Talk:Criticism of the Catholic Church

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[edit] Pre-Reorganization

'From here on down is stuff done before this article was spun off of Roman Catholic Church. Much of it is more relevent to Catholicism now.

Yes, Falcon you've got a good point. You are very mature for a 14 year old.

Whose idea was it to replace any useful information in this article with a long, extensive list of see-alsos? We should compile a number of articles specific to the HRCC (Holy Roman Catholic Church) into this article, using headings and the TOC to delimit them. Otherwise, pages on things like Low Mass and such are largely useless and too narrow for an encyclopædic article. Falcon 18:39, Mar 22, 2004 (UTC)

This talk about a large and powerful Church doesn't mention its drawbacks. It just makes the Church look big and good. This looks biassed to me.Barbara Shack 15:32, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why isn't this information merged into Roman Catholic Church? RickK 02:47, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Dead right! I thought I was going to read about a splinter group. Here we have Wikipedia creating a body that does not exist. I have searched Google and the only references to a capital-W "Worldwide Roman Catholic Church" are Wikipedia derived. Please note that the Holy Roman Catholic Church (I believe that is its correct name) considers itself a whole lot more universal than worldwide! Psb777 05:14, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I'm in the process of renaming "Worldwide Roman Catholic Church" to "Roman Catholic Church" Psb777 07:26, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The worldwide links here will be moved to a new page Roman Catholic Church Worldwide and linked to from here. Then much of the contents of Catholicism will be moved here and a link to here inserted into Catholicism. Any thoughts? Psb777 07:35, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a good way to shuck a lot of page history ;) Wetman 19:10, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

Far better that we lose page history then have such bungled, encumbered, ambigious, duplicated and cumbersome content. We need to refactor the two. --Falcon 21:50, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

What's with the title "Roman Catholic Church new". Either it is moved to its permanent destination or it is moved out of the main namespace. This location is unacceptable. --Jiang 19:12, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

Okay, I moved it to "Roman Catholic Church". What is going on is very bizarre. Can someone also explain "Was Roman Catholic Church"? --Jiang 19:18, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

moved from [talk:Roman Catholic Church new]

Quite possibly I am screwing up. I agree we don't want to lose the page history. But what is the wikipedia solution to splitting out a wjole lot of stuff from an article. Lots of Catholicism is about the Roman Catholic Church. Help!!!

I now have nothing re-directing to was Roman Catholic Church (which had previously redirected to catholicism and it now redirects to Roman Catholic Church. Everything that used to reference The Worldwide Roman Catholic Church now references Roman Catholic Church. What was The Worldwide Roman Catholic Church has been renamed to Roman Catholic Church new. Now I want to rename Roman Catholic Church new to Roman Catholic Church without disturbing any links. All this should preserve the page history. But I am in over my neck. As I said: Help!!!

Psb777 19:23, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)


So you want to move some of the content at Catholicism here? All that is needed is that you insert into the page summary "content moved from Catholicism". --Jiang 19:29, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

Shouldn't this be merged back in to Catholicism? If not then great hunks of that article still need to be moved here? I don't know enough about the splinter churches' theology to know exactly how much but large sections of that page are written as refering to this church specifically? Maybe they need to be rewritten more generally. Rmhermen 21:43, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

Catholicism should be a different topic than the Roman Catholic Church, because although the two are closely related, the former has more to do with being catholic and the various practices, whereas the latter is more or less the organisation of the Church itself. Perhaps a see-also would be a better option, and also refactoring of both pages. What a mess. --Falcon 21:47, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

Is there any interest in a WikiProject on Catholicism? I am particularly interested in just creating a project that organizes the dioceses listed on this page better. Kent Wang 06:27, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I came to Wikipedia looking for information on how the Catholic Church has shaped its belief system through various councils over the last 2000 years, how different documents and interpretations have been disregarded or agreed on, how the current bibble was drawn and what writtings were left out. In part this has been prompted by watching "The Da Vinci Code" with Tom Hanks. Also, I have Jehova Witness friends who have shown me how they derive their believes "directly" from their Bible, and have hence been considered a sect by the Catholics. As a spaniard who grew up in a highly devouted family I was never directed to read the bible and have never seen anyone reading it spontaneously.

