Talk:Catholic Church/Archive 47

Interfaith dialogue
I see nothing in the article about interfaith dialogue, and I'm sure the Church has done quite a bit of work in this area. I expected to see something about it in the lead, and found nothing in the body of the article. What is the reason for this glaring omission? Viriditas (talk) 00:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The purpose of this article is to serve as a (relatively) brief "introduction" to the topic of the Catholic Church, which will then direct people out to more specific pages based upon the links contained in it; as such, I don't think that that the omission is "glaring." I'm not certain that this should be mentioned in the lead, although it might deserve a sentence in the Contemporary subsection, which links out to the Interfaith Dialogue page.  What does anyone else think? Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Definitely not in the lead, but a sentence in Contemporary linking to the full article sounds good. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really see a point in putting this information in this article - althought it may well be appropriate in a child article. Yes, the Catholic Church has dialogued with other religions and other denominations.  Most of them do this.  Has there been any significant impact from the Catholic Church's participation? Karanacs (talk) 14:39, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The Catholic Church has been a major proponent of interfaith dialogue in the 20th century, and several of the Popes (including but not limited to John Paul II) have been noted by a variety of outside sources to have been loud voices for interfaith dialogue. This seems to be born out in the Interfaith Dialogue article; I am not suggesting mroe than a sentence and a link, at most, under the conntemporary subsection. Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with Viriditas and Vercingetorix08. There should be a mention of Interfaith dialogue.  Karanacs asks if there has been any significant impact from the Catholic Church's participation.  That would be hard to quantify.  Some people might argue that the interfaith dialogue consists of "photo ops" and panels of theologians writing nice-sounding but empty statements which are released every few years.


 * If Karanacs is looking for clear steps towards reconciliation, she would be justified in being skeptical. The only clear impact that I know of is the decision regarding the Uniate churches which basically said that Uniatism is wrong but that existing Uniate churches should be left alone and not abolished or otherwise harassed.  (Actually, I think there's also been some common statement about marriages between Catholic and Orthodox but my memory of the details are a bit fuzzy.)  On the other hand, dialogue with the intent to understand where two sides share commonalities and how they differ where they differ can only be considered to improve relations and to be superior to the absence of dialogue.


 * If one considers the history of active enmity and outright hostility over the last 500-1000 years, a spirit of ecumenism is a welcome breath of fresh air. That it has taken longer than 50 years to accomplish so little is a question of the glass being mostly empty or "at least not dry".


 * --Richard S (talk) 16:06, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, another impact that is difficult to quantify is that Catholics now know that they are not supposed to be anti-Semitic --Richard S (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all your comments. The lead section (introduction) for the Roman Catholicism article in the Britannica says: "As a world religion among world religions, Roman  Catholicism encompasses, within the range of its multicoloured life, features of many other world faiths; thus only the methodology of comparative religion can address them all."  While this doesn't address the issue directly, it sets the stage for considering the importance of ecumenism and interfaith dialogue between the Church and other religions.  In several different articles, including one on the church since Vatican II, another on the modern papacy, and an article on Islam and religion in 2001, the Britannica writes:


 * "The pontificate of John Paul II, one of the longest in history, left a profound mark on the church and the papacy. A charismatic and beloved figure, John Paul traveled more than all other popes combined, played a crucial role in the collapse of communism in Poland and the rest of eastern Europe, canonized numerous new saints, and made great strides toward interfaith dialogue with non-Christians. He established formal and full diplomatic relations with Israel and sought greater reconciliation with the Jews and Judaism; he was the first pope to worship in a synagogue, and he made a historic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he prayed at the Western Wall. (From Roman Catholicism, The church since Vatican II)"


 * "In accordance with Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church officially abandoned its “one true church” position and formally ended the thousand-year schism with the Greek Orthodox Church. It also entered into ecumenical conversations with other churches with the hope of establishing greater Christian unity. The church has assumed observer status in the World Council of Churches and has participated in groups associated with the World Council. Representatives of the church participated in the discussions sponsored by the World Council that led to the publication of the important document Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (1982), which identified areas of agreement between the churches on several core teachings; the church responded positively, though with qualification, to the text. Steps to improve relations with non-Christian religions were made at Vatican II and by the popes of the later 20th century. The council's declaration Nostra aetate (October 28, 1965; “In Our Era”) rejected the traditional accusation that the Jews killed Christ, recognized the legitimacy of Judaism, and condemned anti-Semitism. Efforts at improving relations with other religions, especially Judaism, were pivotal to the papacy of John Paul II, who prayed with world religious leaders in 1986, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and prayed in a mosque and a synagogue. (From The modern papacy)"


 * "Pope John Paul II became the first pope to enter a mosque when he toured a 1,300-year-old Islamic house of worship in May in Damascus, Syria. He was greeted at the Umayyad Mosque by Mufti Ahmed Kuftaro, Syria's top Muslim cleric, and the pontiff urged joint forgiveness by Christians and Muslims for all the times they had offended one another. In September the pope arrived in Kazakhstan, a predominantly Muslim state in Central Asia, with a message of good wishes for Islamic leaders. Dato Seri Mahathir bin Mohamad, the Muslim prime minister of Malaysia, told 600 Christian leaders from 82 nations attending the 11th General Assembly of the World Evangelical Fellowship in Kuala Lumpur that “we should be careful that we don't propagate religions at the cost of conflicts and violence.(From Religion Year in Review 2001, Interfaith Relations)"


 * One of the best places for mentioning interfaith dialogue is in the Industrial age or contemporary sections. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 20:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Viriditas, we will be having an RFC to ask participants which form of the article they prefer, either the current one that omits various important issues like the one you are asking about or a longer article that includes those issues seen here . The article linked here was the form of the article for several years and was just tossed on March 9th in favor of the current form by a disputed single day straw poll that produced a near split decision. Because this issue is still contentious, we are initiating the RFC in a day or two. As a long time Wikipedia editor I am interested to know which form of the article you prefer and why.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 23:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, Nancy. Could you remove the above message and confine it to the appropriate thread on this topic, which you have already responded to above?  Replying twice to two different threads about one topic is not recommended.  I will be happy to address the above points when you move/merge your duplicate response back into the appropriate thread.  Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 05:21, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Removed per your request. Not every visitor to this page reads the stuff way at the top, I was not sure you would go back or read what appeared to be a closed section so I posted it here as well. Thanks.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 23:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll respond to it in a moment. Based on the link you gave above, this is all I could find in the previous version:
 * "Christian unity became a greater priority. In addition to finding more common ground with Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church has again discussed the possibility of unity with the Eastern Orthodox Church. (from 'Second Vatican Council and beyond')"


 * "Like Pope John Paul II, he has continued Vatican efforts to improve relationships with other Christian denominations as well as with other faiths. (from 'Pope Benedict XVI and Catholicism today')"


 * Did I miss anything else, Nancy? Viriditas (talk) 10:00, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * See the Industrial Age section after World War II paragraph.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Incarnation and the Virgin Mary
NancyHeise has complained about the current text regarding the Virgin Mary complaining, among other things, that it makes Mary sound as if she were equal to God.

Here's the current text:


 * In an event known as the Incarnation, the Church teaches that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature when Christ was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ is believed, therefore, to be both fully divine and fully human. It is taught that Christ's mission on earth included giving people his teachings and providing his example for them to follow as recorded in the four Gospels.[167]


 * The Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God is held to possess infinite dignity.[168] Mariology deals not only with her life but also her veneration in daily life, prayer and Marian art, music and architecture. Catholic beliefs concerning Mary include her Immaculate Conception without the stain of original sin and bodily Assumption into heaven at the end of her life, both of which have been infallibly defined as dogma, by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and Pope Pius XII in 1950 respectively.

I don't claim to be any great expert in theology but I will share my reaction to the above text anyway. Hopefully, more learned editors will correct me if I go astray. --Richard S (talk) 21:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "God became united with human nature when Christ was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary"
 * ehhh, to be more precise, "divine nature and human nature are united in the person of Jesus Christ". Only God the Son possesses both natures, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit do not become united with human nature although since God is triune, it gets a little complicated and I won't venture any further into this. --Richard S (talk) 21:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "when Christ was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary"
 * Hmmm.... sounds OK. So Christ was not fully human, fully divine before the Incarnation?  I suppose not but I hadn't really given it much thought and it seems there's room for some theological debate, maybe even some heresy around this question.  The problem, as I see it, is that Christ could have been "fully human" and "fully divine" BEFORE he became flesh.  That's how I would view it but maybe I'm wrong.  Somebody who understands theology better than I should weigh in here and enlighten me. (Striking out religious speculation that appears to be outside the mainstream of Christian theology.  Sorry.) --Richard S (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you are ok in fact: "Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man;" (Nicean Creed) - of course, if you're not sure, you can always ask Uber. Johnbod (talk) 04:43, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "The Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God is held to possess infinite dignity."
 * OK... not being a practicing Catholic, I don't claim to be fully knowledgeable about all the phrases used to describe the BVM. I will say that "infinite dignity" is not what I expected to read and it's a new one on me.  Even if the source supports it, is it the best term to use here? --Richard S (talk) 21:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the present state of doctrine may well put the Bleesed Virgin as an equal to the Persons of the Trinity; there certainly is a point of view to this effect; so it is not surprising that these primary sources should sound like it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "Mariology deals not only with ...."
 * This sentence is true but it defines Mariology without connecting Mariology to Catholicism. I think we should rework this whole paragraph to better explain why we're talking about the BVM at all.  To wit, Mariology is a distinguishing feature of Catholicism.  The Orthodox venerate Mary but not in the same way that Catholics do.  The Protestants consider her as just another of the saints (living and dead), perhaps more virtuous than many but not nearly as special as the Catholics view her.  (We don't have to say all that but we should intimate to the reader that this is something important, if not central, to the Catholic faith.)  Also, if we were writing a longer article, I would want to comment that veneration of Mary has waxed and waned over the centuries.  I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning in this article, though. --Richard S (talk) 21:40, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * As Mary is Theotokos, Mother of God, she's right up there. the divine as male and female ..healthier really. Anima/animus. Sayerslle (talk) 23:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That is an incorrect statement. Mary is not "'right up there' - the divine as male and female". She is not equal to God in Catholic belief. She is considered to be a very special saint and her veneration as a saint is part of Catholic belief. Our previous article had factually correct statements referenced to scholarly sources that had the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur designations. What you have now is sourced to nothing.   Nancy Heise   ''' talk 23:43, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If the previous article had correct information, why not add it back? Rather than having an RFC on the entire article, why not go through each section, bit by bit and decide what to re-add, what to leave out, all the time keeping page load issues in mind? Here's the text from one version (the Longstanding?) about Mary:


 * Prayers and devotions to the Virgin Mary and the saints are a common part of Catholic life but are distinct from the worship of God.[140] Explaining the intercession of saints, the Catechism states that the saints "... do not cease to intercede with the Father for us ... so by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped."[110][140] The Church holds Mary, as ever Virgin and Mother of God, in special regard. She is believed to have been conceived without original sin, and was assumed into heaven. These teachings, the focus of Roman Catholic Mariology, are considered infallible. Several liturgical Marian feasts are celebrated throughout the Church Year and she is honored with many titles such as Queen of Heaven. Pope Paul VI called her Mother of the Church, because by giving birth to Christ, she is considered to be the spiritual mother to each member of the Body of Christ.[141] Because of her influential role in the life of Jesus, prayers and devotions, such as the Rosary, the Hail Mary, the Salve Regina and the Memorare are common Catholic practices.[139] The Church has affirmed the validity of Marian apparitions (supernatural experiences of Mary by one or more persons) such as those at Lourdes, Fatima and Guadalupe[142] while others such as Međugorje are still under investigation. Affirmed or not, however, pilgrimages to these places are popular Catholic devotions.[143]


 * I think this can be cleaned up and tightened; perhaps all parties can agree to reinstate some version of this. I do believe it's important information but too wordy as written. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Further up on this talk page, I noted that this was one of the many errors in the present article. I also noted many other errors, so many serious errors both in content and sourcing that it is easier to replace this article with the correct version and then go from there making changes.   Nancy Heise   ''' talk 00:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I've read the comments on the talkpage. So you do not consider the current article to be the "correct" version and won't consider a compromise? I'm absolutely uninvolved here but am frustrated that those who propose to reinstate the correct or Longstanding version don't seem to be concerned that the page is difficult to load and thus not accessible to readers. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:54, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The previous version likewise had many verification errors. PMAnderson and I have so far identified at least 16, which are fixed in the current version of the article. The problem with this entire paragraph on Mary is that it is pretty inaccessible to non-Catholics, and, especially, non-Christians.  There is too much religious jargon and not enough explanation.  The previous version had the same issue, albeit in a different set of words. Karanacs (talk) 01:07, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Responding to Truthkeeper88, Yes, I am very concerned about load time. If you remove some more pictures and eliminate the long quotes you will significantly improve the load time and trim the article. However, since some people have disputed what the sources actually say, I have kept the quotes for now and since I don't know which pictures people want to eliminate I've left them all in there. I have offered my comments about the present article today. I believe it is such a gross misrepresentation (and others have made the same comment above) that it would be much easier to reinstate the "correct version" and then make any agreed changes from there rather than trying to correct the "incorrect version".  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 01:15, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nancy. Have you considered removing the images and the long quotes to see how much it actually helps? Also, I have to agree with Karanacs that the language in the Mary paragraph is problematic: I had to read it more than once, which is isn't doing the reader much of a favor. But in my view the prose is easy to fix (well maybe I should try before I say that!) – the problem seems to finding a middle ground between what editors considers correct or not. What's always correct is presenting the best written, the cleanest, tightest, most factual, objective, and easy to access page for the reader. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you and that is what our work will involve if we revert to the correct version. I can not begin to work with the present article because it can not serve as a basis because of the citation errors that abound.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 01:41, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Has Nancy specified any citation errors? All of those which Karanacs and I found were inherited from the version Nancy would revert to - as are almost all the present citations; reversion would restore those we fixed; some of them are the product of her editing. Why is her abstention regrettable? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sept, you are the one who was defending the text that placed Mary on the same level as God. I was the one who pointed that out as just one of the glaring mistakes in this article. No one, not even yourself has any of the sources used to create the Beliefs section yet you saw fit to remove article text and references and reword sentences and add completely new sentences all without any sources. Your defense of the Mary text really put the exclamation point on your lack of personal knowledge about Catholic beliefs. I might have supported this new version if it kept basic information referenced to scholarly works in line with WP:Cite but it has both cut the most basic info as well as the scholarly works and the Beliefs section is almost wholly cited to original documents (Catechism) in violation of WP:OR. I can not fix this for you. The only way to fix this is to allow me, the person with the sources, to put the old Beliefs section back in the article and then trim it but all I am hearing is threats to fight me tooth and nail for wanting to make the article accurate. That is why we have to go to RFC. There is no compromise from this segment of editors here.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:14, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

RfC talk
Just to let you all know that I've created the structure of an RfC at Requests for comment/Catholic Church in case Nancy wants to use it, and discussion is taking place on that talk page about how to proceed. Cheers, SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 18:54, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Other proposals made by Xandar
Richard asked me to restate the three compromise propositions I had put forward earlier in the discussion in order to produce an acceptable consensus article to proceed from. They were:

1) Shorten the Original Article by simply removing the contention History Section. This would effectively cut duplication by linking History straight through to the Main History Article, and leave the Beliefs and other sections intact. The article this would produce is 126k, and can be seen at User:Xandar/CatholicChurchExmple

2) Shorten the original article by further radical trimming of the History section, and some trimming elsewhere. This reduces size, while leaving the essential features intact. An example of an attempt by me to do this can be found at User:Xandar/CatholicChurchTrial. This ends up at around 145k, but could probably be cut to 130k with a bit more effort.

3) Agree a 30% trimming of the Longstanding Article to be achieved by consensus. This would involve individuals or small groups taking sections to trim in userspace by roughly the stated amount while maintaining balance and content. The trimmed sections would have to be agreed/amended before replacement in the article. The process would probably take several weeks.

So there they are - three options to get a licit agreed version of the article.  Xan  dar  19:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Catholic Church RfC
Requests for comment/Catholic Church has opened to decide which of several versions of the article has consensus, and how best to develop it. Input is welcome. SlimVirgin TALK  contribs 00:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

talk length
Sorry, Xandar, but this page is way too long to be bringing back archived discussions that haven't been touched in a week. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * This is an important current discussion and needs to be on the page - especially when an RFC is going. At the moment there is half the debate, but not the originating post.  Xan  dar   00:15, 28 March 2010 (UTC)


 * It might be possible to put it on a temporary subpage and point editors to it, but when you added it back, the talk page grew to 293 KB which far exceeds the recommended talk page size of 50 KB. Viriditas (talk) 13:58, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That will do, but it needs to be available while these matters are still current and under dispute.  Xan  dar   10:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Albigensian Crusade
I will remove the sentence "Over a million people were put to death as heretics in a twenty year campaign" as most unlikely to be accurate, and inadequately sourced. The flavour of historian's estimates can be seen from this extract from the web source] used in the main article:


 * 1) Albigensian Crusade (1208-49)

* Rummel: 200,000 democides * Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History: 1,000,000 * Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History: 1,000,000 Frenchmen suspected of being Albigensians slain * Michael Newton, Holy Homicide (1998): 1,000,000 * Individual incidents: o PGtH: 20,000 massacred in Beziers. o Ellerbe: + Beziers: 20-100,000 + St. Nazair: 12,000 + Tolouse: 10,000 o Newton: 20-100,000 massacred in Beziers. o Sumption, Albigensian Crusade (1978): <5,000 k. by Inquisition [ca. 1229-1279]

This is not an RS but seems to be the best we have; let's assume for the moment it's numbers are accurate. Of the names I can identify, only Jonathan Sumption is a source of the quality we should be using; he of course has much the lowest figure, as is normally the case when proper modern specialists are compared with popular or polemical works like "The Dark Side of Christian History" or "Holy Homicide". It looks as though he wisely does not attempt to estimate an overall figure. The website's figures on the same basis for the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which I know much more about, come out rather high also, & don't use the best modern specialists. "Put to death as heretics" as heretics is also wrong; famously the whole point about the massacre at Béziers, shown in the figures above as the largest single massacre, was that the large proportion of Catholics in the city were also massacred when it was stormed, hence the famous, if apochyphal remark by Arnaud Amalric "Kill them all, God will know His own".

In general I think the re-editing of the Middle Ages is deeply unsatisfactory. What sources does Truthkeeper actually have in front of him? "The Knights Templar became noted bankers and creditors who were suppressed by King Philip IV of France shortly after 1300" is just the silliest sentence of many. The next one "Later, mendicant orders were founded by Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzmán which brought consecrated religious life into urban settings." is hardly any better. Comparison with the old version shows that many of the nonsenses, suych as in the Templars, are the result of the long version being incompetetently edited down, losing sense - see also the stranded "Consequently" a few sentences above - the situation that gave rise tro the consequences has of course been cut. The latest edits are doing little or nothing to resolve these problems, just sticking a band aid on the bleeding stumps. As I feared. Johnbod (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, this is just another one of the POV issues that needs to be cleaned up here.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 17:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm using the sources in the sources section, but if you check the history you'll see I haven't touched the paragraph about the crusades except to add an introductory sentence and link templars. The rest is as it has been for a long time. For now, however, I will revert all the edits. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:43, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've gone back a week in history to March 20th, and the information Johnbod and NancyHeise object to existed then. Please find in the history who added it rather than pointing fingers. Thank you. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not complaining about you adding it; I'm complaining about you doing a major copyedit and leaving it. I knew you didn't add much of it. Johnbod (talk) 18:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I haven't added any of it. You'll find that it's in the long version (the so-called correct version) and I was working my way, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph through the text and decided the paragraph on the crusades needed too much work, so stopped. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, the Albigensian sentence I've deleted is not in the version you link to, though I fully accept this may not be its first appearance. I think I can remember it or something similar being complained of before. Johnbod (talk) 20:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I thought you were complaining about the changes to Middle Ages section in general. The specific sentence to which you object was added today and if you'll note, I didn't add it. Yet, all copyediting has been called POV pushing which, in my view, in unfortunate, because it keeps new editors (who might actually have some familiarity with the subject) away from the page. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Early Christianity sentence
I'm watching the history of christianity BBC, Diarmaid macculloch and early in episode two he says " In the 3rd century Peter and Paul were equally venerated - at that stage there was no hint that one of them would become the sole spiritual leader of the Church nor that the Roman Empire would become Christian...or Rome the centre.." This clashes with the sentence in the Early Xtian section "Primacy  of the Roman Pontiff was recognised by the Church from the 2nd century.." This is supported at the moment by a ref to the Donatist schism, but the refs to support it from the earlier version are John W.Barker, p.846 Medieval Italy, an Encyclopedia, which is a bizarre ref for the point at issue, and  then,   Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy from the Liturgical Press, which sounds like a propaganda publisher apologist type cite. If the sentence remains I think it needs better refs, because MacCulloch says different. Sayerslle (talk) 01:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, Schatz isn't a bad source on this; he takes a pretty balanced approach, especially for someone writing for an ecclesiastical publisher. Problem is, what he says on the subject not only fails to support the claim in the article, but actually refutes it.  On p. 11 he writes:


 * It is within this context that we can discover, beginning in the late second century, the first attempts on the part of the Roman church to assume responsibility for the whole Church.  We can observe on the one hand that these first initiatives encountered resistance and ended in failure.  Rome did not succeed in maintaining its position against the contrary opinion and praxis of a significant portion of the Church.


