1) a non-trivial appropriation of words, images, or formulas, (2) with inadequate credit, (3) that generates an appearance of original authorship, (4) in a discrete item belonging to the scholarly record,” Dougherty, M. V., Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity: In the Aftermath of Plagiarism (Cham: Springer, 2018), 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For a brief overview, see M. V. Dougherty and Joshua P. Hochschild, “Tracking Father Rosica's (Very) Long History of Plagiarism,” National Post, April 15, 2019, http://nationalpost.com/opinion/tracking-father-rosicas-very-long-history-of-plagiarism.

3 Gerard O'Connell, “Vatican Spokesmen Contradict Viganò's Account of Meeting,” America: The Jesuit Review, September 2, 2018, http://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/09/02/vatican-spokesmen-contradict-viganos-account-meeting-pope-francis-about-kim-davis.

4 “Notice of Retraction,” The Bible Today 57, no. 3 (2019): 184; “Notice of Retraction,” Worship (February 2019), https://web.archive.org/web/20190226204252/http://journalworship.org/. See also Ivan Oransky, “Plagiarism Prompts Retraction of 25-Year-Old Article by Prominent Priest,” Retraction Watch, March 4, 2019, http://www.retractionwatch.com/2019/03/04/plagiarism-prompts-retraction-of-25-year-old-article-by-prominent-priest.

5 Eduardo Valenzuela, Notice of Retraction (“It has come to the attention … ,”), Humanitas: Christian Anthropological and Cultural Review 8 (2016), http://www.humanitasreview.com/publications/10-humanitas-review-8; Sebastian Mahfood, Notice of Retraction (“It has come to the attention … ,”) Seminary Journal (March 2019), https://seminaryjournal.com.

6 “Retraction,” Toronto Journal of Theology 35, no. 2 (2020): 235.

7 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Notice of Retraction,” CCCB, June 21, 2019, http://www.cccb.ca/announcement/notice-of-retraction/.

8 Editors of The Tablet, “Word from the Cloisters: A Shade too much Schadenfreude,” The Tablet, June 1, 2019, 15.

9 Editors of Origins, “On File,” Origins 49, no. 11 (2019): 176.

10 See Thomas Rosica, “How the Pope's Jesuit Roots Affect his Ministry,” Horizon: Journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference 42, no.1 (2017): 24–31; reissued in revised form in June 2019 as Thomas Rosica, with David Gibson, Drew Christiansen, Sean Salai, Chris Lowney, “What Observers Are Saying about How the Pope's Jesuit Roots Affect His Ministry: A Roundup of Commentary,” Horizon: Journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference 42, no. 1 (2017), http://web.archive.org/web/20190620162207/https:/nrvc.net/publication/10247/article/19648.

11 For a notable exception, see Alkuin Schachenmayr, OCist, “Concerns about Bishop Stephen Robson's Dissertation on Bernard of Clairvaux,” Analecta Cisterciensia 69 (2019): 420–28. Charles Curran has noted that the practice of repurposing of texts among nineteenth-century manualists does not accord with the expectations of present-day academia. He argues that “manualists came out of a different tradition” that privileged pedagogical concerns over originality; see Charles Curran, The Origins of Moral Theology in the United States: Three Different Approaches (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 84–85.

12 See the entry “Rosica, Thomas M.” in The Retraction Watch Database, http://www.retractiondatabase.org.

13 Academic plagiarism and journalistic plagiarism have much in common, but distinct norms govern each domain. Plagiarism is universally denounced in both, yet aggregation practices and the use of material from press releases without attribution are common in some levels of journalism. See Mark Coddington, “Aggregation and Journalism,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.778, and Norman P. Lewis, “Plagiarism,” in The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, eds. Tim P. Vos et al. (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0092.

14 Debora Weber-Wulff, False Feathers: A Perspective on Academic Plagiarism (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), 5; Teddi Fishman, “‘We Know It When We See It’ Is Not Good Enough: Toward a Standard Definition of Plagiarism That Transcends Theft, Fraud, and Copyright,” 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity (4APCEI) September 28–30 2009, http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=apcei.

15 On the irrelevance of intention in determining plagiarism, see Bela Gipp, Citation-based Plagiarism Detection: Detecting Disguised and Cross-Language Plagiarism Using Citation Pattern Analysis (Wiesbaden: Springer Vieweg, 2014), 10; Weber-Wulff, False Feathers, 14; Gert Helgesson and Stefan Eriksson, “Plagiarism in Research,” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18, no. 1 (2015): 91–101, 94; Dougherty, Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity, 71–75.

