Fr. Jim Sichko Appears to Be Selling a Book Full of Plagiarism

Back in early 2024, Loyola Press pulled 60 Seconds for Jesus by Fr. Jim Sichko due to plagiarism. He is now selling that same book on his website. As I exposed his plagiarism the most, I feel obliged to point this out and again warn people. I will try to provide a summary of Fr. Sichko’s plagiarism and then give an updated warning about this new book.

Summary of Plagiarism by Fr. Sichko

As far as history, it is worth noting before his book, his book, his book’s removal from publication and his actions after that.

Most of this will come from my January 2024 article, which concludes:

Plagiarism was enough to bring down the presidents of Harvard and Stanford; we Catholics should have higher standards for honesty than them. Fr Jim Sichko does not even pass some of the lowest bars you can set for plagiarism. Let’s share the TRUTH with others, not just a bunch from others that we claim as our own. As Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)

Fr. Sichko has long plagiarized

As I noted in 2024, Sichko was a habitual plagiarist before this book came out.

For the calendar year of 2021, someone found over 300 plagiarized tweets from Fr. Jim Sichko, with an account listing them all: @RevPlagiarism. I know the person behind this account, Fr. Stephen Vrazel, and he had tried hard to convince Fr. Jim to stop plagiarizing before this. In his texts with Vrazel, Sichko lacks remorse for this. Others, including myself, had mentioned to Sichko that such social media plagiarism was wrong, but he seemed to mainly react by blocking, not by stopping plagiarizing. This piece will not go in-depth on this as the evidence is laid out there. Where he plagiarizes from is eclectic: from bishops to Ralph Waldo Emerson to random Catholic laypeople to comedians to Protestant pastors to Juanita Broaddrick. Many of these tweets are things he reposts every year, showing a degree of knowledge and planning. This includes stories he repeated year after year as if they happened that day. Often, you can find the exact words tweeted only a few hours before the first time Sichko posts a plagiarized tweet.

The fact that he often reposted only a few hours later seems to contradict his apology. He claimed, “I often share and repost comments found on the internet, many of which are reposted and reshared several times before reaching me to inspire action.” (Emphasis is added.) If you are stealing a tweet that day, it has not been reposted and reshared several times before reaching you.

Plagiarism in 60 Seconds for Jesus

This book is so heavily plagiarized that it would be a heroic work to remove all plagiarism. After noting cases, I conclude: “He had at least 16 cases of direct or probable plagiarism in the first 20 pages! This is not a slight accident or mere coincidence but a systematic pattern of plagiarism.”

Here are a few examples (more in the article):

[Pages are from 60 Seconds for Jesus in the Loyola Press printing. The new version may be different.]

Page 3: “Even though there are days I wish I could change some things that happened in the past, there’s a reason the rearview mirror is so small and the windshield so big. Where you are headed is much more important than what you have left behind.”

Kenny Lynn of EXIT Southwest (a real estate company) said this on Facebook. Everything from “There’s” traces back further to Sam Elliot, and Mr. Lynn was likely also plagiarizing Elliot. […]

Page 19: Gospel: Jesus often reaches out to sinners even before they ask for forgiveness. It’s community first, then conversion. Welcoming, and being welcomed, is transformative.

This is taken from Fr. James Martin, SJ. Fr. Sichko did slightly transform the last sentence, but this was likely the editors as he tweeted a plagiarized version exactly like the original nine times (every June 14 since 2016 and once on June 13 as well).

Fr. Sichko’s 60 Seconds for Jesus gets pulled from publication

Loyla pulled this book the day after the publication date. I wrote Loyola over the weekend before its launch with my concerns, they published the book on Tuesday, my post pointing out all the issues went live Wednesday morning, and later Wednesday, Loyola pulled it from publication. I wish I knew it would be pulled so I could post immediately following its withdrawal from publication to show why it was pulled. Loyola acted reasonably quickly once the evidence was presented. Fr. Jim Sichko also posted a note to his website.

In my update to the original post, I noted, “I hope Fr. Sichko truly changes his ways & stops plagiarizing. We preach the TRUTH, so we need representatives who respect the truth. Plagiarism does the opposite.”

Fr. Sichko keeps going

However, in the last 18 months, multiple instances of him continuing to plagiarize on social media have been shared with me. He repeats some from before. Some of these he has had his source pointed out to by the @RevPlagiarism account. This appears to indicate a lack of repetance. In his apology, Fr. Sichko stated, “I apologize, sincerely, to anyone who did not receive proper acknowledgment for statements I made.” If this were true, he would have attempted to find sources, & surely should have found those already explicitly pointed out to him. True repentance must include the intention not to commit the sins one is sorry for again. Otherwise, it is not repentance. (This was a key theme in my STL – between Master’s & Doctoral level – thesis.)

A final issue with his apology is that he puts the burden on the other party to contact him if he plagiarized them. That is not how the rules of plagiarism work. He states, “I encourage creators to please contact Attributionsfj@gmail.com regarding attribution.” However, he gives no indication that he himself will seek to fix attribution. Normally, the author is responsible for avoiding plagiarism, not those whom the author plagiarized. Fr. Sichko has offloaded his own responsibility.

Fr. Sichko Is Selling the Plagiarized Book

What led me to post this was a friend pointing out that the same book that was pulled for plagiarism appears to be on his website for sale. His store page includes 60 Seconds for Jesus. The description is similar to the original description for the plagiarized book (Amazon & Loyola Press via the Wayback Machine). Given this almost identical description and his own continued lack of concern about plagiarism, we can only assume this is the same book, including the rampant plagiarism. The description does not indicate that Fr. Sichko resolved the plagiarism issues, which gives more weight to such a concern. I am not giving him $20 to check, but if he has fixed all the plagiarism issues, I invite him to send me a PDF, and I will post an article praising his reform.

I reached out to Fr. Sichko about 46 hours ago, asking what he had changed to avoid plagiarism. He did not respond. I had noted I would publish today without noting the time. Part of publishing it late in the day is to make sure he had a chance to respond.

We need to stop inviting people like this to speak at Catholic parishes. When our message is the truth, it undermines it to have people who show such a lack of respect for truth as invited speakers, etc. Our society has an issue with the truth, and we in the Church have a big lesson to teach them about truth. However, to teach that lesson, we need to hold to the truth. Inviting speakers who habitually lie, like Fr. Jim Sichko, goes against this mission.

Update (8/21/2025): I missed it in my research, but Deacon Greg Kandrea pointed me to a video where Fr. Jim Sichko seems to reply to me indirectly. (I wrote this on Tuesday August 19th, before he posted the video, and only checked the email I gave Fr. Sichko today to add the paragraph noting I had contacted him.) He claims he did proper attribution. However, he oddly does not show pages. Plus, as noted above, Fr. Jim thinks that it is others’ responsibility to contact him if he plagiarized. Plus, he has continued to plagiarize on social media regularly (even on posts long pointed out as plagiarism). Thus, I think the burden of proof is on Fr. Sichko to prove he’s actually done proper attribution. He has my email & socials: send me pages 80-100 in PDF as a review copy if he wants to show he’s done proper attribution.