 * So according to Schatz, what the article claims simply isn't what happened, and in fact the truth is closer to the exact opposite.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 03:00, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * In order to get the correct article text and correct citations you have to go to my userpage and click on either of the Catholic Church articles listed at the top. The longer version gives you the quotes from the cited sources, the medium version has eliminated all quotes in order to facilitate loading time.
 * Here's the article text " From as early as the first century, the Church of Rome was recognized as a doctrinal authority because it was believed that the Apostles Peter and Paul had led the Church there.[48][240][241] The concept of the primacy of the Roman bishop over other churches was increasingly recognized by the church at large from at least the second century.[242][243]"
 * Here's the sources and quotes
 * Chadwick, Henry p. 36, quote: "Towards the latter part of the first century, Rome's presiding cleric named Clement wrote on behalf of his church to remonstrate with the Corinthian Christians ... Clement apologized not for intervening but for not having acted sooner. Moreover, during the second century the Roman community's leadership was evident in its generous alms to poorer churches. About 165 they erected monuments to their martyred apostles ... Roman bishops were already conscious of being custodians of the authentic tradition or true interpretation of the apostolic writings. In the conflict with Gnosticism Rome played a decisive role, and likewise in the deep division in Asia Minor created by the claims of the Montanist prophets to be the organs of the Holy Spirit's direct utterances."
 * Vidmar, p. 40–42, quote: "Several pieces of evidence indicate that the Bishop of Rome even after Peter held some sort of preeminence among other bishops. ...(lists several historical documents) ... None of these examples, taken by themselves, would be sufficient to prove the primacy of the successors of Peter and Paul. Taken together, however, they point to a Roman authority which was recognized in the early church as going beyond that of other churches."
 * Barker, p. 846.
 * Schatz, p. 9-20.
 * Norman, p. 11  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:24, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you give the relevant Barker and Schatz quotes here too? And Norman. Schatz seems to say something different from what your longer form article makes him say.Sayerslle (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I would like to see those as well. It should also be noted that:


 * The quote from Chadwick is wrongly cited; it's from his article in the Oxford History of Christianity, which has page numbers in the thirties, not the three hundreds. And the quote given does not support the statement in the article.


 * The quote from Vidmar also does not adequately support the article text.


 * The citation to Barker is inadequate (the encyclopedia is in two volumes, and the citation either lacks a volume number or has the wrong page number) and in any case an encyclopedia on medieval Italy is probably not the place to look for authoritative materials on the early Church.


 * Schatz flatly denies the claims which he is being cited in support of.  Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 15:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed Chadwick's page number, its page 36, not 361. Henry Chadwick's whole page 36 in this book The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, 1990 Oxford University Press, is telling Reader about the evidence of the Church's authority over other churches and gives examples. For space saving sake, I just provided that little quote in the article text. I believe the book is online at googlebooks so you can probably read it for yourself.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for fixing the page number. Unfortunately, that's the least of the problems with this cite.  I don't need to use Google Books to read Chadwick's article; I have the book itself, and I consulted it before posting.  Your claim that Chadwick "is telling Reader about the evidence of the Church's authority over other churches" is simply not correct.  He cites Clement as an example of Rome "remonstrating" with the Corinthian church over the illicit deposition of presbyters--but this is fraternal correction, not "authority", and it was a matter of discipline, not "doctrine".  He says that Rome gave "generous alms" to poorer churches--but this is "charity", not "authority".  He says that Rome erected monuments to Peter and Paul, but this has nothing whatever to do with any kind of authority over anything outside of Rome itself.  He says that Roman bishops were "conscious of being custodians of the authentic tradition"--but so were many other bishops, and being "conscious" of something does not mean that anyone else necessarily accepts that consciousness as legitimate; after all, schizophrenics are "conscious" of the voices they hear, but that doesn't mean anyone else accepts those voices as authoritative.  He says that Rome played a "decisive role" in the conflict with Gnosticism and Montanism, but these are both second-century movements and therefore Rome's role in fighting them cannot be cited as evidence that "the Church of Rome was recognized as a doctrinal authority" from "as early as the first century"; and in any case others also played a "decisive role" in those battles, but that does not mean they were recognized as having "doctrinal authority" over other churches as a result.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 17:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This analysis of Chadwick (which I haven't read) appears to line up with Duffy's interpretations (which I have now read). The disputed text is no longer in this version of the article, is it? Does the current version adequately reflect Chadwick? Karanacs talk 17:53, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Alas, the disputed version is still there, just split into two pieces:


 * "From as early as the 1st century, the Church of Rome was recognized as a doctrinal authority because it was believed that the Apostles Peter and Paul had led the Church there."  A claim to first-century Roman doctrinal authority is insupportable on any grounds, and to add insult to injury it is cited to Chadwick (and cited with the wrong page number at that), who says no such thing.


 * "Primacy of the Roman Pontiff was recognized by the church from the second century ..." This is also insupportable, on several grounds; first, there was no "Roman Pontiff" in the second century (the title was not assumed by the bishop of Rome until much later); in fact there was no bishop of Rome at all until at least the mid-second century anyway, and perhaps not even then.  There was also no effective Roman primacy of any kind in the second century, as Schatz makes clear; Rome may have had pretensions in that direction, but if so they were unsuccessful.  And the statement is cited only to an online encyclopedia entry about Donatism, which came much later.    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 18:20, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I was looking at the first few paragraphs and trying to figure out why we were arguing. I've removed the first sentence, as this article already makes it clear that this is a matter of disagreement among historians.  (Plus, the sentence was misplaced.)  The second sentence, which I've also removed, appears to be more of a justification for Donatism, but from my reading of Duffy misrepresents the donatist split.  The current text is also unsupportable by the ref, which is a reliable source anyway.  I think we need to rework how the article addresses the early schisms/doctrinal differences in general. Karanacs (talk) 18:33, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * And the Donatist controversy is not from the second century, nor is it an vindication of the authority of the Bishop of Rome - rather the Bishop of Carthage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:32, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The early stages of the Donatist controversy still reflect on the authority of the Bishop of Rome, however; the Council of Arles was convened and adjudicated under Pope Miltiades in 314. This may be the point the sources are making&mdash;Karanacs could advise here&mdash;though it is still too late to reflect on first- or second-century doctrine. G.W. (Talk) 16:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

POV tag installed for these reasons
-I have added the POV tag to the top of the article because of serious POV issues listed here: + :::Yes, I would like to see those as well. It should also be noted that:
 * Second Paragraph in Early Christianity makes an WP:OR statement cited to the Catholic Encyclopedia in the second sentence. The Catholic Encyclopedia does not say what this sentence claims it is saying. The term "bishop" is agreed by scholars to have not come into use until some time later. The three positions held by scholars about the Church's origins are shown in our "Origin and Mission" section in the long version of the article here . +
 * The Early Christianity section of the article tells us this about the Church and slavery "Early Christianity accepted several Roman practices, such as slavery, campaigning primarily for humane treatment of slaves but also admonishing slaves to behave appropriately towards their masters.[26]" Yet you will never find out from reading the article that the Church had something to do with the demise of slavery. We are neither told anything about the work of the Church through the various papal bulls like Sublimus Dei or the work of religious orders such as the Mercedarians in the Middle Ages. Please see the long version for this information and appropriate citations. Thus the present article's POV slant is clear in that the end result provides Reader with zero information about the Church's stands on slavery centuries before its eventual abolition in the 1860s. + :::* The quote from Chadwick is wrongly cited; it's from his article in the Oxford History of Christianity, which has page numbers in the thirties, not the three hundreds. And the quote given does not support the statement in the article.
 * The Church's influence upon Western Civilization is a topic included in all university textbooks on the subject yet this article makes no mention of this influence with regard to practices such as infanticide, abortion, divorce, marital infidelity, human and child sacrifice. The long version had a whole section, properly referenced, devoted to addressing this here . The conscious deletion of this section and failure to incorporate these items into the present article makes the omission a POV issue, especially when it is something that has so many scholarly sources on the subject discussing it.
 * Institutions section has omitted any information about Catholic institutions. This omission is a POV issue. The Church operates numerous hospitals, schools, orphanages etc. This information is located in a referenced table in the long version in the long article here . What is the justification for eliminating this table? There is no article text that can be claimed as being non-neutral, it just gives Reader the facts of what institutions are run by the Church and how many of each.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:15, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is currently undergoing active improvement and it's highly disrespectful to the involved editors to be adding tags when their work is not yet finished. There are a lot of problems with this article, and in a sense I agree with you that it still contains POV issues. However, tags should be left as a last resort for now, if the current changes and discussions do not fully satisfy your requests. Plus, there's an ongoing RFC that you wanted, and this latest move on your part throws into doubt your commitment to that process. I will remove the tag again and I ask that you not reinstate it until other editors have finished their work. UBER  ( talk ) 16:20, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The tag says that until the dispute is resolved, it stays. The dispute is not resolved.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:26, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm bogged down in what's currently called the Middle Ages but needs to be renamed because it spans a millenia—the 4th to the 14th centuries. If you feel the work is POV pushing I'll step back. To be honest, it's difficult and time consuming to verify each statement (many of the sources don't provide the ISBNs for the on-line versions so it's never a matter of a single click). However I'm almost through the section and believe if a thousand years can be summarized in a single section there's hope for vigorous use of summary style in the history section thereby freeing space to be used to build content in other sections. Please advise whether the work should continue or stop. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:29, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Nancy, I could understand the tag if no work was forthcoming on the article. But since there are many actively involved editors, your best recourse is to bring up your complaints in the talk page and sort through them with the others. Anyway, I don't want an edit war with you so I will give you an opportunity to go back and revert yourself. UBER  ( talk ) 16:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * POV pushing can include omission of certain facts which is my point as well as one sided inclusion of others. Until the article accurately and neutrally includes, in some way, the information that was consciously omitted by you, I believe the article violates POV and accuracy and I will remove them when these issues have been properly discussed and a consensus agreement is reached.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:33, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This is very disruptive and will stall any ongoing work on the article. Also this AN/I thread isn't helpful either. Just to be clear: I am not omitting anything because I have an agenda. Not everything can fit on the page. The page won't load if everything is added. But with work the important points can be added and linked to via summary style.Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * And how do we know what important points are missing if I am not allowed to alert you to these and my efforts to do so are deemed "disruptive"?  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:43, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that tagging an article isn't the best way to alert an editor to mistakes being made, if mistakes are in fact being made. So far I've only worked with the existing text and tightened the prose. At any rate, I'll stop now. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:54, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Tagging the article is not necessarily for editors, it is for the 5000 Readers per day that come to the article trying to find out information about the Church. Until the article is neutral and factually accurate, I think we have an obligation to warn them about it's problems.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 17:15, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't want to cause contention here, but I'd point out there is policy stating that there simply needs to be "ongoing dispute" to justify a POV tag. Is any besides Nancy disputing the neutrality of this article? NickCT (talk) 18:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Nancy: Your addition of the POV tag at the top of the article implies that the whole article has neutrality problems. I don't think you have made the case that everything in the article violates WP:NPOV or that the article as a whole is written in a biased manner. On the other hand, you have made the case that there are problems with parts of the article. It would be helpful, IMO if you would tag the specific passages, or sections in article that have neutrality or sourcing problems. This would seem to me to be a constructive way to approach this version. Meanwhile, I am going to remove the POV tag at the top of the article. Sunray (talk) 18:10, 29 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Discussion continued in On tags section, below. Sunray (talk) 22:25, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yet again, Nancy you have failed to supply us with one POV statement after alleging that the page is "full of them". Unlike the sentences from your version I quoted, you cannot tell from what viewpoint "Early Christianity accepted several Roman practices, such as slavery, campaigning primarily for humane treatment of slaves but also admonishing slaves to behave appropriately towards their masters" is written from (it could just as easily be a current Catholic scholar writing about the Early Church or a secular historian, although it's actually sourced to a book by Rodney Stark, a Lutheran who now calls himself an "independent Christian"). Compare it to the sentence from your version on the Cultural Influence of the Church "By spreading Christianity it battled, and in certain cases eventually ended, practices like human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy of evangelized cultures beginning with the Roman Empire." where your viewpoint shines through every peacocky and weaselly word. Haldraper (talk) 08:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Nancy says above, "The term "bishop" is agreed by scholars to have not come into use until some time later." Scholars have agreed to no such thing, mainly because it is demonstrably untrue.  The term "bishop" appears in the New Testament; Paul's letter to the Philippians, written ca. AD 62 and of undoubted authenticity, is addressed "to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons".  (And note here that "bishops" is plural, even though the letter is addressed to a single church, and there is no mention of "presbyters"--which is evidence that at this point bishops and presbyters were more or less interchangeable.)  What scholars are largely agreed on is that the office of bishop as it later came to be understood, separate from and superior to the presbyters, didn't emerge until later, the first evidence for it being in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch in the early part of the second century. (And according to Allen Brent and others, Ignatius was arguing for an innovation based in part on pagan antecedents, not defending a tradition received from the Apostles.)   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 16:00, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I object to the POV tag on the article for the same reasons that I opposed having it when PManderson wanted to put it on earlier. It's not the case that the entire article is flawed by POV problems any more than it was in the revision when PManderson wanted to put it on. In fact, if we got down to evaluating the article from an NPOV standpoint, I would guess that it is more NPOV now than when PManderson wanted to tag the article.

So... if NancyHeise wasn't clamoring to tag the article when PManderson wanted to, she shouldn't be clamoring to tag the article now. It's just another indication that Nancy sees POV issues when they run against her pro-Church agenda and is blind to them when they run towards it.

That said, I take issue with Haldraper's comment that Nancy has "failed to supply us with one POV statement". The POV issues (from her standpoint) include at least two, both of which she has mentioned repeatedly. First, there is the loss of the "Cultural influences" section. Now, I readily grant that the previous "Cultural influences" section was irremediably pro-Church POV and had to go. However, I would argue for rewriting that section rather than just dumping it. Look, for better or worse (and it was both), the Church had an immense influence on the development of Western civilization. Writing the history of Western Civilization without recognizing the influence of the Catholic Church is like writing the history of China without recognizing the influence of Confucius or the history of India without recognizing the influence of Hinduism. You cannot just spread this point throughout the History section. You need to put it foursquare in front of the reader early on so that there is no way that they can not understand it.


 * Additional comment: As long as I'm on my soapbox, I wanted to point out that the standard descriptor for Western Civilization was and still is largely "Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian". Yes, it's true that in the 21st century this civilization is morphing to be more global, more secular and more multi-cultural.  That notwithstanding, the roots of the civilization are to be found in the "Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian" heritage and the role of the Catholic Church in that heritage is huge.  If we fail to make that point crystal clear to the reader, we are not just being POV, we are failing big-time in our effort to write an encyclopedic article. --Richard S (talk) 17:08, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

That said, we don't have to make the point in a separate section (a paragraph might be enough) and we absolutely cannot limit it to only the positive influences. If we are to present both the positive and negative influences, it will be difficult to resolve the contention regarding which influences are "real" and which are "alleged". Xandar and NancyHeise argue that some of the "negative" influences are "alleged" by groups such as feminist, secular/atheist, progressive/socialist groups and they have a point. We should move away from trying to assert that the Church has unequivocally, indisputably had negative influences (since "positive" and "negative" are judgmental, subjective terms anyway). Instead, we should state the existence of a significant POV as a fact. That is, it is a fact that "many feminists perceive the Church to have had an oppressive, restrictive effect on women's rights". That assertion should be easily sourceable. It is also a fact that "defenders of the Church argue that the Church has protected women's rights and given them a greater, safer role in society than its pagan predecessors". If that is too much text for this article, we could simply say "Some have attacked the Church for its oppressive, restrictive effect on women's rights while others have argued that the Church has protected women's rights and given them a greater, safer role in society than its pagan predecessors." or even "than other world religions". Of course, all this has to be sourced. I'll leave that work for someone else to do. My proposed sentence about slavery attempted to capture both sides of the debate in a similar way. This is what I call the "search for the NPOV sweet spot".

The second POV issue that Nancy has raised is the implementation of Catholic social teaching (which existed from the very beginning many centuries before the phrase "Catholic social teaching" was coined). The number and size of Catholic hospitals, schools, etc. cannot be ignored nor can their very valuable salutary contribution to the societies in which they operate. Once again, we have to avoid adopting a tone which sounds like pro-Church promotional advertising but it shouldn't be hard to do. I think the key here is to set the existence of Catholic social ministries in the context of other Christian denominations and other religions. All Christians are called to minister to the sick, the poor, the widows and orphans, etc. Is there any documentation as to how the Church has succeeded in responding to this call? (e.g. has anybody done a study comparing Christian denominations and the amount of money that they spend on social ministries?) How about comparing the Catholic Church against other religions such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism? Or against the worldwide total? Can we say what percentage of hospital beds in the world are operated by Catholic hospitals? Surely, someone has done at least a cursory analysis of this kind of data.

--Richard S (talk) 16:50, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither of these (although I congratulate you on quarrying the complaints out of Nancy's rhetoric) is a complaint of the presence of POV; they're both complaints of absence. Therefore neither is an answer to Haldraper's question. We all know what anti-Catholic POV would look like; this ain't it.


 * The substance of the proposals, I think, deserves a separate section, if not one each. Let me, however, comment here, in general: I agree, in general, that if such additions are made, they should be neutral and comparative. I'm not sure they should be made; they are unlikely to satisfy Nancy, whose sections were neither neutral nor comparative, and both are likely to become cruft-magnets. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:12, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Technically, you're right. Nancy and Xandar seem to have the view that, if you mention something negative about the Church, it's POV unless the counterbalancing positive refutation is also given.  I prefer to say that NPOV describes the existence of one or more POVs without asserting the truth of any of them unless it is clearly the undisputed mainstream view.


 * Nancy also has the view that any article that fails to mention important good things about the Church is anti-Catholic POV. I agree that is a bit hyperbolic but I do think we have thrown out the baby with the bath water with respect to the two issues identified above.


 * --Richard S (talk) 00:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Beliefs
How can a Church have beliefs? It can have doctrine, but only people can have beliefs. This notion is mentioned in the second paragraph. Stephen B Streater (talk) 22:42, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * By metaphorical extension; to those to whom the Church is a woman, it is reasonable to suppose that she believes what she teaches. Emend them if you like; the expression Catholics believe seems far more troublesome; the Catechism is not an adequate source on what Catholics actually believe - that would require secondary interpretation of an opinion poll. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:02, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I'll mull it over and see if I can come up with something less emotive. Stephen B Streater (talk) 23:09, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Technically, according to Vatican II, the Church is "the People of God" and as such it can have beliefs. The problem is that in reality these people as individuals believe all sorts of things, including things which are most definitely not in accord with official Church teaching.  One way out of this bind is to refer not to "beliefs" but to "teachings" or "doctrines" which, practically speaking, are made known through the pronouncements of the Church's official teaching authority or Magisterium.  Hence, not "the Church believes" (which can be taken several ways, some of them wrong), or "Catholics believe" (which as a blanket statement is almost never true no matter what follows), but "the Church teaches ..." which can be established by reference to official documents such as the Catechism.    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 01:42, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll try one of those. Probably less POV than claims, which is also true. Stephen B Streater (talk) 06:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've changed two to teaches and one to maintains, and also reworded a sentence to be a less Catholic POV. I'll leave the rest until more people have commented. Stephen B Streater (talk) 06:53, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Middle ages
After giving it some thought, I decided to restore the copyedits to the Middle ages section for the following reasons: there were inaccuracies, and it doesn't make sense to leave them in; the text is somewhat less wordy; the sources have been checked and in some cases pagination fixed. I would like to point out that I removed a sentence about Medieval monasteries but in my view this is a perfect example of how material can be moved from the main article to daughter/sub article. Please post if there are problems/issues with the first two paragraphs—or revert. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:28, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Support. Removing the (irrelevant) half-truth about when Arianism became a heresy is deeply appreciated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:47, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Factual accuracy violations prompted the accuracy tags

 * The present article was created by people who do not have the sources and changed both sentences and citations in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the article. As a result, it contains many inaccuracies.
 * Citation errors exist especially in the Beliefs section where whole sections are either unreferenced or cited wholly to original documents in violation of WP:Cite and WP:OR. That section, in order to be in accordance with Wikipedia policies must have citations to secondary scholarly sources. The other two versions do have proper citations to both secondary and primary sources in accordance with Wikipedia policy.
 * The article contains gaping inaccuracies like the lopsided emphasis on explaining the priesthood with virtually no explanation of lay people or religious orders. The Church considers each of these to be equally important in the life of the Church and the article violates WP:NPOV in this regard.
 * This article does not tell Reader anything about what the Church actually does. It operates the worlds largest non-governmental school system. It operates many universities and hospitals. It operates numerous orphanages and homes for the elderly. These are part of the Church institution. This article just tells reader how many parishes it operates but makes no mention of the existence or how many of the others.
 * This article omits whole sections of Catholic beliefs like prayer and the saints. If you go through the Catechism, you will see that these are equally part of Catholic Beliefs as other parts. By not mentioning them this article is in violation of WP:OR because it arbitrarily chooses to emphasize some beliefs and omit others. Version 2 or 3 follow the pattern set by scholary experts on the subject of Catholic Beliefs providing space for those aspects emphasized by the scholars themselves.
 * This article does not tell Reader anything about the Church's contribution to Western Civilization. If you read a university textbook on this subject, you will see whole sections devoted to discussion of the Church. That is because the Church is intimately involved with the developement of Western Civiliation and this is not POV but scholarly consensus. I think Version 1 violates WP:NPOV because it omits this information.
 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context; In an effort to create a short article, where length was the only issue, the creators left all mention of criticisms to daughter articles. This created article text that does not meet the comprehensive criteria of FAC.
 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be  well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate; This is exposed in the Beliefs section alone as well as the sections identified above that this article lacks. Someone went through this article and eliminated citations because they said there were too many, in the process, they left sentences without citations that supported the article text and created sentences that are cited to sources that do not say what the sentence purports - some examples: see citation number 166, 206, the last paragraph in Membership (second sentence is an inaccurate statement and is unreferenced),
 * This article contains many violations of NPOV, see for example the second paragraph in Early Christianity. This is singly referenced to a Protestant author, an Anglican priest.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 16:26, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * A Protestant author, an Anglican priest ...and Professor of History of the Church at St Cross College, Oxford. Sayerslle (talk) 17:45, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sayerslle, you have a whole paragraph devoted to one scholar's POV yet in the following paragraph we have already discussed the different POV's held by scholars including the one your scholar holds. It is a violation of WP:Undue and WP:NPOV to place more emphasis on one particular POV and this is why the article fails. We can eliminate your whole paragraph and save space as well as keep the balance of the scholarly views. Thus, I think that para has to go.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:22, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

