Talk:Catholic Church

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Agenda

Open issues

• Relations with Nazi Germany
• Divorce
• Cultural influence
• Slavery
• Human sacrifice
• Albigensian Crusade
• Inquisitions
• Talk:Catholic_Church/Origins
• Sexual abuse cases
  • I disagree that the sex abuse issue is closed. I think the article is now POV anti-Catholic since it does not mention how the Church implemented changes to prevent future abuse. NancyHeise (refraining from signing so this does not get archived by bot)

I disagree that many of these are considered open issues. No one is arguing most of them. I would keep "relations with Nazi Germany" open and "cultural influence" as well. I think that these issues are vastly understated in the article in a way that glosses over or significantly omits the good done by the Church in these areas. I have compiled a list of sources to improve the Cultural Influence section here [1] someone keeps eliminating it from this tray. Please do not edit my post - Thanks, NancyHeise (refraining from using signature so this section does not get archived by the bot)

Use --~~~ (three tildes instead of four) and your signature will not be timestamped and therefore the bot will continue to ignore this section when archiving.

Nancy, no one is arguing these issues because they have either disengaged from this article Talk Page or they are wrapped up in the silly and useless fight over the Tags. I am taking the initiative to reorganize things in a way that will hopefully allow those who are interested in various subtopics to discuss them without being distracted by the other foodfights that erupt on this page.

Nancy, you will find a link to your sources in this subpage: Talk:Catholic Church/Cultural influence.

--Richard S (talk)

Settled issues

• Catholic vs. Orthodox

modern persecutions of the Church

• I think the article fails the FAC criteria because it does not mention modern persecution of the Church. Please see the links below and consider how we can incorporate this important information. Thanks.
• Recently, Catholic churches and orphanages were burned and Catholics murdered by Hindus in India [2].
• There has been a decades long conflict between violent Muslim extremists and Catholics in the Phillipines [3] Catholic priests are targeted for violence by Muslim militants there [4]
• Iraqi Muslims have been blowing up churches (Chaldean Catholics are part of the Catholic Church) and murdering Catholics [5]
• Vietnam government is in a clash with the Church [6]
• China as a long history of persecution of Catholics and priests up to the present day [7]
• Africa persecutions are usually at the hands of Muslims this is just one story about one part of Africa but there are countless sources for this [8]
• Middle East - Here's one POV that should be included [9]
• We might even want to consider mentioning recent legislation in UK that many Catholics consider anti-Catholic such as the requirements that caused the Church to close its adoption services. Xandar might have more info on this kind of persecution - some might call it legal persecution.
• I am not sure but I think there is some kind of persecution of the Church in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and in Bolivia, maybe someone else here can research those areas. I know that there are some Muslim countries that do not permit Catholics to practice their faith - Saudi Arabia is one. These are pertinent issues that should be mentioned in a concise way if we want our article to be comprehensive. NancyHeise ^talk 05:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

NancyHeise ^talk 05:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, you've raised this before and as before I just don't see how we could include all this information in a NPOV way. Take one example that I'm familiar with living in Britain. You describe the withdrawl of the Catholic Church from adoption services here as the result of "anti-Catholic...persecution - some might call it legal persecution". It was the result of equality legislation requiring adoption agencies to consider potential parents on merit regardless of their sexuality. Gay and lesbian couples clearly do not share your interpretation of the change, seeing the previous situation as anti-gay legal discrimination. To be NPOV would require us to include a counterview on each of your nine examples which not only would take us back to a tennis match-style text but significantly increase the length of an article arleady tagged as overlong.Haldraper (talk) 08:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

There are other issues here too. The case of Iraq for example is, as far as one can tell - including from the source Nancy cites - not anti-Catholic but anti-Christian. In other cases the incidents may be reported in the west as religious, but actually be nationalist or ethnic in nature. Analysing these cases can be very difficult, and i would want better sources for the analysis than news reports. In any case, if it is anti-Christian, it does not belong in this article. I expect that may be the case for some of the other cited examples: the violence or persecution is not against Catholics, but against Christians or evangelicals (or, as i think might be the case in India, against any rival faiths). There might be a place for discussion of this in an article on contemporary Christianity, but not on the Catholic Church. hamiltonstone (talk) 10:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. The persecutioon (for whatever reason) of catholics is a very notable subject and should be included. Now it may be in some cases that (like Nigeria) muslims just attack any Christian Church, and as often or not it is a Catholic one. In Iraq the majority of Christians are Catholic, eastern or western. So the persecution, which is very real, falls most heavily on them. I believe figures show at least half the catholic population has had to flee since the invasion. Stating "this is anti-christian persecution rather than anti-Catholic persecution", is a bit like saying you shouldn't mention the persecution of Russian jews in that article, because they weren't persecuted as Russian jews, but just as jews. Catholics do suffer persecution for different reasons in many countries. I would however separate physical persecution, as in Iraq, Somalia, India etc, from, "harrassment"of the church as in the UK adoption, or some similar situations. Xandar 17:55, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The sources do not support Hamiltonstone's argument. Catholic churches, clergy and members were killed and/or persecuted on a significant scale and should be reflected in the article. If other Christians suffered or if Christians in particular were targeted, that can also go into the Christianity article. However that does not erase the fact of this Church's particular sufferings which are notable enough to be mentioned. NancyHeise ^talk 02:57, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Haldraper, responding to your point - I think we may want to consider mentioning the clashes between the Church's beliefs and the homosexual agenda that has led to the legal tangles described above. I think we could do this in an NPOV way and keep it to one sentence. NancyHeise ^talk 03:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Nancy, speculation on other people's "agendas" is the stuff of blogging, not of encyclopedias. There is no consensus on the matter; if there were consensus on each other's purposes, there would probably be no issue. Peddle your point of view somewhere else, and let the gay activists, with which we are also plagued, do the same. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• On the issue at hand, I see no evidence that the terrorists of Iraq bomb the Roman "Chaldeans" more than the Nestorian "Assyrians", or the handfuls of Iraqi Protestants. Indeed, they are probably attacked less than the rival sects of Islam. So also in the other cases. Go revel in self-pity somewhere else. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with Nancy that persecution of Christians should be relegated exclusively to the domain of another article. There are at least three categories of persecution of Catholics:

1. Persecution of Catholics qua Christians (i.e. they are not specifically targeted for their Catholicism but for their Christianity). In this case, it doesn't matter if the "majority of Christians in Iraq are Catholic". The point is that they are being targeted as Christians not as Catholics. Similar arguments might be made re persecution of Catholics in Somalia, India and Vietnam
2. Persecution of Catholics qua Catholics (e.g. persecution of Catholics by Protestants or Orthodox where the Catholics are being targeted specifically for their Catholicism)
3. Persecution of Catholics for reasons which are not primarily religious in nature (e.g. sectarian strife in Northern Ireland where ethnic and socio-economic class differences come into play). In other words, that conflict is not primarily religious in nature but pulls in a lot of other issues unrelated to religion.

IMO, we should mention persecution in categories 1 & 2 but we should make sure to differentiate the two categories so that the reader knows which ones are persecution of Catholics qua Christians and which ones are persecution of Catholics qua Catholics.

--Richard S (talk) 06:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding persecution of Catholics as Christians versus persecution specifically as Catholics. I think the distinction is largely on the basis of who is doing the persecuting. In other words other Christians persecute on the basis of denomination. religions outside Christianity are less bothered what denomination of Christian is being hit, since by and large they don't distinguish between Christians. However it is still persecution of Catholics because of their beliefs/practices. For example of Zoroastrians took over Iran and started persecuting Muslims, would it be worth arguing wheteher it was persecution of Muslims or persecution of Shias (the vast majority of Muslims in Iran)? Xandar 11:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Not that it matters, but when did the "Zoroastrians took over Iran" - the boot was on the other foot! And the Iranian Shia majority is a much more recent thing. Johnbod (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Some time in the first half of the first millennium BC, depending largely on your identification of Vishtapa. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:49, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Length and content

I saw that a length tag went up on this page. Two questions: "Is there a lot of text?" Yes. "Is this a big institution?" Yes. So from a practical viewpoint, it must be made clear which text could possibly be sent into exile without diminishing the value of the article. I do not see any section that can be deleted, but a haircut for the history section may be suitable. But that section is towards the end anyway, and does not get in the reader's way. I think for the tag to remain there a "practical suggestion" is necessary, else the tag should be removed. Each section in the article informs the user of some aspect of the Church, so no section can be deleted. The Church has a long history, so expecting the presentation of its history to be short enough to be written on a paper napkin is unrealistic. Yet, I personally find the history section somewhat long. My suggestion would be to agree to just trim that section by 15% to 25% and stop there. The reader who wants more history can read the history article. A related fact is that the history article gets about 20% of the number of visits of this article, so obviously many people are interested in history anyway. Another reason the article seems longer than it is, is that the notes and footnotes sections are huge. In fact that is a clear case of "footnote wagging the article". It seems that whatever text could not find its way into the article was relegated to "second class text" and went into the footnotes. That can, and should be seriously trimmed. History2007 (talk) 08:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the "length" tag is largely mischievous. Quite a few articles on big topics, and some on considerably smaller ones are of similar length, so while a marginal trimming is possible. I don't think much can be lost from the main text. Xandar 10:57, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not see how a trim can happen to any section except history. Any trim from other sections will lose information that is fully relevant. However, I think some of the details in the history section just make it hard to read, to the point that I have not even read that section in full. So if you want feedback on that section, I find it hard to read through and if anything a lighter version would teach more, since people may actually read it. As for mischievous motives within Wikipedia, I am absolutely certain that no such activities have ever taken place within the pages of this revered encyclopedia (wink). But when criticism is launched against an article, it often focuses on the "weakest points" (at times selected subconsciously) and in this case, it may have just reminded everyone of the fact that some of the longer paragraphs are just hard to read through. History2007 (talk) 11:37, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• This is a big institution; so are many.
• How many of them hsve articles of 200K? That's what subarticles are for.
• But we can reduce this monster of flab by reducing the moments of special pleading from every section.
• Those who defend articles they have not read really should consider take up other interests. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You have not made any specific suggestions. Unless you can spell out how the article can be subdivided without the loss of information, the tag is not applicable. And 200k includes footnotes and refs, so that is not the whole article. As fo my not reading the history section, that was my criticism not a defense of the article. For the article to be subdivided, some sections need to be exiled. Which do you suggest? I see none. History2007 (talk) 20:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• This page is full of suggestions, some of them mine.
• The problem exists, whether or not we agree how to solve it. (And no article is 200K in part because (like no article I have seen) this one is decorated with irrelevant citations which do not support the claims of the text. Taking them out is one of the most obvious fixes.)
• No section need be exiled; all should be trimmed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, now you have explicitly and clearly agreed that no sections from this article need to exiled. Yet the tag you placed requires that we "consider splitting content into sub-articles". Therefore:

• A: Since you have explicitly stated that no sections can be exiled, this article can not be separated into sub-articles.

