Talk:Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence/Archive 2

Catholic League press releases

I'm not questioning that they had nasty things to say about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Of course they did. I'm questioning why we need to include an entire paragraph sourced only to self-published attack material. If this criticism wasn't picked up in reliable sources, we shouldn't be including it; merely having an opinion isn't sufficient to have that opinion included on Wikipedia. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The CL presents itself as a civil rights group tracking instances of Anti-Catholicism, and have labeled the SPI as a hate group. I think this should be mentioned as the CL is the largest (only?) group in the US that claims to speak out for the civil rights of Catholics and tracks anti-Catholic hate speech -- which in their view includes the SPI--Dudeman5685 (talk) 01:31, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Objections regarding the actions of the Catholic Church and simple abuse directed at Catholics are not the same thing. Judging by their reactions to criticism and parody, you would think the Roman Church were a feeble enclave of unjustly persecuted co-religionists, rather than a huge international organisation with wealth and influence.

Nuttyskin (talk) 17:27, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Sister's London Chapter

Hello all, I was planning on writing a section for the London Chapter of the Sisters, if that's all good to do. Recently stumbled across a short documentary on said group, which I think would be particularly useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tygerstiled (talk • contribs) 13:10, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Poor quality sources / religious self-published websites

This article currently has quite a few references that come from Catholic self-published websites. These likely do not meet the standards of WP:RS. Especially when controversies are being discussed, we should rely on high quality news sources, ideally Wikipedia perennial sources (WP:RSP), books by well-established publishers, etc. Just because a Catholic website is publishing an opinion, does not mean that this opinion merits inclusion in an encyclopedia article. Note: "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

Along the same lines, there is the use of a very old letters-to-the-editor reference, in which it is usually not made clear which letter is being referenced, and why the Wikipedia article would rely on a letter to the editor. Letters to the editor are not reliable sources for establishing the basic facts about a subject. At least one use of this source is also grossly misrepresenting it, claiming that the ADL made a certain statement, when in fact what is found in the short letter is just a short statement by one member of a local chapter of the ADL. This usage is very misleading. Hist9600 (talk) 04:23, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Certainly letters to the editor should be referenced individually. The ADL letter, presumably the one in 25 March 1999 letter page, is signed by the Assistant and Associate directors of the Anti-Defamation League San Francisco so is presumably an official statement by the local chapter and thus a bit more legit as a source on the SF ADL's view of the matter (though as we don't have the full context, it and the other letters probably shouldn't be used unless cited by a good secondary source). For the 1999 Easter street party and related controversy, there should now be some good scholarly secondary sources describing it that the editors can use; if not, the incident is probably not 'notable'. Looking at Wilcox 2018 which is a book on the organization written by a scholar (professor of religious studies, UC Riverside) and published by an academic press, it mentions the 1999 event as a comparison to the much smaller 1989 event. The author covers in more detail the mass at Most Holy Redeemer in 2007 where two sisters took communion from the archbishop and the critics responded loudly; an event this article doesn't cover at all. --Erp (talk) 05:37, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Criticism

I've been thinking about how best to restructure the article to weave positive and negative reactions etc into the overall article rather than having a WP:CSECTION, for the reasons noted at that page. And I realized that the current modular structure (and the fact that several subsections of the "criticism" section do, to their credit, at least mention positive as well as negative reactions) means that just dropping the empty top-level "Controversies and criticism" header and incrementing the header level of "Religious parodies" and (most of) the other subsections would be one easy improvement. (It also makes me notice how excessive the prominence being given to Sullivan's criticism is, currently given its own section of the article and formerly even added to the lead, when it'd be better placed into the section next to it that already discusses Hunky Jesus, or possibly (depending on how much weight his view is given in secondary sources) dropped altogether. -sche (talk) 09:58, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's best practice to avoid criticism sections, which tend to just pile on negative views about a subject. Better to integrate well-sourced criticisms from reliable, independent sources, into normal sections of the article. And of course, content should follow WP:DUE, so if there are not reliable, independent sources saying something, we should consider whether those specific criticisms need to be included in an encyclopedia article on the subject. Hist9600 (talk) 15:19, 31 May 2023 (UTC)