On tags
If you have a principled opposition to the current version of the article, it would be fine to add as many (appropriate) tags as your heart desires, but right now is the wrong time. It's difficult to justify having the RFC while simultaneously sticking tags all over the article. What's the point of having an RFC in that case? Wasn't it supposed to determine what the "Wider Wikipedia Community" thinks? Per this reasoning, I'm going to remove the remaining two tags, and I ask that any major POV flare ups like this wait until after the RFC finishes. UBER ( talk ) 21:36, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I put an "Under Construction" Tag on the page. This should satisfy people who claim the article is not accurate, neutral, etc, as it is undergoing work at the moment.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 21:47, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Eh...I think any tags can wait for now. The one you're proposing is not inflammatory and that's welcome, but it's also somewhat inaccurate thanks to the RFC, which has brought constructive work on the article to a screeching halt. Consequently, the article isn't undergoing any kind of revamping now, much less major. UBER  ( talk ) 21:54, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * well, when City workers tear up a street and post "under Construction" signs, and then are told to "cease and desist" because some bureacrat doesn't think the right type of asphalt is being used, do they walk away from the torn up and hazardous street and take away the signage when they're not working? :)--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 22:12, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * LOL. Nice analogy. Sunray (talk) 22:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the "Under Construction" tag. Of course, the workers might be gone for a long while, but in the meantime, the tags explain the reason for the mess to visiting readers. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Haha you lost me at "city workers"...I'm just fundamentally against tags unless they're absolutely necessary, and here they seem more like a last-ditch effort (by others, not you) to taint the article and the ongoing RFC. UBER  ( talk ) 22:21, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Uber, I agree with your removal of the other very general tags about the factual accuracy of the article. I do, however, think it would be useful, at some point, for editors to mark specific sections, paragraphs, or sentences with appropriate tags as long as there is supporting commentary on the talk page. However, you make the point that this should wait until the RfC is decided. That is probably wise, though I don't see any reason why an "under construction" tag shouldn't remain on the article. Whichever way the RfC goes, it seems that there will be major changes to the article to follow. Sunray (talk) 22:23, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't mind that much. To its credit, "Under Construction" is not controversial, although it is distracting. UBER  ( talk ) 22:34, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with removal of the section tags, since clear issues have been raised with those section, which have not been resolved. I opposed tags in the past, where people wanted to keep them there in perpetuity without actively specifying or discussing the issues, but that is not the case here.  Xan  dar   20:07, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Incredible.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 20:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe we need tags in the sections for which I have listed problems. Those problems have not yet been resolved. The tags need to stay until they have. The under construction tag is a good addition as well but the others were deleted inappropriately and need to be readded.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The under construction tag negates the others - that means that we know the article is a mess and we're working on it. Karanacs (talk) 21:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Earthly authority
In the lead section it says that the Pope is the Church's highest earthly authority. I realize that this kind of archaic language might be acceptable in the appropriate context, but does it really belong in the lead section? For me, this kind of 19th century verbiage reads like purple prose. Viriditas (talk) 00:02, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the phrasing should be that the Pope is the "Church's highest official" - would that be OK with everyone? Majoreditor (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that you still must clarify the Pope as an "earthly" official, authority, whatever. Although you can use words other than earthy if they seem less archaic to you, this is a crucial distinction for the Catholic Church (and many other religions).  Personally, I think that the current wording is fine, and is in fact the most common phrasing for the Pope's position int he Church. Vercingetorix08 (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The Church considers God to be its highest authority. I think we need "earthly" or some similar word. We certainly can't state that the Church considers the pope to be its highest authority, that would be an incorrect statement.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 01:45, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Nancy, doesn't every monotheist religion consider God its highest authority? (See also: Names of God.)  Why not use the article on the pope as a guide, and simply describe him as "the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church."  Why do we need to call the pope an "earthly authority"?  My understanding is that the archaic language of an "earthly authority" comes from older terminology used to describe the authority of kings.  Should we consider the pope a "king"?  I don't believe "earthly authority" is appropriate encyclopedic language. Viriditas (talk) 05:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Viriditas, people would be confused about the true leader of the Church if the word "earthly" or some similar word is not included. The Pope is not a "king". He is just an adviser to the Church. jgf_97 (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In Diarmaid MacCulloch's History of Christianity on BBC he calls the Pope, the "spiritual leader" of the Catholic Church. Or why not just leader? I agree that 'chu high eart auth..' is inappropriate for wikipedia - it belongs within the walls of the faith that kind of language. Sayerslle (talk) 12:37, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Re-watching the episode he calls the Pope spiritual head., not leader. Sorry for my mistake, but I think leader is o.k, but maybe it isn't.Sayerslle (talk) 01:06, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Work process
I saw Richard's post at the RfC talk page that he is working on Talk:Catholic Church/Unresolved issues (very useful now for finding past discussion!). He also proposed that we may need to set up separate pages to discuss certain issues. I like this plan, a lot, and would recommend that we set up subpages for several of the topics that we seem to spew large amounts of text on - Slavery, World War II/Pius, Sexual abuse, etc. We can have undated sections at the top of this page that link to the subpages, so that people interested in those particular disputes can watchlist the subpages. It may make it easier to follow this page in general. Karanacs (talk) 13:37, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is a useful page that can also help us in a mediation if we decide to go that route to acheive article improvement. I've expanded the page a bit.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Talk:Catholic Church/Unresolved issues has been moved to Catholic Church/Unresolved issues in order to allow for a Talk Page if such is desired. Another reason for doing this is to make sure that no one ever accidentally creates a page called Catholic Church/Unresolved issues, the existence of which would not be in accordance with Wikipedia guidelines for the use of article mainspace.

In addition, I have created the following subpages:
 * Catholic Church/History - Nazism and Fascism
 * Catholic Church/Cultural Influence

I only created those two because they are the ones for which we have enough stuff to warrant a separate page. More subpages can be created as the need arises.

I don't have a clear model yet of how these pages should be formatted or how the process of discussing the topics should go. For now, I'm just trying to compile information from the archives so that we don't have to revisit the same stuff all over again. If you have a suggestion on how to proceed, please comment either here or on the relevant talk page (i.e. Wikipedia talk:Catholic Church/Unresolved issues, Wikipedia talk:Catholic Church/History - Nazism and Fascism or Wikipedia talk:Catholic Church/Cultural Influence. If you would like to start working on a different topic, just let me know and I'll set up the appropriate subpage.  Let's just try to keep the number of simultaneous discussions down so that we can actually make progress.

--Richard S (talk) 15:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Richard. I created a section at the top of the page with links to these subpages so that we can find them more easily. Karanacs (talk) 15:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Note after the fact: All of the aforementioned pages starting with "Wikipedia:Catholic Church/" were reverted or moved to a page that starts with "Talk:Catholic Church/" since Catholic Church doesn't exist, making any title that begins with "Wikipedia:Catholic Church/" eligible for speedy deletion per db-subpage (criterion G8.) The aforementioned pages can be found at the following titles:
 * Talk:Catholic Church/Unresolved issues
 * Talk:Catholic Church/Cultural Influence
 * Talk:Catholic Church/History - Nazism and Fascism
 * – Steel1943  (talk) 05:11, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Major Inaccuracies in History Section
Major inaccuracies are being added to the history section, and I have had to tag two sections for the good of the project.


 * In Early Christianity statements that the papacy did not emerge until after the time of Constantine have been quoted as facts, with no counterview put. Vague references have been inserted citing to TV programmes and certain encyclopedias. And the opinions of Diarmuiod MacCulloch, an extreme liberal theologian, have been overemphasised and stated as facts. There also appears to be original research and synthesis.


 * In Middle Ages crucial information on the evangelisation of Europe has been cut out, while the Synod of Whitby has been left in! The amazing claim that 200,000 people were "put to death" in the Albigensian Crusade is cited to a scruffy table on an internet website!  Xan  dar   20:37, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

The first of these is scarcely a dispute of fact. Most of whst is said about the fourth century Papacy says that MacCullough says thus-and-so. If he does say so, so much is not a dispute of accuracy, but (possibly) of balance, and Xandar is not a credible judge of blance.

The second is not a dispute of fact at all. The Synod of Whitby did happen; the statements in the revised edit all appear to be true. Which of them, if any, does Xandar dispute? Unless an answer to that can be given, accuracy is unwarranted. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:15, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Mayr-Harting devotes an entire chapter to the Synod of Whitby in The coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England which is the source that should be used for that section. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:26, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Where is there original research and synthesis in the Early Xty section? will McCulloch join Antony Beevor  on the Index of Prohibited Writers?  Sayerslle (talk) 21:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably; he has committed the mortal sin of disagreeing with what Xandar knows without evidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:52, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The whole of this paragraph is innaccurate and outrageously POV:
 * There is a tradition about the early history of the Church, traceable from late antiquity, which places Peter in Rome where he founded a church and served as the first bishop of the See of Rome, consecrating Linus as his successor and beginning the line of Popes.[14] The only element of this which the Catholic Encyclopedia presents as historical is Peter's martyrdom at Rome.[15] (The crucial steps towards cenralised power were taken 30 years after Constantine's death. It was during the time of Pope Damasus I that the Bishop of Rome was established in unbroken succession from Saint Peter. According to the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch - " you would be hard put to find anyone before the time of Damasus who made the claim that Peter was Bishop of Rome. But as successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome became the Holy Father, Pope of all Christians of the West. Damasus then took his good news, not to the poor and downtrodden to whom Jesus had preached, but to the Roman nobility."
 * First sentence is slanted in that it changes the former mention of the "traditional narrative", to "a tradition about the early history of the Church". This downgrades the main narrative of Church history, with much evifence to back it, to "a tradition"
 * Second sentence is pure Original research and Synthesis, interpreting what the Catholic Encyclopedia supposedly considers historical. No direct ref given.
 * Third sentence is a claim presented as fact, which isn't fact, referenced to a highly POV and controversial statement by MacCulloch. The POV continues with a sneering remark about preaching to the Roman Nobility, not the poor. This contradicts most standard histories of evangelisation.
 * As regards the Middle Ages section. The evangelisation of Europe is more important than the Synod of Whitby to the World Church. Leaving it out is a major skew of the article from the facts. The point about the killing of 200,000 people is a wild claim simply not supported by Reliable sources, and is indefensible.  Xan  dar   21:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Xandar - I haven't touched the paragraph about the Crusades, so either figure out from history who added the "wild claim," or simply delete it. The Synod of Whitby was actually important - without it we wouldn't be celebrating Easter this Sunday. Nevertheless, I'll try to figure out which material was removed that incenses you so, and simply reinstate. No worries. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed both. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:14, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * By the end of the century Pope Gregory the Great initiated administrative reforms and the Gregorian missions to evangelize Britain.[46] The reunion of the Celtic churches with Rome was achieved at the Synod of Whitby in 664, which was complemented by other missionary movements such as the Hiberno-Scottish mission. Missionaries took Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples is less than perfect. Saint Columba did not "complement" Whitby, which was much later and undid his work; nor do we need to mention the mission to Kent twice. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:33, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly the reason I initally copyedited it. Wasn't supported by the source. But, an objection was raised and apparently inaccurate information is preferred. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:49, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Which of the "standard histories of evangelisation" denies the obvious: that after Constantine, the Church attempted to convert the Senatorial and decurional elite, which had been largely beyond their reach before? This is not controversial, nor is it new; the results may be seen in prominent Christians of the next few generations: Melania, Augustine, Paulinus of Nola, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Tours; all who were not monastics and some of those who were. (Even Columba was a prince, as princes went in Ireland.) The conversion of the lower classes was later; some would argue it was never complete, except in a formal sense - and it was a consequence of the conversion of the nobility. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Xandar, please do not add any controversial tags to the article until the RFC is complete. Doing so will only prejudice the RFC against the current version. Disputes like these are precisely why we're holding the RFC. After the RFC is complete, and if you have legitimate complaints against the current version, then you can start putting up tags. But if you start to tag the article, then you're circumventing the authority of the RFC. UBER  ( talk ) 00:53, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I still say the history section needs to be shit-canned in exchange for a portal to the sub articles, page load time is bringing the suck to this page again.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It's loading fine for me. The article keeps getting shorter. We're now down to about 7,100 words and roughly 96 kb of wikitext. UBER  ( talk ) 01:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the history section can be cut drastically, and perhaps not a bad idea to consider setting up subarticles to move the material to. The Middle Ages, which is a misnomer because the section spans almost an entire millenia, can be brought down significantly. Also, in my view, the Reformation/Counter-Reformation material is much too long and can be summarized fairly briefly. This, of course, all takes some work, but it's not impossible to be done. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:04, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess the reason I say "Get rid of it" is that it only serves to invite POV wars and edit wars. Even if you scale it back, it invites people to want to "expand upon it" and we end up like this again.  I appreciate that a lot of work has gone into this and I think that work should be used, I just think it all needs to go into "History of the Catholic Church" as a separate piece and the associated subs that go with it.  I think my first objection when it came to FAC was paragraphs on Pope Pius XII and Hitler and no mention of the rosary or Thomas Aquinas, etc.  If it's removed the quick answer to some FAC reviewer is to point them to the appropriate sub article and tell them it's out of scope to mention Mozart's Requiem Mass or English Penal Laws.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 01:11, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, History is bar none the most important section of the article. It would be a bad idea to remove it. It definitely needs to be much shorter though. UBER  ( talk ) 01:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would be easier to summarize the history if the subarticles existed. For instance, the paragraph about art at the end of the Middle Ages section could be brought down to a line or so, but I can imagine the existence of an article only about Medieval Catholic Art or some such thing—also as I suggested earlier, I was surprised that an article doesn't exist on Medieval monasteries which really deserves an entire article. There's plenty to write about. The question is where to put it all! Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The History section needs to be shortened, but needn't be completely removed. I doubt Uber's assertion that it's "bar none" the most important section in the article. Let's just treat it as one of the most important sections in the article (who's to say which one is most important?) and ensure that it's written in appropriate summary style. Majoreditor (talk) 03:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that it needs to be reduced and written in summary style, but I remain concerned that there doesn't yet seem to be a coordinated approach to how to rewrite this article in correct summary style, based on a literature search rather than personal preference. Folks are picking away at each piece, when a global approach to the correct article structure still hasn't been discussed and implemented, based on due weight, reliable sources, and appropriate use of summary style.  So far, the chairs on the deck of the Titanic are being rearranged, when something more drastic is still needed.  Uber's first cut was a good start, but I hope editors will now take a fresh look at all of the problems in the article structure, and decide how to best use summary style and daughter articles.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:12, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Does somebody have a topic that is missing from the ToC, or a daughter article that is missing an appropriate link here? Without that, this is hypothetical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sandy, I've just gotten access to a few of the sources used for the history section (and I've ordered a brand-new book on the History of Christianity that hasn't been used yet), but it takes time to read through all the sources. I hope to have a proposal for rewriting the text on the first 400 years soon... Can anyone else get some books for either the history section or the beliefs section? Karanacs (talk) 13:33, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I've been to the library and have the following for the history (Middle Ages) section:
 * Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. Norton. 2010. ISBN 978-0-393-05975-5
 * 700 plus pages with extensive bibliography. I will begin reading this first.


 * Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. 2004
 * We already have this, but thought I'd read it.


 * Lewis, David Levering. God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe (570-1215). Norton. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-06472-8
 * Will review to see if this helps with the section about the Crusades. If not, not a problem. My small town library has an entire shelf devoted to the Crusades!

I'll set up a sandbox to keep notes and begin a bibliography. Comments or thoughts? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The article is beginning to cross over into violations of WP:fringe with the expression of the view that the papacy did not emerge until the fourth century. We already extensively covered the various views of all scholars and these do not include the fourth century theory which makes it a fringe view.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think MacCulloch was saying the leading role aspect of the Bishop of Rome didn't emerge til the 4th century. You were saying 'Primacy of the Roman pontiff was recognised by the second century ' and supported it with an encyclopedia of medieval italy and schatz and chadwick who said no such thing on examination. So MacCulloch is 'fringe' and p.84something of an encyclopedia on medieval italy is 'mainstream'. Sayerslle (talk) 16:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Precisely so. There was a Bishop of Rome much earlier; but there is very little evidence of his acting as Patriarch of the West, much less Universal Pontiff, before Constantine legalized Christianity. Observe, for example, that the Council of Arles was in 314.


 * McCullough also claims, and is probably right, that the tradition that Peter was bishop of Rome cannot be clearly traced back further than the late fourth century. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Two things are being discussed here:
 * 1. Length of the History section. I actually produced a shorter version of the history section than the current one in my compromise version of the article at: User:Xandar/CatholicChurchTrial. See it there.


 * 2. The early Church paragraph which I complained about is still present, with all its misleading information and inferences. The sentenced supposedly referenced to the Catholic Encuclopedia, (but which actually has no direct reference), needs to go. The rest of the para is false. Irenaeus detailed the succession of the Bishops of Rome from Peter, 2 centuries before Damasus. The whole MacCulloch TV quote is out of any context, (if it is indeed a quote), and presented so as to provide a misleading impression. Virtually all church histories agree that the Church in Rome was preached to and supported by chiefly the poor and slaves. This is not mentioned in the article, so the jibe about preaching to the rich (in supposed contradiction to Jesus) is extremely misleading. The argument about whether Peter was called Bishop of Rome is another red herring. The central point of Catholic claims is descent from Peter, which even MacCulloch acknowledges in his History of Christianity is supported by archaeological and other evidence.   Xan  dar   20:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * (if it is indeed a quote)?? - indeed it is, from the telly series, don't judge me by your 'standards', why is it out of any context?, he's just saying something about the early Church's development, then that Damasus brought the good news to the nobility, you set up aunt sallys the whole time, he didn't say the Church preached only to the nobility,  he says that's what damasus did - what Irenaeus wrote  is fine, Irenaeus, he had his reasons for saying the things he did..in the end with you its all 'the church preached to the poor', 'the church has been persecuted for no reason', 'the Church comes from God ' 'angels exist to  worship and serve God' , blah blah blah. Sayerslle (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * First, quotes from a tv series are not the best references. Second, it's out of context because a negative sentence is quoted without the balancing positive material. I have Mr MacCulloch's book, and it goes into far more detail than this, and presents other sides of the question. The point about the "preaching to the nobility" point is that the article text does not make clear that the poor were preached to first. The text therefore presents a misleading picture and is unbalanced and out of context. And while you may not like positive material about the Church being in the article, it is nontheless essential for balance and NPOV.  Xan  dar   20:34, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Mac Culloch is a professor of the history of the church. I noticed on the history of the Church, the Spanish Civil War, with all the scholarly books in english on the subject, you cite something called Kleine Kirchengeschichte by Franzen - probably useful for your POV, - and on your talk page at 20;00 hrs I think there has been a failure to discuss issues dispassionately instead of emotionally and in a highly personalised way..and then half an hour later, And while you may not like positive material about the Church being in the article..blah blah blah. Some inconsistency here.Sayerslle (talk) 00:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Syrian Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church and Catholic Church
I know that the name of this article was the subject of intense debate... this is NOT an attempt to re-open that debate... I simply wish to understand why it resulted the way it did. We have an article on the Syriac Catholic Church, which I gather is part of the broader Catholic Church... so why don't we have an article on the "Roman Catholic Church" as a part of the broader Catholic Church? If one did use the objectionable "RCC" would it be correct to say that the Syriac Catholic Church was part of the Roman Catholic Church? Or what? How are these things different and how are they the same? Blueboar (talk) 20:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * We went into all of this in excruciating detail at the mediation. As a brief response, the Syriac Catholic Church is one of the Particular Churches in union with Rome which make up the Catholic Church. These churches include the other Eastern Catholic Churches and the Latin Church, which is sometimes inaccurately referred to as the Roman Catholic Church. All the Churches acknowledge the Pope as head, and share the same doctrine, but not liturgy and practice. "Roman Catholic Church" tends to be a name used by outsiders, far more than by the Church itself. Most Eastern Catholic Churches would not consider themselves in any way "Roman Catholic", and would object to the term. The term Catholic Church is the one the Church uses to describe itself in the official documents and constitutions of Vatican II.  Xan  dar   20:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Xandar. That helps (especially your using the term "Latin Church" which I understand from studying history.)  Would it be correct to say that we could have an article on the "Roman" Catholic Church, but it would have to focus purely on liturgical and not doctrinal distinctions? (not that I intend to write one... again just clarifying the distinctions in terminology). Blueboar (talk) 20:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * But that is not the "primary" meaning of "Roman Catholic", which now means, and has meant since 1605 (when it is first attested in English), "pertaining to the Church which is the subject of this article", or "a member of it". The OED quotes Thomas Fuller indeed: Roman Catholick (as they delight to term themselves) and so it has ever been: it is both common usage and a self-identifying term, except for a handful of polemicists and pedants within the Church.   Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree with Xandar. Most of the answer to your question was in a long note which has apparently been removed in the recent orgy of cut, slash and burn.  In brief... there are some Catholics (e.g. Kenneth Whitehead and Patrick Madrid) who insist that the official name of the Church is "the Catholic Church" and that "Roman Catholic" should NOT be used to refer to the Church as it is a derogatory term used by those outside the Church.  Some Eastern Catholics like to style themselves as "Eastern" Catholic as opposed to "Roman" Catholic.  However, "Roman Catholic" is properly used to refer to the whole Church, not just the Latin Church (the opinions of people like Whitehead and Madrid notwithstanding).  The tussle between the Whitehead/Madrid POV and the "Roman Catholic as a proper and acceptable name for the whole church" POV was the essence of what the mediation was all about. --Richard S (talk) 22:22, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, every organization has the politically correct, who insist on their shibboleths. Most such shibboleths are based on dubious philology and false statements about usage; are these?   Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh... to actually answer the question that Blueboar posed: the problem was that this article was titled "Roman Catholic Church" but certain editors (Xandar and NancyHeise among them) wanted to make it clear that, based on their reading of the sources, the "official" name of the Church was "the Catholic Church". They presented quite a number of sources in support of this argument including the aforementioned Whitehead and Madrid. The opposing POV argued that, while "the Catholic Church" was, in fact, often used in official contexts, there was no conclusive evidence that the Catholic Church was the "one and only official name of the Church". Whitehead said that "the proper name of the Church" was the "Catholic Church". Madrid did actually say that the official name of the Church was the "Catholic Church". AFAIK, he was the only source that actually said it in precisely those words. All other sources could be interpreted to support that interpretation but could also be interpreted differently. The opposing POV presented sources to argue that the name "Roman Catholic Church" was also used in quite a number of official contexts. In the end, the decision of the mediation was to say nothing as to whether there was any official name of the Church nor to affirm or deny that "Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholic Church" were among the official names of the Church. In essence, we do not make any assertion about the phrase "official name" which is reasonable because Madrid is about the only source who makes this assertion unequivocally. We changed the title of the article in order to appease those who wanted "Catholic Church" to come as close to the beginning of the lead sentence as possible. Some editors objected to the name change but they were basically dismissed without much hearing.