• B: Based on admission A, the tag placed is not applicable and must be removed.

• C: The remedy you suggested is similar to my suggestion for a trim/haircut for some sections. I want a trim of the history section, you want an overall trim from all sections. But in any case, the remedy is not that of splitting the article.

The only way I see for the trim is a case by case suggestion for candidate sentences to be removed. It is impossible to remove every 12th sentence to achieve an overall reduction and each trim needs to be addressed in its own right. As I stated above, I also think that there are far too many footnotes, and there is a case of the "footnote wagging the article" here. However, they can not all be deleted at once. Therefore, please suggest which specific sentences you want to trim, and the editors at large here will address that. In the meantime, the tag that asks for the splitting of the article must be removed. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Please read WP:Summary style; shortening an article by use of subarticles does not mean losing sections; it means shortening sections.

The rest of this is mere dilatoriness. Be bold; if something is unnecessary, get rid of it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I read that, buy see no reason for the tag to be there and distract from the article. You have provided no specific suggestions. Hence I am justified in removing the tag. If that pleases you not, please contact an admin. History2007 (talk) 07:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason for the tag is to encourage editors, including those who pass by, to shorten this outrageously long article. (Distraction from this pile of unsourced blogging can only relieve the tired reader; but one or two small tags at the top are not adequate to the job.) Yes, removing it does displease me; but there is no need for an admin unless you revert-war. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

But given the situation on this page, it is clear that as Xander hinted, frustrations experienced from other edits are getting expressed as length flags. The flag is totally inappropriate. It must be removed. History2007 (talk) 19:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Frustrations at the biased text of this article are expressed by {{POV}}; that's what it's for. Frustrations at revert-warring for inaccurate text will be - if necessary - expressed by an {{accuracy}}. But this article would be too long if it were neutral, accurate and honest.

Does anyone respectable agree with History2007's campaign - or is this another version of we'll keep this article trashy but pretend it's worthwhile as long as it stays untagged? If so, History2007 should be banned: he himself admits that this article is too long, and is therefore acting against the interests of Wikipedia to make a point. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not think that this article is trashy at all. In fact, I think the article, except the history section, is really well written item - partly because it has been the subject of so much debate. I did not write any of this article, so I have no pride of authorship. But I do think that the constant debates here, coupled with the in depth knowledge of several unnamed editors does provide a very good representation of the Catholic Church. I do not agree with the mode of use of Roman within the article, as discussed at length before, but as far as the structure of sections and content goes, I think it is a credit to Wikipedia. I do see the history section as hard to read, as stated above, but I see no reason for throwing the article out with the bath water. As for anyone respectable agreeing with me, the measure of respect is, of course, within the keyboard of the beholder. History2007 (talk) 20:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You think this is well-written and knowledgable? Then yiou mark yourself as the sort of person who would think so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:35, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

If someone is unhappy about the level of the "knowledge" in an article, that should be expressed in its own right, not through a length tag. I do see this article as well written, but then what do I know, I have only created 200 article in Wikipedia..... I must be uninformed. History2007 (talk) 20:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

To repeat myself, the level of knowledge - and common honesty - is expressed by the {{POV}} tag; the length tag is - and was - about length. The defensiveness, and the assumption of hidden motives, mark the bad faith POV-mongeer; unless I receive an apology or retraction, I will treat Hiatory2007 and his edits as his actions warrant. When this revert-warrior goes elsewhere, we can get on with trimming this article, if possible; and tagging it, if not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Both tags are unnecessary. The POV tag refers only to claims about certain sections of the article, not the whole thing, and even those vague claims do not seem to be being actively and specifically discussed atm, by those who raised them. The length tag is also purposeless. We cannot remove large sections of the article, or turn it into an extreme summary article without sevcerely damaging its usefulness. PMAs primary motivation here seems to be to make endless negative and random comments about the article and its writers and to plaster the article with tags. Xandar 00:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Amen and thank you. But Pmanderson seems really upset on this page. Calm is needed to avoid a Myocardial infarction for any editors here. Which reminds me Xander... There is no link to Last Rites in this article: was that avoided because the section on Sacraments was "too long"? May be that should be expanded in case some editor here needs it administered electronically, last minute as the debate heats up (wink).... I will add alink for it now just in case... History2007 (talk) 07:18, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I am merely tired of dealing with false claims about my motives. I am restoring the tag - and anyone who removes it had better be prepared with a coherent and good-faith argument that 200K is not {{long}}. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It's usually more helpful to tag specific sections for potential POV issues than to tag an entire article of any significant length. That focuses the discussion on the specific issues where there may be a problem, which is ultimately necessary to get concrete improvement.EastTN (talk) 18:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Every section can be tagged; that is what general tags are for. The only way to get concrete improvement is to ban the True Believers from (at least) this article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It's quite unusual for every section in an article of this length to be non-neutral - that has been subject to as much work and debate as this one has. Turning to this article in particular, it has a number of "technical" sections that describe the structure and practices of the church (e.g., Catholic_Church#Liturgy_of_the_Hours, Catholic_Church#Consecrated_life, Catholic_Church#Devotional_life_and_prayer, Catholic_Church#Diverse_traditions_of_worship). We may not agree with Catholic doctrine or practice in those areas, but the text seems to do a pretty good job of neutrally reporting what the church teaches and does. That being the case, it creates needless drama to tag the entire article as biased. Doing that just provokes a reaction without identifying the specific sections or assertions that need attention. EastTN (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This sentence and various other things you have said about History2007 and others on this page show exactly what your POV is in editing this page. Anyone that disagrees with your tags is immediately labeled some label by you. Between comments you make about the article itself ("this pile of unsource blogging", "article trashy but pretend it's worthwile as long as it stays untagged") to comments about people ("mark the bad faith POV mongeer, unless I receive an apology or retraction, I will treat Hiatory 2007 and his edits as his actions warrant", "When this revert-warrior goes elsewhere, we can get on with trimming this article, if possible, and tagging it not." Show how much you need time off from this article. Repeatedly tagging an article does not help the article in any way. How about stop worrying about the tagging and worry about the editing? If you read through a majority of what is said by you on this page it is mostly you complaining about other editors or the page itself without being construcive. How about either taking some time off from the article period or at least taking time off from personal attacks or attacks on the article without specific suggestions as how to improve it. It has been said several times throughout the archives that the size of this article can be warrented both by the size of the organization and the fact that organization spans 2000 years. Very few other organizations have the history, world changing scope, etc. that the Catholic church has. Marauder40 (talk) 21:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Well Pmanderson, you also just entered the 3 revert zone. The rules regarding that are probably not too long, so please read them and refrain from further reverts. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 21:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for demonstrating your bad faith in public; I am nowhere near 3RR. Hopefully, this is the last time I should need to respond to you. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:36, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I will pray for that... I will pray for that... History2007 (talk) 23:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Pray rather for the courage to treat fellow editors decently. There is no "tag forever" campaign; there is a "tag until fixed" campaign. Get this article down to the size of comparable articles (Christianity is only 112K), and I will join in opposing one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Marauder40 that the time spent on inserting and reverting the tags is totally unproductive and, in fact, counter-productive. I think it's time to issue an RFC on the question. Depending on how the RFC comes out, the next step would be to propose an article ban on any editor who inserts or removes tags in defiance of the consensus of the RFC. (And, yes, I know that it's possible no consensus will emerge but we can burn that bridge when we get to it.) --Richard S (talk) 01:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

An Rfc takes a lot of time. I was going to do something, but will do later, namely get the size of each section. Once that is done it will become clear. Can you wait a day or two. It has already been admitted that:

• No section can be deleted.

So once we show the size of each section, the sole crusader who wants the tag will have to stop. For now, anyone who wants to remove the tag can do so anyway. History2007 (talk) 07:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

A red herring. Has anybody ever proposed deleting sections? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:55, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't follow your logic but you are welcome to size each section and make your case for whatever point you are trying to make. BTW, I actually agree with Pmanderson that this article is too long (especially in the History section but in a few other places as well). I also agree that there are some areas where there is a pro-Church POV bias (especially in the History and Cultural Influence sections). I just disagree with him as to the importance of placing tags that apply to the entire article. I think this whole fight over tags is an immense waste of time and energy and would propose a 3 month article ban of Pmanderson if a consensus supported it. (and this primarily on the basis of the tag war) Other sanctions might be appropriate for other misconduct (such as incivility).

However, all of my complaints are about his conduct on the Talk Page. He makes some valid points about the article content (though these are too often expressed stridently and hyperbolically).

--Richard S (talk) 08:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

One thing everyone will probably agree on is that this is a far more emotional topic than Woodworking, so often emotions run over logic, as has been the case of this "tag forever" campaign. Showing the size of sections will add some perspective. Anyway, let me do it and we will go from there. I think it will become clear that the 200k comes from notes and refs not the text. History2007 (talk) 08:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

And the notes are misleadingly elided quotations from sources that do not support the text. They are among the first things that should be cut back severely. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(<---) I have started attempting some tightening of wording, for the purposes of making the length shorter as well as the wording more declarative (reading better as well as hopefully attracting fewer POV objections). I hope it will not disrupt your section sizing, because each one will be a somewhat small edit.

I reiterate my plea that editors here comment on the content, not the contributors. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Baccyak4H wholeheartedly.

I think History2007 misinterpreted what Pmanderson said. I think Pmanderson meant to say "It is not absolutely necessary that entire sections be deleted. The real problem (from Pmanderson's perspective) is that there is too much detail in many sections and that the article could be shortened significantly if we go through the text line-by-line and remove the excess.

