South Bend, Ind., Jan 18, 2006 / 22:00 pm
University of Notre Dame officials have been alerted to a case of “apparent plagiarism” that involves one of its well-known staff members — Catholic author and former chairman of the university’s theology department Fr. Richard McBrien.
William Hobbib sent a letter to university officials stating that Fr. McBrien, who sits on Notre Dame's Academic Code of Honor Committee, copied some text from a Boston Globe article for a column he submitted for the Jan. 6 issue of The Tidings online.
Hobbib, a software industry executive, is a speaker at the Archdiocese of Boston's Defense of Marriage meetings and co-orgainzed the Convention on Voting "Authentically Catholic" on the eve of the Democratic Convention in 2004.
“I am writing to inquire as to the most appropriate way of lodging a complaint about a faculty member's apparent plagiarism,” wrote Hobbib.