Here are some links to key components of the dispute resolution process that was applied to this dispute.

This RFC was issued to get input on the question. When the input gained from the RFC did not prove helpful enough to resolve the dispute, NancyHeise issued a request for mediation.

This page provides the mediator's report of the outcome of the mediation.

This page is probably the best, single compendium of all the sources that were presented during the mediation.

That is, I think, a fairly good summary of the long dispute that ended with the changing of the article title and the insertion of a long note which has subsequently been removed. (Whoever took it out, put it back quickly before I come over and break all your fingers!)

--Richard S (talk) 23:01, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Citation #6 in the Name section has a note from O'Brien. Is that the note you're looking for? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:38, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No... actually (excuse me, while I remove my foot from my mouth) the Note was condensed into the text that now constitutes the "Name" section. Here is the text of the original note. --Richard S (talk) 03:28, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for supplying links to that disaster. I shall read with interest to see whether any actual sources were cited and if they were cited correctly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:30, 4 April 2010 (UTC)


 * And let me restate that my intent was NOT to open up this debate again. I simply wanted to understand why there was an article on the Syrian Catholic Church, but not one on the "Roman Catholic Church" (as distinct from the Catholic Church as a whole).  Xander's explanation that the "Roman" Church is what historians often term the "Latin" Church makes sense to me.
 * I do think a short article on the Roman Catholic Church (alt name Latin Church)... as opposed to Roman Catholic Church... focusing on the liturgical and historical distinctions between it and the other branches of the broader Catholic Church would be a valid article... and might help those like me better understand the these distinctions... but I am content to leave the decision of whether to write such an article, and if so what its scope would be, to those who have better knowledge of the subject than I do.
 * My query has been answered. Please do not debate this further. Blueboar (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Blueboar states that it "intent was NOT to open up this debate again"; to which I respond "What? And deny us the pleasure of wasting another year and a half of our lives pounding on our keyboards and sacrificing the lives of millions of innocent bytes?  You stink!  (In all seriousness, thank you for not re-opening the debate although I suspect someone will eventually come along wanting to do so.)

You may be interested to know that this revision of the article Roman Catholic actually discussed uses of the name but that revision was replaced by a redirect on the grounds that it was a POV fork.

There is also an article on the Latin Rite. Does that article provide the treatment that you are looking for?

--Richard S (talk) 03:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)


 * More or less... my ideal would be an article that would be more along the lines of a merger between Roman Catholic (term) with Latin Rite.
 * Thanks to all for your patience and understanding in explaining this to yet another confused editor. Blueboar (talk) 13:51, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I too do not wish to reopen discussion of the question (although I quite fail to see why Wikipedia should depart from the general practice of publications that are not specifically Catholic, including encyclopedias such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with regard to the title given to the article on this Church). But I do wish not to leave unquestioned Xandar's statement that most Eastern Catholic Churches would not consider themselves in any way Roman Catholic and his too easily misunderstood statement that "the term Catholic Church is the one the Church uses to describe itself in the official documents and constitutions of Vatican II" (as if these 16, I repeat, a mere 16, were the only official documents of the Church that exist!). Eastern Catholic Churches too are included in the Church that does call itself, in its official documents, the Roman Catholic Church. It uses the adjective "Roman" in order to "emphasize that the centre of unity, which is an essential for the Universal Church, is in the Roman See", as explained in the catechism quoted in the section "Name" of the article, which is the present form of the note that Richard wrongly thought had been removed from the article, when in fact it has been brought up from a mere footnote to become a regular part of the article.  So nobody's fingers are in danger of being broken by him!  Much more enlightening than the link to a former POV fork would be a link to the existing article Roman Catholic (term).  Esoglou (talk) 10:01, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

GAR on hold for 7 more days
See Talk:Catholic Church/GA1. We are still hopeful that issues will be resolved shortly so that the article becomes stable enough to review, and are encouraged that the dispute is taking place on the talkpage and not on the article itself. We will, however, be looking for some significant progress on resolving the dispute when we look again in seven days.  SilkTork  *YES! 08:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is being considered for a mediation after the close of the current RFC. It may be a while before it is in any agreeable form.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I will not join any appeal to MedCom. I will not join any process in which Nancy takes part in which my words are not on the public record.


 * Nancy needs to take some time off from this article, and this post is more evidence for it. This is filibustering. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The article would be a lot better served by PMA's removal. Too many of his contributions are simply personal attacks and worse.  Xan  dar   20:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

As for the question at hand, I see no point in postponement. The essential conditions for this article to be stable or consensus will not be met for some time yet; when they are, it can be renominated for GA if anybody wants one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article isn't close to GA, and the POV and weighting issues aren't likely to be fixed in the next week. It would be better to renominate later. Karanacs (talk) 16:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * On mediation: I'm opposed to it because it will be just another process for Nancy to circumvent and ignore when it doesn't go her way, which is what's happened with the RFC. I still remain convinced that only a decisive conclusion from Arbcom can settle this permanently. As for the GAR: there is no time limit on a GAN or GAR if there are active improvements occurring, as there are with this article. Plus, without these bureaucratic dramas (RFCs, ANIs, etc), we could actually get this article back in shape in less than a week...easily. UBER  ( talk ) 16:53, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the time frame. We can certainly get an improved article in a week, but there is a lot of reading and verification left to do - and there aren't enough volunteers now to do it.  I'm hoping that in a week or so I can have a proposal for the early Christianity part...and that still leaves 1700 years of history! Karanacs (talk) 16:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree with UberCryxic and Karanacs... better to delist it as GA now and renominate it later. --Richard S (talk) 16:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree on delisting: it's going to be a while before this is stable enough for review again. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Delist, I've had articles better written than this rejected for far less than the problems with this piece.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 17:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Delist. Too much work to do, and too many distractions. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:58, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree to delist: the article has never been at GA status, should have been delisted long ago, and considering recent talk page input it doesn't appear that a reasonable wait will be long enough to correct the issues. At the time that EyeSerene and SilkTork put their original GAR plan in place, great progress was being made, and it appeared that the article had a chance to make it within a month: instead, an RFC has stalled progress and derailed talk page discussions in spite of very clear emerging consensus on the RFC as to the source of the problems. A structured approach to re-doing this entire article is still needed, and I'm concerned that work will not get underway again unless IDidntHearThat factors are eliminated from the talk page and the article for a very long time, which will encourage experienced and knowledgeable Wikipedians to help out with the considerable work needed to build a neutral encyclopedic article based on a survey of high quality sources.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:03, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The article certainly was at GA status for several years before the brutal hacking to pieces that took place just over two weeks ago. Now it definitely is not GA status because it is not comprehensive, complete or properly balanced and weighted. As far as "clear emerging consensus" on the RFC, Sandy's group may have block voted, and other editors been driven away. The "source of the problems" is the illicit attack on the article through edit-warring which she supported.


 * I also note the continued refusal of many here to follow Wikipedia measures for dispute resolution such as mediation. They simply want their own way and to ignore everyone else. This is what produces disputes, edit-warring and bitterness on the page. And is why the article is nowhere near consensus or stability. This is not what this encyclopedia was founded upon, and these attitudes do nothing but damage to the principles of Wikipedia. This is being noted.  Xan  dar  20:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Xandar, SlimVirgin has asked on to specify, on the RfC talk page, which editors you think were driven away from the RfC and need to be notified. Karanacs (talk) 20:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The article never met GA criteria, and should have been delisted through any of the four (five) FACs that identified the POV issues. At any rate, that's moot now, since everyone recognizes now that it was not and is not GA.  And we are following DR processes: the results of the RFC are emerging to clear consensus of what and where the problems lie.  Xandar, is there a reason you don't answer Slim's question about all of those editors you claim were chased off? I put up a long list which showed how many experienced FA writers opposed all earlier versions of the article and were chased off, but you still haven't answered the question from your end. And will you please stop personalizing issues with statements like "Sandy's group"; I don't know just who you think those might be, since many of the people who hold the same views as I do about this article have a long history of being on different sides of issues than I am ... there is no "Sandy's group", unless you mean the number of experienced FAC reviewers and FA writers who found problems in the article, and you associate them with me because of my position at FAC. Please stop the battleground and focus on the article, which would include answering questions asked of you to advance dispute resolution. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:15, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The article always met GA criteria. This is a FACT - unless you are trying to accuse the GA assesors of being incompetent. This seems to be a case of applying some form of alternative reality here. The vast majority of FA reviewers also considered the article worthy of FA status. Certain individuals claimed the article was POV, however when pressed for specifics, most failed to back up claims convincingly or failed to respond. However this small minority was given a veto. As far as SGs "long list" of FA writers supposedly driven off from the article. This is nonsense. The list is not long, and most never attempted to work constructively with editors, but came in with an aggressive combative attitude, and flounced off when it was clear that existing editors were not going to do exactly what they said without informed discussion. By Sandy's group, I refer to the group Sandy supports, on thiese issues. I'm afraid the battleground was largely produced by some of the people Sandy supports and by the continuous personal attacks made by them. (Examples on this page.) As far as SV's "question", I was not aware of it, and can't find it on the talk page. It's probably best to re-post or link.  Xan  dar   21:17, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It is rare for anything proclaimed a FACT in capital letters to be factual; this is no exception: GA assessors are self-appointed single editors, and often careless, over-indulgent, interested, or incompetent. This is why GA has a review system. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the evidence exists that this article can no longer be classified as GA. There are people here insisting that we eliminate NPOV language in the article and use books that are not suitable for creating the Beliefs section. I do not think the current batch of editors have improved the article but have in fact destroyed it and do not have the resources or knowledge to build it back up again. I think the current batch of editors are POV warriors, not genuinely here to improve the page. I'm sorry if this offends but it is my honest assessment of the current situation based on what I see happening so far. There has been zero effort address the factual accuracy and POV issues I listed above.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:35, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Founding of the Church
I've removed the reference to Kung, which cited only that some historians thing Jesus provided only a framework of beliefs. Essentially all Christians think that Jesus provided a framework of beliefs. Some Christians - and a few historians - think that Jesus found a church organization; most others appear to disagree (including Kung). From reading the first chapter of his book, he should actually be placed on the other side of the argument with Duffy, Bokenkotter, and others. I'm reading as much as I can right now and am becoming more convinced that the "Jesus founded a Church organization" thought process is a fringe view among historians and should not be given the same weight as the counterthought. Karanacs (talk) 18:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Considering that a now banned editor of this article was known to misrepresent sources, I fear you are going to find a lot of this once you really get into the sources. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 18:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Further issues. The "historians really do buy into the tradition Catholic narrative!!" piece is cited to two authors.  One is Jose Orlandis's Brief History of the Catholic Church.  This is available in full online as a PDF if you Google it (not Google books; regular search).  The book was published in 1983 by Ediciones Rialp, S.A. in Madrid and translated into English in 1985.  From what I can understand of the Spanish websites, this publisher is likely the same as Scepter Publishing, which published the English-language version.  Both of these are listed as being founded by member of Opus Dei or inspired by the Opus Dei mission.  Orlandis is a priest in Opus Dei (at least according to his WP entry), and is a professor of the history of law, specializing in the Visigoth area.  The books often feels very religious rather than historical ("At a precise moment in history and in a particular place on earth, the Son of God became man and made his appearance in human history" and "The resurrection of Jesus ...is the decisive proof of the truth of his teaching.") I don't consider this work to be a reliable source for what historians think, and I'm against using this work in the article at all. Vidmar is the other source used for this, and that is published by Paulist Press.  I read the pages that were cited, and it does not say on those pages (haven't read the earliest pieces of the chapter) that Jesus founded the Church, but does argue that Peter was the bishop of Rome. I think that at most the article should say that some Catholic historians assert the truth of the traditional narrative, and then explain in greater detail the mainstream view.  Thoughts? Karanacs (talk) 19:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Your interpretation as to what is or is not the "mainstream view" is irrelevant. That's not for WP editors to determine. What we have done is presented both views. And once again I'm seeing an attempt to exclude historians who are Catholics, and then say "most historians support x". This is not a convincing rationale. This is not an article, as some seem to think, which is here to try to debunk the traditional history of the Church. There is also a tendency here to split hairs by trying to place too much emphasis on things like whether Jesus established a "church organisation", (however interpreted). Jesus established a Church, with apostles. Peter, Paul and the apostles (as far as we know) established the wider organisation. So excluding one does not exclude the other. We have to be very clear here.  Xan  dar   20:52, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm judging "mainstream" by the fact that the only historians that can be found to support the other statement are printed by very specialist, Catholic presses, and that the books themselves often seem to confuse belief with fact. I am confused by your later statement.  Why would we mention historians if not to try to support that the hierarchy was founded by Jesus, or that there was a hierachy with Peter as the first authority?  We could skip that whole paragraph and go directly into "During the 1st century, the Apostles traveled..." Karanacs (talk) 21:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I support Karanacs' solution. Indeed, that is the point at which our narrative becomes history. The first paragraph is doctrine; the second is the tradition, which is not history except in saying that Peter died at Rome; the third is historiography. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

If a view can only be cited from Protestant sources, it is not consensus of scholarship. If a view can only be cited from Catholic sources, it is not consensus of scholarship. That leaves three alternatives: show it is consensus of scholarship; explain why this article should spend its limited space explaining the controversy; or be silent. The first will be difficult. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:06, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Use the best reliable sources, including peer reviewed journal articles to verify. Just because Wikipedia editors know a thing to be true is not argument for inclusion. In my view, if Orlandis' piece is not peer reviewed, then it shouldn't be used. Certainly there must be plenty of peer reviewed scholarship to replace. Does anyone have access to academic databases? Also, not convinced the Paulist Press represents the best scholarship according to their submission guidelines. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Vidmar's book got a lot of flak at one (or more?) of the FACs for not being a rigorous enough source. Karanacs (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's a book that looks good and received a nice review from Vidmar: Edward Norman's The Roman Catholic Church: An Illustrated History. I'll check with my library or order through inter-library loan. We really need to use the highest quality sources possible. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * We can only call a view a mainstream view if very reliable sources agree it is so. There is no consensus view on this, so alternative views need to be presented.  Xan  dar   21:03, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Articles may not call something mainstream unless that point of view is consensus - any more than they may use half a dozen words this article uses all too freely. But editors, among themselves, are not so restricted; indeed, determining the status of a source is part of editorial judgment.


 * But this again is a call by the intransigent Xandar for a liberum veto. That is not policy - and his efforts for one should be ignored. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

There is a difference between belief and historicity. It is Catholic belief how their church began and continues under authority of Apostolic succession. There is no reason not to use Catholic sources to support this belief. From a strictly historical or secular perspective, I have not seen any evidence that this doctrinal position is anything but a belief system. It is completely appropriate to describe Catholic beliefs, but with the qualifier that it is a belief. -- Storm  Rider  23:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for that, Storm Rider. It is well stated.  I was planning to write something along those lines but it was a busy day and you beat me to it.


 * The only problem with what you wrote is that it probably represents the consensus of editors of this page with the exception of Xandar, NancyHeise and perhaps a few others. Nobody disputes that these are the doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church/


 * The dispute over the text describing the founding of the Church and other related events (e.g. the Primacy of Simon Peter and the institution of the Papacy) is that Xandar and NancyHeise wish to use phrases like "a view shared by many historians" while many other editors argue that "many" is not an appropriate term to use when those historians appear to be primarily Catholic and, to a lesser extent, Anglican. Orthodox historians would tend to have a different interpretation of history and it is unclear what the mainstream view of secular historians is although there is some indication that the "traditional narrative" has been increasingly subject to challenge in recent decades (like over the last century) both within and without the Catholic Church.


 * I think most Christians (i.e. Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and the mainline Protestant denominations such as Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran) believe that Jesus founded the Christian Church. Among Christians, the concept that Jesus did not intend to found a church with presbyters/elders/bishops is probably a minority viewpoint although it is a significant viewpoint which should be presented probably in the Christianity and/or Early Christianity articles.


 * It is obvious that many Christians dispute the idea that the Papacy was established by Jesus on Simon Peter. AFAIK, no Christian disputes that Jesus said what he said about Simon Peter being the Rock.  What they dispute is what Jesus meant by saying it.


 * I think it is critical that these distinctions be drawn in this article as this dispute regarding ecclesiastical authority is one of the major stumbling blocks to Christian unity. Recent Popes have suggested that the doctrinal issues are not nearly so great and insurmountable if only ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of Rome were acknowledged.  (Whether that assertion is actually true or not is an open question but that does seem to be the message that the Vatican has been signalling.)


 * In summary, one of the things that distinguishes the Catholic Church from other branches of Christianity is its claim that the Bishop of Rome has jurisdiction over the entire Church militant (the Church of Christ on earth).


 * Yes, that is an assertion of faith and doctrine. The question before us is whether historians accept the historical narrative that is invoked to support this claim as rooted in historical fact rather than simply doctrinal assertions.


 * --Richard S (talk) 04:35, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * So far as I can tell, the only Anglican historian cited on this has been Chadwick; and Harmakheru found, with quotations, that the citations from Chadwick failed verification. Furthermore, prominent Catholic historians, writing in the name of the Church, have refused to assert large parts of the tradition. The "many" is a few men, writing outside their field, expressing their beliefs.   Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:48, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

OK... let me try again...

The Orthodox accept apostolic succession and even accept the Primacy of Simon Peter but only as to a primacy of honor, not one of authority.

I'm not sure where the Anglicans stand vis-a-vis apostolic succession but they certainly reject the authority of the Pope.

The Protestants reject both the Primacy of Simon Peter and apostolic succession (and much more).

The Catholics teach both apostolic succession and the Primacy of Simon Peter.

The above sentences make assertions that describe the doctrinal teachings of various branches of Christianity. They do not make any assertions about historical facts.

The question before us has been whether these doctrines are rooted in the history of early Christianity or if their origins are unclear and possibly artifacts of later antiquity. Rather than tussle over whether or not the traditional narrative is a "view shared by many historians", why not simply describe the questions (e.g. we don't know for sure what Peter did in Rome other than die there; we don't know for sure when and how the Bishop of Rome acquired the prestige and power that he exerted) and describe the various explanations put forth to these questions.

Part of making an NPOV presentation is to avoid asserting certainty where such clarity is absent in the "real world".

--Richard S (talk) 02:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see why the question of the validity of the claims/beliefs/teachings of the Church should be even mentioned in this article. Articles on individual questions (primacy, apostolic succession, episcopacy, eucharist ...) can report on discussions about them, for and against; but in this article on the Church itself I see no need to include any reference whatever to views for or against any particular aspect of how the Church sees and presents itself.  I see no advantage in even mentioning any support or any contradiction or any doubt voiced by others, whatever the field of their expertise.  Am I too naive?  Esoglou (talk) 08:06, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Esoglou, if you are Lima/Soidi, I have a lot of respect for you but I must disrespectfully disagree. I think we need to at least present the fact that these claims/beliefs/teachings are disputed and that the disputes form a significant basis for the divisions that separate Christians.  We needn't go into the details of the disputes and we certainly shouldn't take sides.  However, these disputes are what make the Catholic Church distinct from all the rest.  We got to let the reader know about them. --Richard S (talk) 08:25, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem here is when we come to the historical side. Some people seem to want text that pooh poohs the traditional narrative of the foundation of the Church in Rome and the descent from Simon-Peter. Such text tends to state or infer that most historians deny or deprecate the traditional narrative, further implying that the narrative is untrue. This presents a problem, since even the most Liberal of historians have no proof of their theories, but merely sets of suppositions and guesswork. Historical evidence of the truth of the TN is present but incomplete, and it included archaeological evidence. So any text that infers that there is clear agreement that the Traditional Narrative is untrue would be extremely POV. The writing of text in this area needs extreme accuracy and care.  Xan  dar   20:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It is consensus of the sources - even the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1904, in the middle of the struggle against modernism, agrees - that the traditional narrative is largely not history (with the obvious exception: insofar as it repeats contemporary sources it is no worse than they are). Neither is it doctrine; indeed, as Harmakheru has pointed out, statements of doctrine go to some length to avoid endorsing it.


 * That leaves us with two choices: either to mention the tradition and include the consensus view of it, or to omit it entirely, as we omit the Golden Legend. I could go with either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Bokenkotter discusses the traditional narrative versus the history in A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Chapter 3, beginning on page 29 of the 2004 edition. I can make notes later if necessary. It would seem that this point can be resolved, as Bokenkotter has, by indicating that controversy exists between the trad. narrative and historical intrepretation, and then cite to Bokenkotter. This alleviates the need to present both versions, cited to a variety of sources, which in my is leaning a bit toward WP:SYNTH. Thoughts? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is the text to which I was referring from Bokenkotter:
 * "p. 29 By end of 2nd century Church exists as an institution with authority based on Scriptures, creed and hierarchy of 'bishop, priests and deacon.' Development of the institution 'constitutes one of the most controverted chapters in the history of the Church.'"
 * p. 30 Traditional Catholic view of early Church organization "is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control after his death." The narrative is viewed by "many scholars, including some Catholic ones" as a "retrojection" of the current church into the "primitive era." " Most Many...historians prefer the theory that the primitive Church only slowly organized itself and shaped its system of authority to a variety of situations that existed in difficult localities. And in their view, it only gradually settled on the three tiered structure—bishop, priest and deacon—as the one most conducive to its mission."