I endorse such an effort although my experience tells me that we are not likely to achieve more than a 5-10% reduction in size this way.

--Richard S (talk) 17:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What can go

• Elements of this traditional narrative agree with the surviving historical evidence which includes the writings of Saint Paul, several early Church Fathers (among them Pope Clement I)[45] and some archaeological evidence.

  This is weaselwording - and misleading. It refers almost entirely to one "element of the tradition", which is that Peter died in Rome - which is held by almost everybody (almost is a Scotch theologian who wrote an article on the position that he died peacefully in Galilee); the archaeological evidence is his tomb (which is some centuries later, and so, strictly, evidence of the age of that element of the tradition). That Clement was bishop (let alone "pope") is not one of these elements, and is unsupported by evidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

What's in the Pauline epistles that discusses the subject? I can't remember any references to Peter, except for the bit in Galatians (many years before his death) about eating with Gentiles. Nyttend (talk) 17:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

After consulting a Bible search tool, the only other references I can find are in I Corinthians, where (1) some Corinthians are talking about being partisans for Peter, and (2) Paul appeals to things Peter has done to say that he has the right to do them to. There's nothing in the Pauline epistles about Peter's death. Nyttend (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Forget the Bible. That's why it's called "church tradition". Some Protestants won't accept anything that's not in the Bible. Others kind of pick and choose out of church tradition. Bottom line is we're talking about the portion of the narrative that is based on writings of the Church Fathers. BTW, if memory serves me correctly, there's also nothing in the Bible about where and how Paul died either. We kind of assume he died in Rome but I don't think the Bible says that explicitly. --Richard S (talk) 17:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It does not say so explicitly about either of them; the Pauline epistles cannot. (The Books of Moses record Moses' death and burial; but this has for centuries been a major argument that they are so called because they are about Moses.) What the epistles attest is (from Romans) that Paul's assertions had weight among the Christians in Rome, and (confirming Acts) that Paul was later in Rome. The "tradition" makes much wider claims, which even Catholic historians are unwilling to assert as history. "Based on the writings of the Fathers" for much of this is like basing a pyramid on its point. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:26, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The archaeological evidence includes the discovery of Peter's tomb abd other archaeological references to Peter in Rome. Arguing about the traditional witness is pointless, since it clearly exists and is basically unchallenged by alternative accounts. Xandar 16:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Does Xandar read the threads to which he responds? What part of the archaeological evidence is [Peter's] tomb did he fail to understand? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Section sizes

Now that I understand what History2007's approach is, I figured I'd get the ball rolling by conducting a very top-level analysis of the article.

The following results are based on copying the article to MS Word and using its word count tool. Please note that the total character count in MS Word is about 20% lower than the byte count given by the WikiMedia software. My guess is that the discrepancy might be due to Wiki markup and other non-printing characters (e.g. image filenames).

Total article including Notes, Footnotes, References and other bottom material 25,057 words; 165,109 characters

Article text only excluding Notes, Footnotes, References and other bottom material 14,106 words; 92,403 characters

Notes only 1067 words; 6699 characters

Footnotes only 8,189 words; 54,153 characters

--Richard S (talk) 18:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I recommend User:Dr pda/prosesize.js for automating this tedious task. Results from that script:

• File size: 717 kB
• Prose size (including all HTML code): 181 kB
• References (including all HTML code): 292 kB
• Wiki text: 199 kB
• Prose size (text only): 80 kB (12995 words) "readable prose size"
• References (text only): 54 kB

—Quibik (talk) 18:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Here are some initial thoughts based on the above analysis...

The footnotes constitute 33% of the total characters in the article (54,000 out of 165,000 characters). With 441 footnotes and an estimated 50 characters per footnote reference on average, we would expect about 22,000 characters. I would guess that the remaining 32,000 characters come from extensive quoting in the footnotes. Removing the vast majority of quotes from the footnotes would probably yield somewhere between 20,000 - 30,000 characters from the page. However, WP:SIZE tells us that footnotes and other bottom material are not to be counted in considerations of article length. Thus, removing quotes from the footnotes makes page loading and page editing easier but it does not improve the readability of the article because most readers are likely to ignore the footnotes.

Accounting for the discrepancy between MS Word and WikiMedia character counts, MSWord's 92,403 character count for the article text should be adjusted to about 115,000. (Nah, ignore this point, WP:SIZE focuses on "readable prose")

Readers may tire of reading a page much longer than about 30 to 50 KB, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words of readable prose. Our current article text is 14,000 words.

This suggests that a reduction of 33-50% of the article text is in order. That would get us into the 7,000-10,000 word range.

My experience is that Wikipedia articles on substantial topics such as this one regularly break the WP:SIZE guideline. A more reasonable goal might be for us to try to get into the 10,000-12,000 word range (this represents a 15-30% reduction in article text).

As mentioned above, I think it would be hard to achieve more than a 5-10% reduction in the article text unless entire sections are deleted but I think it's worth a try. What we need is a disciplined effort to avoid mentioning everything under the sun just because it seems "important to somebody" or because it serves to defend somebody's "sacred cow". For example, the extended defense of Pius XII and the Church's conduct during WWII is not appropriate. Some mention of the controversy is appropriate but the detailed exposition is not. Many of these kinds of debates can and should be discussed in a subsidiary article.

It may be useful to continue this word/character count analysis on a section-by-section basis. I don't have time to do that this morning. I'll try to get back to it later.

--Richard S (talk) 18:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I did an analysis of the individual sections. Note that the units of measurement differ. For larger sections, these are expressed in kilobytes rather than bytes (a kilobyte is roughly 1000 bytes). Note also that the percent of article calculation was derived off of the word count.Karanacs (talk) 18:56, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Section	Prose size (text only)	Word count	% of article
Origin and mission	3023 B	496	3.9
Beliefs	12k	2078	16.4
Prayer and worship	10k	1728	13.7
Church org...	11k	1841	14.6
Catholic inst...	1443 B	234	1.8
Cultural influence	3337 B	488	3.9
History (total)	37k	5787	45.7

History section breakdown

Section	Prose size (text only)	Word count	% of history section
Early Christianity	1495 B	228	3.9
Persecution	1508 B	233	4.0
State religion	2068 B	335	5.8
Early Middle Ages	2295 B	517	8.9
High Middle Ages	5081 B	785	13.6
Reformation...	4111 B	631	10.9
Age of Discovery	4118 B	639	11.0
Enlightenment	3873 B	602	10.4
Industrial Age	4157 B	634	11.0
2nd Vatican	5939 B	916	15.8
Present	1619 B	248	4.3

My thoughts on the numbers alone: Given that this organization is approximately 2000 years old and has had such an impact on the western world, I would expect the history section to be about 1/3 of the total article length. We've overshot that quite a bit (especially considering that half of the "origin" section is also history, as is the cultural influences section). It also surprised me that 20% of the history section (about 10% of the entire article) is devoted to the history of the last 50 years. Note that the last 50 years accounts for only 2.5% of the Church's existance. These numbers very strongly suggest that the article has fallen victim to recentism. What other analyses can we do from this? Karanacs (talk) 19:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I am impressed, thanks for doing this. I was going to look at the numbers, but you guys did it pretty well. Basic analogy is this: Corporation A wants to reduce its budget and to do so, they need to know where to cut. In the real world most CEOs used to have only a vague idea of where the budgets were really spent. So these days they use a Decision support system or an OLAP server, etc. to zoom into the numbers. That was what I was planning to do and exactly what you guys started. Next step: drawing conclusions therefrom. Thanks again. History2007 (talk) 21:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Karanacs that, at nearly 46% of the article, the History section is way too long. I would think 25-30% would be adequate especially since there is History of the Catholic Church and many, many other subsidiary articles. If we could cut the History section by 25% to 33%, that would get us there.

However, I'm not 100% convinced about the argument about recentism. I would argue that the last 100 years or so (basically since Vatican I) are very important in understanding the Church today and that this last 100 years should probably constitute 20-25% of the article. The key areas to focus on are

1. Early Christianity
2. Persecution by the Roman Empire
3. Spread throughout the ancient world
4. Adoption as the state religion of the Roman Empire
5. Medieval Christianity
6. Crusades
7. Reformation
8. Inquisition
9. Age of Discovery
10. Modern era

Just off the top of my head, those are the major topics that come to mind as "must be discussed". As I've said before, hit the main points and leave the details and controversies for subsidiary articles.

--Richard S (talk) 22:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I completely disagree that we should spend so much time on recent events. Yes, Vatican II and its impact should be discussed, but I think that, at most, it should get the same amount of space as the Reformation/Counter-Reformation. In the grand scheme of things, the Reformation/Counter-Reformation had a much, much larger impact on the Church (and the world) than Vatican II. The article already discusses current beliefs and practices in their own sections. The history focus needs to be presented a balanced overview of how the Church has changed through time and what effect that had. When looking at the broader picture last 50 years are really not that revolutionary for the Church, it's just what many are most familiar with. Currently, I think the history section does a pitiful job at getting the core themes across and is mired in detail. I really think it will take a rewrite (and possibly more research) to put that section in the appropriate context. Karanacs (talk) 22:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

By the way, in this type of analysis there is need for one more column in the table, before decisions are made. The table now has "objective data" which corresponds to size. The next column is a subjective assessment of the importance of each section as a number between 0 and 100. Of course, there is no universal algorithm for the assignment of said subjective numbers, but they need to be assigned by some form of consensus, or else by executive decision. The numbers do not need to add up to 100. For instance, I would have said that "Beliefs" has an importance of 100 while "Church organization" may have an importance of 70 and "History" an importance of 60. So let us assume that Section X has importance i(X) and size s(X). Then to get the relative contribution we divide the size of the section by its importance namely: 100 * s(X)/i(X). For instance:

• Beliefs = 16.4 * 100 / 100 = 16.4
• Church org = 14.6 * 100 / 70 = 20.85
• History = 45.7 * 100 / 60 = 76.16
• Etc.