I also feel that there should only be one article dealing with the Roman Catholic Church, and that all information should be structured under this heading. As enciclopedists we have to seek the truth and be factual, which by definition is critical and anti-catholic. The church already has a long list of banned books and writtings, Opus Dei for example, control ALL media access to its members and openly admit that they read their post "to protect them". We should not endeavor to compromise but simply expose knowledge. cgonzalezdelhoyo 07:27, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Content largely missing

I have just glanced through the history of the page, and there is a lot of good content that is largely missing from the current Wikipedia. I understand the page was merged into Roman Catholic Church but the criticism content looks like it has been eroded over time. Should this redirect be reverted to a regular page? If I hear nothing, I will do it. --ExtraBold 12:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, it is done. --ExtraBold 08:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I've added a small portion explaining the Church's theological reasoning for opposing artificial contraception. --Domangard 03:13, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a Catholic discussion on Talk:Roman_Catholic_Church Dominick (TALK) 17:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical crimes edit

This wasn't good enough:

The Church is also criticized by some for its failure to admit past mistakes. Many claim that they have not taken sufficient responsibility for their alleged (but strongly denied) "complacency" in the Holocaust, for their persecution of Galileo Galilei, or for their actions during the Inquisition.
The Church response is that the crimes of the Church have been exaggerated, and that in 2000 years of Church history there have indeed been some wrongdoers within the church, but that the evil that has been committed have too-often been exaggerated and overemphasized, at the expense of the good that has been done in terms of preserving learning, establishing education and health care, charity, scientific and technical advancement and providing a moral basis for western law and society. Most atheists, humanists and freethinkers strongly dispute these alleged accomplishments.

The crimes in question are the Crusades, the Inquisition, and so forth, not the present failure to apologise for them!

The use of 'alleged (but strongly denied) "complacency"' to mean 'alleged complacency' is ridiculous. There is no extra meaning but the writer is trying to belittle the allegation, with scare quotes. Many would allege complicity, rather than complacency, particularly in the concentration camps in Croatia.

Whether the church has achieved all this good that is listed is off-topic for the article, it is just pro-Vatican spin.--ExtraBold 09:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism/Response ratio

As often happens with these sorts of pages, Responses to criticisms take up more space than the criticisms themselves. This needs to be rectified.

Also the article is almost entirely 'some critics say' ,'many in the Church argue'. Insisting on cites would go a long way to avoiding the to-and-fro debates that creep in here.Ashmoo 05:10, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There is no article featuring the criticism of any other religion or sect.

I realize the Catholic Church has received much more critcism than the protestant sects, but it's biased not to have anything, not even a stub, on the criticism of protestant sects or other religions. This article just feels more anti-Catholic than informative.

There is precedent for this type of article at Mormonism and Christianity. The article is currently of pathetic quality, however. CyberAnth 17:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Where is the book section? Didn't H.G.Wells write a small volume criticising the Roman Catholic Church? Larry R. Holmgren 04:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of Judaism

Where is this article? 75.3.4.54 04:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

