Talk:Aloysius Stepinac

This statement might not be real

"Maintaining close links with a genocidal regime at the same time as making humanitarian interventions would preclude listing." Did they really state that? Did they forget Schindler, a German nationalist, spy, nazi and a saviour of more than a thousand Jews? Which makes me suspect that someone invented this sentence. Or someone with an amnesia spoke it. Also, if I am not mistaken, he was nominated by a survivor of the holocaust (if I am not mistaken). I have a feeling that he was not listed because of a lot of pressure that was coming from Belgrade...

Stella Alexander on Stepinac

On this page, there is an excerpt from the article written by Stella Alexander, but by reading the article, it can be seen that some of the sentences in this excerpt have been removed here without denoting it. In addition to that, the same article also clearly states the opposition of Stepinac to the ustaše on several topics tat fall under the political outlook which is supposedly mentioned here as described by Stella Alexander. With respect to that, I would have three questions: 1) Is there any reason for not including these parts as well? 2) Would it be OK to add them now? 3) Is there any reason for not including all sentences in the excerpt or at least denoting that some of them are missing? TheWikiBadger (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

I think I am going to add the missing sentences since it would be more correct, simpler than denoting, and it would give the full picture. Some other parts of the same articles that also fall under the same topic could also help to give a better understanding of her view so I will add them as well. Are there any objections to that, i.e., is there any reason why this article was only partially quoted? TheWikiBadger (talk) 15:06, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Census data

Do we really need two mentions of the census data? It is effectively a primary source, and I don't think we need to bash the reader to death with it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:11, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Supposed conversions of hundreds of thousands to Catholicism are mentioned twice (here, and again by citing Rogošić and Ramet), whereas the articles I cited, by a Hungarian demographer and a publication by the Catholic Church in Bosnia, show no evidence conversions in Croatia and Bosnia. Also Ramet is cited for supposed overall shifts to Orthodoxy in Yugoslavia in interwar, when Zerjavic shows that natural population growth in highly Orthodox Central Serbia was much higher than population growth in mostly Catholic Croatia and Slovenia, thus citing overall Yugoslav numbers on Catholics vs. Orthodox tells us nothing regarding the specific causes of these trends Thhhommmasss (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

It actually seems like a WP:OR violation, it would certainly be better to just find a secondary source that simply says the same. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:47, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

As mentioned above, both cited sources are secondary sources, which in turn cite census data as their source Thhhommmasss (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

No, the Hungarian text is not about Stepinac's claims, the page 171 cited in there is a generic table of statistics, one of which is presumably supporting the claim made in the article. I went to check the other one but I can't even find page 217 inside it, the PDF only has 17 pages and the internal numbering is 326-342...? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:28, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

The cited page in the Hungarian demographer’s book shows that from 1921. to 1931. the number of Croats in Croatia went from 2,374,752 to 2,641,144, i.e. an increase of 11.2%, while the number of Serbs went from 584,058 to 636,518, i.e a smaller increase of 8.9%. For the Bosnian figures part II of the work was wrongly cited, instead of part I. I will change that. Here's what page 217 of part I states: "Broj katolika je između 1921. i 1931. godine ukupno porastao s 444.431 na 557.836. Istodobno, broj pravoslavaca se sa 820.731 popeo na 1.028.723." Run the numbers and you will see Catholics increased by slightly higher percent than Orthodox Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:36, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Regardless, there is no valid reason to state this twice in successive paras. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 21:18, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

What is the valid reason for repeating 3 times the claims of mass conversions to Orthodox (once in one paragraph and then twice in next), when no evidence exists of same. Btw, for claims of Orthodox to Catholic conversions, the sources cite the Ustashe priest and functionary, Ivan Guberina, whom the Catholic Bishop of Mostar accused of publicly instigating violence against the Orthodox, and who made claims of 200,000 prewar conversions to Orthodox in 1943, following forced Ustashe conversions and genocides. After that, Stepinac cited the same numbers. The cited book on Mostar bishop Alojzije Misic, extensively quotes his writings, yet does not cite a single claim from him of prewar Catholic-to-Orthodox conversions, nor have I found any references to similar prewar claims by Stepinac, not even in his private diaries, which historians note the Croatian Catholic Church has used extensively and very selectively (i.e. they refuse to publish the complete diaries), to advance the case for his canonization. Certainly, the prewar Yugoslav regime was highly repressive, and favored the Orthodox Church (although they did not impose a state religion, unlike Italy where per the Church's Concordat with Mussolini, the state recognized and financed only the Catholic Church, banned Protestant meetings and publications, forced all Protestant and Jewish children to attend Catholic religious classes, etc. - Stepinac did not object to any of this, nor did he object to what he enthusiastically called creating "a Catholic state", i.e. the NDH where over 40% of populace was non-Catholic, via among other things, the total destruction of the Serb Orthodox Church, mass killings of Orthodox priests, etc). Claims of massive Catholic to Orthodox conversions cite these extremely biased sources, and WP:RS states biased sources should come with intext attributions of the source. These sources are as credible as claims by violently anti-Croat chetnik priests and anti-Catholic, nationalistic, Orthodox Serb bishops, who raise accusations against Croats and the Catholic Church, with zero independent proof Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:24, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the problem - the reader has to run the numbers to verify this. Is every reader supposed to be qualified to do so, without error in calculation or interpretation? This is the point of WP:NOR. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:15, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

