Talk:Catholic teaching on homosexuality

jargon

Contaldo is changing the verbiage of the lede to use direct quotations from church documents. However, as explained a little lower, " there "are hidden nuances which 99 percent of the Catechism’s readers cannot be expected to fathom." If Catholics can't be expected to understand it, then neither should the average Wikipedia reader. Additionally, WP:JARGON says that we should not use "specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do." This is especiall"y true in the MOS:LEDE which "should be written in a clear, accessible style." For this reason, I am reverting. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:46, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Wake-up it's "Contaldo80"! There are no specialised words in the lead - this is a red-herring. The material is plain to read. It's important that we are precise. Are you someone that goes around the science article and takes out any "hard to understand" concepts. Generalising too readily risks giving people incorrect information. You are giving people incorrect information. Contaldo80 (talk) 09:43, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Phrases such as "grave depravity," "intrinsically disordered," or "objective disorder" are most certainly WP:JARGON. The average reader is not going to know what intrinsically disordered means. They are so specialized, in fact, that this article has a whole section that explains what they mean. As these are complex issues, we should write this article WP:ONEDOWN. As part of that, "the lead section should be particularly understandable." I agree that we should be precise, and that the reader should come away with a better understanding after reading the article. However, this explanation is properly done in the body, not in the lede where per MOS:INTRO we should "avoid difficult-to-understand terminology" and the "subject should be placed in a context familiar to a normal reader." The article itself says that most people won't understand these phrases. Your bold edit has been reverted. If you still object to this language, please bring your prefered language here to the talk page and we can work it out rather than edit war. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:34, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

In the main article, you welcomed the removal of jargon in the lede and said that we needed less detail, not more. You said it "looked great" when we edited the lede to provide clearer language. Not sure what has changed. --BrianCUA (talk) 15:33, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The lead has language simple enough to follow and then clarification of language in brackets to show what was said. Without it the lead over-simplifies and is incorrect. Why don't you state your real concern? Your concern is that to the casual reader the technical language used by the church looks very mean to gay people. You don't want readers to think the worst of the church. But the language is what it is. Deal with itContaldo80 (talk) 11:44, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Please don't tell me what my motives are. Again, if you think a statement is incorrect, please bring it here and we can work it out. --BrianCUA (talk) 12:49, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Austria

I have, once again, deleted the section on Austria. The source cited talks about a blessing performed in two parishes. It does not say that such a blessing is allowed in the entire diocese. This statement fails WP:V. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:49, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Which part of the sentence "the blessing of same-sex unions are allowed in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Linz" is not supported by the source? Contaldo80 (talk) 09:48, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The source says that it happened in two parishes. It does not say that the bishop approved of these blessings, or that they are a common practice throughout the diocese. We don't even know what happened after. Perhaps the priest was reprimanded. Perhaps the bishop decided it was such a good idea that it should be rolled out throughout the diocese. All we know from this is that it happened in two individual parishes. This source does not support what you are saying here. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:39, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

You are interpreting the text. I have seen nothing to suggest the priests were reprimanded for the blessings. So stop pushing OR and take the source on face value or find a source that gives a different view if you have it. Contaldo80 (talk) 11:45, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Ratzinger vs Hume

In the section ""Objectively disordered" and "intrinsically disordered"", Contaldo has included language that implies that Ratzinger directly challenged a statement made by Hume. This is not supported by the source. Though both men are talking about the same issue, it is WP:OR (at least with the current sources) to imply that one was in direct response to the other. I am editing to remove the WP:SYNTH. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:52, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Hume said "Being a homosexual person is, then, neither morally good nor morally bad; it is homosexual genital acts that are morally wrong." Ratzinger said that it was a misunderstanding to "imply that the homosexual tendency could be good or even neutral". How can those two statements be reconciled? Please clarifyContaldo80 (talk) 09:54, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Maybe Ratzinger was responding to Hume. I don't know. The source doesn't say that, however, so it is WP:OR to say that he was. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:46, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't know and I don't care. Nevertheless the two are contradictory aren't they. In what sense is this OR? Worried that the casual reader might spot that the church is inconsistent? God forbid. Surely not. Contaldo80 (talk) 11:47, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I will once again point you to WP:SYNTH. It is OR because "If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. This would be improper editorial synthesis of published material to imply a new conclusion, which is original research performed by an editor here." We have one source relating what Hume said. Another reported what Ratzinger said. Neither says that Ratzinger was responding to Hume. --BrianCUA (talk) 12:46, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Synods on the family