There are "criticism of" articles for several faiths besides us Catholics and most of them are in dispute. There's Criticism of Islam, Criticism of Hinduism, Criticism of Mormonism, Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Criticism of Christianity, Criticism of religion, Criticism of atheism, etc. I see there is even a Category:Criticisms. Still Judaism is in a different situation as it faced centuries of persecution, but never had the ability to persecute anyone in that period. Well outside of a few fringe offshoots and I think Spinoza was kicked out. Still I think the history of 2100 years of criticism justifies giving Judaism "a break from criticism" here.--T. Anthony 09:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
No, I disagree. The criticism should be documented whether or not it was valid. And the idea "deserves a break" makes no sense in an encyclopedia. There should be a Criticism of Judaism article precisely because much of Christianity is based on an anti-Judaism polemics. This is not just the "Jews killed Jesus" charge (although that should be documented) but the fact that much of Christianity is based on the allegation that the Jews built a religion based on rules and Christ came to shatter that religion and replace it with one of grace. Whether you agree with this charge or not is irrelevant. What matters is that this is what many Christians (both Catholics and Protestants) believe. This has strong implications for Christian-Jewish relations.
--Richard 16:01, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
To be honest a part of me thinks most of these "Criticism of X religion" threads are non-encyclopedic. I find lists in Encyclopedias. For example there's something called "naval terms" in my encyclopedia that's just a list of naval terms with a sentence or two on each. Under Criticism there is "Criticism, Drama; Criticism, Literary; and Criticism, Music." If we're going to get the point of criticism for religions as, comparatively, small as Seventh-day Adventism or Judaism we might as well be doing Criticism of Sikhism or Criticism of the Coptic Church or whatever. Still if we're going to Criticism of Judaism it can't just be the notion Christianity is based on Anti-Semitism. Otherwise this article should be about how Protestantism is based on Anti-Catholicism. If we must have criticism of Judaism, and I don't think we must, then it should be real criticism about the religion. Perhaps criticism about parts of the Torah that non-religious Jews and others find offensive. Like its view of women and violence done toward the Canaanites.--T. Anthony 03:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I disagree. Admittedly, there is a fine line between criticizing Judaism and being anti-Semitic but it is a similar line to that between criticizing the Catholic Church and being anti-Catholic.
A large part of Christianity is based on differentiating itself from the Jews. Think about this, if Christianity could not differentiate itself from Judaism, it would still be a Jewish sect. Actually, that's how Judaism started out. The book of Acts and the Epistles have a lot of discussion about how man's relationship to "the Law (Torah)" changed after Jesus. If James and the Jerusalem church had won, Christianity would still be a Jewish sect. It might not have survived and, even if it did, it would probably be a lot smaller and less influential than it is now.
Some validity to this. Differentiation is certainly important as it is in any religion that came from a previous background. Like say Buddhism to Hinduism or Bahai to Islam.--T. Anthony 04:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not saying that this is the only criticism that can be made against Judaism. I'm saying it is the most widely spread criticism precisely because it lies at the core of the raison d'etre of Christianity.
Fine, but we have a good deal of articles already on Christian criticism of Judaism. My real position is still that this article you created is unnecessary. If we must treat Judaism as any other religion that's been criticized than let's treat it as any other religion that's been criticized. Otherwise why bother? The argument from history is unconvincing. The longest standing criticism of Catholicism is from Eastern Orthodoxy you going to add a bunch on that here?--T. Anthony 04:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Admittedly, this anti-Judaic polemic gave rise to a lot of anti-Semitism. However, at least once a month, the liberal Presbyterian pastor at our church gives a sermon that castigates the Jews at the time of Christ for having an overly rigid system of laws. In essence, the charge is that Judaism was (and still is) a religion based on justification by works and that the Christian religion is one based on justification by faith and grace. (and, for the Catholics, by works too)
--Richard 03:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
That's a specifically Protestant criticism and you should make clear to differentiate that from Christian criticism in general. Catholics and Orthodoxers value works as you concede. I have heard priests criticize Judaism, but it's not been very common in my life. The criticism I've heard in Church is that Judaism is unforgiving and doesn't teach love of enemies. I didn't like hearing that at Church and was a bit put out, but it was rare enough I noticed it. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Judaism to say what its views on forgiveness or enemies is. Anyway you're missing the main critic of Judaism today, the Islamic world. By focussing it on Christians you're betraying an unhealthy bias. I tried to correct that, but admittedly I haven't put much on Muslim criticism myself as I fear that'd be more explosive. Christians are fairly accepting of insults, Islam sees less so.--T. Anthony 04:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay I switched political to Islamic.--T. Anthony 04:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've created it. You can add to it if you like. --Richard 16:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What belongs here vs. in the Anti-Catholicism article?

The discussion of moving text from the Anti-Catholicism article to the Criticism of the Catholic Church article involves the organization of at least three articles: Roman Catholic Church, Criticism of the Catholic Church and Anti-Catholicism. I feel that we should have a single discussion on this topic rather than three seperate discussions on the Talk Pages of each of the relevant articles. I have moved the discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism/Strategy. Please make any comments or suggestions at that page.

--Richard 18:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure these criticism articles are appropriate. However I would say this should be about why people think the Catholic Church is incorrect on certain points and what those points are. Anti-Catholicism should be about the history of those who were actively against the Catholic Church and encouraged hatred of Catholics. It should be more of a history and culture article. This article, the criticism article, should be a criticism article in the manner of philosophical criticism. Discussions of hatred or actions against Catholics should not be in here, but instead be in the Anti-Catholicism article.--T. Anthony 23:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
We can make the comment here, or on a RfM please. Dominick (TALK) 18:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
On a separate page (Talk:Roman Catholic Church), Dominick has explained that, by "RfM", he meant "Request for Move". On Talk:Roman Catholic Church, I have explained why I think a "Request for Move" is a bad idea. The very fact that I have to document this exchange here is a "proof by example" of why we need a common page for discussing these kinds of "cross-article" issues.
It's a bad idea to discuss "cross-article" issues in three separate places i.e. here and in Talk:Anti-Catholicism and in Talk:Criticism of the Catholic Church. That's why I created Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism/Strategy. Please conduct further discussion on that page.
I hope we don't have to vote on where we are going to have the discussion. Sheesh.
No wait, first let's vote on where to have the vote.  ;^)
--Richard 19:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
You want to be sarcastic? Thats a heck of a way to work together.
I asked you about discussion of wikiproject on that page. The article is a mess. The moves make a lot more entropy. Dominick (TALK) 19:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
The discussion of where to have a vote has ended. Since the most discussion on this topic so far is happening on the Talk:Roman Catholic Church page, I have started a vote there. Since I have identified five different options (some of which are not very likely winners), there may need to be a run-off if there is not a clear runaway winner. Please visit the Talk:Roman Catholic Church page and express your opinion if you have one.
--Richard 22:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mass Merge Discussion