16 Joshua P. Hochschild, “Rosica, Fraud,” First Things, February 26, 2019, http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/02/fr-rosica-fraud.

17 Fabio Paglieri, “Reflections on Plagiarism,” Topoi 34, no. 1 (2015): 1–5.

18 Dougherty, Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity, 1.

19 Yuehong Zhang, Against Plagiarism: A Guide for Editors and Authors (Cham: Springer, 2016), 5–8.

20 Imad A. Moosa, Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018), 61–62.

21 Mario Biagioli, “Watch Out for Cheats in Citation Game,” Nature 535 (2016): 201. See also Mario Biagioli, “Recycling Texts or Stealing Time? Plagiarism, Authorship, and Credit in Science,” International Journal of Cultural Property 19, no. 3 (2012): 453–76.

22 Sven Ove Hansson, “Philosophical Plagiarism,” Theoria 74, no. 2 (2008): 97–101.

23 See Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, “Is There a Retraction Problem? And, If So, What Can We Do About It?,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication, eds. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dan Kahan, and Dietram A. Scheufele (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 119–26.

24 Gali Halevi, “Why Articles in Arts and Humanities Are Being Retracted?” Publishing Research Quarterly 36 (2020): 55–62.

25 Lindsay McKenzie, Adam Harris, and Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz, “A Journal Article Provoked a Schism in Philosophy: Now the Rifts Are Deepening,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 63, no. 37 (2017), 22–23, 22.

26 Susan Feng Lu, Ginger Zhe Jin, Brian Uzzi, and Benjamin Jones, “The Retraction Penalty: Evidence from the Web of Science,” Scientific Reports 3, no. 3146 (2013): 1–5, 1.

27 See Dougherty, Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity, esp. chap. 1.

28 In a 1975 document, the International Theological Commission issued twelve theses on the relationship of magisterial teaching and theology. The sixth thesis is: “The Magisterium and the theologians also differ in the quality of the authority with which they carry out their tasks.” See The Ecclesiastical Magisterium and Theology (1975), http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1975_magistero-teologia_en.html.

29 Francis A. Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 45.

30 Avery Dulles, Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 39. See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2033, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P74.HTM.

31 Factors include the author of the magisterial document, its genre, and its mode of expression. On the variety of genres of magisterial documents, and the methods for assessing the weight of magisterial documents, see Francis A. Sullivan, Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 4, 141. Furthermore, the CDF has noted that “it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies”; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis, May 24, 1990, §24, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19900524_theologian-vocation_en.html.

32 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei, 1998, §11, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_1998_professio-fidei_en.html.

33 Sandro Magister, “Amoris Laetitia Has a Ghostwriter. His Name Is Víctor Manuel Fernández,” May 25, 2016, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351303bdc4.html?eng=y.

34 Michael Pakaluk, “Ethicist Says Ghostwriter's Role in Amoris Is Troubling,” Crux, January 15, 2017, http://www.cruxnow.com/commentary/2017/01/15/ethicist-says-ghostwriters-role-amoris-troubling.

35 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Mane Nobiscum Domine, October 7, 2004, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2004/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20041008_mane-nobiscum-domine.html. In Table 1 and also in tables that follow in this paper, the designation “//” indicates a division between copied source texts.

36 John Paul II, “Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the XXXIX World Day of Prayer for Vocations, April 21, 2002, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/vocations/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20011123_xxxix-voc-2002.html.

37 John Paul II, General Audience, July 23, 1988, http://www.totus2us.co.uk/teaching/jpii-catechesis-on-god-the-son-jesus/the-churchs-holiness-comes-from-christ/.

38 Francis George, Becoming an Evangelizing People: The First Pastoral Letter, November 1997, https://web.archive.org/web/20200727034557/legacy.archchicago.org/Cardinal/pdf/BecomingAnEvangelizingPeople.pdf.

39 Francis George, “Young People and the New Evangelization,” Chicago Catholic November 6, 2011, http://www.chicagocatholic.com/cardinal-george/-/article/2011/11/06/young-people-and-the-new-evangelization.