 * If the text above were to be reworked and inserted in the article, in my view it would be better than what exists currently. Can we achieve consensus on this? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, good grief! Bokenkotter says that? Really?  And we've been arguing about asserting that the traditional narrative is "a view shared by many historians"?  If Truthkeeper88's quotes can be relied upon, this suggests that we've been focusing on the minority (i.e. the ones who are not included in what he calls "most historians") and characterizing them as "many".  This is clearly misleading.  We should focus on what Bokenkotter says "most historians" prefer and maybe, just maybe, mentioning the minority view though that could be considered "undue weight".  I cannot begin to tell you how exasperated I am that we have spent so much time, energy and negative emotion on this issue. (P.S. Please supply the missing text between the word "Most" and "historians prefer".  I would really like to be 100% sure that this quote accurately represents Bokenkotter's view.) --Richard S (talk) 21:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"The traditional Catholic view of the organization of the Church is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control after his death. This is the picture presupposed and developed by Luke particularly; but many scholars including some Catholic ones view this conception as a retrojection of the later developed Church system into the primitive area. If the twelve apostles were put in charge by Jesus, why the they so completely disappear from the subjequent history of the Church?
 * The missing text is a single word: "therefore". But, it refers to the previous paragraph which I paraphrased above but here's the complete text:

Many historians, therefore, prefer the theory that he primitive Church only slowly organized itself and shaped its system of authority to a variety of situations that existed in difficult localities. And in their view, it only gradually settled on the three tiered structure—bishop, priest and deacon—as the one most conducive to its mission."
 * I see I've made a mistake due to bad eyes and haste in the first post. Bokenkotter says "many" not "most." To repeat, I have Bokenkotter, page 30, 2004 edition. I also have Richard McBrien's The Church which addresses the early centuries with one of the longest sentences I've read in a long time. Will add that as well. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:24, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've got the Bokenkotter book as well now and vouch for Truthkeeper88's quotes. My notes from this book are available at User:Karanacs/Bokenkotter. Reading through this and some of the other sources cited in this article is what made me think we are trying too hard to put in the minority viewpoint. Karanacs (talk) 14:44, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've commented a bit; if you find them incovenient, feel free to revert. The money quote is
 * It [episkopos, "bishop"] gradually came into Church usage, and was nearly synonymous at first with the word for elder, presbyter. These elders or bishops governed the churches collectively at first. But gradually one man took over the power and concentrated the various ministries in his hands. He was now called "bishop" to distinguish him from the presbyters, who were his subordinates. (Bokenkotter, ed, cit. p. 33).
 * This is a flat denial of the "traditional" view; Bokenkotter cites no historian as favoring the traditional view, although he asserts it is a presupposition of Saint Luke. (He does not here discuss the date of Acts.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:25, 5 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In his book The Church Richard McBrien asserts that Jesus did not establish an institution; however Jesus did establish an ecclesilogy that is the foundation of the institution. His distinctions are important and worth consideration in my view. McBrien's writing style is somewhat convoluted and his sentences very long so I won't put the entirety of the quotations here but can do so tomorrow when I'll have a bit of time. The relevant pages in his book are 29-31. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Adding text from McBrien: Did Jesus intend to found a church? (name of chapter heading) "The answer to the question of whether Jesus intended to 'found' a church is no, if by found we mean some direct, explicit, deliberate act by which Jesus established a new religious community of organization." "This view is known as 'precritical' according to scholar Raymond A. Bwn" "The answer is yes, if by 'found' we mean 'lay the foundation for' the Church in various indirect ways, that is by the gathering of disciples, which set him apart from the Rabbis of his day." My notes are in User:Truthkeeper88/Catholic Church sandbox. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:09, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I apologize for adding McBrien's view above. In my spare time I've been trying to make my way through the talkpage archive and realize this entire discussion has been gone through before, complete with the quotation I added above. This must be extremely frustrating, and I'm sorry that Harmakheru has left because now we're duplicating work that's been done in the past which is a waste when other articles could be edited instead. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "This must be extremely frustrating" - yeah, no kidding. "Harmakheru has left" - I expect he would help us on specific issues if he were asked. --Richard S (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we have to be careful here. Bokenkotter is writing a summary statement about what historians think.  McBrien appears to be writing his own opinion.  I'm not saying McBrien is wrong but what he is writing is not "fact" but "interpretation", his interpretation.  What I think we can write is that there is a "traditional Catholic view" that "Jesus himself organized the Church" and that "many scholars including some Catholic ones" reject this view and " prefer the theory that the primitive Church only slowly organized itself " gradually settling "on the three tiered structure — bishop, priest and deacon".  What we don't have information on is how long it took for this "gradual settling".  Suffice it to say that we don't know exactly when the Bishop of Rome became the Pope.  There are reports of signal events along the way that we can point to but it's very difficult to say "Right here.  This is the year when the Papacy came into being."  What we can say is that the See of Rome gained increasing dominance over the Western Church and perhaps point to Pope Gregory I as a clear example of the monarchical papacy. --Richard S (talk) 21:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Bauer's newly published book The History of the Medieval World the first "pope" was Leo I in the 5th century. When Leo I took the title, the bishop of Constantinople took the title of patriarch. Then they excommunicated eachother. Agree that McBrien is iffy, so best to go with the newest sources available. I have notes from Bauer in my sandbox. I am surprised that Leo I has not been mentioned in this article. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * How long was "gradual"? According to Bokenkotter, not more than two centuries (see first quote above) and not all that much less. Harmakheru said several times that it varied from place to place - and this seems entirely plausible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:47, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we need to resolve the question in this article. It should suffice to say that the structure and governance of the Church evolved gradually over centuries and that it varied from place to place, taking on a more uniform structure after it became the state religion of the Roman Empire.  The details of different theories about how, when and where can be expanded upon in the articles on the History of Christianity and the History of the Papacy. --Richard S (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree that we don't need to explain in the article - and I was posting for my fellow editors. On the other hand, one of Raul's Rules is that anything worth explaining on the talk page may well be worth explaining in the article (quoted from memory). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Misquoting sources - and vouching for them

 * Truthkeeper has misquoted Bokenkotter page 30 and Karanacs has vouched for his misquote.
 * Bokenkotter page 30 does not say what Truthkeeper has printed above that "Most historians, therefore, prefer the theory that the primitive Church ......" Bokenkotter's exact words are "Many historians" not "most". Also, he states on page 30 that "many scholars, including some Catholic ones, view ..." I would argue that "most" scholars of Catholic history are Catholic and Bokenkotter never says most scholars agree with such and such point of view but provides us with the evidence that they are split on it which is why we provided Reader with both points of view in keeping with WP:NPOV. Eliminating both points of view incorrectly places favoritism on a single point of view which is a violation of WP:NPOV.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with NancyHeise that we have to be very careful with the words "many" and "most" as well as distinguishing between Catholic scholars and non-Catholic scholars. The text which she supported in the "previous article" said "a view shared by many historians" without specifying whether these were Catholic or non-Catholic.  As I've said before "many historians" is misleading.


 * I think we can "read between the lines" and deduce that Bokenkotter is NOT saying that the "retrojection" perspective is the mainstream view. If it were, he would more likely say "most" rather than "many".  What he does seem to be saying is that the "retrojection" perspective is a significant, notable viewpoint among many historians.  It must be presented in our article.


 * I think we can also infer that Bokenkotter thinks the mainstream view of Catholic scholars supports the traditional account. If it were not, he would not use language like "including some Catholic ones" which implies to me that the Catholic scholars who support the "retrojection" view are in a minority among Catholic scholars.  Now, I wouldn't want to use this "reading between the lines" as solid evidence of the foregoing conjectures but I would resist reading Bokenkotter to say something other than that.  It would be helpful to find more sources that comment about what historians and scholars think.


 * On the other hand, NancyHeise wrote "I would argue that most scholars of Catholic history are Catholic". She is probably right in that assertion.  However, we need to be clear here.  It is very POV to assert that the history of the Christian Church prior to the East–West Schism of 1054 is "Catholic history" rather than "Christian history".  Although the Western Church began to grow away from the Eastern Churches long before then, the history of the first few hundred years is a shared history.  There is no "Catholic history" in that time period.  Only a "history of Christianity".


 * Viewed that way, the history of the origins of Christianity are the domain of all scholars, Catholic or otherwise. So, in the period that we are discussing, we might be interested in what Catholic scholars think as a group but we cannot limit ourselves to only what they think.


 * In summary, I'm fine with asserting that there is no "consensus" view among historians as to the origins of Christianity. I think we should also comment that the disputes tend to follow sectarian/denominational lines (i.e. the history is colored by the doctrinal positions of the Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants).  If we also want to comment that some Catholic scholars depart from the traditional Catholic position, that's OK too but that's getting to be a bit too much detail.


 * --Richard S (talk) 17:17, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is, we have found many examples of scholars putting forth the "retrojection" view. (I've been doing as much reading as I can on this - and there's more to do - and with the exception of Orlandis and Vidmar so far all the other scholars seem to align with the retrojection view.) We have only seen two that give the other view, and those are both from priests being published by a Catholic publisher.  That certainly does not imply a mainstream view.  I am certainly open to being proven wrong, but I would really like to see the sources that back up the fact that other view is pretty prevalent among historians.  Are there any sources published by university presses or, at the very least, other non-Catholic-affiliated publishers?  Otherwise we are just speculating. Karanacs (talk) 20:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Bokenkotter himself clearly and distinctly asserts that there was once a collegial bishopric, as fact, not as a party view. He does not cite any historian as disputing it. I do not believe that Richard's inference is sound; Bokenkotter contrasts "many historians" to tradition, not to other historians. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Truthkeeper had already corrected that mistake (see his second post on the subject) before I vouched for it. Is there any evidence that "most" scholars of Catholic history are Catholic? So far, the only two sources used by the article to justify the POV that some scholars advocate for the historicity of the legend in full are a Catholic priest and a lay priest in Opus Dei whose works were published by Catholic publishers and were not peer-reviewed. Not very good sources, on the whole. Karanacs (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It may well be that most scholars of, say, twentieth-century Roman Catholicism are Catholic. But the history of first or fourth century Christianity has scholars of all denominations, for they all claim it as their history - and some scholars of none. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * One can only apologize for erring . If the apology if not accepted in good faith, or if the error is wrongly considered malicious and egregious, then there's not way forward, in my view. Furthermore, while your assertion may or not be true about scholars, until it's verified in a secondary source, it isn't relevant at the moment. This has nothing to do with WP:NPOV and everything to do with which information is verifiable and which not. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:32, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The point is that we have to be VERY careful in this section of using wording that supports or implies support for either the traditional or liberal historical view, but instead present both views for the reader. Neither is one view specifically the "catholic" view, or the "non-Catholic" view. This is not only a complex, but a very controversial area of history in which historians of all persuasions can be found on all sides. It's very easy to accidentally misquote, or misapply a quote.  Xan  dar   19:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The short answer is to stop using WP:WEASEL words like "many", "most", "some", and "few"; obviously editors have not been careful with them..--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 20:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. Particularly because typing three letters incorrectly (on Easter day, waiting for the dinner to cook!) caused this thread. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * That's what I get for typing in a hurry; the missing word "hierarchy". Are you finding much in Brent that ought to make its way into the article or is it too detailed for this particular overview? Karanacs (talk) 21:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Much of Brent is too detailed (and the details of his position may well not be consensus); but I will doublecheck the above quotation, from one of his books on Ignatius, and consider it for inclusion (it is clearer than "retrojection"). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

POV violations

 * Second Paragraph in Early Christianity makes an WP:OR statement cited to the Catholic Encyclopedia in the second sentence. The Catholic Encyclopedia does not say what this sentence claims it is saying. The term "bishop" is agreed by scholars to have not come into use until some time later. The three positions held by scholars about the Church's origins are shown in our "Origin and Mission" section in the long version of the article here.
 * The Early Christianity section of the article tells us this about the Church and slavery "Early Christianity accepted several Roman practices, such as slavery, campaigning primarily for humane treatment of slaves but also admonishing slaves to behave appropriately towards their masters.[26]" Yet you will never find out from reading the article that the Church had something to do with the demise of slavery. We are neither told anything about the work of the Church through the various papal bulls like Sublimus Dei or the work of religious orders such as the Mercedarians in the Middle Ages. Please see the long version for this information and appropriate citations. Thus the present article's POV slant is clear in that the end result provides Reader with zero information about the Church's stands on slavery centuries before its eventual abolition in the 1860s. :::* The quote from Chadwick is wrongly cited; it's from his article in the Oxford History of Christianity, which has page numbers in the thirties, not the three hundreds. And the quote given does not support the statement in the article.
 * The Church's influence upon Western Civilization is a topic included in all university textbooks on the subject yet this article makes no mention of this influence with regard to practices such as infanticide, abortion, divorce, marital infidelity, human and child sacrifice. The long version had a whole section, properly referenced, devoted to addressing this here . The conscious deletion of this section and failure to incorporate these items into the present article makes the omission a POV issue, especially when it is something that has so many scholarly sources on the subject discussing it.
 * Institutions section has omitted any information about Catholic institutions. This omission is a POV issue. The Church operates numerous hospitals, schools, orphanages etc. This information is located in a referenced table in the long version in the long article here . What is the justification for eliminating this table? There is no article text that can be claimed as being non-neutral, it just gives Reader the facts of what institutions are run by the Church and how many of each.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Factual accuracy violations

 * The present article was created by people who do not have the sources and changed both sentences and citations in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the article. As a result, it contains many inaccuracies.
 * Citation errors exist especially in the Beliefs section where whole sections are either unreferenced or cited wholly to original documents in violation of WP:Cite and WP:OR. That section, in order to be in accordance with Wikipedia policies must have citations to secondary scholarly sources. The other two versions do have proper citations to both secondary and primary sources in accordance with Wikipedia policy.
 * The article contains gaping inaccuracies like the lopsided emphasis on explaining the priesthood with virtually no explanation of lay people or religious orders. The Church considers each of these to be equally important in the life of the Church and the article violates WP:NPOV in this regard.
 * This article does not tell Reader anything about what the Church actually does. It operates the worlds largest non-governmental school system. It operates many universities and hospitals. It operates numerous orphanages and homes for the elderly. These are part of the Church institution. This article just tells reader how many parishes it operates but makes no mention of the existence or how many of the others.
 * This article omits whole sections of Catholic beliefs like prayer and the saints. If you go through the Catechism, you will see that these are equally part of Catholic Beliefs as other parts. By not mentioning them this article is in violation of WP:OR because it arbitrarily chooses to emphasize some beliefs and omit others. Version 2 or 3 follow the pattern set by scholary experts on the subject of Catholic Beliefs providing space for those aspects emphasized by the scholars themselves.
 * This article does not tell Reader anything about the Church's contribution to Western Civilization. If you read a university textbook on this subject, you will see whole sections devoted to discussion of the Church. That is because the Church is intimately involved with the developement of Western Civiliation and this is not POV but scholarly consensus. I think Version 1 violates WP:NPOV because it omits this information.
 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context; In an effort to create a short article, where length was the only issue, the creators left all mention of criticisms to daughter articles. This created article text that does not meet the comprehensive criteria of FAC.
 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be  well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate; This is exposed in the Beliefs section alone as well as the sections identified above that this article lacks. Someone went through this article and eliminated citations because they said there were too many, in the process, they left sentences without citations that supported the article text and created sentences that are cited to sources that do not say what the sentence purports - some examples: see citation number 166, 206, the last paragraph in Membership (second sentence is an inaccurate statement and is unreferenced),
 * This article contains many violations of NPOV, see for example the second paragraph in Tradition. This is singly referenced to a Protestant author, an Anglican priest. It also fails to note that of those disagreeing scholars, the mainstream view is that the papacy had emerged by the year 150 and that these scohlars do not specifically state when it absolutely emerged, just that it had evidently done so by that time. The way it is presently worded, Reader has no idea when it mainstream historians think it emerged which is a huge POV violation.   Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:43, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Nancy, it may be better to pull the entire section out of the archive rather than just post your comments again without the responses that had already been made. Otherwise we may end up in a circular discussion. Karanacs (talk) 15:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I posted my comments to help you see what was still factually inaccurate and POV. I came back and saw that none of these issues were ever incorporated and that my list was archived even so. I am placing them back on the page and amending them for what has changed. If the items get addressed, then we can archive but I think it is inappropriate to do so if they have not been addressed.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The archival takes place automatically if a post hasn't been made in that section in a 5-day period. My question is, could you please restore the whole section rather than start over, because there were responses to your points made before. Karanacs (talk) 16:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * These are essentially minor complaints that can be dealt with by editing the current page where necessary, as has already beeen done in the section on Mary. Some of them seem to lack any basis however:


 * "This article does not tell Reader anything about what the Church actually does"


 * How about: "It operates social programs and institutions throughout the world including schools, universities, hospitals, missions, shelters and charities" (with links to wikipages on Catholic schools and charities) in the lead?


 * "the present article's POV slant is clear in that the end result provides Reader with zero information about the Church's stands on slavery centuries before its eventual abolition in the 1860s."


 * Really? What about: "In South America, Jesuit missionaries sought to protect native peoples from enslavement by establishing semi-independent settlements called reductions" in the Early Modern section?


 * Anyway, the answer is clearly not to revert to Nancy's 'long' version that has been rejected as irredeemably POV by the RFC. Haldraper (talk) 17:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Many of these POV and referencing issues are pretty significant in my view, and need to be sorted out, whatever version we end up to be using as a base version.  Xan  dar   19:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Nancy's whinging has been discussed at Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_47 and  Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_47; as usual, she convinced nobody but herself and Xandar. The repetition of the evident falsehood that The present article was created by people who do not have the sources makes it a lie; we do have, and have been quoting, the sources. There is no consensus to do any of these things; repeating them will not create one. Until this Mutual Admiration Society has something novel to say, I suggest we let these vain repetitions be archived in due course. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Factual accuracy violations
The "writing is on the wall" regarding the RFC. The consensus is currently running 25-5 in favor of starting with the shorter version. There are, however, significant issues that have been raised by the minority and thus, to achieve true consensus, we need to address those issues. Let us please move away from sniping at each other and address the actual substantive issues. I have relisted Nancy's issues in an expanded format here so that we can address them more easily. --Richard S (talk) 14:32, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracies
 Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The present article was created by people who do not have the sources and changed both sentences and citations in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the article. As a result, it contains many inaccuracies.
 * This is a very broad criticism and not actionable as such. Please list the inaccuracies or just be bold and fix them.  We will use WP:BRD if necessary. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Citation errors

 * Citation errors exist especially in the Beliefs section where whole sections are either unreferenced or cited wholly to original documents in violation of WP:Cite and WP:OR. That section, in order to be in accordance with Wikipedia policies must have citations to secondary scholarly sources. The other two versions do have proper citations to both secondary and primary sources in accordance with Wikipedia policy.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Once again, please list or fix the citation errors. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Priesthood vs. lay people and religious orders

 * The article contains gaping inaccuracies like the lopsided emphasis on explaining the priesthood with virtually no explanation of lay people or religious orders. The Church considers each of these to be equally important in the life of the Church and the article violates WP:NPOV in this regard.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The point as stated seems valid to me. The previous version went into too much detail.  In this shortened version, we could probably spend a sentence or two on the laity and religious orders.  --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Not a violation of neutrality; but if someone cares to add a sentence or two, it would probably improve the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:56, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Social welfare ministries

 * This article does not tell Reader anything about what the Church actually does. It operates the worlds largest non-governmental school system. It operates many universities and hospitals. It operates numerous orphanages and homes for the elderly. These are part of the Church institution. This article just tells reader how many parishes it operates but makes no mention of the existence or how many of the others.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This point has been raised before. The table is sort of interesting but it is "data" rather than "information".  IMO, what would truly inform the reader would be to provide information about the relative importance of Catholic social welfare ministries in the past as well as the present.  In many countries, Catholic missionaries provided social services which were superior to the care that had been available previous to their arrival.  Some mention of the detrimental effects of said missionary work is also in order.
 * We must also set Catholic social welfare ministries in the context of other Christian ministries and ministries of other religions. In other words, it is POV to suggest that the Catholic Church engages all these ministries without also mentioning that other Christian churches and religions also answer the call to service.  What would be great would be statistics that indicate what percentage of NGO-operated hospitals are operated by the Catholic Church.  Similar statistics on schools would also be useful. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I haven't had time to assess the website, but ACSI Association of Christian Schools International might provide information or sources about schools. Other school organizations exists as well, I believe. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Catholic beliefs

 * This article omits whole sections of Catholic beliefs like prayer and the saints. If you go through the Catechism, you will see that these are equally part of Catholic Beliefs as other parts. By not mentioning them this article is in violation of WP:OR because it arbitrarily chooses to emphasize some beliefs and omit others. Version 2 or 3 follow the pattern set by scholary experts on the subject of Catholic Beliefs providing space for those aspects emphasized by the scholars themselves.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree that prayer and the saints are given short shrift in the current version but a sentence or two on each should suffice. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

FAC criteria
Note: I am unsure why we are trying to compare this version of the article to the FAC criteria. No one has proposed that this meets the criteria. There is a great deal of work that needs to be done. Karanacs (talk) 15:29, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Comprehensive
 Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context; In an effort to create a short article, where length was the only issue, the creators left all mention of criticisms to daughter articles. This created article text that does not meet the comprehensive criteria of FAC.
 * Other than the issues mentioned above, what other "major facts or details" are missing? --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with this. The history section is a mishmash of facts that doesn't necessarily pull out the information that should be included. Karanacs (talk) 15:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing citations