So the History section compared to Beliefs is much more heavyweight that may seem at first. These numbers can then be normalized as percentages for easier understanding. History2007 (talk) 22:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe that will be very useful or accurate. The data is subjective - it is unlikely in the extreme that any 2 of us will place the same number on any section. Even if we could, there is the further issue of the content within each section. For example, I think the origin and mission section, as an independent section, should go away. I would put the actual information in a different section. As another example, I think half the history section needs to be thrown out for being too detailed. Does that make the history less important? No, it just means it might not be presented well (in my opinion) at the moment. Karanacs (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I stated how it is done in the Fortune 500. This page may or may not be different... Now, I wonder if the Vatican uses an OLAP system to analyze donations... History2007 (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Corporate resources consist chiefly of money; words are not usually fungible - and when they are, they are scarcely worth keeping. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding another column showing the percentage of total to the breakdown table will help. For instance, High Middle Ages = 45.7 * 13.6% = 6.2 percent of the entire article. But the column should not be the last column, and just before the last. Looking at pre and post Reformation totals will also help, e.g. there is more on both pre and post Reformation history than on Beliefs. History2007 (talk) 05:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't 80k of readable prose the advised limit? And if so, we are already within it. As Richard says, I can't see us usefully trimming more than 10-15% of the article across the board without severely damaging content. I disagree that much beyond 10-15% can be trimmed from History. Xandar 16:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It would severely damage Xandar's advocacy and Nancy's apologetics; but these are advantages to the encyclopedia. There are other outlets for what they want to write. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Xandar, I'm not sure where you got 80k as the advised limit for readable prose. WP:SIZE (be careful, WP:size is something else!) recommends that pages have no more than 30K - 50K of readable prose, which is about 6,000 - 10,000 words. (Richard quoted this above.) At 80K, this article is therefore about twice as big as it should be in terms of readable prose size. Karanacs (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I am on Xandar's side on this, and I think guidelines are one thing, but common sense needs to enter the picture too. The scope of an article on Cricklewood is quite different from an article on the Catholic Church in terms of content and context. The Catholic Church can not be described in a long telegram. Guidelines are there, but common sense can always try to provide the "best information" to the reader. Now at the risk of getting the Cortisol level of certain "unnamed users" who like to place tags here and there it would not be far off to say that the motivation for some tag might have been what several people pointed out above, namely suppression of information about the Church. Cutting back too much on the article would be playing into their hand. I can not agree with that. History2007 (talk) 20:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a very large difference between "losing" information and presenting an article of reasonable size. WP:SUMMARY exists for a very good reason - users with poor Internet connections have trouble loading large files (I have a good internet connection and often have trouble editing this article), and user attention spans tend to be short. Because the scope of this topic is so broad - the Church has been an integral part of all kinds of stuff for 2000 YEARS, this particular article needs to display only a broad overview. The details can - and should - go in the child articles. It is very likely that we haven't come up yet with the right balance of child articles - maybe we need to create more, maybe we need to consolidate some. I'm not sure what the right answer is yet, but I am positive that this article is much, much too long and we need to do something. Karanacs (talk) 20:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, maybe we need to do X, maybe we need to do Y. But those solutions are untested and not clear who will do them, with what quality. I think an article in hand is worth 2 in the bush. And "we have to do something" is not always a good decision, sometimes sitting tight is the best decision [10]. Overall, all other options are likely to risk the DISRUPTION a really well written article. History2007 (talk) 21:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I think we can get too eaten up with the overall size of the article. 80kb of readable prose compares with the readable size of articles on other large topics such as Russia, the United States, World War II, or even History of the Han Dynasty. Very poor internet connections are getting less of an issue in an age when one JPEG picture can very often go above 200kb, and bitmaps hit 1-2MB. The over-all size can be reduced when we dispose of a lot of the large quotes in the footnotes when we do a general trim. We had a very good article at 140kb total size, and I think we can get back to that without too much drastic cutting. On summarry style we also need to remember that this article forms part of Wikipedia on disk, schools Wikipedia, and other media, all of which have fewer opportunities for linking to sub-articles, so the main information must be here. The other problem with sub-articles is as History raises, the extremely variable quality of many subarticles. The main history article is a case in point - which few of us had time to work on, with the problems on this article. Xandar 22:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Moreover, over time the article may grow back to where it is now anyway as users feel items that were trimmed need to be included. So all the heated discussion on trimming a lot may be forgotten in 6 months when a new editor reaches for the keyboard. A Vermeer was added yesterday all of a sudden and it does not say very much. I will go trim that now. But when I look at sections such as Beliefs or Organization, in most cases, each sentence found therein seems to have been added for a specific purpose, not just at random. And as anyone can see this talk page seems as long as the Long Island Expressway, indicating that discussions took place over most issues. History2007 (talk) 23:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Recentism

I generally agree with Karanacs re the recentism in the history section, and that it would be best if it were somewhat shorter overall. I thought Richard S's idea about key areas to focus on wasn't bad, but is headed toward whatever one wants to call the opposite of recentism. Given that there is Early Christianity and History of the Catholic Church, I would suggest his items 1 to 4 are just the one item, and that their length managed accordingly. As a person with limited knowledge in this area, i am inclined to agree with Karanacs also that reformation / counter-ref is more significant than Vatical II and post-V2 history, but that is a view formed just as an outsider without much information on the subject. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think a typical example of recentism in the history section is the following line "The Church also sponsors the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which provides the Pope with information on scientific matters and whose international membership includes British physicist Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureates such as U.S. physicist Charles Hard Townes." This is included under "Present" yet the Pontifical Academy was founded in 1936. The sentence should probably be moved to the industrical age section and changed to something similar "Starting in 1936 the Church started sponsering the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which provides the Pope with information on scientific matters." There are many more examples of this. Marauder40 (talk) 15:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

With respect, I think the problem with that sentence isn't primarily one of recentism but rather an over-indulgence in apologetics (a general tendency that has been pointed out by Pmanderson among others). The motivation behind this sentence would seem to be a desire to suggest that the Church is not "anti-science". I'm fine with making that point but this is not "history" per se, this should be discussed elsewhere. The sentence that Marauder40 proposes is an improvement but I would like to see it placed somewhere else in the article such as "Cultural influence". The real question here is whether the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is important to mention at all other than to serve the apologist agenda of defending against the "anti-science" charge. As I've said before, one problem this article has is a desire to stuff in text to defend against a whole litany of criticisms. This leads to the bloated article that we have now. We should create an article titled Catholic Church and science and have only a brief summary here that links to that article. --Richard S (talk) 16:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Richard I think you are starting to give in to the motive assignment that others on here are doing. Don't worry about why a line is here just whether something belongs or not. The line and other lines in the Present column can just as easily be there because someone found out what they thought was an interesting fact or something in the news and decided to put it in the article (i.e. the newly inserted line in the Present section on the Anglican outreach.) Over time it got modified to its current format. The History of why lines are the way the are should only be important in references to a previous FAR (or some other formal consensus discusion) if the line was specifically made that way due to a FAR. But I agree with you on that line probably shouldn't be there period. Marauder40 (talk) 17:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Heh, that required a healthy dollop of good faith. Sorry, but my ration of good faith is not quite that ample. I may not be as strident or uncivil as some other editors but I do have my opinions and I won't hesitate to call them as I see them. The main problem with the History section as I see it is the desire to include stuff to serve various agendas which, IMO, should be relegated to subsidiary articles. One of the most obvious examples is the whole discussion of Reichskonkordat/Mit Brennender Sorge and the Holocaust. That whole discussion should be reduced to a paragraph consisting of a few sentences. (NB: I personally believe that the Pius XII and the Church did a lot to help Jews in the Holocaust. My edits to other articles on this topic provide ample evidence of that. I just don't think we need to get into the topic that deeply in this particular article.) --Richard S (talk) 19:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Whether it's easy or not, assuming good faith is important. What looks to you or me as pure neutrality will all too often honestly appear, to people who disagree with us, as "agendas" and "apologetics". And we may be misjudging their motives as well - that's normal human psychology on both sides. We'll make much more progress if we focus on content rather than motive. There's been more than enough drama related to this article as it is, without our contributing any more. EastTN (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Being an impatient sort, I have created Catholic Church and science. The next step is to for someone to write a good summary of the topic and insert it into the appropriate place in this article. --Richard S (talk) 16:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

As we think about the new article, we should keep in mind the articles on related topics that already exist, such as Catholic Church and evolution, Relationship between religion and science, List of Christian thinkers in science, Faith and rationality and Science and the Bible. At the end of the day, we would like to have a coherent body of articles that make sense in context with each other. EastTN (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Lost in numbers

I think I must plead guilty to the introduction of too much analysis here regarding article size. I think it must be said that all the focus on the numbers should NOT distract from the purpose of the article, which is the "education of readers". Hence I think to balance all the number crunching here, another front needs to open, namely "what should the article teach the reader". My personal opinion is that the article is a VERY good introduction, except the long history section. A new reader with a non Catholic background should first be informed of a few things:

• Where did this Church come from?
• What do Catholic believe?
• How is it structured?
• What was its history?

And the article is already structured as such. So apart from the massive history section, the rest is really needed to inform the reader. And I think it is pretty well written. History2007 (talk) 20:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this should not turn into an exercise in statistics on text length. That analysis just gives us an idea of which topics we have the longest passages. If there are obvious anomalies we should fix them but we need not be slavishly bound by an analysis of the percentages. --Richard S (talk) 06:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Quality of writing

The purpose of our articles is not deciding how to "inform the reader"; that l is what leads to the production of propaganda, as it has here.