40 Francis George, “Young People and the New Evangelization.”

41 Francis George, “Remembering Vatican II: The Religious Significance of the Catholic Church's Relationship with the Jewish People,” September 30, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20141018074435/http://www.juf.org/news/local.aspx?id=430343.

42 John Foley, “Homily at Mass for Catholic Press Association,” May 27, 2005, http://www.zenit.org/articles/john-paul-drew-the-crucifix-to-himself-and-embraced-it.

43 Thomas Rosica, “John Paul II Showed Us the Suffering Face of Jesus,” The Catholic Register, April 27, 2011, http://www.catholicregister.org/item/5469-john-paul-ii-showed-us-the-suffering-face-of-jesus.

44 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “Toward COP 21: Civil Society Mobilized for the Climate,” February 26, 2015, http://www.omhksea.org/2015/02/reflections-by-ecumenical-patriarch-at-the-forum-in-philippines.

45 Reissued also in two other languages: Thomas Rosica, Les sept dernières paroles du Christ (Toronto: Novalis, 2017), and Thomas Rosica, Le sette parole di Cristo sulla croce (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2017).

46 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “Address of Patriarch Bartholomew,” Information Service. Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity 143, no. 1 (2014): 15–16, https://web.archive.org/web/20151223203535/http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/information_service/pdf/information_service_143_en.pdf.

47 Thomas Rosica, “Viewing the Church through the Lens of Pentecost,” Zenit, June 7, 2011, http://www.zenit.org/articles/viewing-the-church-through-the-lens-of-the-holy-spirit; Thomas Rosica, “Making Time for God: Catholic Spirituality 2.0 for Busy People,” Origins 42, no. 1 (2012): 9–15.

48 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Dies Domini, May 31, 1998, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1998/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_05071998_dies-domini.pdf; General Audience, October 4, 2000, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20001004.html; “Holy Thursday Homily,” April 8, 2004, w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2004/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20040408_coena-domini.pdf.

49 John Paul II, General Audience, October 7, 1987, http://www.totus2us.co.uk/teaching/jpii-catechesis-on-god-the-son-jesus/jesus-christ-has-the-power-to-forgive-sins/; Benedict XVI, “Homily for Visit to the Roman Parish of St. Felicity and her Children, Martyrs,” March 25, 2007, w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070325_visita-parrocchia.pdf.

50 Rosica's plagiarisms often involve the appropriation of texts in translation, so in addition to the original authors, the translators are denied credit.

51 Stanislaw Rylko, “Ecclesial Movements and New Communities: The Response of the Holy Spirit to Today's Challenge of Evangelization,” March 9, 2006, http://www.piercedhearts.org/communion_hearts/ecclesial_movements.htm.

52 Table 14 identifies only part of the plagiarism from the archbishop's text; more than 15 percent of Rosica's article consists of uncredited text taken from the address by the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

53 Luigi Ventura, “Homily for the Episcopal Ordination of John Corriveau,” January 30, 2008, saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=717&language=.

54 Antonio Spadaro, “A Conversation with Cardinal Schönborn on Amoris Laetitia,” La Civiltà Cattolica, March 1, 2017, last updated August 20 2021, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/conversation-cardinal-schonborn-amoris-laetitia/.

55 Spadaro, “A Conversation with Cardinal Schönborn on Amoris Laetitia.”

56 Donald Wuerl, “Pope Francis, Fresh Perspectives on Renewal, and the New Evangelization,” October 19, 2016, adw.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/101816ND-Symposium-Remarks.pdf.

57 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xxiii–xxiv.

58 Rosica, Where Jesus Walked, 81.

59 A portion of page 54 of The Seven Last Words of Christ corresponds to pages 217–18 of Jesus of Nazareth; a portion of page 15 of Stay with Us corresponds to page 261 of Jesus of Nazareth; and a portion of page 27 of Stay with Us corresponds to page 243 of Jesus of Nazareth.

60 Edward Sri, “‘I Thirst’: Mother Teresa's Devotion to the Thirst of Jesus,” Edward Sri: To Keep and to Ponder (blog), September 10, 2014, https://edwardsri.com/2014/09/10/i-thirst-mother-teresas-devotion-to-the-thirsting-jesus/.

61 The address appeared online the same day and shortly thereafter was published as: Ouellet, Cardinal Marc, “The New Evangelization and the Mass Media,” Origins 38 no. 6 (2008): 93–98Google Scholar.

