Template talk:Beliefs condemned by the Catholic Church

NPOV?

This template seems to create all kinds of WP:NPOV violations. Labelling a group's religious views a "heresy" explicitly takes one point of view on a matter of controversy. This is contrary to Wikipedia policy.--Srleffler (talk) 05:26, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

At least partially fixed: "Heresies condemened by..." replaced with "Beliefs condemned as heresy by..." The title then makes it clear that we are documenting the Catholic church's declarations, rather than directly labelling some beliefs as "heresies". --Srleffler (talk) 05:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Next problem: it had better be the case that every single one of the entries in this list has been explicitly condemned as heresy by the Catholic church, and we ought to have a reference to a reliable source establishing that fact. Taking a quick look through the entries in the "modern era" section, I find that almost none of the linked articles contain an explicit statement that the Catholic Church has condemned the belief as a heresy. To expedite matters, I am challenging every entry on the list per WP:V. I'll come back in a few days and delete any that are lacking references to a reliable source establishing that the Catholic Church has, in fact, declared it a heresy. References can be in the linked articles.

Third problem: Should we create a whole series of these templates? "Beliefs condemned as heresy by Islam", for example, and link every article, including perhaps Catholicism, on beliefs that Muslims consider to be heresy? Should we create one for the beliefs condemned by every Christian sect, and link every condemned sect's article? I'm sure that Catholicism would appear on many of those templates. It may be better to conclude that this was just a bad idea, and get rid of this template. There are better ways to document Catholic theology and its views on other religious beliefs.--Srleffler (talk) 05:48, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm removing the following Modern era beliefs, which are not particularly related to Roman Catholicism and whose articles do not assert that the Roman Catholic Church has declared them to be heresies. If you want to add them back, per WP:V please provide a reference to a reliable source that establishes that the Church has declared these beliefs to be heresy.--Srleffler (talk) 06:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

• Anglo-Israelism
• Christadelphians
• Christian Zionism
• Jehovah's Witnesses
• Latter Day Saints
• Millerism
• Phyletism
• Sabbatarianism
• Seventh-day Adventists
• LaVeyan Satanism

--Srleffler (talk) 06:57, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Srleffler: I've been the one adding this to articles that are linked from it. I believe this should be transcended in all articles it links to to keep navigation WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. That being said, I agree with both of your concerns: POV and verifiability. Considering POV, of course this is a POV, but at least considering some of the topics listed here it is a significant POV that should be reported WP:YESPOV. What the largest Christian denomination says about Christian doctrines, and has said for hundreds of years in some cases, is a significant position. When reported, it should of course be referenced. I tried to look for some references, but this wasn't as easy as I imagined.

I propose a solution: instead of just removing this from articles that don't check out, also remove such articles from this template. That way we don't end up with seemingly unverifiable claims made by this template and don't run into the problem of unidirectional navigation. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:01, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

@Finnusertop: That's just what I did: I removed items from the template and removed the template from those articles. There is probably not a perfect one-to-one correspondence though: some articles didn't have the template transcluded.--Srleffler (talk) 16:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

On the POV issue, I notice that including this template on some of the modern beliefs' articles doesn't fit the guidelines at WP:NAVBOX:

1. All articles within a template relate to a single, coherent subject.
2. The subject of the template should be mentioned in every article.
3. The articles should refer to each other, to a reasonable extent.
4. If not for the navigation template, an editor would be inclined to link many of these articles in the See also sections of the articles.

The problem is relevance: whether the Catholic church happens to consider the Latter Day Saints to be heretics (for example) is not that relevant to the topic of Latter Day Saints. It's different from the case of Lutheranism, for example, where the fact that the Catholic Church labelled them heretics was very important to the history of the Lutherans.--Srleffler (talk) 16:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Too Western/Catholic-centric - Move proposal

Most if not all of these heresies condemned by the Catholic Church are also condemned by the Eastern Orthodox Church in totality. Can we move and modify this template to something like "Heresies condemned by Chalcedonian Christianity"? This site tends to be ignorant of "Eastern" Churches in general.--Sıgehelmus (Talk) ω 23:13, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Then we'd have to remove "Protestantism" and a few others which are also part of Chalcedonian Christianity. StAnselm (talk) 00:23, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Can we modify that then, or make a new general template for it? It's odd to read an article on Arianism for instance and then see the template like only the Roman Catholic Church opposes it.--Sıgehelmus (Talk) ω 01:19, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

See my complaint above. It may be better just to conclude that this template was a bad idea and discuss deleting it.--Srleffler (talk) 04:45, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe that I would go that far, honestly I've always wanted a sort of codex template for the laundry list of heresies out there. If it's the terminology that's concerning, I understand the intent but I believe that would cross out from the realm of practical reason into just obtusity. I believe an optimal template would include articles on heresies that basically oppose the Nicene Creed as a threshold (but include the theological doctrines per se and not churches today that may hold some sort of anti-Nicene belief, like Oneness Pentecostals for example).--Sıgehelmus (Talk) ω 00:08, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Can't see but that merely complicating matters. PPEMES (talk) 22:43, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Different naming issue

Some of these churches/groups self-identify as Catholic. As a result, to avoid confusion we must add "Roman" to the title to clarify that not all Catholics condemn the movements as heretical.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 20:48, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Think we need to add Mohammedans

I think we need to add "Mohammedans", but fear that if we do, it will be considered hate speech or something. In historical lists of heresy, they are nearly always mentioned as if they were yet another Christian heresy like Arianism. Of course this is a POV, but it was the Catholic POV, so this seems legit anyway. To be consistent we should add Mohammedans. Does anyone know what will happen if we do?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 20:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

You would need a reliable source showing that the church condemned this belief as a heresy. You would also need to link to Islam, not Mohammedan, since the latter article is about the word, not the religion. You're correct that this template documents the Roman Catholic POV. We could just as well have templates documenting beliefs considered heretical by Muslims and followers of other religions. As I suggested above, we could also decide that this template was just a bad idea and get rid of it. While it exists, though, I don't see a reason why Islam shouldn't be included if the Church's view of it is documented by a reliable source. --Srleffler (talk) 04:36, 9 July 2019 (UTC)