[Wikipedia-l] Re: MT and pro-Catholic bias

Tue Oct 21 23:33:13 UTC 2003

>James-
>
> > What I tried to achieve was a biographical article on MT that covered 
>both
> > her positive and negative image and reputations, with the massive detail
> > added in by Eloquence put in a separate page called [[Criticisms of 
>Mother
> > Teresa]]
>
>That was a clear violation of NPOV. We do not split away criticisms just
>because the person is question is considered a "saint" by some.

No-one ever proposed doing that, Eric. All that was done was that proper 
professional editing was done, with the detailed text that went into 
discussions that weren't about MT but about Christopher Hitchens' opinions, 
medical procedures, comments by an ex-nun from the Bronx being placed where 
it belongs, in a special article that can explore the topic without drowning 
a biographical article in minutæ that aren't specifically about the person 
the biography is supposed to be about.

Not that there is much point explaining that, as you have no interest in 
listening. But everyone else needs to know the truth.

>I tried repeatedly to reach consensus
>with you on this, you refused and insulted me instead (and still do).

So reverting edits to put things into the wrong tense again and again, 
deleting attempts to correctly centre text in captions, accusing everyone 
who disagreed with your 20K 'criticism' of censorship is your understanding 
of what 'consensus' is; 'put up with my 20K or I'll revert any edits you 
make!'
>
> > /Mother Teresa with Charles Keating, convicted of fraud in the Savings 
>and
> > Loan scandal and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Mother Teresa received
> > over a million dollars in donations from him, which she did not return 
>after
> > the conviction. She did, however, send a plea for clemency to Keating's
> > trial judge/
>
>That is a perfectly neutral description of what happened. There are plenty
>of precedents for having comprehensive image captions that do more than
>just say "Mother Teresa, left, with Charles Keating, right", e.g. [[Donald
>Rumsfeld]]. It should be possible for a casual reader to get the necessary
>information what an image is about and why it is reproduced by reading the
>caption. Take a look at any electronic encyclopedia that has space for
>captions, and you will notice that the exact same style is used.

There is this strange tendency when writing in a text that has an 
accompanying photo, to write in the text (See photo opposite). For some 
strange reason the rest of the planet tends to do that and doesn't feel the 
need to write half a book as a caption under every photo, all of it from one 
side of the argument.
>
> > Her (MT's) view that abortion is immoral even in cases of rape and 
>incest is
> > rigid even by Catholic standards
>
> > As anyone who knows anything about the teachings of various religions on
> > abortion, or who has followed the abortion debates for longer than 5 
>minutes
> > knows, the above view is the /standard/ RC view, not a right wing fringe
> > view.
>
>You keep repeating this, but it does not become any more true when you do
>so-- of course opposition to abortion and contraception is the official
>line of the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously, however, not every Roman
>Catholic in a position of power and influence shares that position. MT
>would have been in a perfect position to challenge papal authority on
>these matters, instead she contributed to this deadly campaign that is
>taking a toll among millions of people -- often by lobbying various
>governments for harsher laws against both abortion and artificial
>contraception. That is what the critics complain about, and that view of
>course needs to represented in an article about MT.

If you really believe that you know even less about Catholicism than your 
contributions to articles on the topic already suggest. Do you really thing 
70 and 80 year old cardinals would suddenly abandon their (IMHO) 
questionable theological views on sex because a woman, even MT, urged them 
to. And the more you write Eric, the more you come across, as one wikipedian 
put it, as someone presenting the case for the prosecution. That is not what 
anyone supposedly providing NPOV copy in an encyclopædia article is supposed 
to be doing. NPOV means Neutral Point of View. It isn't IGGMOI - I'm Gonna 
Get My Opinions In.

JT

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