Bethany Lutheran Church, WELS, Appleton
Bethany (WELS) in Appleton is getting a fat grant to hire an additional pastor, who will use baby-sitting as evangelism. Remember the TV ad WELS broadcast? - "I'm tired of poopy diapers." WELS has the answer - they will change those diapers while the mothers go out to do something more important.
Bethany was famous on the Internet for the pastor posting his meditation, identical to the one written by Chuck Swindoll.
Deputy Doug says a lot of pastors plagiarize, so it is OK. At the time, when the pastor was caught by the Intrepid Lutherans, he apologized and erased his swindle Swindoll.
Paul McCain, CPH Blogger
I have tried to help Paul McCain with his plagiarism, but he is unrepentant. His post on Jerome is another example. The first part is copied from the LCMS, which other blogs admit. What is the big deal there?
The second part is a quotation from Jerome, which begins and ends exactly the same as the one from the Roman Catholic rosary website.
The quotation is a great favorite among Roman Catholics. This Roman Catholic site has some of same punctuation peculiarities as McCain's. He is sloppy about copying mistakes. But it is more likely that McCain copied from here, since the blogger also links McCain. The citation found at the end of McCain's post is the same as the one noted before, and it is found on many other Protestant blogs.
The dead theologians blog is the closest match, and it was posted three years ago - "MONDAY, OCTOBER 05, 2009."
Lutherans want to know - "Is it a sin to copy a quotation when the original source is noted at the bottom?"
In fact, this is a case of copying someone's scholarship, so it is academic dishonesty. When the quotation is copied from another author, even if the original source is given, the fact of copying must be noted. There would be nothing wrong with giving the Jerome source, adding that it was copied from The Dead Theologians, giving the URL or link.
The reasons are obvious. Many times finding an actual quotation source comes to a dead halt because there is a question about its wording, date, pagination. The author quoting it is dead or no longer remembers how or where he found those words. Mistakes, like The Bird of Israel instead of The Birth of Israel, can lead the researcher back to the original, but that is not always possible.
Someone can give the impression of great scholarship simply by copying the scholarship of another person and acting as if he found all those sources.
California:
WELS is hopping on the secular womb to tomb
concept of institutional care (meddling) being promoted by public schools,
encouraged by foundations and corporate interests. The Master Plan for Early
Learning in the county where I reside in California makes a point of explaining
the change in terminology from "preschool" to "early learning". It was done to
reinforce the agenda of a seamless transition from birth to post secondary
education, instead of the mind set of something called "preschool" before "real
school begins". That same master plan for early learning calls for prenatal
visits to prospective parents, by school representatives. Truly whom to tomb.
If the WELS copy cats want to get in on the ELE bandwagon, are they willing to go all the way by
setting up prenatal or regular home visits with the non church members availing
themselves of the ECE facilities provided by
the congregations? Maybe they could baptize the non churched member's children just out of womb if they
are patterning themselves as the facsimile of the secular
government early learning agenda? Do you think the non member parents of WELS
early learning academies would go for that?
