Is it bad judgment to hold a strong opinion about someone?

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fakename

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Basically am I or am I not judging a person if I hold only a strong opinion about them?

or does judging imply that we have certainty?

And yet we can’t have certainty about human acts so how can we judge people at all?

So my second question would be, what counts as “good enough” evidence for judging someone. I assume that things like proper witnesses, very very probable proof, etc. count.
 
We each are combinations of charity and sin.

We all are to judge the actions of other people for our own safety as individuals.

It is wisdom to discern the gray areas of the strengths and weaknesses in other people.

This wisdom however isn’t license to use your perceptions in unjust ways which harm the reputation of people (even thou they are or may be in sin).

As Fr. Valladares says here, “judge but don’t condemn”. Believe in the hope that people can and do repent.

youtube.com/user/EWTN#p/u/6/Vz1uerySdhs

Curse over to 15:30
 
You can judge that an action is good or evil. In fact, we are supposed to judge actions.

You can also tell that person out of love that it is evil, if you want.

The thing that you cannot judge is whether that person is doomed to hell or not. Only God can determine where a person will go when he is judged.
 
Barbkw said:
We each are combinations of charity and sin.

We all are to judge the actions of other people for our own safety as individuals.

It is wisdom to discern the gray areas of the strengths and weaknesses in other people.

This wisdom however isn’t license to use your perceptions in unjust ways which harm the reputation of people (even thou they are or may be in sin).

As Fr. Valladares says here, “judge but don’t condemn”. Believe in the hope that people can and do repent.

youtube.com/user/EWTN#p/u/6/Vz1uerySdhs

Curse over to 15:30
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Yes it is so.

It isn’t wrong to judge the actions of people as doing wrong or evil, it is a way for us to discern what is right and good, God ultimately is the judge of mans soul. Peace, Carlan
 
user "Carlan":
Yes it is so.

It isn’t wrong to judge the actions of people as doing wrong or evil, it is a way for us to discern what is right and good, God ultimately is the judge of mans soul. Peace, Carlan
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I would agree but for some objections: (1) people generally would say that hitler was a bad man, and not just a doer of bad actions. So are we wrongly judging hitler or not? (2) I think the Church regularly judges people’s souls or characters by means of testimonial evidence etc. and they seem to est. the guilt of those who break canon law. So is this practice somehow wrong?
 
Judgements about people and things are inevitable. It’s called an opinion and it’s an inevitable way the brain makes sense of and categorizes the world.
 
fakename said:
I would agree but for some objections: (1) people generally would say that hitler was a bad man, and not just a doer of bad actions. So are we wrongly judging hitler or not? (2) I think the Church regularly judges people’s souls or characters by means of testimonial evidence etc. and they seem to est. the guilt of those who break canon law. So is this practice somehow wrong?
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I understand what you are saying and it is the way a country’s juducial system works, and even so mistakes are made.That is why ultimately God is the judge of a man’s heart and soul.🤷:)Peace, Carlan
 
The problem is with how the word “judge” has been thrown around and is now used in place of “discern”, or “pay attention to you God-given emotions” or “listen to your conscience and make a wise decision based on your emotions about someone/thing + some critical thinking”.

We are supposed to evaluate things, consider things, and judge to an extent. The “judging” that we are not to do is judging someone as damned, or as less “good” that we are. But you “judge” in the other sense every time you make a decision. Whether or not to pick up a spoon, or whether or not a person is a safe person to be around, or whether an action they took was sinful or not…these are judgments you are free to make and should make.

Strong opinions about people are normally based on some facts, or on emotional cues that your body gives you. There is nothing wrong with having a strong opinion about someone, or holding on to it, as long as you don’t gossip, detract, calumniate, etc…and as long as you don’t let that opinion lead you to condemn that person in your heart or cause you to withhold forgiveness.
 
user "ahs":
The problem is with how the word “judge” has been thrown around and is now used in place of “discern”, or “pay attention to you God-given emotions” or “listen to your conscience and make a wise decision based on your emotions about someone/thing + some critical thinking”.

We are supposed to evaluate things, consider things, and judge to an extent. The “judging” that we are not to do is judging someone as damned, or as less “good” that we are. But you “judge” in the other sense every time you make a decision. Whether or not to pick up a spoon, or whether or not a person is a safe person to be around, or whether an action they took was sinful or not…these are judgments you are free to make and should make.

Strong opinions about people are normally based on some facts, or on emotional cues that your body gives you. There is nothing wrong with having a strong opinion about someone, or holding on to it, as long as you don’t gossip, detract, calumniate, etc…and as long as you don’t let that opinion lead you to condemn that person in your heart or cause you to withhold forgiveness.
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again, this is problematic, for hitler is considered evil and not just a doer of wrong actions, and lenin is considered to be evil and not just a doer of bad things. We imply that hitler is worse than us and the same with lenin or are they as good as you or better?

If you answer logically and say that hitler is just a doer of bad things or that lenin was not worse than you (in an agnostic sense of not judging character) then I’ll be astonished but I might be convinced if many people said the same thing. In common discourse though, this never happens and so I am left to shrug.
 
fakename said:
again, this is problematic, for hitler is considered evil and not just a doer of wrong actions, and lenin is considered to be evil and not just a doer of bad things. We imply that hitler is worse than us and the same with lenin or are they as good as you or better?

If you answer logically and say that hitler is just a doer of bad things or that lenin was not worse than you (in an agnostic sense of not judging character) then I’ll be astonished but I might be convinced if many people said the same thing. In common discourse though, this never happens and so I am left to shrug.
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You’re looking at the difference of what should be and what is. You are correct, that we cannot look at Hitler or Lenin and say, “they are evil and will burn in hell”. Instead, we must recognize that they are humans who did evil things. Their actions were evil, and could likely have caused them to reject Salvation, but we cannot judge their souls. Instead, we can pray for them.

And don’t be stuck on what people say. It doesn’t matter how many people agree or disagree, what matters is what Christ has taught us to be right. There will always be people who “judge”, in the Biblical sense (condemn a soul). But that does not change the fact that we are not to do it.
 
To ahs:

you’re more or less correct. My confessor told me that it is possible to sort of tell that someone is evil but it is not possible to tell that they’re going to hell or heaven. In general I’ll only judge actions.

But in connection with this, I think that we could judge hitler because it was so evident that he was evil. But we shouldn’t have judged him in regard to certain things that were uncertain (like him being gay or something) because that would’ve damaged his honor, the safe-keeping of which is what non-judgment is essentially ordained to for. In fact we should judge the better of him since it makes us better to do so, and it doesn’t endanger our intelligence.
 
Okay, I think I see what you are getting at.

If someone has a habit of doing bad things, you can make a judgment that the person is relatively bad in terms of behavior, because of the things he/she does, and use that judgment to help you make better decisions on how much influence you let that person have on you…until that person has stopped the bad behavior/shown a sign of changing for the better. Yet, at the same time, we can’t judge their soul or condemn them as being a worse person that we are, since we all are sinners. Is that what you are getting at?
 
The act of judging a persons actions is objectively moral. You have to add adjectives to the word “judge” before you get anywhere such as “rashly judge”. To rashly judge someone would be effectively immoral I believe, for sure in a subjective sense and also in an objective sense as well I think…
 
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