Does History2007 mean to praise such prose as This is held to be in fulfilment of, or is he supporting its general polemic dishonesty? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought you wanted to never respond to me again.... sigh.... I was hoping for that.... I am going to pray for that again..... History2007 (talk) 21:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is an obligation to respond to such programs when they are made an entire section. Otherwise some partisan would declare this opposition to basic policies to be consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's not get caught up in sparring over semantics here. Of course we're trying to inform readers - otherwise we wouldn't be writing an encyclopedia. By doing it through Wikipedia, we've all agreed to do it in as neutral a way as possible. The challenge is that we all have our own biases, and we need to work through the inevitable disagreements. Let's also try and back off a bit on the personal accusations. Statements like This is held to be in fulfillment of . . . may need to be qualified (e.g., This has traditionally been held by many Catholics to be in fulfillment of . . .), and we need to identify them. But accusing each other of bad faith and tarring the entire article as fundamentally biased doesn't help. We need to identify specific sentences and paragraphs and talk about them. Otherwise all we're doing is annoying each other. EastTN (talk) 22:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Please note that I choose This is held to be in fulfillment of as an example of the prose; it is not (particularly) POV - it is merely abominable writing, with its quasi-scientific passive and its unnecessary abstract noun. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Please, let's be more compassionate regarding writing style. The problem is finding different ways of saying "Catholics believe..." and "the Church teaches...". If, in an effort to avoid repeating those phrases umpteen times, an editor has chosen a locution that seems stilted, then let's fix it but let's at least understand from whence these locutions come. (or,more colloquially, "where these locutions come from"). --Richard S (talk) 06:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Since we are trimming the history section...

I've been reading some of this section. I hadn't realised just how bad it is. Duplicate sentences, unreferenced claims, stuff all over the place. Truly dire. Anyway, i'm working away at some of it, and i came across this:
"Some historians argue that for centuries Protestant propaganda and popular literature exaggerated the horrors of the inquisitions in an effort to associate the Catholic Church with acts committed by secular rulers.[313][314][315] Over all, one percent of those tried by the inquisitions received death penalties, leading some scholars to consider them rather lenient when compared to the secular courts of the period.[310][316"
As a lay person my immediate reaction is that this makes a ridiculous comparison between secular court outcomes, trying criminal matters, and the inquisition, which was a doctrinal investigation. The notion that a body is lenient because it puts fewer people to death for non-Catholic religious beliefs than for, say, murder or theft, is too bizarre for words. I propose that all the above quote be deleted. This would allow the bare facts to stand without such wierd commentary. Not to mention the added virtue of shortening the bloated history section. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
PS. Notes on the cited sources. There are three separate sources involved in these footnotes:

• One - John Vidmar (notes 310 and 315) - might best not be regarded as an independent source in this context - he is a Catholic university scholar, a dominican, and the particular source is published by a church organisation. As i have commented in other contexts, this would be OK for some facts, but not for an evaluation of how good or bad the chruch was during the reformation. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• A second - Edward Norman - is also a conservative Catholic scholar. Not an inherent issue - we should faithfully represent the range of views in general - but i think he is somewhat fringe on this issue. Consider this remark from a review of his book on the church: "Norman has boundless sympathy for his subject. This is not the place to look for an account of the decadence of the Borgia popes, still less the controversy over Pius XII's conduct during the Second World War. He even manages to shift the blame for the Inquisition by depicting it as a legacy of the 12th century Islamic heresy courts and insisting that it was far more enlightened than the secular courts of its time." We should not be oblivious to source POVs. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
• The third source- Morris - makes a much more cautious remark that does not warrant the interpretation currently laid out in the WP article.

Once again, i recommend deletion, not tinkering, and certainly not expansion to cover "the range of views". The place for that is papal inquisition or Spanish Inquisition. hamiltonstone (talk) 05:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

No it is Historical revision of the Inquisition, but there were squeals of outrage when I suggested a link there, so like other readers, you remain unaware of the article. Johnbod (talk) 05:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

You will find this section has been under discussion for some weeks - see above. I was supposed to be producing a new draft, which I did start but now seem to have lost, but this page is currently just too depressing to follow, & I lack the sources to reference the section, which has other issues - not making clear enough the different types of inquisition, for example. I think you misunderstand what the passage is saying: sometimes the inquisition imposed its own sentences, and sometimes it found them guilty and handed them over to the "secular arm" for sentencing. Heresy was at various times and places a criminal offence, and other charges were often involved; this is not very clear, I agree. The passage as it stands is not good, as has been pointed out before. Vidmar, and Norman, have been much discussed before; in this case I think they accurately reflects the fashion among modern historians to counterbalance older accounts of inquisitions. If there are duplicated sentences it is because the whole section has been buggered about so much; at one point it was at least all coherent, and considerably over-referenced imo. The inquisition is one of things the popular mind in the Anglosphere most associates with the medieval history of the Church, so I think it does deserve rather more space than a straight historical account might give it. Johnbod (talk) 05:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've already been admonished once for describing parts of this article as indulging in apologetics but I have to say that this is another example of what I've been talking about. I haven't read all of Historical revision of the Inquisition but I do at least agree with this sentence: "Because the inquisitorial process was not based on tolerant principles and doctrines such as freedom of thought and freedom of religion that became prominent in Western thinking during the eighteenth century, modern society has an inherent difficulty in understanding the inquisitorial institutions." This is why we need to discuss the Inquisitions with some nuanced detail. Not the specifics of each Inquisition but an expanded explanation of the historiography of the Inquisition. (i.e. an inclusion of the revised perspective discussed in Historical revision of the Inquisition)

However, I will point out that Historical revision of the Inquisition also says " Investigations usually involved a legal process, the goal of which was to obtain a confession and reconciliation with the Church from those who were accused of heresy or of participating in activities contrary to Church Canon law. The objectives of the inquisitions were to secure the repentance of the accused and to maintain the authority of the Church. Inquisitions were conducted with the collaboration of secular authorities. If an investigation resulted in a person being convicted of heresy and unwillingness to repent punishment was administered by the secular authorities."

Now let us look at the current article text which says "Over all, one percent of those tried by the inquisitions received death penalties, leading some scholars to consider them rather lenient when compared to the secular courts of the period." What does this mean? Are we saying that 99% of those tried admitted their heresy and recanted thereby escaping the death penalty? I fear that we are trying to provide an apology for the Inquisition as not being bloodthirsty like the Terror during the French Revolution and glossing over the use of interrogation, torture and the threat of the death penalty to coerce religious conformity. Sometimes a great lie can be told by telling a partial truth. This seems to be one of those situations.

I would prefer not to try and excuse the Inquisition in this particular way; it seems intellectually dishonest to me. I would prefer a more straightforward explanation of the social context of the Inquisition (along the lines of the sentence quoted above from Historical revision of the Inquisition which starts "Because the inquisitorial process was not based...") I think we just need to understand that religious conformity was considered far more important to peace and civil tranquility than it is today. If this is so hard to understand, consider that McCarthyism was a form of political inquisition and that was only half a century ago. The Communists had their own style of political inquistion as well. We are not so much more civilized than our forebears as we would like to think.

--Richard S (talk) 06:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Trimming this article

I re-read this article line-by-line and managed to reduce it from 203,000 bytes to 195,000 bytes (assuming no one reverts my deletions). I have to confess that many of the complaints that I voiced earlier turned out to have been addressed already. For example, the previously lengthy discussion of the Reichskonkordat/Mit Brennender Sorge/Holocaust has been reduced to 4 sentences. It's hard to see how that could be reduced much more.

I do see a little more trimming that could be done in the last section titled "Present". The mention of the "new ecclesiastical structures" to accomodate converts from the Anglican Church could be dropped. In addition, the very last paragraph which starts with "In politics, ..." could also be dropped.

Other than that, I really don't see much more that could be deleted except for a few sentences here and there.

--Richard S (talk) 10:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I think in the digital age worrying about a sentence here or there is just "worrying" with no real result, e.g. see the article yesterday [11] on how in the age of clay tablets every word could be worried about but these days, here now, gone in a few seconds.... An IP will come out of nowhere and change in 3 months anyway.... History2007 (talk) 12:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that trimming 10 sentences out of the whole article has very little effect on the total size of the article. My edits only reduced the article size by 4%. However, as I re-read the article last night, I could only find parts of one or two sections to delete entirely. Everything else was a sentence here, a sentence there.

Maybe I'm too much of an inclusionist and we need someone with a more radical deletion "knife" to excise more text.

What I'd like to hear from other editors is "Where do we cut?" Should we go after the lengthy quotes in the footnotes? This will cut total load time for viewing and editing but will not have any effect on the "readable prose" of the main article text.

I don't think it's worth going after the "Notes" section. If we removed all the Notes, we would only cut the article size by 8000bytes maximum and none of that would have been counted as "readable prose" anyway.

At this point, I think we need to move away from generalities and get down to "brass tacks" with nominations of specific sections and subsections to delete or trim.

--Richard S (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Open questions and concerns

I have outlined some open questions and concerns below. I'd like to hear what other editors think.

"Giving people his word"

In the section on Jesus, sin and penance, the article says "It is taught that Jesus' mission on earth included giving people his word and his example to follow, as recorded in the four Gospels."

Well, being a Catholic, I understand what this means and so too would any Christian who has spent any time in church or Bible study. However, to a non-Christian, "giving people his word" might be something less than comprehensible. First of all, my inclination would be to capitalize "his Word" as the colloquial meaning of "giving someone your word" is to make a promise. Is that what is meant by this sentence? I don't think so. I'm unclear as to what we mean to say here because "Word" has so much meaning overloaded onto it that I'm not sure if the original author meant "his word" or "his Word". For example, There is this huge discussion about Jesus being "the Word" (ho logos) and the Bible being the "Word of God".

I'd like to hear what other people think about this. The sentence needs to be fixed but I'm not sure how to do it.

P.S. Subsections 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 in the "Beliefs" section use a very florid style that takes on the tone of something that is either catechizing or proselytizing (i.e. it's what one might expect to find in catechetical material or in a proselytizing tract). It's not quite an encyclopedic tone. Any ideas on how to fix this?

--Richard S (talk) 06:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The English for logoi is "sayings", possibly "preaching". Check to see if this is a copyvio from a catechism.

As for Word, we can leave that to Christianity, unless we wish to assert that Catholicism reads the Gospel of Saint John differently than other Christians.

One of the endemic problems of this article is failure to remember that this is part of an encyclopedia, and what is important is to make sure that Wikipedia as a whole has everything notable and verifiable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sacrament of confirmation

In this section, the article says "Through the sacrament of Confirmation, Catholics believe they receive the Holy Spirit."

Once again, as a Catholic, I understand what this means to say. However, for a non-Christian, this could be read differently. What does this say about what happens between baptism and confirmation? Has the baptized but unconfirmed Christian received the Holy Spirit? I would say "Yes, he has but at confirmation the Holy Spirit endows the confirmand with a fuller understanding of one's faith and one's relationship to God and the Church".