Though they were both known as Synods on the Family, the 2014 event was the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The one in 2015 was the Fourteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. They were separate events, with different participants, and each of them had a final report. It is not correct to say that the final report from 2015 encompassed discussions from 2014, although there certainly was some overlap. I am editing to remove the incorrect facts. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:56, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

They were two connected synods as the article makes clear. The discussion in the first led to an interim report and the second the final report. Contaldo80 (talk) 09:52, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

That is incorrect. The 2014 synod had an interim and a final report. The 2015 synod had an interim and a final report. There were four reports. The 2015 final report was not a follow up to the 2014 interim report. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:41, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The two synods were related. Contaldo80 (talk) 11:46, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. But that does not mean the 2015 final report was a follow up to the 2014 interim report. --BrianCUA (talk) 13:58, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Local perspectives § United States

I have restored the content at Catholic teaching on homosexuality § Local perspectives § United States that was removed, as per WP:BRD. The removal of the content was the bold edit, which was reverted. Now it's time to discuss. It makes no sense to omit the United States content entirely from the section; why is it being removed? Also, why was content regarding other countries not removed, and only U.S.-based content? North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:09, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

US

If we insist on putting in all the warm cuddly stuff about how lovely the catholic church is to gay people then we have to put in the reality (which is that it hasn't actually been very nice) otherwise the article demonstrates bias. The risk of this is that we then have a very long article that just repeats what is in other articles. Now if the consensus is to go down that route then I am happy to oblige. But three paragraphs on how the US church has been so inclusive towards gay people is not balanced and extremely misleading and has next to nothing to do with church teaching. Contaldo80 (talk) 10:12, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

If anything, this sounds like a reason to expand the section more, to include examples such as you mention above. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:16, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

With all due respect you need to be aware of the bigger picture here. There was an article called "Catholicism and Homosexuality" which told the whole story. Editor Briancua decided that the article was too long and spun it off into a myriad of smaller articles (incidentally I can't say whether connected or not but the revised main article now shows the "official" Catholic line, and material suggesting unpleasant things like discrimination, violence and dissent now require a more determined search). If we have these spin out articles then fine but it is simply not on to create spin-out articles which then cherry pick the positive aspects of the church's treatment of gay people. If we balance that with the reality of what's going on and add more material then we can back to square one where we have a long article - repeated now 6 times. Can I suggest as a way forward that we really think carefully about what material is most closely related to the article them - and link to related articles where wider "context" is available. The material you've re-inserted for the US really just talks about pastoral care. It isn't really official church teaching which is usually done centrally through the vatican and its constituent bodies. Contaldo80 (talk) 12:52, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Translations

Contaldo has asked for me to explain why I put tags on several citations. The reason is that they are either 1)in German, or 2) a bare URL. In the first case, WP:NONENG says that "editors may request that a quotation of relevant portions of the original source be provided, either in text, in a footnote, or on the article talk page." The bare URLs are tagged per WP:LINKROT. --BrianCUA (talk) 12:52, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Briancua. It is permitted to use non-English sources - particularly as I see that they are accompanied by English sources alongside them. I assume this issue is now resolved in any case. Thanks again. Contaldo80 (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Marx reference

BrianCua you made a recent edit explaining "I wish the editor who added these sources would include full details himself, but as a gesture of good faith I have done so". Can you clarify which editor you are referring to please and what exactly you mean by "full details"? Thanks. Contaldo80 (talk) 23:27, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