 * This article does not satisfy FAC criteria that states that an article must be  well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate; This is exposed in the Beliefs section alone as well as the sections identified above that this article lacks. Someone went through this article and eliminated citations because they said there were too many, in the process, they left sentences without citations that supported the article text and created sentences that are cited to sources that do not say what the sentence purports - some examples: see citation number 166, 206, the last paragraph in Membership (second sentence is an inaccurate statement and is unreferenced),  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * So, please tag the problems with either or  .  Better yet, just fix the citation problems yourself. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You are right, this does not represent a "thorough and representative survey" of literature. Truthkeeper, PMAnderson and I are right now concentrating on reading a wide variety of works for the history section.  There are also citation/verification issues listed at the top of the page that PMA and I identified which were also problems in previous versions.  The article needs a good audit, and all hands are welcome to help fix the problems. Karanacs (talk) 15:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

 * This article contains many violations of NPOV, see for example the second paragraph in Tradition. This is singly referenced to a Protestant author, an Anglican priest. It also fails to note that of those disagreeing scholars, the mainstream view is that the papacy had emerged by the year 150 and that these scohlars do not specifically state when it absolutely emerged, just that it had evidently done so by that time. The way it is presently worded, Reader has no idea when it mainstream historians think it emerged which is a huge POV violation.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This issue is being addressed in an earlier section titled "Founding of the Church". --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The Catholic Church; scum of the earth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.91.88.2 (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Lest we forget, this is what anti-Catholicism looks like... Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Meh, check his ip he's part of a subculture:; the real antis aren't as brazen.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 17:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Diarmaid MacCulloch
I just received a copy of (the American edition of) Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (in case the title confuses you like it did me, I'll explain that it starts at 1000 BC to give a background of Jewish and Greek cultures). MacCulloch is a historian who specializes in Christian history and is an Oxford University professor; he has won multiple awards for his previous works. The book was first published in Britain last year, and was the subject of a BBC miniseries. I have so far read only the introduction to the book. In that (p 12), MacCulloch states that his book "is self-evidently not a work of primary-source research; rather, it tries to synthesize the current state of historical scholarship across the world. It also seeks to be a reflection on it, a way of interpreting that scholarship for a larger audience which is often bewildered by what is happening to Christianity and misunderstands how present structures and beliefs have evolved." The book has 77 pages of footnotes (in tiny print) and another 14 pages of Further reading. I do not have access to JSTOR or other academic publication compilations and cannot, therefore, determine if there are any reviews - positive or negative - of the book available (an endorsement from Eamon Duffy is on the back cover). Would we consider a book such as this (very recent, written by a noted historian, and self-described as a synthesis of current research) to be a good indicator of which ideas are mainstream among modern historians? While that wouldn't preclude us from including alternative theories, could it be used to help determine which ones should get more weight? Karanacs (talk) 20:16, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm wary of giving too much weight to one individual book, no matter how weighty, since authors have their own pet theories and prejudices. So let's see what we can get out of it. I think this is the same book that is published here as A History of Christianity, which I have on loan at the moment.  Xan  dar   21:15, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * My personal view is that it's a shame we can't outsource the article to him. Some random facts include: he's Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, a vicar's son from three generations of clergy, was chosen by the BBC to create their first major documentary on Christianity in decades, is gay, "his discussion of the tortuous theological controversies that divided early Christians is brilliantly concise", says of himself, "I remember with affection what it was like to hold a dogmatic position on the statements of Christian belief... I would now describe myself as a candid friend of Christianity.". All circumstantial, of course, but I think the article do a lot worse than lean pretty heavily on his work.--MoreThings (talk) 21:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Contribution to Western Civilization

 * This article does not tell Reader anything about the Church's contribution to Western Civilization. If you read a university textbook on this subject, you will see whole sections devoted to discussion of the Church. That is because the Church is intimately involved with the developement of Western Civiliation and this is not POV but scholarly consensus. I think Version 1 violates WP:NPOV because it omits this information.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:50, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. However, we must address the POV problems of the text in the previous, longer version. --Richard S (talk) 14:31, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I wonder what assertions about "the Church's contribution to Western Civilization" could possibly be consensus among the sources. (We could just quote what Gandhi said when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: that it would be a good idea. ;->) I am sure that if any were found, they would not satisfy Nancy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Catholic Church RfC
Note: Please do not datestamp

Requests for comment/Catholic Church has opened to decide which of several versions of the article has consensus, and how best to develop it. Input is welcome.

Premature closure of RFC
I have to state formally here, and for the record, my objection to the early closure of this RFC, despite the fact that it was never properly advertised to the WP community, it had only been running for two weeks, and despite the fact that a further week following proper notification had been requested.  Xan  dar  21:24, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Did Jesus intend to found a Church?
If we want to present the view that Jesus founded the Church, then we need to be able to provide decent sources to back this up. So far we only have two - an Opus Dei priest writing a non peer-reviewed book for an Opus Dei publisher and an ordained priest writing a book I believe is not peer-reviewed for Paulist Press. Unless other sources can be found to support the view, this looks like a fringe view among historians. Karanacs (talk) 19:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's be careful: whether Jesus founded the Church is a question of definition, deeply metaphysical and a matter of doctrine. The question at hand is whether the Churches of the first century were all endowed with the three orders of deacon, priest, and bishop or whether there were (in at least some of them, for some period of time) only two, the higher one being called, almost indifferently, the presbyteroi and the episkopoi.


 * Brent discusses the second view more clearly than some: when Eusebius of Caesarea wrote his Church History, the first of any length, under Constantine, he assumed that the Church in the first century had the same structure it did in his own time, and read the surviving documents accordingly; a lack of historical perspective of this kind was not uncommon in antiquity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:18, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Pmanderson wrote "Let's be careful: whether Jesus founded the Church is a question of definition, deeply metaphysical and a matter of doctrine."


 * Yes, however, most church-going Christians today believe that Jesus intended to "found" a Church as a matter of faith they only dispute what kind of a Church he intended to found.


 * I can well believe that a historian would look at the evidence and conclude that Jesus did not envision a three-level hierarchy or a Pope sitting in the Vatican. Even a Protestant using "scriptura sola" as a guide might come to the same conclusion.  These discussions are certainly appropriate for Christianity and History of early Christianity.  Given that this part of the Catholic Church's history is identical with the history of Christianity, should we say something about it here as well? --Richard S (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You're mistaken, I think to say that "Jesus did not envision a three-level hierarchy or Pope". Honestly, we don't know what he "envisioned". But whether or not that's how the Church came to be later on, that's the issue. Many of the Catholics point out of Jesus' commissions of Peter in the Gospel as the foundational aspects of the Papacy, and admit that the structure of the current Church was their, it just wasn't elaborate as today, but in a primitive form. Hence, the "development" that the beatified Cardinal Neumann spoke of.Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 04:01, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's not. That's why we link to those articles. Whether it is significant enough as a doctrine to be included in our summary of doctrine is another question; how many points are there to the catechism? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with Pmanderson about discussing in this article the question of whether Jesus intended to found a Church. Here's my reasoning: A big part of the Catholic Church's claim to legitimacy rests on the idea the Jesus intended to and did found a Church on the apostles with Simon Peter as their head. Most mainstream Christians buy into this idea. Heck, even the Restorationists believe it. Where they differ is in interpreting what happened next (i.e. what is the connection between the apostolic Church and the later Church).

The bishops which the Catholic Church recognizes are those who can establish apostolic succession. The Orthodox buy into apostolic succession; they just interpret the Primacy of Simon Peter differently from the way that the Catholics do. The Anglicans? I'm not so sure but I expect they view the College of Bishops as being more collegial than hierarchical.

In contrast, the Protestants reject apostolic succession. In their view, anybody can start a church that follows Jesus. Well, OK, that's a bit of an overstatement but it's true for non-denominational churches. Mainline Protestant denominations have more of a formal procedure for ordaining ministers but these procedures do not rely on apostolic succession.

Now, I understand that this is an article about the Catholic Church and therefore we should not get into too much of a digression about comparisons with the rest of Christianity. On the other hand, these distinguishing characteristics of Catholicism should be presented as they help to distinguish the Catholic Church from the rest of Christianity. I dare say that your average Christian (Catholic or otherwise) does not have a good grasp of these issues and the non-Christian may have no idea why there are so many different kinds of Christians.

--Richard S (talk) 00:05, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * WRT "Most mainstream Christians buy into this idea", I don't think there is much room to move on this point. Matthew 16:18 is pretty darn clear: "... thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Hesperian 00:23, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, precisely. That is why Christians who are outside of the Catholic Church argue some combination of the following: that the Catholic Church has lost its way and become irretrievably corrupt (Protestant, Restorationist) or that Jesus did not intend for there to be a single monarchical head of the Church (Orthodox, Anglican).  I'm not interested in establishing the truth of the assertions about whether Jesus intended to found the Church or when and where the Papacy emerged.  These are assertions of faith and historical interpretation respectively.  It seems clear that faith influences how you interpret the quasi-historical evidence.  What I think is really important to present to the reader is (1) these controversies exist and are unlikely to be resolved on this mortal earth and (2) these controversies are used to justify the existence of more than one Christian Church (of which the Catholic Church is but one).  We must present the Catholic view in the context of what other Christians believe because it is part of defines the Catholic Church. --Richard S (talk) 15:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "Yes, precisely. That is why Christians who are outside of the Catholic Church argue some combination of the following: that the Catholic Church has lost its way and become irretrievably corrupt (Protestant, Restorationist) or that Jesus did not intend for there to be a single monarchical head of the Church (Orthodox, Anglican)." — Exactly, couldn't have said it better. There is little debate in Christianity on whether the Church was to be founded; and you have to remember, for Christians, this has many eccesiological, metaphysical, theological, and doctrinal implications. Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 03:56, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually there is a considerable body of Protestant opinion in the 19th and 20th centuries which vigorously denies that Matthew 16:18 means what it says, and this denial still has legs in Protestant-Catholic polemic online. The claim is that when Jesus said "this rock" he was not referring to Peter at all, but to himself, and further that the difference in Greek between "petros" (Peter) and "petra" (rock) actually constitutes an insult to Peter:  "Simon, you are a mere pebble; I am the foundation on which I will build my church, not you."  Of course this is rubbish even from the perspective of the Greek, and even more so in the underlying Aramaic, but ideologues are seldom thwarted by such details.  Most mainstream historians--Protestant, Catholic, and secular--now agree that the only reasonable way to read the Greek is to understand the "rock" to be Simon Peter.  But there are still a lot of anti-Catholic apologists who continue to argue otherwise.     Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 03:48, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

More Nits to Pick
I originally put this under one of the other headings above, but there is now so much other stuff that's been added that I was afraid it would get lost if I didn't put it here.
 * I got a handful, this thing is such a mess it's hard to get a good place to start.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:23, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Second paragraph: "Church doctrines have been defined through various ecumenical councils ..."  First, "various" is unacceptably vague, especially since there is an official numbered list stating which and how many councils are considered "ecumenical".  Second, it is wholly inadequate to the complexity of the matter, since the bulk of official Catholic teaching has never been formally defined but falls under the rubric of the "ordinary and universal magisterium" of the bishops in dispersion.  (See the article on Magisterium for details.)
 * 21 ecumenical councils


 * Third paragraph: "With a history spanning almost two thousand years, the Church is the world's oldest and largest institution ..."  It may be the oldest in the western world, but in the eastern world the Theravadin Sangha is at least 250 years older.
 * changed to western
 * I don't see anything in the article linked to suggest that this Buddhist Council is currently ongoing as an institution. Is it?  Xan  dar   20:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "Those beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed ..." Not really.  The Nicene Creed is primarily a resolution of early conflicts over trinitarianism and christology; the rest of the faith is barely even in view.  For example, the Eucharist, the "source and summit" of Catholic life, is not even mentioned.
 * removed
 * Still present in a second location at the end of the "Beliefs" section. It might be worthwhile to change "summarized in the Nicene Creed" to "summarized in a number of official creeds" since creeds are indeed important and the link gives a good overview of them.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 00:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Early Christianity: "Jesus also directed the evangelization of non-Jewish peoples ..."  Certainly the Church teaches that he did so; but whether the historical Jesus actually issued such instructions is very much disputed among scholars, in part because the gospels themselves record Jesus as saying that he was "sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel".


 * "Christianity was legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan and declared the state religion of the Empire in 380." An important element is missing here:  After the Council of Nicaea in 325, all forms of Christianity except Catholicism were proscribed and subjected to persecution by the Roman government; and it was not "Christianity" in the abstract but the very concrete reality of the Catholic Church which became the state religion, to the exclusion of all other forms of Christianity.  And to make this sequence complete, the fact and date of the final suppression of paganism should also be added.
 * Let's be careful here. Arianism and Semiarianism were legal under Constantius II, and Athanasius proscribed; the situation changed again under Julian (whose actual enactment was universal toleration), and afterwards there was official indifference until the various edicts of Theodosius, which have different dates. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * By the end of the fourth century, the Catholic variety of Christianity (and to some extent Judaism) was the only religion it was legal to practice in public.? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "In 325, the First Council of Nicaea convened in response to the rise of Arianism ..." This implicitly assumes that what later became "orthodox" Catholicism was the established view, and was only disputed with the "rise" of the Arian "heresy".  This was certainly the retrospective POV of the victors, but it may not have been the perception of everyone on the ground at the time ... especially that of the Arians themselves.
 * Quite so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Beliefs: "With the exception of baptism, the sacraments are administered by ordained members of the Catholic clergy."  This oversimplifies the situation considerably.  In practice, baptism is also supposed to be administered by Catholic clergy when possible, although (as the next sentence states) baptism by others is still considered valid.  In the case of Eucharist, reconciliation, and anointing, the Church recognizes the validity of some other churches' sacraments and even allows its own members to receive these sacraments from non-Catholic ministers under some circumstances.  And the situation with matrimony is even more complicated; while canon law requires the participation of ordained clergy for a Catholic marriage to be considered valid, the ministers of the sacrament are actually the married couple themselves, and Catholic theology also recognizes the sacramental character of marriages entered into by baptized non-Catholics outside the Catholic Church.  Of course this is way too much detail for a summary approach, but whatever the summary says should more closely approximate the reality and point somewhere else for the messy details.
 * We should definitely summarize the sacraments here and point the readers to: Sacraments of the Catholic Church--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "Baptism is the only sacrament that may be administered in emergencies by any Catholic, or even a non-Christian ..." Again, this fuzzes up the distinction between "valid" and "licit", and also seems to divide the world into "Catholics" and "non-Christians", which is truly infelicitous.
 * removed, anyone curious about that should be reading the Baptism or Sacrament articles.


 * "In an event known as the Incarnation, the Church teaches that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God became united with human nature when Christ was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary." First, "the Church teaches that" should be at the beginning of the sentence; as written, it says that the Church was teaching in the Incarnation, which is silly and impossible.  More importantly, to say that "God became united with human nature when Christ was conceived" is the sort of statement that in earlier times might have required the convening of an ecumenical council to sort it out.  This is a place where hewing close to the official language of a creed or council would be a very good idea, instead of trying to come up with alternative language which is all too easily subject to misunderstanding.
 * How about: "the Church teaches that in an event known as the Incarnation, God (specifically the "Divine Word" or the Logos (λóγος)) assumed a human nature and became a man in the form of Jesus Christ. This doctrine maintains that the divine and human natures of Jesus do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but rather are joined in him in a personal unity that has been referred to as the hypostatic union.""
 * Or: "The Church teaches that in the Incarnation, God the Son (the second person of the Trinity) 'came down from heaven' and 'by the power of the Holy Spirit was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man' as Jesus of Nazareth.  This union of the divine and human natures in one person is called the hypostatic union."    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 00:28, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Good! I was trying to move away from "quoting the Creed" and working in the Logos, element...but I think yours might be better.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course now we've also got to shoehorn the word "Trinity" in there at the beginning of the "Beliefs" section, since it is (unaccountably, to my thinking) totally absent at the moment.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 00:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and that is the fundamental reason for my hatred of the "confirmation paragraph", specifically, the oversimplistic non-academic explanation of the Holy Spirit. There's some other passing mention of Pentecost, but the Holy Spirit really suffers in this article.  The only thing holding me back from being a "bold editor" is the verbosity.  Another reason why I think the entire "history" section should be removed with a simple paragraph or better yet a portal, guiding readers to more detailed sub articles.  The Triune God is what made the Church so unique and not merely another branch of Judaism, yet it is barely mentioned in the article compared to Albigensians and Cathars.(insert sarcasm here)--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 00:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the "confirmation paragraph" stinks. Here's a suggestion.  Change "Catholics believe that they receive the Holy Spirit through the sacrament of Confirmation and that the grace received at baptism is strengthened" to "Baptism is believed to confer the gift of the Holy Spirit, while confirmation strengthens and completes the grace received in baptism."  Delete the next two sentences, which are way too much detail for this article.  Keep the sentence about the eastern church and chrismation, and then add a parallel sentence for the west:  "In the western Church the same procedure is followed for those received into the Church as adults, but for those baptized as infants confirmation is usually delayed until adolescence."    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 01:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "Prayers and devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary are part of Catholic ritual but are distinct from the worship of God." This also opens the door to misunderstandings.  I would suggest substituting "piety" for "ritual" here.
 * Done.


 * "The Church has affirmed the validity of Marian apparitions ..." More accurately, it has declared that some apparitions are "worthy of belief"; but it has also quite clearly stated that no apparitions, or the messages allegedly received from them, are binding on the larger body of the faithful, or can add anything to the deposit of faith received from the apostles.  And in some cases alleged apparitions have been flatly condemned as unworthy of belief.  (See Marian_apparition for detailed discussion.)
 * Done.


 * "Catholics believe that they receive the Holy Spirit through the sacrament of Confirmation ..." Well, not exactly, although that language is often used.  The Church teaches that Christian baptism, Catholic or otherwise, confers the new birth in the Spirit; confirmation (to use the language of the Catechism) "completes the grace of baptism" so that the recipient is "enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit".  The distinction is important and should not be glossed over.
 * I particularly hate this paragraph, I've been trying to rewrite it without getting verbose.