Anyone else have an opinion on this sentence?

--Richard S (talk) 06:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

At least reverse it. Through modifies receive, not believe. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Liturgy of the Hours

Is this section really vital to this article? I would advocate removing the entire section. The Liturgy of the Hours is mentioned and linked to in the next section Devotional life and prayer --Richard S (talk) 07:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeh, being bold, I just deleted the section. If you feel strongly that it should be kept, revert me and then let's discuss it here. --Richard S (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought that was a good call. Happy with it gone from this article. hamiltonstone (talk) 23:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Consecrated life

I think the discussion of "Tertiaries and oblates" is excessive detail for an article of this scope and should be dropped. I would reduce the section to just the lead sentence and thus the last two sections of the "Consecrated life" section would now read:

Tertiaries and "Oblates (regular)" are laypersons who live according to the third rule of orders such as those of the Secular Franciscan Order or Lay Carmelites, either within a religious community or outside. The Church recognizes several other forms of consecrated life, including secular institutes, societies of apostolic life and consecrated widows and widowers. It also makes provision for the approval of new forms.

Comments?

--Richard S (talk) 08:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I was bold and made the proposed edit. More trimming could be achieved by dropping even these two sentences. --Richard S (talk) 10:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Early Middle Ages

I hesitate to ask this because the answer will probably make the article longer but here goes anyway...

The article text reads "The consequent estrangement led to the creation of the papal states and the papal coronation of the Frankish King Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans in 800. This ultimately created a new problem as successive Western emperors sought to impose an increasingly tight control over the popes."

There are dots that are not connected here. How exactly does the estrangement "lead to the creation of the Papal States"? Also why does the papal coronation of Charlemagne lead to the problem of successive Western emperors seeking to impose control over the popes?

I think I know the answer to the second one. Once the pope claims the right to crown the secular ruler, then secular rulers seek to control the pope to make sure he crowns the "right" secular ruler. However, this is not obvious to someone who is not already familiar with the history of that period. We need to spell it out for the average reader.

--Richard S (talk) 09:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It led to the pope acting as an independent sovereign, with the assistance of the Kings of the Franks; Pippin conferred (much of) the Papal States on the Roman See. Need more dots? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, but the dots are so weakly linked that I think this bears more discussion. Here's the relevant passage from the article...

From the 8th century, Iconoclasm, the destruction of religious images, became a major source of conflict in the eastern church.[261][262] Byzantine emperors Leo III and Constantine V strongly supported Iconoclasm, while the papacy and the western church remained resolute in favour of the veneration of icons. In 787, the Second Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of the iconodules but the dispute continued into the early 9th century.[262] The consequent estrangement led to the creation of the papal states and the papal coronation of the Frankish King Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans in 800. This ultimately created a new problem as successive Western emperors sought to impose an increasingly tight control over the popes.[263][264]

Now, I'm not an expert in this or any other period of Church history but the problem I see is that the above text suggests that the Papal States were created and Charlemagne was crowned as a consequence of the estrangement between the East and West over the theological dispute over iconoclasm. This is sort of true but in a very indirect way.

What I found interesting is that the creation of the Papal States are actually not mentioned much in History of Christianity or History of the Catholic Church. It isn't until we look at History of the Papacy that we see a discussion of how the Papal States were created by the Donation of Pepin. This is is almost Rashomon-like in the way the same period is described in different ways by different articles with an important event (the creation of the Papal States) being omitted in two of the four major treatments of the period.

Moreover, this article makes it sound as if a theological dispute over iconoclasm led to the creation of the papal states and the coronation of Charlemagne. I'm sorry but this really sounds strange to me. As far as I can tell from reading History of the Papacy and the Donation of Pepin, what was really going on was geopolitical in nature rather than theological.

I don't doubt that theological differences contributed to the estrangement of East and West but, as far as I can tell from reading the Donation of Pepin, the real issue is the fact that the Lombards conquered the Exarchate of Ravenna, the main seat of Byzantine government in Italy, whose Patriarch held territorial power as the representative of the Eastern Roman emperor, independent of the Pope. So, to counteract the Lombards and to avoid paying tribute to Aistulf, Pope Stephen II goes to Gaul and talks to the Franks.

Pepin the Short agrees to help and also agrees to give the Roman Pontiff a sizable chunk of territory which forms the beginnings of the Papal States. None of that narrative is presented in this article.

I know we're trying to shorten the article so I am not proposing that we go into this in great detail but I think we need a more accurate summary than the one currently presented in the article.

--Richard S (talk) 09:09, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Present

The last paragraph of the article reads as follows:

In politics, the Church actively encourages support for candidates who would "protect human life, promote family life, pursue social justice, and practice solidarity" which translate into support for traditional Christian views of marriage, welcoming and support for the poor and immigrants, and supporting those who oppose abortion.

First of all, this is sourced to the USCCB and therefore we have no proof that this is the position of the whole Church. Also the source is effectively a primary document. A secondary source would be preferable.

However, those points are just a question of sourcing. My real concern is that whether this should really be the last paragraph of the article and whether it is that important to mention as part of the description of the Church in the present. To warrant keeping this paragraph, I think we would have to show that there is a deliberate increase in involvement of the Church in politics across multiple countries (e.g. in the U.S., Canada and Europe at least). Even then, it seems like an abrupt way to end the article.

--Richard S (talk) 10:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It also is a drastic simplification of the Church's long and conflicted interaction with democratic politics, which now (although not in the past) includes an active opposition to priests running for elective opposition. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:38, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I got rid of the sentence. It might be worth presenting this info but I think we need a fuller exposition of the relationship of the Church to governments. --Richard S (talk) 09:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment: You've been doing a great job trimming the fat on this, Richard! I'd love to help out but there's an individual or two whos edits make my blood pressure surge. Keep up the good work!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 14:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

My comment is that you are doing a great job, but now the section may be to short. Need some things that the church is doing at present but doesn't smack of recentism. Not sure what those things are yet. Probably need to define "Present" as either 2000 - current or maybe say 1980s - Present (1980 was arbitrary picked as a year that gave Vatican II time to stabilize since there is an entire section on Vatican II.)Marauder40 (talk) 14:50, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

What next?

Thanks for the kudos but my problem is... I'm pretty much done and all I've managed to trim is 10,000 bytes from a total of 203,000. Anybody have ideas on what we should do next? --Richard S (talk) 15:57, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a whole paragraph on missions in California which is way too detailed for this article (especially considering the poor job the article does in general on missions in the Americas). I've been trying to get this taken out or modified for years now. Karanacs (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

A quick list of other things we could cut

• Eucharist is too detailed and likely can be trimmed

I'll take a look at this one.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• devotional life and prayer seems not to need an entire section - I suspect that most of this can be moved to a sub article

trimmed it back and put it in appropriate section

• There is much too much info on the English Reformation
• The whole paragraph on the dissolution of the Jesuits is uncited and may be too detailed for this article

I say lose it, see below "Age of Discovery"--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• The French Revolution info is probably too detailed

I say lose it--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• Does Benedict need to be mentioned in the history section or can he just be mentioned in the discussion of Popes? If we need to keep him in the history section, then I think the only thing we need to say n the history section is that he was elected in 2005. The present section in general can be axed and the one line on Benedict moved into the "Second Vatican Council and beyond section"

I second this! Present can be axed!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

• The section on Vatican II is too long. I think there is too much detail on liberation theology, and too much on the sexual revolution and other Church rulings on sex and its consequences.

I would say lose paragraphs 3 and 5 altogether.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:53, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Karanacs (talk) 16:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Disagree with Mike, the South American missions and reductions are important and need to be included. The same goes for some modern history, and the Liberation Theology issue. I certainly oppose drastic elimination of entire referenced sections of the article. There is a BIG difference between trimming of excess verbiage and detail, and the butchery of whole sections, some of which are there in the first place as a result of complaints and objections to their exclusion. Let's take it SLOW, and reduce wordage through tighter but balanced coverage of the issues, without eliminating significant referenced content. Xandar 00:42, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Eucharist section

Eucharist

The Church holds that Jesus Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper

See also: Eucharist (Catholic Church), Catholic liturgy, and Sacraments of the Catholic Church

The Eucharist is celebrated at each Mass and is the center of Catholic worship. The Words of Institution for this sacrament are drawn from the Gospels and a Pauline letter. Catholics believe that at each Mass, the bread and wine become supernaturally transubstantiated into the true Body and Blood of Christ. The Church teaches that Jesus established a New Covenant with humanity through the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. Because the Church teaches that Christ is present in the Eucharist, there are strict rules about its celebration and reception. The ingredients of the bread and wine used in the Mass are specified and Catholics must abstain from eating for one hour before receiving Communion. Those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden from this sacrament unless they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance). Catholics are not permitted to receive communion in Protestant churches because of their different beliefs and practices regarding Holy Orders and the Eucharist.

That seems much clearer to me and will probably be more accessible to non-Catholics. I like the proposal. Karanacs (talk) 17:57, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. There is an entire separate piece on Eucharist which can and should include the greater detail.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 18:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I restored the sentence on the continuity of the Eucharist, which I believe to be important. Xandar 00:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, then maybe it doesn't belong in the Eucharist article if it's covered here? Mever mind, that article is written worse than this one.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You restored this: "In its main elements and prayers, the Catholic Mass celebrated today, according to professor Alan Schreck, is "almost identical" to the form described in the Didache and First Apology of Justin Martyr in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries.[132][133] ." That may be the only "fact" I have issue with in this whole piece. It is not almost identical, that is one man's take on it and it applies undue weight to his point of view. Even if I concede and say, it's "factual enough for wiki" it belongs more in the Mass section than in the Eucharist section. I still doubt that Justin Martyr saw clipped haired former female gym teachers in pants suits distributing the precious blood to folks in cargo shorts while the presbytyr sits in the chair and watches this all go on.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the restored text about the Mass today being "almost identical" could be deleted and presented in a subsidiary article on the Eucharist or the Mass. It's an important point but not necessarily for this article.