For Croatia bottom part of table shows that as % of population, Croats increased by nearly 1%, while Serbs fell slightly in 1921-1931 (same is shown here). I can add same numbers and do calc for Bosnia (WP:CALC states simple calcs are not OR) But there are broader issues here. One is the misuse of Yugoslav-wide Catholic-Orthodox statistics by Ramet, who otherwise is an RS, since Zerjavic’s and other cited data contradict her claim this is a result of conversions. Then we have the highly-RS Tomasevich, citing 1943 claims by sources who on a 1 to 10 bias scale are 11s in terms of anti-Orthodox bias, with no independent sources backing up the claims. Ramet’s misuse of Yugoslav-wide statistics is commonly used by rightwing Croat sources to deny Ustashe genocides (i.e. they compare 1931 and 1948 census data showing there were quite a few more Serbs in 1948, “hence how could there have been genocide”), ignoring fact that per Zerjavic this is due to prewar much higher population growth in Serbia, while in Croatia proportion of Serbs drastically fell. Nationalists on both sides regularly cite highly-biased sources, including ustashe and chetnik priests, to make their claims. So these are practically object lessons on how NOT to get at the truth. So yes, per WP rules one can cite these highly dubious, by all indications flat-out wrong claims, since they are cited in otherwise RSs (Ramet and Tomasevich), but I’d like to see some way this could be addressed

One solution to the above is to cite the sources of claims, per WP:BIASED, i.e. “in 1943 the Ustashe priest, Ivan Guberina (whom the Catholic bishop of Mostar accused of making “threatening and bloody” public speeches against Serbs), and Stepinac claimed that…” An additonal solution would be to have something like a WP:COMMON SENSE rule – e.g. how likely is that prior to 1943, neither Guberina, nor Stepinac, nor anyone else in the Croatian Catholic Church, nor in the overseas nationalistic Croatian press, not even in the Ustashe press – none of them noticed these mass interwar conversions to Orthodoxy, but then for the first time suddenly “realized” there were such mass conversions in 1943, after complaints lodged at the Vatican, including by Croat members of the Yugoslav government-in-exile, of forced mass conversions of the Orthodox to Catholicism, along with other mass crimes against Serbs (Tomasevich cites the example of another such “sudden realization” - i.e. when Cardinal Tisserant in 1945 confronted the Ustashe-priest Dragutin Kamber about the 300.000 Serbs killed in the NDH, Kamber suddenly “remembered” that 60.000 Croats were killed by the Yugoslav government in interwar period, although no one from the Catholic Church, émigré or even Ustashe press noticed these mass killings before then) A WP:COMMON SENSE rule would be applied for discussion, to see if dubious claims made by otherwise Reliable Sources, should be included in articles, much less repeated 3 times. Many such dubious and flat-out false claims are generated by nationalists on all sides in former Yugoslavia, to create "alternative histories", in what some historians describe as "competitive victimhood", and thus also minimize or justify crimes commited by "their side" Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:57, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

References

Dubious claim

The intro states, "On 10 February 1960, still under confinement, Stepinac died of polycythemia and other illnesses he contracted while imprisoned". The cited source for this claim is clearly biased and not very authoritative - i.e. a Catholic website dedicated to Stepinac. Stepinac died in 1960., nine years after he was released from prison and confined to his home village of Krasic. As this article notes, after his release Stepinac was examined and treated by well-known American and German doctors, who indicated that aside from polycythemia (a surplus of red blood cells, which leads to clotting), he was in good physical condition. They cite no other ailments, nor that he contracted anything in prison, On his death the NYT quoted his personal physician, stating that Stepinac died from a heart ailment, while noting that Stepinac suffered from a blood ailment for years, and had twice been operated to remove blood clots

I suggest the quoted sentence be removed from the intro, else I will need to add this additional information which contradicts the claim Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:38, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It isn't a good quality source at all (in fact probably not sufficiently independent of the subject), certainly the NYT is a better one. I would replace what blessedstepinac says with what NYT says. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

References