It has been a couple weeks since I made that edit, but I think what I was referring to was the practice of just including bare URLs as citations. When that is done, the chances of WP:LINKROT goes up dramatically. Best practice when citing a source is to use the appropriate template for the source. Additionally, using list-defined references by collecting the full citation code within the reference list template, and then inserting them in the text with <ref name="ABC" /> tags helps to reduce the bloat in the edit window. --BrianCUA (talk) 14:04, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Merging

It has been suggested (although not explained) that this article should be merged with the main article on Catholicism and homosexuality. I disagree with that move. The motivation from a number of editors was that the main article had become too long and exceeded reasonable word length. Articles were subsequently spun out to allow for more detail on different aspects. To merge all of these articles make into the main article would be to make it unwieldy again. Contaldo80 (talk) 00:37, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Clean-up

Slugger - suggest you focus your attention on one article at a time. Trying to amend related articles when you haven't achieved consensus for your preferred form of wording on other articles isn't generally helpful. Thanks. Contaldo80 (talk) 00:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Homophobic violence not a reason for the church to change its position

At para 10: "But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered." Happy to help you read, Slugger. Frankly, the continuation of that paragraph came in for some hefty criticism in that it blames gay people for hate crime, so I've added that as well. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

POV

This article cannot be used to POV-fork Catholic_Church_and_homosexuality. It's flagrantly ridiculous, for instance, that it contains a whole section on "Freedom from discrimination" without the main article's sources on how the church considers discrimination in employment, marriage, adoption, military service, and other aspects of life to be not only moral but obligatory. If this and other sub-articles are going to be used for advocacy, we must merge them back in. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I am all for improving articles, but will point out that you were involved in the discussions about spinning this article out almost two years ago. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 02:18, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

No shit, I wasn't thinking it would be used for pure advocacy as a POV fork. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:02, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the promotional crap about antidiscrimination. Reading over the article, I'm inclined to simply merge/redirect this article back into the main article; this level of detail is appropriate for a fan wiki, not for WP. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Roscelese, I noticed you did again, even after having been reverted. Is there a reason you chose not to obtain consensus before your second deletion? -- Slugger O'Toole (talk) 20:40, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Restored template, given that discussion is ongoing and that the proposed merge specifically concerns the fact that this article is a disallowed POV fork. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Roscelese, Discussion is ongoing? There has been very little discussion on the topic, and nothing for over a month. The template has been there for six months with only two editors offering five comments. I'm not sure what discussion you are seeing. -- Slugger O'Toole (talk) 02:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Tobin statement

AlmostFrancis, in this edit you say that "This is from an interview on the Today show and comes directly without thirdparty sourcing so probably undue." The statement is a personal opinion. It was published by a reliable source. Can you please explain what third party you think is necessary? --20:36, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Its UNDUE because no third-party source found his comments notable. Its an interview without any analysis of his comments.AlmostFrancis (talk) 04:57, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