That's not everything by a long shot, but it's a good start.  Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 23:00, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem with all of your edits are that none of them have any citations to support them. Do any of you have any sources? We need to use those sources that have the Nihil obstat, Imprimatur designations and/or sources that are used in Catholic catechesis.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 14:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I haven't made any edits; I am simply pointing out problems and in some cases making suggestions for improvements, which others can implement or not as they choose. If someone decides to make changes based on my suggestions and they need citations, they can either find the sources themselves or ask me for help in finding them.  I'm not going to waste time digging up and documenting citations for mere suggestions which may never be used.    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 14:52, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * If you are making suggestions for article text that does not have a source to support it that will lead to accusations of WP:OR. Can we please stick to what the sources say? I notice that you have a problem mentioning the Nicene Creed and make mention of "other creeds". The only creed recited at Catholic Mass is the Nicene creed. It is the central statement of Catholic belief according to our sources. I do not have a good feeling about your expertise on this subject.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:02, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Nancy now seems to be asserting that the only acceptable sources are ones which have the official approval of the church. Thank you, Nancy, for finally confirming what many of us have already suspected - that you are only interested in being an advocate for the church and are not interested in any scholarship that may not reflect the church's magisterium.  So much for neutrality.  This is just getting more and more ridiculous. Afterwriting (talk) 15:25, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Nancy, I don't care what kind of "feeling" you have for my "expertise". You always have a problem with the expertise of anyone who disagrees with you, especially if they actually know more than you do.  I'm not going to get into another slinging contest with you over this.  You and Xandar are the biggest obstacles to progress on this article, and the sooner everyone else realizes this the better off they and Wikipedia will be.  Until then, I'm not going to waste any more time on it, or you.  Savor your victory, for however long it lasts.  I'm done.    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 15:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, don't leave. We can simply ignore her, as she deserves. If she causes a scene, it will (once an admin sees it) make her even easier to ignore. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I notice again, further evidence of personal attacks, unpleasantness and twisting the words of a fellow editor from Harmakheru, Afterwriting and PMAnderson. This too can be reported to admins if it continues. Stick to the issues under discussion and avoid personal attacks please. Nancy is quite clear that probvlems arise from just inserting material in the article that is not referenced. Material on Catholic belief are best referenced to official sources that explain that belief. That's what is being said here. So claims that Nancy is not interested in scholarship are a misrepresentation of what she has been saying.  Xan  dar   20:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, the chief problems with this article consist of statements which do not represent correctly what the source says. That most of these sources are themselves polemical works is a lesser but real problem (most polemical works nowadays being more accurate than Gasquet, Belloc, or   ). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Xandar writes: "I notice again, further evidence of personal attacks, unpleasantness and twisting the words of a fellow editor ...". I have noticed this again as well, but my list of the principal offenders is only two and doesn't include the three ones you've mentioned.  That's a bit odd. Afterwriting (talk) 07:02, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The thing is that the three person's breaches that I mentioned are all-too visible here on the page.  Xan  dar   21:19, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources for Beliefs section
Catholic Beliefs are in the Church's official book of Beliefs, the Catechism. This book has been summarized by many experts on the subject of Catholic beliefs in secondary sources that have been approved by the Church whose approval is listed in the front of the book where the copyright information is located. If a book has Nihil obstat and Imprimatur, it can be used as a source in the Beliefs section. If a book does not have this designation, it will be suspected of having errors such as Richard McBrien's Catholicism which was never given these designations because the US bishops condemned the book as containing too many inaccuracies. Yet some editors here feel we are being POV pushers for insisting that we use books with Nihil obstat and Imprimatur. I think this accusation must stem from a misunderstanding that we want to use these for other parts of the article but we have not suggested that, they are only for the Beliefs section.  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This is directly contrary to policy; the statement "the Catholic Church teaches X" should instead be sourced to Catholic and non-Catholic sources alike. Fortunately, in fact, this won't make any difference, except perhaps in tone; but consider what this improper proposal would do to Scientology. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:19, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The Catholic Church's official beliefs are found in the Catechism. As such, the Catechism, supplemented with other Church-approved documents, such as documents with Nihil obstat or Imprimatur, encyclicals, or magisterial statements, could be the only possible sources for supporting a statement about Catholic doctrine. Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 04:27, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. The Catechism is a primary source. We may quote it, but should not paraphrase or interpret it, unless a secondary source has done so for us. (In principle, selecting among its thousand articles is also interpretation - and we have not room for the whole thing.) Such interpretation should follow the consensus of scholarship, not one point of view among scholarship. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:34, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Sexual assault scandal in the lead?
I realize this issue is all over the news right now, but even that's not good enough to merit inclusion into the lead of an organization going back nearly 2,000 years. That's why I reverted Pmanderson's reversion of Xandar. I'm fine going into some detail on this topic in the body of the article, but it doesn't seem "encyclopedic" to place this information in the lead (read: we're just including recent events at the expense of historical context). UBER ( talk ) 23:58, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the fact that the very word "recently" was in that edit should make it obvious enough that it's recentism. Sure, it's big now, but history books in 1000 years probably won't even mention this scandal.Farsight001 (talk) 01:06, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Recentism, and not necessary for the lead.  The topic is addressed in the article. --anietor (talk) 03:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Concur. Majoreditor (talk) 01:44, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Church Accounts
It has been quoted, for example in Business Week that the church raises $7.5 billion annually. On both a global scale, and the scale of my local church and my local priest, and even the heating bills for his church. Where does the catholic church earn it's income? There is no account on any part of the web site which even mention the fiscal side of this organisation. I think it would be of great interest to know how my local priest is paid, and how the building under his care are paid for? Globally, what is the breakdown of income and outgoings? For reference, I am in the diocese of Westminster in the United Kingdom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.47.16.57 (talk) 19:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is any attempt at global accounting. The figure you quote is probably an estimate. Some of the foreign language articles give figures for national Churches. But Dioceses are generally financially independent units, hence some are rich, with investments and endowments, and some are poor. In some countries, such as Spain and Germany, funds are raised for the Church through the state. In most, funds are raised through collections and free donations. Various missionary societies and religious orders also raise their own funds. Schools have their own funding and budgets. Priests generally are not highly paid. In the UK a Catholic priest earns about half what an Anglican priest gets, and has poorer pension rights. I'm not sure if there are any books dealing in Church finances.  Xan  dar   01:11, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong but I'd surprised if as Xandar says there is no "attempt at global accounting": surely the Vatican bureaucracy is more than capable of the task and would want to know the figures? Haldraper (talk) 16:37, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * But whether they publish them is another question. Peter jackson (talk) 08:57, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No, there is no global accounting. I don't see how there can even be national accounting, unless the country has very few Catholics: I presume that the figures for some countries that Xandar refers to concern what the Church there receives in the form of aid from or through the state, not what it receives from the faithful or from investment of what it has already received and what it spends on building, upkeep and other expenses.  There is not even diocesan accounting except for the diocese's own affairs: the finances of the missionary societies and religious orders to which Xandar refers and indeed of many other associations within the Church are, as he rightly says, independent of the diocese's.  The Church is by no means as centralized as some imagine.  Esoglou (talk) 09:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The accounts for my local diocese are published in the annual diocesan yearbook showing income from donations, investments against wages, upkeep of property etc. I presume every diocese keeps such records: it would not take a massive effort by the Vatican bureaucracy to ask that each diocese file a copy with them surely? Haldraper (talk) 16:28, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Why would they need to? Its a distributed model -- Snowded  TALK  16:36, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Check the Pontifical Yearbooks which are the ultimate sources for the (inflated) membership statistics in the first paragraph. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:42, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The Italian-language Pontifical Yearbook (Annuario Pontificio) is not the ultimate source for membership statistics. The ultimate published source is the trilingual (Latin-English-French) Statistical Yearbook of the Church, the latest edition of which (ISBN-13: 978-88-209-8381-9) gives the statistics (total and by continent and country) on baptized Catholics, priests, seminarians, members of religious institutes, schools, hospitals etc. on 31 December 2008, collected in 2009 from the dioceses and religious institutes with which open contact is possible (China and North Korea may now be the only countries excluded), and published on 15 April 2010.  Perusal of this or any edition should make the previous editor wonder on what grounds he has declared the figures inflated.  Esoglou (talk) 11:51, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Because of the definition of Catholic being employed: anyone who has been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, regardless of whether they have later turned atheist, skeptic, Protestant, or Buddhist. (On the same grounds, it may well include actual excommunicates, as Catholics under discipline.) Given the definition, I am reasonably willing to accept the figures; but the definition is not what the guileless reader will expect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:16, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Fine. Then specify "baptized Catholics", as in the Statistical Yearbook.  Formal renunciation of membership is possible, as, I believe, formal renunciation of some countries' citizenship is possible.  Until that formal renunciation takes place, even lapsed Catholics and citizens who have gone into exile remain, respectively, baptized Catholics and citizens.  Esoglou (talk) 21:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Tradition
Pmanderson deleted the section on "Tradition" with an edit summary in German which translates to "one must be silent on this (topic)". I restored the section with an edit summary which hopefully translates to "No, one must find NPOV on this (topic)".

For reasons stated previously, I think we must present this tradition because, in the minds of many Catholics if not in its teaching, this traditional narrative forms the basis for the Church's claim to authority (i.e. direct succession from Peter to the current Bishop of Rome). The fact that various elements of this tradition are challenged by other branches of Christianity does not mean that we should not mention the tradition. We should simply avoid asserting it as fact or overstating the number of historians who view it as historical.

I remain convinced that Bokenkotter considers the majority of Catholic scholars to be supportive of the traditional narrative and even a sizable number of non-Catholic scholars. I think we need to research further to understand what the mainstream position is with the caveat that I think there are multiple "mainstream positions" depending on which branch of Christianity you adhere to.

--Richard S (talk) 18:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Edward Norman's The Roman Catholic Church: an illustrated history shows the traditional narrative and indicates that the "title of pope became established" in the 6th century. On Google books, pages 11 to 14 . Am still waiting for a copy to arrive at the library. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Silence is neutral. That's why I quoted an aphorism (by a prominent Catholic philosopher), which begins: "Whereof we cannot speak..." The neutrality of what is written is contested. Fine, then I am perfectly willing not to say it.


 * The Catechism goes to some length to avoid basing the claims of the Church on this tradition - Harmakheru discussed this in detail, and will be missed. Therefore I doubt Richard's argument can be sustained; indeed, if the claims of the Church depended on the details of the tradition, those claims would fall, for the tradition is mistaken. That would be a desperately anti-Catholic position. Richard's position on Bokenkotter is vacuous: it consists of his guesswork at the meaning of a passage he has not read, denied by those who have. Bokenkotter  does not say or imply anything of the sort.


 * There are three major components of the tradition, as this section discusses it:
 * That the Church did, everywhere, and at all times since Pentecost, have three orders, exactly as it does now: a single bishop for each city, an order of priests, and an order of deacons:
 * That certain named individuals held the position of Bishop of Rome (and secondarily that other named individuals held the position of Bishop in other citiea)
 * Traditions of the other actions of these individuals (including Saint Peter dictating the Gospel according to Mark, Saint Clement's martyrdom on an anchor, and so on).


 * Of these, part (1) has consensus of the sources, and close to unanimity, against it. I have quoted Bokenkotter's words on the subject above). Brent, which I have been reading, provides a chronology of when the component parts of the threefold tradition came into being, none earlier than the second century.


 * Part (2) falls with (1); if there was so single bishop, saying that Linus (say) was a single bishop must be false. In addition, it bears the characteristic marks of retrospective history: there is no consensus among the ancient authorities as to who was Bishop of Rome, when, or in what order (Is Clement next after Peter, next but one, or next but two? All these have ancient authority, but two of them must be wrong.) In addition, it is unsupported by any contemporary authority whatsoever: Clement does not call himself bishop - indeed, his letter is anonymous and presents itself as being from the presbyters of Rome, and the Shepherd of Hermas says: "You will write two small books and you will send one to Clement and one to Grapte. Clement will therefore send his to the cities outside, for that is his commission. But Grapte will admonish the widows and orphans." (In short, Clement is Corresponding Secretary of the committee of Presbyters.)


 * (3) consists almost entirely - not quite entirely - of such stuff that no-one will call history; and that nobody does.


 * But none of this contradicts the actual assertion of the Catechism: The apostles entrusted the "Sacred deposit" of the faith (the depositum fidei), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. Nor does it contradict the Apostolic Succession; when there were two orders, the higher order was called alternatively bishops and presbyters, and it is a reasonable conjecture (which faith may affirm, without asserting falsehood) that the college of bishops at Rome (or at Antioch, or Corinth) consecrated each other, and passed on the tradition to each other. There is evidence, indeed, which supports that this did happen before there were single bishops.


 * However, because there is a faction of literalists, we cannot reach any consensus of what to say about the tradition, save perhaps that there it is an article of faith that there is one. I shall so edit.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I have just read through, once more, the four pages of Bokenkotter on this subject. To cut and paste the first half page:


 * ''All of this shows a distinct sense of the Church’s sense of supernatural oneness in Christ— but little idea of organization. The traditional Catholic view of the organization of the Church is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control of the Church after his death. This is the picture presupposed and developed by Luke particularly; but many scholars, including some Catholic ones, view this conception as a retrojection of the later-developed Church system into the primitive era. To mention only one objection to the traditional view: If the twelve apostles were put in charge by Jesus, why do they so completely disappear from the subsequent history of the Church?


 * ''Many historians, therefore, prefer the theory that the primitive Church only slowly organized itself and shaped its system of authority in response to a variety of situations that existed in different localities. And in their view it only gradually settled everywhere on the three-tiered structure— bishop, priest, and deacon— as the one most conducive to its mission.


 * ''Those who favor this developmental approach interpret Paul, the earliest witness, in this sense. They hold that for Paul the Spirit is the one who organizes the community; rule by the Spirit means that love is the unifying and organizing force, and freedom is its characteristic quality. The various ministries needed to carry on and order the community are given directly by the Spirit. And Paul lists these in his Epistle to the Corinthians: “God has given the first place to apostles, the second to prophets, the third to teachers; after them, miracles, and after them, the gift of healing; helpers, good leaders, those with many languages.”


 * Note that Paul does not limit apostleship to the original twelve; an apostle for Paul was anyone who had personally been commissioned to preach by the risen Jesus and, as a witness to the resurrection, authorized to found and lead churches. and so on for three pages of the developmental view, tracing how the apostles were succeeded charismatic leaders, they in turn by elders/bishops and deacons, and finally


 * ''This term "bishop" was originally a secular Greek expression, episkopos, meaning supervisor or overseer. It gradually came into Church usage and was nearly synonymous at first with the word for elder, presbyter. These elders or bishops governed the churches collectively at first. But gradually one man took over the power and concentrated the various ministries in his hands. He was now called "bishop" to distinguish him from the presbyters, who were his subordinates.

In short, one sentence on what the traditional view is; one half sentence asserting that it is presupposed by Luke (and since neither Luke nor Acts mentions bishops, this means the traditional view in the widest terms); three pages asserting the developmental view (beginning with an objection to the tradition), which in due course fall out of indirect discourse into Bokenkotter's own voice. No historian is ever mentioned as supporting the traditional view, or any part of it.

No assertion of what Richard "remains convinced" Bokenkotter really means; no evidence for it; by this method, any book can support any claim, if an editor is just sufficiently convinced. We have two editors now who edit on those terms; that's quite enough. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:33, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * First of all, I would like this discussion to be less confrontational. We often see things the same way and so I suspect there has been some combination of loose writing/thinking on my part and misinterpretation of what I wrote/meant on your part.  Please AGF and even assume some modicum of intelligence and reasonableness on my part even if I have written something stupidly recently.  If I pride myself on anything, it is the willingness to learn from those who are more knowledgeable than I am.  Sometime ago, I made up this mantra for myself: "I love Wikipedia.  I learn all sorts of new things.  Some of it is even true."


 * Secondly, I grant that the "Tradition" section in this article asserted more than Bokenkotter did explicitly in the quoted text. Bokenkotter only describes the traditional view positively in skeletal form.  It appears that we can only glean what the full traditional view is by inferring that it is what the developmental view challenges.  Thus, it's not quite fair to say that the positive description of the traditional view provided by Bokenkotter is all that there is to the view.  To some extent, the traditional view can be inferred to include all the points that the developmental view argues against.


 * Thirdly, I notice that the current revision of the article has this text in the "Doctrine" section:
 * "According to its doctrine, the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ.[151] The New Testament records the activities and teaching of Christ's appointment of the twelve Apostles and giving them authority to continue his work.[151] The Church teaches that Jesus designated Simon Peter as the leader of the apostles by proclaiming "upon this rock I will build my church ...I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven ..."[152] The Church teaches that the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, signaled the beginning of the public ministry of the Church. All duly consecrated bishops since then are considered the successors to the apostles,[153] and they hand on the Sacred Tradition received from the apostles.[154]"


 * I will comment that reference 151 is to Kreeft and the citation includes this quote "The fundamental reason for being a Catholic is the historical fact that the Catholic Church was founded by Christ, was God's invention, not man's ...As the Father gave authority to Christ (Jn 5:22; Mt 28:18–20), Christ passed it on to his apostles (Lk 10:16), and they passed it on to the successors they appointed as bishops." Unless Kreeft is writing in extreme shorthand, the quote suggests that he is asserting that the apostles appointed bishops as successors.  This seems to be hinting at apostolic succession and maybe even a distinction between bishops and presbyter/elder/priests.  Kreeft may well be a proponent of the "traditional Catholic view" although we can go around the block arguing about whether he is a scholar or a popular author.


 * I will also comment that the text in the "Doctrine" section that I quoted above is not so bad. Given that we are trying to write a shorter article, we might justify leaving out the "Tradition" section as being excessive detail.  I will, nonetheless, continue the discussion partly because it might be useful to have the "Tradition" section dealt with in History of the Catholic Church or History of early Christianity.


 * Unlike Xandar and NancyHeise, I am not trying to assert the truth of the narrative nor even that historians view it as historical. However, I do think the tradition is an important part of the Catholic view even if it is not official doctrine or held among Catholic scholars and theologians.  As anecdotal evidence, I point to Nancy Heise who, in real life, teaches Catechism and has fought mightily to defend this narrative because "as a teacher of Catechism, she knows that this is Catholic teaching".  I would wager that many lay teachers of Catechism also have this view.  So, it is notable even if it is wrong.  Describing the Catholic Church is not just about what the scholars say about it and what the Catechism says but what the parish priests and the lay ministers say and do.


 * My view of NPOV is not that "saying nothing on a controversy is neutral". To me, "saying nothing on a controversy is cowardice".  I would much prefer to present the fact that the controversy exists and avoid taking sides unless there is a clear mainstream view.  In fact, I'd be OK with this article saying pretty much what Bokenkotter says i.e. that there is a traditional Catholic view and a developmental view which many scholars, including some Catholic ones, prefer.


 * If we look at what Bokenkotter says ...


 * " The traditional Catholic view of the organization of the Church is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control of the Church after his death. This is the picture presupposed and developed by Luke particularly; but many scholars, including some Catholic ones, view this conception as a retrojection of the later-developed Church system into the primitive era."


 * What can we take away from that?


 * 1) The traditional Catholic view of the organization of the Church is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control of the Church after his death.


 * This is the "traditional" Catholic view. Bokenkotter does not indicate in this sentence whether this view is traditional in the sense of being antiquated and obsolete as opposed to "modern" or traditional in the sense of being the mainstream Catholic view.  If you can shed light on this question, it would be appreciated.


 * At this point, Bokenkotter doesn't say that the "traditional view" includes bishops, priests, and deacons. Much less a "Bishop of Rome" with monarachical power.


 * 2) This is the picture presupposed and developed by Luke particularly; but many scholars, including some Catholic ones, view this conception as a retrojection of the later-developed Church system into the primitive era.  Many historians, therefore, prefer the theory that the primitive Church only slowly organized itself and shaped its system of authority in response to a variety of situations that existed in different localities. And in their view it only gradually settled everywhere on the three-tiered structure— bishop, priest, and deacon— as the one most conducive to its mission. "


 * "Many scholars" view this conception as a retrojection... " "Many historians prefer ..." Bokenkotter has every opportunity to say "most" or "almost all" but he doesn't.  To me, this suggests a number less than 50% but even if it were greater than 50%, it is unlikely to be much more than 50%.  Heck, there's no easy methodology to determine how many historians believe a certain theory.  So, unless something represents the overwhelming consensus, it is easier to just say "many".


 * Also note that Bokenkotter says "including some Catholic ones". This suggests that the Catholic scholars who view this conception as a retrojection represent a small proportion of the total number of Catholic scholars than the "many scholars" represent of the total number of non-Catholic scholars.  If this were not true, why bother saying "including some Catholic ones"?  And, why use the word "some"?  If the proportions were roughly equal for Catholic and non-Catholic scholars, a more apt locution would be "Many scholars, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, ..."


 * The "retrojection view" sees the Church as slowly organizing itself and gradually settling everywhere on the three-tiered structure. This suggests that the "traditional Catholic view" sees the Church as having organized itself fairly rapidly and universally into the three-tiered structure.


 * Now, I grant that this takes a lot of "reading between the lines" so I wouldn't want to bet my first-born son on my reading. However, I don't see anything in this quote that suggests that the "retrojection" view is the mainstream view.  It might very well be that but this quote from Bokenkotter doesn't support that assertion.


 * You wrote that "No historian is ever mentioned as supporting the traditional view, or any part of it." and yet the quote suggests that there must be some scholars (historians? theologians?) who support the traditional view else why use words like "many" and "some"?


 * You wrote " three pages asserting the developmental view (beginning with an objection to the tradition), which in due course fall out of indirect discourse into Bokenkotter's own voice". Really?  Are you suggesting that Bokenkotter is a proponent of the developmental view over the traditional view?  I've always assumed that he was describing both sides of the debate without taking a clear stance on either side.  Based on everybody else banging on Bokenkotter's reliability as a source, I had assumed he would be a proponent of the traditional view.  However, even if he is a proponent of the developmental view, that doesn't refute the fact that there is a "traditional Catholic view".  After all the developmental view is notable because it overturns the traditional view.  The only question left is whether the "traditional Catholic view" is Catholic doctrine (which you assert it isn't and which argument I have found convincing) or just what gets taught at the local parish level because some stuff lives on forever even if it's not actually in the Catechism.


 * --Richard S (talk) 01:51, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps this will help: resurrected and excerpted from Archive 38:


 * From The Church Triumphant: A History of Christianity up to 1300 by E. Glenn Hinson (Mercer University Press, 1995), p. 14:


 * Since the late nineteenth century scholars have debated whether Jesus should be regarded as the founder of Christianity or only as the "presupposition" for it. ... Such questions cannot be answered easily. Few scholars today would defend the view held since primitive times that Jesus founded the church essentially as it now exists save for growth and development.


 * The most Hinson will grant is that "it does seem important to insist that Christianity has some connections not merely with the resurrection experience but with what antedated it." (Hinson, by the way, has a doctorate from Oxford and also studied at the Gregorianum in Rome and The Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.) What is particularly interesting about Hinson is that his scholarly objectivity is affirmed by none other than Thomas Noble, one of Nancy's favorite authorities. In a review of the book from which the above quotation was taken, Noble writes:


 * This is a good and ambitious book. ... It is good because it is wonderfully fair-minded. Hinson has no axe to grind." (Church History, vol. 66, no. 2 (June 1997), pp. 335-336.)


 * This comes pretty darn close to being "encyclopedic": Hinson, a Protestant with excellent credentials, states unequivocally that "few scholars today" would defend the traditional view ("held since primitive times"), and Noble, a Catholic scholar with excellent credentials, declares that the book in which Hinson says this is "wonderfully fair-minded".


 * Also, from Reconciling Faith and Reason: Apologists, Evangelists, and Theologians in a Divided Church by Thomas P. Rausch (Order of St. Benedict/Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 45:


 * [Karl Keating] refutes ... argument on the nonexistence of the early papacy simply by referring to the tradition's naming Linus as the second pope ... but the emergence of the Petrine ministry is far more complex. Rome did not have a monoepiscopal government until close to A.D. 150. Nor should Keating take as historical without further question Tertullian's statement that Clement was ordained by Peter, something that would be questioned by most historians today.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 02:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Also this, from Archive 37:


 * The 1985 Canon Law Commentary from the Canon Law Society of America (with nihil obstat and imprimatur), in its commentary on the canon most closely associated with the Petrine primacy (Canon 331), specifically declines to endorse the traditional narrative, saying: "Scholars argue that it is not necessarily a question of linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome. It is possible that for some time the Church of Rome was governed not by a single individual bishop but by a college of church elders." And it goes on to refer this conclusion to "many scholars today, Catholic as well as Protestant".   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 02:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It would be nice if Bokenkotter had said more clearly what he did not mean. But he says clearly what he does mean: The traditional Catholic view of the organization of the Church is that Jesus himself organized it by appointing the twelve apostles and giving them authority to assume control of the Church after his death. That is a statement of very rapid formation - and the issue at hand is precisely and solely the role of the apostles. If he meant more than this, he would not have added   This is the picture presupposed and developed by Luke particularly: Luke did discuss (in Acts 4) the role of the apostles; he did not discuss the role of bishops or deacons - indeed, Luke does not mention either.


 * Now that question of the status of the apostles may well be one on which Catholic scholarship is divided, although I see no evidence of it. It is that point on which Bokenkotter describes two views; one may well be present and one past. On the development of bishops, however, he is quite clear, and I have quoted him above. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:13, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

So, in a nutshell, we are saying that Bokenkotter and most other Catholic scholars would agree with Hinson's assertion that "Few scholars today would defend the view held since primitive times that Jesus founded the church essentially as it now exists save for growth and development." And that Bokenkotter's "traditional Catholic view" is equivalent to " the view held since primitive times that ..."?

If this is an accurate interpretation, why is it not worth including in the article? Why must we "schweigen" (be silent) on this? How is it encyclopedic to do that? To say nothing is to tacily support the traditional view which the average person is more likely to be familiar with. (By this, I mean that even the average non-Catholic would probably think the Catholic Church claims the Pope to be the lineal successor of Simon Peter.)

Why not say something along the lines of


 * "The traditional Catholic view has been that Jesus founded the Catholic Church with an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons and that the Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Clement, the first in the succession of Popes. However, few scholars today would defend that view.(cite Hinson)  Many scholars prefer a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter)  Scholars argue that it is not necessarily a question of linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome. It is possible that for some time the Church of Rome was governed not by a single individual bishop but by a college of church elders.(cite the 1985 Canon Law)."

