About that Theology Degree...

Well, I had enrolled in a place called "Catholic Distance University", and it turned out to be a mistake. A very big mistake.

To make a long story short, I withdrew from the university after I discovered multiple examples of the university plagiarizing material.

Judge for yourself:

Reviewing my 106-101 readings, I had found this paragraph, in Week Seven, Lesson 8:

"The third approach to understanding the relationship between providence and free will is the one that is officially taught by the Church. Called predestination, in its widest sense it refers to every Divine decree by which God, owing to His infallible prescience (foreknowledge) of the future, has appointed and ordained from eternity all events occurring in time. This applies especially to those which directly proceed from, or at least are influenced by man’s free will. It includes all historical events (e.g., the appearance of Charlemagne or the foundation of the United States). It includes particularly the turning points in salvation history (e.g., the mission of Moses or the election of Mary to the Divine Motherhood). In this general sense, predestination clearly identifies with the topic of this lesson, Divine Providence, and the government of the world. We may thus understand predestination on three levels."

This is from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Predestination (Latin præ, destinare), taken in its widest meaning, is every Divine decree by which God, owing to His infallible prescience of the future, has appointed and ordained from eternity all events occurring in time, especially those which directly proceed from, or at least are influenced by, man's free will. It includes all historical facts, as for instance the appearance of Napoleon or the foundation of the United States, and particularly the turning-points in the history of supernatural salvation, as the mission of Moses and the Prophets, or the election of Mary to the Divine Motherhood. Taken in this general sense, predestination clearly coincides with Divine Providence and with the government of the world, which do not fall within the scope of this article (see DIVINE PROVIDENCE)." (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12378a.htm)

Do you think that the similarities are more than coincidental?

Subsequently, I came across another case of this in the same document. This is from the pages on Predestinarianism:

“We can reduce this heresy to two fundamental propositions which relate to each other as cause to effect. First, the absolute will of God is the sole cause of the salvation or damnation of the individual without regard to his merits or demerits. Second, as to the elect, the freedom of will is denied because of the influence of efficacious grace (see below); the reprobate is placed under the necessity of committing sin because of the absence of grace.” (Week 7, Lesson 8, page 9.)

And this is from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“The essence of this heretical Predestinarianism may be expressed in these two fundamental propositions which bear to each other the relation of cause and effect: the absolute will of God as the sole cause of the salvation or damnation of the individual, without regard to his merits or demerits; as to the elect, it denies the freedom of the will under the influence of efficacious grace while it puts the reprobate under the necessity of committing sin in consequence of the absence of grace.”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm

Can there be any doubt which is the original, given that one dates to 1917? Yet the course materials contain no reference to the original source. This seems a clear violation of CDU's plagiarism Rule 1, "Other people's words should never be presented as your own without acknowledging the source." (For the moment, we'll leave aside the oxymoronic wording of that sentence, which implies that if you do acknowledge the source, you can claim the words as your own.)

I also think CDU's writing on the Trinity borrows from Arendzen's "The Holy Trinity", but I haven't examined it close enough to be sure. I'm tired of doing their course QA work for them.

But you know, this isn't the really big problem. The Really Big Problem is the school's refusal to accept responsibility for this; instead, in classic shoot-the-messenger style, their response was to reprimand me for pointing it out, as though their arrogance is explanation enough.

Truly disgusting.