AlmostFrancis, Do you mean third parties such as these? --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 14:08, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't see much value in the irishcatholic or CNS source. Irish Catholic because it seems little more that a quick recap and CNS because it has an admitted evangelical mission so its content doesn't say much on DUE concerns. The firstthings source would work for sure if it was published in their journal but the section is it in seems bloggy to me. Ill take a closer look later.AlmostFrancis (talk) 23:01, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I propose selectively merging and redirecting this article back into Catholic Church and homosexuality. The article and its history clearly indicate that, rather than being a necessary content fork due to size, this sub-article is and has been an apologetic document seeking to explain and justify Catholic doctrine through extensive recaps of doctrinal primary sources and other subpar promotional sources, both in Wikipedia's voice and through quotation; in layman's terms, fancruft more appropriate for a fan wiki than Wikipedia. This is not a problem that an overhaul of the article would be likely to solve, because maintaining a separate article for the sole purpose of regurgitating Catholic teaching to Wikipedia users is inherently POV. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:23, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. First, a little history: The parent article, Catholic Church and homosexuality, was once WP:TOOBIG at 117k (and then even bigger) of readable prose. When a discussion about its size took place, this was the first section to be suggested to be spun out. Spinning out those child articles was a textbook case of WP:SUBARTICLE. As to this specific proposal, if there are issues with this article, then by all means let's fix them. However, that an editor didn't like the way an article progressed is not one a WP:MERGEREASON. I also disagree that this article is inherently POV. We have articles on Catholic teaching on the Ten Commandments, Jewish principles of faith, and Puruṣārtha, to name just a few. Articles on religious teachings on specific topics can, do, and should exist. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 00:35, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support They do not seem to be two subjects at all. The teaching and the history of the Catholic church and homosexuality should be the main content in the parent article.AlmostFrancis (talk) 04:51, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support I agree with the reasoning of the initial proposal by Roscelese. The vast majority of this article is made up of quotations which create a decidedly non-neutral POV; while some editing could make the article seem more neutral, its topic seems impossible to reconcile with WP:NPOV. Additionally, the three articles noted in the opposing comment by Slugger O'Toole (Catholic teaching on the Ten Commandments, Jewish principles of faith, and Puruṣārtha) are all related in that they discuss religion-specific teachings on inherently religious subjects. Given that homosexuality is not an (inherently) religious concept, I would argue that their existence does not in any way justify the continued existence of this article. ezlev signed this. talk 01:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support: I'm not totally sure how these two topics are distinctly separate enough to warrant two separate articles. The previous discussion mentioned above seemed to be based on Catholic Church and homosexuality being too long to read comfortably, with someone (BrianCUA) mentioning it was then around 117kB. That page is currently around 45kB, so is much shorter now than it was when that discussion took place, so there's no reason a merge would make that page too long, imo. Seagull123 Φ 16:52, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support: @Roscelese: Catholic teaching on homosexuality should be merged as a section of Catholic Church and homosexuality. The total size of the article would be 84kb which is acceptable. Veverve (talk) 11:52, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Good call; sorry I only noticed this now. Good luck with the merge. Mathglot (talk) 09:13, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Rm more fluff

I'm about to remove more apologetic fluff from a non-independent source with an overt POV aim. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Uy, Alberto S. (2003). "The Homosexual Orientation as an "Objective Disorder" and its Limited Meaning". Landas. Ateneo de Manila University. 17 (2).

Alberto Uy, seems to be a priest without any secular academic credentials. His highest degree was a masters degree in "Sacred Theology" from a seminary not an Academic university. Landas has a miniscule impact factor and the whole editorial board is made up of priests. Is there any reason that his research in this journal is in anyway due in a secular encyclopedia.AlmostFrancis (talk) 04:46, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

AlmostFrancis, It is a peer reviewed journal. I have opened up a query at RSN. -- Slugger O'Toole (talk) 14:16, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Misrepresenting source

Roscelese has removed this content saying that it is a misrepresentation of the source. The source reads as follows:

Having declared all same-sex genital activity to be objectively wrong, the Church also teaches that care and prudence should guide all pastoral judgements about a person's subjective responsiblity for such behavior (PH, 8). An indiviudal's culpability for any given instance of same-sex genital activity can be agrevated or mitigated, even removed altogether, depending on the circumstances (PCHP, 11). ... the degree a person can be judged culpable for such activity will vary. This means in a particular instance a person engaged in a homogenital activity may not be subjectively sinful. (emphasis in original)

I am not sure what she thinks is being misrepresented here. Could you explain, please? --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Refer to the previous talkpage discussions on the subject (they're either here or at the main article). They were very extensive, and I'm fairly sure you participated. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Correct title

Under the "'Objectively disordered' and 'intrinsically disordered'" subsection, it says, "In a 2006 commentary, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger...". The thing is that his papacy began in 2005, so if it really was a 2006 commentary, then it should say "In a 2006 commentary, Pope Benedict XVI...", or if the year is wrong, then the year should be corrected. I don't know which one is right, but this part as currently written is certainly wrong.JMM12345 (talk) 22:59, 14 April 2021 (UTC)JMM12345