Talk:Catholic Church and politics

Name Change to Political Catholicism
This page refers to political application of the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. "Catholicism," when referring to the Roman Catholic Church (as it does here), is capitalized. Loyalprecision (talk) 08:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Capitalization issue has been fixed. And it only took three and a half years! Rinne na dTrosc (talk) 22:56, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 23 February 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: MOVED (non-admin closure) Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Political Catholicism → Catholic Church and politics – More suitable scope (as suggested already by top category Category:Catholicism and politics, while including current content. Also in similarity to equivalent articles, such as Christianity and politics, Judaism and politics, Catholic Church and science etc. Chicbyaccident (talk) 12:04, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Support on the basis of consistency and better natural title unless a reliable source can be shown referring to the "political and cultural conception" of Catholics engaged in politics as "political Catholicism". Shadow007 (talk) 15:00, 26 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Catholic Church changed its teaching on pluralism, human rights, and democracy
Yes, in theory, CC never changes its teaching, but in practice it does: "The case of Catholicism is equally revealing about the historical qualities of the connection between Christianity and democracy. It has already been pointed out that it took the Catholic Church nearly 200 years after the French Revolution until it reconciled itself, at the Second Vatican Council (1962�65), with the principles of democracy and human rights. The fact that the cause of democracy received particular support by Catholic clergy in Latin America during the 1970s (see Huntington 1991: 77�85) cannot obscure the fact that, both in doctrine and in organisation, the Catholic Church has been the historical antagonist to liberal democracy for much of Western modernity."

"The hostility of official Roman Catholicism’s papal magisterium to the liberal concepts of the rights of man as defined in the French Revolution’s creed, and to the liberal democratic state, is well known to all students of the period ... Rightly or wrongly, the central leadership of nineteenth century Roman Catholicism truly believed that religious liberty-a key plank in the platform of liberal democracy-would inevitably lead to religious indifference... These developments in Catholic social teaching and the Church’s theology have had significant effects “on the ground,” as papal teaching and Catholic reformist practice have, in a variety of locales, become a powerful support for the democratic revolution..."

(t &#183; c)  buidhe  23:42, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

You have to look at reliable scholarly sources and they all say that Catholic Church changed its position from being hostile to democracy and human rights to supporting it. That's a fact. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  23:43, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

In fact, the Catholic Church never opposed to democracy in general, but indeed opposed to liberal one (the issue is, according to the Church, that in liberal, positivistic democracy the people's will is considered the only source of law, while not takin in account laws of higher rank, such as natural law). The Catholic Church never opposed to the concept of human right, and rather defended these. One more thing: every Council doesn't revoke pervious teaching, but rather extends it. So the Church Magisterium is made up by all the Council and all the authorized papal doctrinal documents. Of course, there's opinion that the Magisterium actually is arbitrarily changeable, but is should be mentioned just as opinion, hence separatedly from article's core — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chronophobos (talk • contribs) 00:05, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * the Catholic Church never opposed to democracy in general, Reliable sources do not support this claim. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:16, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In addition, the above seems to be either a) your own interpretation of it (not a reliable source) or b) the church's position on the thing (which of course will try to justify it's positions in some way or the other; but we base our articles on independent analysis, not received dogma). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

But still, Church couldn't contradict to itself. For example: Your source is merely private opinion, but isn't official teaching of the Church. --Chronophobos (talk) 14:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Should This Article be Removed?
This article is extremely incoherent and seems to be a list of grudges and made-up claims about the Catholic Church (CC) and its role/influence in politics (in a general and non specific sense). It is over-broad, full of factual errors of the highest magnitude. The opening itself sets the tone of the rest of the article. It was clearly written by someone who has no knowledge of the history of the CC and its teachings. The part on concordats is equally telling as it portrays them as some sort of 'satanic' deals with totalitarian and fascistic regimes in which the Church keeps its power in exchange for supporting human rights violations. The lists of factual errors and obfuscations is overwhelming and I haven't even touched the surface yet.

For this article to have merit it would have to be re-written completely from scratch. It should start properly from the founding of Christianity, establish the proper doctrines like separation of Church and state, human rights, etc. Move through Roman persecution, Donatism controversy, Edict of Milan, Fall of Western Roman Empire, Councils in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, the so called Dark Ages, Reformation under Gregory the Great.... and this is just the bare background needed to present the conceptual framework of Church's doctrines on matters political through which the rest of the article can be understood.

The biggest problem is where to stop? Is taxation a political matter? If so then this needs to be touched on. Is slavery a political matter? This has to be included (on its own a huge topic), Human rights? Women's rights? Property rights? The list goes on. For this to turn into a proper article it would require a behemoth amount of work and effort. So far this article is far, far from that. It is just a list of petty and imaginary grievances against the Catholic Church and for this reason alone should be completely removed, as it creates a false and heavily skewed image of the Church and its role/part in politics. 83.8.221.63 (talk) 22:29, 28 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I have decided to take up the mantle of a reformer of this article, although my knowledge is mostly focused on the 20th century. I will try my best to expand the article with time and replace the anti-Catholic bits with sourced facts, without turning it into apologia either.
 * If you can spare some time, feel free to help, particularly on pre-20th century matters. If not, don't worry - I'll be gradually expanding this article with stuff I find. Brat Forelli (talk) 11:47, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * This is much appreciated friend, I'll also try to improve things somewhat. Tomorrow and tomorrow (talk) 23:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I've also put notices on some related talk pages asking if people there could merge some of that content into this Tomorrow and tomorrow (talk) 00:08, 2 May 2023 (UTC)