62 Joseph Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization,” Zenit, December 12, 2000, http://web.archive.org/web/20011106212235/https://www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/Ratzinger.htm.

63 For example, paragraphs 17, 18, 20, and 21 of the keynote address correspond to sections of Sandro Magister, “Overturned: The Church Can—and Must—Evangelize” Chiesa, December 17, 2007, https://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/182761bdc4.html?eng=y.

64 Thomas Rosica, “Ouellet's Appointment Shows Desire for Reform,” National Post, July 5, 2010, http://nationalpost.com/holy-post/3366.

65 For an account of plagiarizing ghostwriters who worked for North American cardinals in the first decade of this century, and an analysis of the resultant faulty magisterial documents, see Dougherty, M. V., Disguised Academic Plagiarism: A Typology and Case Studies for Researchers and Editors (Cham: Springer, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 5.

66 “Toronto Priest Plagiarized when Ghostwriting for Canada's Most Senior Vatican Figure,” National Post, August 27, 2020, https://nationalpost.com/news/new-revelations-in-the-serial-plagiarism-of-a-canadian-priest-extend-to-his-role-as-ghostwriter-for-vatican-figure.

67 The essay containing Rosica's controversial passage was published in various fora online and in print in the theology journal Horizon. See Thomas Rosica, “The Ignatian Qualities of the Petrine Ministry: Reflection on the Feast of the Founder of the Society of Jesus,” July 31, 2018, http://web.archive.org/web/20180801112316/https:/zenit.org/articles/the-ignatian-qualities-of-the-petrine-ministry-of-pope-francis; Thomas Rosica, “How the Pope's Jesuit Roots Affect his Ministry,” Horizon: Journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference 42, no.1 (2017): 24–31. The undisclosed source text is Richard Bennett, “Pope Francis: Master of Jesuit Spiritual Exercises,” Berean Beacon (2014), http://bereanbeacon.org/pope-francis-master-of-jesuit-spiritual-exercises.

68 The original version seems to have been presented to the National Religious Vocation Conference Convocation in Kansas City, Kansas as “The Ignatian Qualities of the Petrine Ministry of Pope Francis,” October 29, 2016, http://web.archive.org/web/20170815095845/http://saltandlighttv.org/blogfeed/getpost.php?id=72516.

69 This finding was first reported in Dougherty and Hochschild, “Tracking Father Rosica's (Very) Long History of Plagiarism.”

70 James Martin, “Pope Francis: Still a Jesuit,” America: The Jesuit Review, March 13, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nTePyD1TWI.

71 Thomas Rosica, “A Lexicon for Evangelization and Pastoral Ministry According to the Mind and Heart of Pope Francis,” Origins 46, no. 40 (2017): 628–34, 631; Thomas Rosica, “The Language of Pope Francis: How the Pope's Rich Lexicon Can Influence Our Pastoral Ministry,” Our Sunday Visitor, May 2017, 25–31, 30. Cardinal O'Malley's source essay has been republished as “Understanding Pope Francis Through Ignatius of Loyola,” National Catholic Register, March 25, 2014, http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/understanding-pope-francis-through-ignatius-of-loyola.

72 EWTN, August 16, 2018, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxtSafC2VOg&feature=youtu.be&t=1500.

73 “Vatican Adviser: Pope ‘Breaks Catholic Traditions Whenever He Wants,’” Catholic Herald, August 14, 2018, https://catholicherald.co.uk/vatican-advisor-pope-breaks-catholic-traditions-whenever-he-wants/.

74 In addition to being one of Rosica's most controversial and complicated cases of plagiarism, it is also one of his sloppiest. That Rosica in this case did not try to tone down the exaggerated—and anti-Catholic—tone of Bennett's sentences (e.g., “thoroughly indoctrinated,” “militant attitude”) and that he included even the word “counterfeit” to characterize the “way of conversion” of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, seems uncharacteristic of his usually more conservative approach.

75 On the corruption of the downstream literature by plagiarism, see Dougherty, Disguised Academic Plagiarism, 6–9.

76 Dougherty, Disguised Academic Plagiarism, chap. 5.

77 Dougherty, Disguised Academic Plagiarism, 76–81.

78 We are grateful to the editor and the three peer reviewers at Horizons for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful to Msgr. Michael Heintz, Larry Masek, Michelle Dougherty, Fr. Alkuin Schachenmayr, and Perry Cahall for comments or conversations.