Is plagiarism or churlishness the worse offense?

Plagiarism is wrong. We all know this. We were all told this by our parents, our teachers, our professors. At university I had to certify that I had read their policy for anyone caught plagiarizing work. We are failed for cheating. New books are scrutinized and authors are brought into court for the phrasing of sentences, familiar plots and other similarities to already published work.

And now a new controversy has joined the ranks, this time from the world of blogs. Neale Donald Walsch, the author of Conservations with God, was accused by writer Candy Chand of stealing a Christmas tale she had published in several publications, including in 2000's Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul, and using it as his Christmas post on his blog for Beliefnet. That post has since been taken down, from what I can tell, and Walsch has issued an apology and a long summary trying to explain how it happened.

Chand's story is a simple one. She wrote years ago of being at a Christmas pageant, and several young children gathering to hold up several cards that were meant to spell "Christmas love." But one of the children, most likekly astounded by throngs of adoring parents, or simply not yet able to read, help her M upside down, thus spelling, "Christ was love." A simple story, but certainly one that many people have been touched by, as the story became a popular e-mail forward, and Chand herself has published it in a number of places. In the e-mail forwards, she admits, she is often uncredited.

Now, according to Walsch, he saved this story at one point into his writing files. And over the course of many years, he told the story again and again, at lectures and events, until the story became far more than a useful anecdote. It became his own story, an event that had happened to him. And so when he was searching for a Christmas post that December day, he stumbled across this lovely, simple story in his folder of writing never used, and told it as his own. Cut, paste, post.

At least, this is his story. Walsch really does seem dumbfounded by the fact that he came to believe over the years that this event had actually happened to him, and not someone else. And I for one believe him. Memories are easily rewritten, especially when one tells a story over and over. And my own writing folders are filled with files and subfolders of random scraps of stories that may never be used (although I am careful to mark anything that is not my own as such.)

But the truly astounding part of the story, at least for me, is Chand's reaction. Perhaps it's the fact that she has received e-mail forwards of her own story, without attribution for easily ten years. Perhaps it's the fact that she envies a far more successful writer. But for whatever reason, Chand told The New York Times that she's "not buying it." She believes the author knew precisely what he was doing and chose to steal her work in the belief that he wouldn't get caught, which is rather laughable in this age when you can Google "Christ was love" and the second link contains any attribution of the story to Chand. (Walsch could hardly have been so brazen.) She also claims that his use of the story diminished the miracle that occurred on that stage all those years ago.

I think classifying a child's spelling error as a miracle might be stretching it, but she does have a point when she says out that it damages her credibility. I too would be upset to find out that someone had been telling one of my stories for years as their own, and thus diminishing my own right to the story as people begin to question who really wrote it, who really lived it. But the fact that a Christian writer would declare that she doesn't accept another Christian writer's apology, and that she won't forgive? That is the most surprising part, far more than Walsch's ill-timed memory lapse. And it doesn't speak very highly of Chand's own ideals.

*As it suddenly seems pertinent, I must note that I learned most of the story from The New York Times story linked above, written by Motoko Rich. And I originally heard about the story from the Christian Science Monitor blog, Chapter & Verse, written by Marjorie Kehe.