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

Wed Oct 22 09:35:49 UTC 2003

On 22 Oct 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> 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. You did
> not bother to write as much as an edit comment for your massive changes,
> let alone announce them in advance. I tried repeatedly to reach consensus
> with you on this, you refused and insulted me instead (and still do).

It sounds like perfectly POV to me. POV is to mention the pro and the con
sides, without giving preference to either. POV is not just about mentioning
facts. It is also about which facts to mention

> > /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.

To be honest, when I read this caption, my reaction would be - so what? Is
this really such an important thing that it belongs on the page at all, let
alone be repeated another time in the caption? And in my opinion it is the
Donald Rumsfeld caption that should be shortened, not the Mother Theresa one
that should not be.

> 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.

I disagree. Giving her view on abortion is probably on-topic, but saying
that others say she should have another opinion is not. Just like we do
not give the reasons for the American attack on Iraq in the [[Jacques
Chirac]] article.

Andre Engels