Talk:Roman_Catholic_Church#Mass_Merging Dominick (TALK) 20:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Papal Supremacy

User:58.170.44.132 added "But the Pope has not always used papal supremacy for good." This may be true but it's inadequate and unencyclopedic without examples. I've deleted it but will let a better supported replacement stand.

--Richard 03:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-marital sex??

Wouldn't "extra marital sex" be more accurate?

Yes, I suppose so. However, more people approve of pre-marital sex which they see as "harmless fun" than approve of "extra-marital affairs" which is more likely to be considered a "sin". However, we could make it "extra-marital sex" if you think that's appropriate. Since you know where this is in the article, why don't you go ahead and change it? Be Bold!

--Richard 18:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

No, extra-marital ,means outside of married life whilst pre-marital means before marriage. -- Tmorton166 (Errant Emote)  talk 22:35, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. Wouldn't "sex outside marriage" be more accurate then, as it covers pre-marital sex and infidelity within marriage? Ros Power 11:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Sheesh. Forget what I wrote earlier in this section. I meant what I wrote but it has nothing to do with the question. I clearly put my fingers in motion without putting my brain in gear when I wrote that. I have made the change in the article from "pre-marital sex" to "extra-marital sex".
--Richard 23:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
But surely Extra-marital can mean before or after (or even during depending on your view point) marriage asurtely that is innaccurate. Does the catholic church now accept divorce? -- Tmorton166 (Errant Emote)  talk 01:10, 24 May 2006(UTC)
Ok scratch that I thought we were talking specifically about sex before marriage duh! -- Tmorton166 (Errant Emote)  talk 01:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Judaism

--Greasysteve13 09:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chick

If the article's going to mention Chick's POV on the RC, then it's got to point out that he considers Catholics to be the devil's dupes (but that they're no different from most people in that regard). The referenced pamphlet spells out, for example, that Satan is the author of the RC Eucharist. To say that he thinks they're no Christians is to mislead by omission. In addition, the fact that a sizeable portion of conservative US Christians think the same thing is worthy of mention on the Criticism of the CC page. Jonathan Tweet 02:51, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:POV

In my opinion this article is neutral and template should be removed. Superborsuk 10:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Since no one has commented on this in two weeks, I will be bold and remove the template. --Richard 09:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polytheism?

Has any thought of adding the accusations of polytheism? For example, I was reading in "The God Delusion" about the trinity, Mary, the angels and the endless number of saints could easily lead to accusations of polytheism. Trinity since its creation as an idea has been accused of polytheism. What about the "Mother of the Church" Mary? Surely she is the Mother Goddess of old classical paganism. The angels and the saints forming some sort of demi-gods. Also, the number of shrines and invocation of their the various beings beyond God in prayer and meditation, surely constitutes some form of polytheism. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.136.169.166 (talk • contribs).

Stated this way, your text is POV. An NPOV way of stating it would be to say that "Catholicism has been characterized as incorporating elements of polytheism. Arguments supporting this characterization include...". Of course, these criticisms need to be sourced to reliable sources. If you just add your text to the article verbatim, it constitutes original research and is liable to be deleted. --Richard 09:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Karlheinz Deschner

Why isn't today's foremost critic of the Catholic church, Karlheinz Deschner, mentioned in the article? Deschner’s opus maximus Christianity’s criminal history (in German) is monumental. I find it inexplicable that freethinking publishing houses such as Prometheus Books haven’t translated it. What a shame!! (I confess I have read only three of the ten volumes of Criminal history of Christianity that have been translated to Spanish.)

And, BTW, why is the article still tagged?

—Cesar Tort 19:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

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