In addition, I would delete these two sentences : "The ingredients of the bread and wine used in the Mass are specified and Catholics must abstain from eating for one hour before receiving Communion. Those who are conscious of being in a state of mortal sin are forbidden from this sacrament unless they have received absolution through the sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance)." This is excessive detail and does not need to be presented in this article. It belongs in the Eucharist (Catholic Church). --Richard S (talk) 05:03, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Age of Discovery

This seemed to run on and repeat itself unnecesarrily.

Just before the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453, in an effort to combat the spread of Islam, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal the right to subdue and even enslave Muslims, pagans and other unbelievers in the papal bull Dum Diversas (1452). Several decades later European explorers and missionaries spread Catholicism to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands to Spain and Portugal and the ensuing patronato system allowed state authorities, not the Vatican, to control all clerical appointments in the new colonies. Although the Spanish monarchs tried to curb abuses committed against the Amerindians by explorers and conquerors, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, openly rebuked the Spanish rulers of Hispaniola in 1511 for their cruelty and tyranny in dealing with the American natives. King Ferdinand enacted the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid in response. The issue resulted in a crisis of conscience in 16th-century Spain and, through the writings of Catholic clergy such as Bartolomé de Las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria, led to debate on the nature of human rights and to the birth of modern international law. Enforcement of these laws was lax, and some historians blame the Church for not doing enough to liberate the Indians; others point to the Church as the only voice raised on behalf of indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World.

In 1521 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan made the first Catholic converts in the Philippines. Elsewhere, Portuguese missionaries under the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier evangelized in India, China, and Japan. Church growth in Japan came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians or Kirishitan's. An underground minority Christian population survived throughout this period of persecution and enforced isolation which was eventually lifted in the 19th century. The Chinese Rites controversy led the Kangxi Emperor to outlaw Christian missions in China in 1721.

Strongly disagree. Removal of material on Latin American missions would severely disable the articles usefulness and comprehensiveness. This is an article on the WORLD church. Xandar 00:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

This section should not rate more than 2 paragraphs, if it even belongs here. Strip it down, summarize it and see what happens, is it not covered in Catholic Church and the Age of Discovery?--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The thing is that this article needs to be balanced and comprehensive, which means covering significant events and issues in proportion to their weight as covered by the sources. I'm not opposed to concise coverage, but there needs to be enough to make sense. As I said before, this article is not just available on web wikipedia but is distributed in other forms where link articles may not be available. Xandar 01:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I would be inclined to keep most of the above-quoted text except for the discussion of Christianity in Japan and China. (i.e. keep the sentence about Francis Xavier but drop the sentences following that one). As an Asian with ties to both countries, I am personally interested in both but, given our desire to trim the article, I think the details should be presented in subsidiary articles that we link to. --Richard S (talk) 04:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Xandar restored text in the "Age of Discovery" section with this edit. I am inclined to keep the discussion of the Amerindian missions but I would remove the material about the Jesuit reductions and the suppression of the Jesuits. --Richard S (talk) 05:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

How far is too far?

It seems that various sections are getting trimmed quite rapidly now. The trims seem ok in many cases, but I feel the trend is about to result in a starvation diet - not a great thing. I think it is still the history section that needs trimming, not elsewhere. History2007 (talk) 21:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, the history section needs trimming to almost non-existence because there is already an article solely on the history of the Catholic Church. Just take a look at other comparable articles. If a section of it is big enough for it's own article, then the section gets cut to little more than one sentence, referring people to the other article. That's what it should be here too. This article is about what the Catholic Church is anyway, not how it came to be what it is.Farsight001 (talk) 22:00, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes. There needs to be an "overview of history" but clearly it is too heavy now, as the stats above show. E.g. Council of Constance, formation of San Francisco & LA (really? like LA is a major Catholic hub these days?) are probably not relevant. But I think the trimming elsewhere should probably stop until the history section is reviewed and trimmed, then an overall assessment can take place. History2007 (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm just trying to trim the fat, the bulk of what I trimmed was either repeated elsewhere in the article or non-essential to the point of this article and covered elsewhere on wiki. The page actually loads quicker now.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but much fat remains in history. History2007 (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I'll take another look at it.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Are we not all on board with this? What good is it to edit out fluff and non-essentials better covered elsewhere if it keeps getting put back in? Reminds me of this neighbor I had named Seamus, he was a packrat, type you'd see on Hoarders. Basement and garage packed so full of crap, his wife hired a dumpster and paid 4 guys to clean it out when he went fishing for a weekend. He came home from fishing, didn't make a scene, but calmly took every last piece of junk from that 18 yard dumpster and placed it back in his basement. I am not removing essentials, but trying to edit this ungodly mess, summary-style. --Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:11, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh fuck it. Good luck, I'm outta here!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:13, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a BIG difference between a TRIM (ie keeping the range of coverage in the article, while reducing the verbiage and excess detail), and Butchery - ie removal of major referenced sections of the article covering extremely important events and issues. Some people seem to be confusing this. A trim requires care, effort and compromise. Removing major areas of content, developed over years and months without full agreement is just not on. Xandar 00:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Butchery is a term used by people with problems of ownership.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. If an article has been assembled by a large number of people over years, often in response to suggestions, complaints, compromise and debate, someone coming in and just chopping whole sections because they think they are irrelevant, is not going to be happily received. Do the same on USA or Russia and you are likely to get a poor response. Xandar 01:31, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Reformation Section

Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Main articles: Protestant Reformation, English Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and Catholicism and the wars of religion

The Protestant Reformation began as an attempt to doctrinally reform the Catholic Church from within. Catholics reformers opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice — especially the teaching and the sale of indulgences, and simony, the selling and buying of clerical offices — that the reformers saw as evidence of the systemic corruption of the church’s hierarchy, which included the Pope.

In 1517, Martin Luther included his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences. Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into a large and all encompassing European movement called the Protestant Reformation.

Whitby Abbey, England, one of hundreds of monasteries destroyed during the Reformation

The English Reformation under Henry VIII began more as a political than as a theological dispute. When the annulment of his marriage was denied by the pope, Henry had Parliament pass the Acts of Supremacy, 1534, which made him, and not the pope, head of the English Church. Henry initiated and supported the confiscation and dissolution of monasteries, convents and shrines throughout England, Wales and Ireland. Elizabeth I, {second Act of Supremacy, 1558} outlawed Catholic priests and prevented Catholics from educating their children and taking part in political life.

The Catholic Church responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which became the driving force of the Counter-Reformation. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation, and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. It made structural reforms, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and laity and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia. New religious orders were a fundamental part of this trend. Orders such as the Capuchins, Ursulines, Theatines, Discalced Carmelites, the Barnabites, and especially the Jesuits strengthened rural parishes, improved popular piety, helped to curb corruption within the church, and set examples that would be a strong impetus for Catholic renewal. Organizing their order along a military model, the Jesuits strongly represented the autocratic zeal of the period. Characterized by careful selection, rigorous training, and iron discipline, the Jesuits ensured that the worldliness of the Renaissance Church had no part in their new order.

To popularize Counter-Reformation teachings, the Church encouraged the Baroque style in art, music and architecture.

Toward the latter part of the 17th century, Pope Innocent XI reformed abuses that were occurring in the Church's hierarchy, including simony, nepotism and the lavish papal expenditures that had caused him to inherit a large papal debt. He promoted missionary activity, tried to unite Europe against the Turkish invasion, prevented influential Catholic rulers (including the Emperor) from marrying Protestants but strongly condemned religious persecution.

Not bad as a condensation. However the work of the Jesuits and Teresa of Avila need to be in here too. Xandar 00:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

No, it's excessive detail that belongs in a separate article. Most of the stuff in these sections does. I do not disagree with much of what is being said (the tone may have an apologetic ring to it at times, but it's at the very least 90% accurate), but all of that extraneous stuff makes this piece excessively long and about as boring as a dog's ass. I think the separate individual articles need to be improved, with much of what has been put in here. This piece is simply too long and despite what I am sure are the best intentions of the editors involved, it does not do any service to the Church by being so unweildy. It needs to be summarized, there is too much unnecesarry detail. The byproduct of this is an article which does not inform because it cannot engage the reader. If you really want to improve this article, the key is to improve the seperate pieces and use the lede from those, here. Or just ignore suggestions from people who want to improve it...go and edit war, go through RFC's, take the personal attacks from snarky creeps, and scratch your head when this is still a B-Grade article 4 years from now.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Well hopefully we can get it concise and comprehensive. The foundation of the Jesuits is a HIGHLY significant event though. Xandar 01:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Xandar wrote "the work of the Jesuits and Teresa of Avila need to be in here too". The work of the Jesuit missionaries is mentioned in the "Age of Discovery" section. I am going to copy a couple of paragraphs from Counter-Reformation. It may be too long but let's discuss it and see what is really important to say.

Without taking away from the importance of Teresa of Avila as a saint and "Doctor of the Church", I don't see why it is important to mention her in the "History" section. --Richard S (talk) 01:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Frequency of "Catholic" & "Church"

I wanted to comment that I personally find the considerable frequency of the words "Catholic" and "Church" very tedious. I have removed some completely unecessary repetitions in the past but believe the article would read much better if the use of these two words could be significantly reduced. If any editors feel the same way and up to the task at present I would encourage them to do so. Afterwriting (talk) 05:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Liberation Theology

Xandar restored the section on Liberation Theology with this edit.

I agree with Xandar that it is important to mention Liberation Theology but perhaps a more concise description could be drafted.

Here's the original text:

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Church in Latin America gave birth to liberation theology, a movement often identified with Gustavo Gutiérrez who was pivotal in expounding the melding of Marxism and Catholic social teaching. A cornerstone of the Liberation Theology were ecclesial base communities, groups uniting clergy and laity in social and political action. Although the movement garnered some support among Latin American bishops, it was never officially endorsed by any of the Latin American Bishops’ Conferences. At the 1979 Conference of Latin American Bishops in Puebla, Mexico, Pope John Paul II and conservative bishops attending the conference attempted to rein in the more radical elements of liberation theology; however, the conference did make a formal commitment to a "preferential option for the poor".[394] Archbishop Óscar Romero, a supporter of the movement, became the region's most famous contemporary martyr in 1980, when he was murdered by forces allied with the government of El Salvador while saying Mass.[395] In Managua, Nicaragua, Pope John Paul II criticized elements of Liberation Theology and the Nicaraguan Catholic clergy's involvement in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) have denounced the movement.[396] Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by advocating violence or engaging in partisan politics.[397] Liberation Theology is still alive in Latin America today, although the Church now faces the challenge of Pentecostal revival in much of the region.[396]

I would reduce this to:

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Church in Latin America gave birth to liberation theology, a melding of Marxism and Catholic social teaching which united clergy and laity in social and political action. Although the movement garnered some support among Latin American bishops, it was never officially endorsed by any of the Latin American Bishops’ Conferences. In Managua, Nicaragua, Pope John Paul II criticized elements of Liberation Theology and the Nicaraguan Catholic clergy's involvement in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) have denounced the movement.[396] Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by advocating violence or engaging in partisan politics.[397] Liberation Theology is still alive in Latin America today.[396]

In particular, the mention of the "challenge of Pentecostalism" is a bit of a non sequitur here.

--Richard S (talk) 05:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I like the condensation, however I have tweaked it as follows, since the 1979 declaration has been considered significant by commentators.

In the 1960s, growing social awareness and politicization in the Church in Latin America gave birth to liberation theology, a melding of Marxism and Catholic social teaching which united clergy and laity in social and political action. Although Latin American bishops voted in 1979 to make a formal commitment to a "preferential option for the poor", the movement itself was never officially endorsed by any of the Latin American Bishops’ Conferences. In Managua, Nicaragua, Pope John Paul II criticized elements of Liberation Theology and the Nicaraguan Catholic clergy's involvement in the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) have denounced the movement.[396] Pope John Paul II maintained that the Church, in its efforts to champion the poor, should not do so by advocating violence or engaging in partisan politics.[397] Liberation Theology is still alive in Latin America today.[396] Xandar 23:20, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Present

Xandar restored the "Present" subsection in the "History" section with this edit.

Below is my sentence-by-sentence analysis...

"The Pope remains an international leader who regularly receives heads of state from around the world."

I dunno. This seems trite to me. This isn't "history", it's about the Pope. Put it in that article.

"As the head of the Holy See, he occasionally addresses the United Nations where the Holy See is the only non-member observer state with all the rights of full membership except voting."

Same point as above. Put it in the article on the Pope and/or the article on the Holy See.

"The 2005 election of Pope Benedict XVI saw a continuation of the policies of his predecessors. His first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) discussed the various forms of love and re-emphasized marriage and the centrality of charity to the Church's mission."

I would be OK with keeping this.

"Following outcry from Muslims over Pope Benedict's Regensburg address, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor's remarks critical of Islam, a May 2008 summit between the pope and a delegation of Muslims came to an agreement that religion is essentially non-violent, and that violence can be justified neither by reason nor by faith."

This is debatable. It's definitely an example of recentism but we could keep it.

"In October 2009, the Vatican announced the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to receive Anglican converts to the Catholic Church."

Definitely recentism. We don't know if this will ultimately amount to anything important.

" The Church also sponsors the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which provides the Pope with information on scientific matters[214] and whose international membership includes British physicist Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureates such as U.S. physicist Charles Hard Townes."

As previously argued, this isn't "history". Why is this important other than as a rebuttal to charges that the Church is anti-science? If that is the motivation, then let's do a better job and discuss it in "Cultural influence" or somewhere else other than in the "History" section.

"In politics, the Church actively encourages support for candidates who would "protect human life, promote family life, pursue social justice, and practice solidarity" which translate into support for traditional Christian views of marriage, welcoming and support for the poor and immigrants, and supporting those who oppose abortion."

Seems to me this needs some balance. After all, it's not as if this "active encouragement of support" is uncontroversial. Also, as I said previously, this is U.S. centric. Unless we can document that this is an international phenomenon, then this belongs in Catholic Church and politics in the United States.

--Richard S (talk) 06:10, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

On the Holy See at the UN, there is already a separate article, Activities of the Holy See within the United Nations system. -- Bonifacius 07:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the pre-present section from VaticanII onwards is pretty long too. There are ALL kinds of details here, e.g I just trimmed the names of 2 physicists who report to the Pope! Hello? We are fighting over space here and does it really matter which physicist gets a blessing? I think the Regensburg address is also a storm in a tea cup that is best forgotten. History2007 (talk) 09:19, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

On that note, someone reverted and put back the physicist names, I see no need fo rthem. I also added 9 characters as a link to Mariology and that was objected to - petty bickering really. I think a link to the general concept of Mariology is appropriate when Mary is discussed for those who arrive on this page need to just get familiar with the term. History2007 (talk) 09:49, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Richard, I agree with your point about the structures created by the Vatican for defecting Anglicans. I said it at the time it was added, as I remember in a tide of enthusiasm from Xandar and Yorkshirian that some 'stray sheep' may be 'coming home'. I think it would be better to wait until some actually do. Regensburg could definely go now as well. Haldraper (talk) 18:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Haldraper, your memory seems to be short-circuiting. I would love to be directed to the post where I sais that stray sheep were coming home.

Richard, going through your points

1. The sentence regarding the pope as an international leader is important as a summation of a historic review that brings us up to the present. Without it, we are left in limbo as to the current situation.
2. Addressing the UN could go, or be merged with the sentence above.
3. I agree with keeping the Deus Caritas est sentences
4. I'm unsure about Regensberg. It is not perhaps a big an event as it seemed at the time, however Catholic/Muslim conflict/relations remains an important ongoing issue around the world, and mentioning it in some manner seems advisable.
5. New structures for Anglicans. Again, it is a significant development in church terms.
6. Pontifical Academy. I would agree to moving this to Cultural Influences.
7. Political support for pro-life, family life etc. candidates is pretty worldwide in application, and quite a significant matter, since these issues (abortion, euthanasia, minority rights etc) engender a lot of anti-Church opposition and conflict. Xandar 23:03, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

re point #1 ("the Pope as international leader"), I would be OK with the text if we present his current status as "international leader" in the context of the past 130 years (since Vatican I and the loss of the Papal States). My original reaction was, "Yawn, so what... that hasn't changed in the last 40 years since I became a Catholic". However, if we consider the turmoil of the first half of the 20th century (loss of Papal States, WWII, secularization of the West, etc.), it is certainly remarkable that the Pope is still relevant today. John XIII, Paul VI and John Paul II are responsible for keeping the Catholic Church relevant (in different ways). Of course, we would have to find a reliable source that says this. Can anyone help?

Re point #3 "Deus Caritas est", I could keep it or lose it. I think it would be better to have a longer paragraph about Benedict XVI in general (what seem to be his objectives, what's he done, what are his plans) and not focus on "Deus Caritas est". Partly, because when I read our article on it, I find it boring. Is it notable for anything other than being Benedict's first encyclical? If we don't mention every encyclical ever issued, then why do we mention this one? Just because it's Benedict's first one and we don't have anything else interesting to say?

Re points #4 & #5 Instead of focusing on Regensberg and the new structures for Anglicans, why not write a paragraph or section on interfaith relations. We have an effort to reach out to the Muslims (after the Church pissed them off), efforts to reach out to the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and a move to accomodate defecting Anglicans. Really, all this is an extension of the ecumenism of Vatican II. Which is not to say that the Catholic Church has exactly the same approach to interfaith relations now that it had in the 1960s. Presumably that has evolved. What we need to do is to explain how it has evolved. If we could find a reliable source that synthesises these various interfaith relationships into a single analysis, that would be great.

Re point #7. you wrote "these issues (abortion, euthanasia, minority rights etc) engender a lot of anti-Church opposition and conflict." Yes... but we don't say that. We also don't say that much of the anti-Church opposition and conflict is precisely because of the involvement in politics. There are many (including some Catholics) who would assert that separation of Church and state suggests the Church should not meddle in imposing its moral standards on others via the legal system (of which politicians are a part) and via excommunication and withholding of the Eucharist. IMO, if we are going to mention this "political support" bit, then we should reword it to present what the whole phenomenon is and how it is received instead of throwing out this one innocuous little sentence which, while true, runs the risk of "telling a big lie by telling only a partial truth".

--Richard S (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The Final Conclave

When I was in college (and now I'm dating myself), I read a book by Malachi Martin entitled "The Final Conclave". In this book, Martin describes the tension between the liberal/progressives and the conservative/traditionalists in the Church. Written in 1978, Martin's thesis was that the selection of the next Pope would be driven by this battle for the soul of the Church.

Well, here we are 32 years later, and we can look back and see how things have played out. Neither side has completely won although my personal take is that the conservatives have been more in the driver's seat than not. Liberation theology has definitely been smacked down.

The shift towards the conservative end of the spectrum is the work of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

What's my point? We don't really talk about this battle for the soul of the Church except that we do mention liberation theology and the traditionalists but the way the end of the history section is written, those issues could be considered by the reader as no more important than Regensberg and "structures for defecting Anglicans".

I think the Catholicism of the 1990s and the 21st century has a different face from the Catholicism of the 1960s in a bunch of different ways. Use of the vernacular in the mass, fewer white Europeans as a percentage of the whole, not so militantly leftist or even progressive, a focus on sexuality and its attendant moral issues, issues regarding adequate supply of clergy.

Now, the above is OR but I think we can find reliable sources who analyze the past quarter century or so of Church history and come up with a very similar list.

This is what I think the end of the article should be about instead of degenerating into a bunch of disconnected bits of recent news that lacks any unifying theme.

NB: In what I wrote above, I am not necessarily in favor of the conservatives or the liberals despite some indications of what my personal position might be. For the purposes of this article, I'm more interested in describing what happened than in advocating that one side should or should not have won.

--Richard S (talk) 01:18, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Canada and Other Countries on Sex Abuse Cases by Catholic Priests

Editor Farsight001 reverted my edits adding links to wiki links to articles on sex abuse cases in Canada and other jurisdictions. This editor has previously reverted edits on Catholic sex abuse cases by replacing words confirming the problem is world wide with words suggesting it is limited to a few jurisdictions. See for example this edit by Farsight001:
# 08:44, 31 December 2009 (hist | diff) Catholic sex abuse cases ‎ (Undid revision 335070820 by Sturunner (talk)rv pov edits re-added with no explanation given. take to talk first)
203.129.49.145 (talk) 05:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)