To reiterate, I am no defender of the historicity of the traditional Catholic view. I simply want it to be presented alongside whatever verifiable assertion can be made about the mainstream view of contemporary scholars regarding the traditional view. I think the above paragraph does that although it needs to be rewritten to avoid plagiarism. I am also willing to accept that this might be too much detail for this article and might be more appropriately placed in History of the Catholic Church, History of the Papacy and History of early Christianity.

--Richard S (talk) 04:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * PMA, to call Ludwig Wittgenstein a "prominent Catholic philosopher" is really quite misleading. He was certainly a prominent philosopher, & he called himself a Catholic, but I don't think anyone would call his philosophy Catholic philosophy. Peter jackson (talk) 10:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Was he a Thomist? No. But those who wish to call the Way of Silence non-Catholic must reckon with Theresa of Avila, not with me. We have had more than enough parochialism on this page. (A more valid question would be whether it is philosophy, rather than mysticism - and on that point he might agree.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:07, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

This very long conversation began here when Kung's stance was explained. I now have a copy of Kung's The Catholic Church: A Short History. Kung's credentials are impressive: theological consultant to the 2nd Vatican Council; wrote the documents of the Vatican II. This is a short book so I should manage to get through it fairly quickly, make notes, and add as appropriate. Richard's draft above is a good starting point. I think Mike's point about avoiding "some", "most", "many" is worth following, and also if I were writing the text I'd attribute these very important arguments to the sources directly in the text. In other words, something like: "Church historian Bokkenkotter explains: " ...add a direct quotation here...." and so on. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The first chapter is titled "Founded by Jesus?". He writes: "No, according to all the evidence, Jesus did not found a church in his lifetime." (Kung, p. 4)
 * In the chapter titled "Peter" he writes: "Even Protestant theologians now affirm that Peter suffered a martyr's death in Rome. Conversely, however, Catholic theologians concede that there is no reliable evidence that Peter was ever in charge of the church in Rome as supreme head or bishop."
 * First of all I'd have to say that Richard's suggested paragraph begins with a mis-assertion, which I think lies as a key to confusion in this discussion. The sentencs; "The traditional Catholic view has been that Jesus founded the Catholic Church with an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons.." is wrong in my opinion. The Catholic view does not suggest that Jesus founded a Church with Bishops Priests and Deacons. It states, as Bokennkotter records, that he founded a Church based on Apostles and disciples. It was the Apostles who set up the basis of the threefold ministry of Bishops, priests and deacons. So we have a two-stage process. Jesus established a Church, but he did not establish a church, which (in the words that Harmakheru quotes from Hinson,) was "founded ... essentially as it now exists save for growth and development." (ie with Bishops priests and Deacons). So where the quote from Hinson alleges that few scholars would support such a statement, that is a red herring. The traditional narrative does not state that Jesus founded the church essentially as it exists today, but that he founded the Church on the Apostles, and that the Apostles developed its structure after his death. We need to be clear on this, and exactly what it is that scholars are agreed or in disagreement on.
 * I have to agree with Xandar on this one. The Catholic Church's View is that Christ founded a Church but the Command structure came later.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 22:13, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the Catholic Encyclopedia it's more complicated than that:
 * It is usual to distinguish a twofold hierarchy in the Church, that of order and that of jurisdiction, corresponding to the twofold means of sanctification, grace, which comes to us principally through the sacraments, and good works, which are the fruit of grace. ... The Council of Trent has defined the Divine institution of the first three grades of the hierarchy of order, i.e. the episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate (Sess. XXIII, De sacramento ordinis, cap. iv, can. vi). ... In the hierarchy of jurisdiction the episcopate and the papacy are of Divine origin; all the other grades are of ecclesiastical institution.
 * Good luck sorting that out in a way the average reader can understand.   Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 02:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As far as the statement that Rome may not have had a single bishop, that is again a very tenuous statement made by some scholars, based on very scanty supposition (and the ignoring of some early evidence that does exist). This is a theory only and, if mentioned at all, should be clearly set out as a point of view.  Xan  dar   21:01, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we're closer on the wording than we realize. Xandar or Mike, can either of you re-draft Richard's proposed draft with the necessary changes? Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Reworking Richard's passage in the light of above comments would give us something more like this.
 * "The traditional Catholic view has been that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Linus, the first in the succession of Popes. However, many scholars today would prefer a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Such scholars argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome, theorizing that for some time the Church of Rome may not have been governed by a single bishop but by a college of church elders.
 * It doesn't state specifically scholarly support for the traditional view, but doesn't really need to, so long as the alternative view is only expressed as a particular line of opinion.  Xan  dar   21:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Unacceptable. The scholars who deny the traditional view are the overwhelming majority; they do not argue that there may not have been a single bishop at Rome, they assert that there was not one (as Bokenkotter does); lastly, they do not theorize, they follow the ancient evidence: Clement, the Pastoral Epistles, Hermas, Ignatius (who, despite being all for bishops, addresses the Christians of Rome, not a bishop), and Polycarp. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:29, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It occurs to me that what we're trying to do is reconcile doctrine with history and I'm not entirely certain that's within the scope of this article. But, to respond to Xander's rewrite above and PMAnderson's response: first of all I'm not uncomfortable with the word argue in the classical Aristotelian sense of argument (make a claim and prove it), but "claim" and "consider" work equally well. Here's my stab at the above:


 * According to Church doctrine the traditional Catholic view is that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Linus, the first in the succession of Popes.(cite the Catholic Encylopedia?) However, contemporary scholars of the Church, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Furterhmore, contemporary scholars argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome, theorizing that for some time the Church of Rome may not have been governed by a single bishop but by a college of church elders.(maybe cite Kung here?).
 * If we can get the wording correct, then I'd suggest placing this section at the beginning of the history section, which sets up the section as being the historical view. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 14:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think we need to mention Bokenkotter and his book in the main text. And it should read "Furthermore many contemporary scholars argue that there may not have been a linear descent..." Since that theory is not universally held. Otherwise this would work.  Xan  dar   01:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Disagree. "Many", "most", "some", and "few" are weasel words; that has been at the root of the sourcing problems for years.  Spell out who says what or for all anyone knows you're talking about the man in the moon or the cat's mother; it works better if the author in question has a wiki article.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 03:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * How are you going to do that in general? If you have a reliable source that says many/most/some/few, are you going to ban it? If you have 93 sources saying a particular thing, are you going to list them all? Peter jackson (talk) 09:41, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not talking about banning anything. If a source uses "many/most/some/few" it more than likely is not scholarly enough to be used in this article.  93 sources?  Now I know you're just joking!  Seriously, though, when you have a majority agree you don't list all 93 in the body of the text, but you list out 3 or 4 of the more prominent ones.  How do you determine prominence?  They should have their own Wiki, barring that you list title and affiliation.  Otherwise why would anyone give a shit what one source has to say, any idiot can write a book, but we're looking for idiots that have some weight behind them, like a University Press.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 14:55, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Absolutely agree with Mike. I would hesitate to remove the direct attribution in the text for the reasons Mike has explained. FWIW, Bokkenkotter does not have an article but Hans Küng does. I'm currently reading his book and find it concise, informative and absolutely delightful because of the brevity. So here's the text again for consensus:
 * "According to Church doctrine the traditional Catholic view is that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Linus, the first in the succession of Popes.(cite the Catholic Encylopedia?) However, contemporary scholars of the Church, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Furthermore, contemporary scholars, such as Hans Küng argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome, theorizing that for some time the Church of Rome may not have been governed by a single bishop but by a college of church elders.(Kung p.21)." Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:47, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer Richard's original proposal, and his sources. If the Canon Law Commentary says only possible, nothing stronger is consensus; but nobody has been quoted saying impossible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed wording
Version 1 (User:Richardshusr's original version):

''The traditional Catholic view has been that Jesus founded the Catholic Church with an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons and that the Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Clement, the first in the succession of Popes. However, few scholars today would defend that view.(cite Hinson) Many scholars prefer a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter)  Scholars argue that it is not necessarily a question of linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome. It is possible that for some time the Church of Rome was governed not by a single individual bishop but by a college of church elders.(cite the 1985 Canon Law).''

Version 2 (User:Xandar's version)

''The traditional Catholic view has been that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Linus, the first in the succession of Popes. However, many scholars today would prefer a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Such scholars argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome, theorizing that for some time the Church of Rome may not have been governed by a single bishop but by a college of church elders.''

Version 3 (User:Truthkeeper88's version)

''According to Church doctrine the traditional Catholic view is that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, transferring his power by ordaining Linus, the first in the succession of Popes.(cite the Catholic Encylopedia?) However, contemporary scholars of the Church, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Furthermore, contemporary scholars, such as Hans Küng argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome, theorizing that for some time the Church of Rome may not have been governed by a single bishop but by a college of church elders.(Kung p.21).''

Version 4 (User:Truthkeeper88's attempt at compromise)

''The traditional Catholic view is that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome.(cite the Catholic Encylopedia?) However, church historians, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Furthermore, contemporary church scholars, such as Hans Küng argue that there may not have been a clear linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome (cite Kung) .It is possible that for some time the Church of Rome was governed not by a single individual bishop but by a college of church elders.(cite the 1985 Canon Law).''

Version 5 (User:Resolver-Aphelion's proposal at compromise)

Catholic doctrine states that the Catholic Church was the original Church founded by Jesus Christ, being of both divine and apostolic origin in the Catholic view (cite Catholic Encyclopedia). All duly consecrated bishops since then are considered the successors to the Apostles. According to the traditional narrative, Peter, who was the leader of the Apostles, founded the church in Rome and served as its first bishop. The tradition maintains that Peter consecrated Linus as his successor, beginning the line of Popes. Most scholars accept that Peter died in Rome and likely preached there, although there are disagreements over whether Peter founded that church. However, some modern ecclesiastical historians, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Others, such as Hans Küng, do not support the notion of a singular succession of bishops from Peter, but believe the Roman church was for a time governed by a college of presbyters(cite Küng). Most of the early Church Fathers support the notion that Peter, along with Paul, founded the Roman church.(cite Catholic Encyclopedia)
 * I think the above new version is more wordy than necessary and I believe it's important to avoid the use of some/many/most and so on. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:49, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

But Truthkeeper88, sometimes usage of "some" is necessary. For instance, in your example it says "However, church historians, such as Thomas Bokenkotter..." which implies ALL ecclesiastical historians believe such, even though that is by no means the case. I guess it could be fixed by saying "Ecclesiastical historians disagree as to whether this is true; Thomas Bokenkotter... blah, blah" and then we can cite an opposing view to Bokenkotter from a modern church historian, speaking of the "traditional narrative". This proposal maintains complete NPOV. Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 08:03, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Nonsense, those are weasel words pure and simple. Say who says what or at the very least quantify "some" or "most" with examples of those people, otherwise it gets mired down in the same BS that's been killing this article for the past 5 years.  To suggest naming one church historian implies "all church historians" is complete and utter bullshit.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 09:09, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but you'r knee-deep in your own B.S. I never said "naming one church historian implies all church historians" — I said that the way it was phrased, "However church historians.. yadda, yadda" suggests that a consensus of Church historians say so, even though they clearly do not and there is no universal consensus among them. And apparently you didn't read my whole post, because I proposed we could avoid the weasel words by stating that there are disagreements between ecclesiastical historians, some holding a more nuanced view, some holding to the traditional narrative. Next time try to comprehend what someone is saying before you announce your misguided "advice".Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 03:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * No, my version implies nothing. As is written, plural historians/scholars simply refers to more than one. That's all. It implies nothing and certainly does not imply "all". It is specific by providing the name of one of the (plural) (more than one) scholars/historians. Our job is not to determine how many, nor to make judgments such as some/many/most/all which would necessitate a thorough study of the entire body of the literature, and beyond the scope of Wikipedia or Wikipedia editors. However, to some extent this is a moot issue, because I think Karanacs has presented a good version below that circumvents these problems of wording. That said, the article in general needs to be written with language that is as specific as possible, thereby avoiding ambiguity. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:33, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In that case, I propose we could avoid the weasel words, but still be specific and clear, by stating that there are disagreements between ecclesiastical historians, some holding a more nuanced view, some holding to the traditional narrative, and then cite Bokenkotter and other historians dealing with this issueResolver-Aphelion (talk) 03:05, 20 April 2010 (UTC).

Infusing this with optimism that we can agree on the wording by the end of the month. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 14:17, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There should be a comma after Küng, and may not sounds weaselly. He argues that that there was not a clear linear dissent; if we were summarizing the whole body of scholarship, we might have to hedge, but we're not. Also it is possible... (cite Canon Law), and Allen Brent and others assert that it was. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:30, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * How about?: The traditional Catholic view is that Jesus founded the Catholic Church on Peter and the Apostles; who subsequently established an organization essentially as it now exists with bishops, priests and deacons. The traditional narrative cites Peter as the first Bishop of Rome.(cite the Catholic Encylopedia?) However, church historians, such as Thomas Bokenkotter, author of A Concise History of the Catholic Church present a view in which the Church gradually settled on the three-tiered structure of bishop, priest, and deacon.(cite Bokenkotter) Furthermore, contemporary church scholars, such as Hans Küng, argue against the linear descent from Peter to one individual after another serving as bishop of Rome.(cite Kung) Historians such as Allen Brent, assert that for some time the Church of Rome was governed not by a single individual bishop but rather by a college of church elders, the Church, itself does not rule out this possibility, according to the 1985 Canon Law.(cite the 1985 Canon Law).


 * The last sentence gives too much weight to the Liberal view. Stating what Alan Brent or whoever believes is one thing, but no contrary view is put. Putting "Some historians, such as Alan Brent.." would solve this. Or stating that others disagree. Additionally what is cited as 1985 canon law is not the document itself - but some US organisation's view of it. Such organisations don't speak for the Church on these matters, so that quote has always been on the unreliable side. Personally I prever version 4.  Xan  dar   19:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In the US, that would be "organizations".--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 19:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Xandar has yet to find a reliable current source for the point of view he calls the "contrary view". Until he does, we must represent what the sources tell us - whether or not reality "has an unfortunate liberal bias". (Similarly, of course, where consensus goes the other way.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:50, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Just curious, but only three positions have been mentioned; yet the New Testament identifies several others. Eph 4:11 states prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers that were designated as part of the church. Have Church historians ever equated these to positions in the early church? -- Storm  Rider  01:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a standard position that they were offices in the Church in Paul's time. Whether apostles here are the Twelve is one of the points historically at issue. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:29, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers were positions in the early Church - otherwise Saint Paul's statements on them would be meaningless. There does not appear to have been any organized system for appointing them in the first century; those who had those gifts displayed them. Hence the controversies over "false prophets" - those who claimed those gifts without everybody agreeing that they had been bestowed. (Pastor may well be another word almost synonymous with elder/presbyter/bishop.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 10:24, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

arbitrary break
I had started working on a proposal for rewriting the early Christianity section. I'm not done yet (still reading - see the proposal for the list of sources consulted so far). Based on the sources I've read - several already used in the article - I think the best approach is to start with a paragraph that details the tradition, along the lines of: Catholic tradition holds that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ. The New Testament records Christ's activities and teaching, his appointment of the twelve Apostles and his instructions to them to continue his work. The Church teaches that the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, in an event known as Pentecost, signaled the beginning of the public ministry of the Church. All duly consecrated bishops since then are considered the successors to the apostles. According to the traditional narrative, Peter, who was the leader of the Apostles, founded the church in Rome and served as its first bishop. The tradition maintains that Peter consecreated Linus as his successor, beginning the line of Popes. Most scholars accept that Peter died in Rome and likely preached there, although there are doubts that Peter atually founded that church.

and then move into discussing the Apostles' missionary activities and the growth of the Church. The sources I've read (note that the ones listed in my source sheet are only the ones I've read in full through the first 1000 years of Church history unless noted otherwise; I've read pieces of many others) make it clear that the modern consensus view is that the hierarchy evolved over time. (I would be very interested in seeing a modern scholarly source that displays a different view - I haven't found any yet.) We can explain this evolution throughout the article; I don't see a good reason to pack this into the first part of the history section. Karanacs (talk) 16:57, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't quarrel with the factual accuracy of the paragraph as written.  Xan  dar   23:49, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

history section
Having not looked at the page for a few days, I've just read the history section: I have to say it's not only balanced but more solidly written, well done to the editors involved. Haldraper (talk) 09:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Haldraper's comment has motivated me to revisit the History section. I am rereading the section and will leave comments as they occur to me. --Richard S (talk) 16:05, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Load time
Load time for the page is still very slow, which makes editing difficult. A page size report shows the following; In my view the 94 kB of references is causing a problem. I'm happy to weed out references that are no longer being used, and to shorten the in-text syntax as much as possible. I've had good results with Harvard short notes (in other long articles) that allow the user to click from article to footnotes and click again to the source, all without scrolling. I'm also happy to set this up and convert to Harvard short notes if no one objects. It is a fair amount of work, so will wait for a few days in case objections come in. This is one of the suggestions made in the GA review. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * File size: 440 kB
 * Prose size (including all HTML code): 87 kB
 * References (including all HTML code): 94 kB
 * Wiki text: 92 kB
 * Prose size (text only): 42 kB (6819 words) "readable prose size"
 * References (text only): 16 kB
 * Removing HTML code really ought to be uncontroversial. The only function of citation templates (as distinct from internal links, like short Harvard) is to provide standard formating for those uncertain of their ability to do it by hand.


 * Unused references should be brought here to talk; I'm sure some of them are excellent books which simply don't happen to be cited at the moment. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Just so I understand what is being proposed here... are we getting rid of the templates?  I'm rather fond of them but I'm Ok with their deletion if they are contributing to the load time problem. --Richard S (talk) 05:29, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the citation templates are fine in the sources section, but there isn't a need to have them duplicated in the text. Instead, I'd propose substituting Harvard short notes. For an example article see here—an article I'm in the process of expanding from a stub. In the CC article I see two problems: the first is that navigating from the footnote to the source requires a lot of scrolling (my browser never formats columns in the footnote section for some reason, regardless of the markup used); the second is that sections such as doctrine have quite a few citations embedded in the text, in addition to all the citations in the source section. I'd propose to move the in-text citations to the source section. Furthermore, PMAnderson is correct about deleting sources (which I did yesterday as a test); instead I propose those sources not currently used be added to a section called Further reading. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:34, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

I have removed some (only some) of the unnecessary and duplicate in-text citation templates. New page size statistics are as follows:


 * File size: 422 kB


 * Prose size (including all HTML code): 87 kB


 * References (including all HTML code): 69 kB


 * Wiki text: 89 kB


 * Prose size (text only): 42 kB (6845 words) "readable prose size"


 * References (text only): 13 kB

The file is still huge but references decreased by 25 kB. Do the number of internal links add to file size? It's still loading very slowly, but now in about 20 to 30 seconds instead of 30 to 60 seconds.Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Massacre Picture
I took out a picture someone had put in the Reformation section purporting to illustrate the Bartholomew Day Massacre, since it was emotive and POV. PMAnderson immediately put the POV picture back, taking out the one of Melk. The Bartholomew Picture should not be in the article for several reasons. 1. It is emotive and misleading. Are we going to have pictures of catholic priests being disembowelled in the UK and France to balance it? 2. It appears in the Catholic Church article, but illustrates an event that was neither planned or organised by the Church - as is implied by its usage in the article. The massacre - if planned at all - was the responsibility of Catherine de Medici and the King of France. The picture is therefore misleading in its implication and POV. 3. It gives undue weight to the incident in the history of the period of the Reformation and Counter-reformation, and seems to have been chosen for negative effect. There are many more salient things that can be utilised to illustrate the reformation era, an era of wars, monasteries, iconoclasm, great figures and councils. The massacre itself is linked in the text to a more detailed article; and that is sufficient weight for this matter in the history of the Church.  Xan  dar  22:20, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This is the perpetual problem with the ceaseless and dubious quest for "balance"; we are not an ad agency. Which is more notable, more typical, and more vivid: the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or Melk (even throwing in the free reference to The Name of the Rose)? Neutrality is not denial, nor whitewashing - the educational policies of the Lone Star State are not our model.  We do not exist to have a Sympathetic Point of View; Wikiinfo does.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, initially I put in Wycliffe, but thought he'd be unacceptable, then placed the St. Bart's image there temporarily. Given the GAN comments above, any image that needs a long caption to tie it to the text shouldn't be used (hence Wycliffe or St. Bart's). I've now put in Erasmus. Will see what happens. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 02:05, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting... I tend to agree with Xandar on this one. The St. Bart's day massacre may be widely recognized as a notorious anti-Protestant incident but it is not a good representative of the Reformation era.  Erasmus is OK with me.  Almost all of the great Protestant figures of the Reformation started out being Catholic.  I don't see why we can't have pictures of Luther, Calvin and/or Henry VIII in this section.  You can't describe the Reformation without mentioning these names, so why not provide pictures of one or more of them as well?  If you must have a non-Protestant, why not include a picture of St. Thomas More? --Richard S (talk) 05:35, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "Almost all of the great Protestant figures of the Reformation started out being Catholic." Er, well, yes, what else could they have been before the Reformation? Peter jackson (talk) 10:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeh, sorry. I was in a hurry and couldn't think of a better way to say what I meant.  The point is that it's like trying to describe the American Civil War without mentioning any of the leaders of the Confederacy.  The most famous figures of the Reformation are the Protestants.  Can anyone suggest someone of comparable notability who remained Catholic?  Yeh, Erasmus, sort of.  But, at the end of the day, he was not as influential or notable as the Protestant leaders.  I think we should consider having one or two pictures of Protestants even if this is an article about the Catholic Church.   --Richard S (talk) 15:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Henry VIII was opposed to the Reformation anyway. His Church of England was like the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, largely maintaining Catholic doctrine but rejecting papal authority. Peter jackson (talk) 10:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeh, I know... nonetheless, his was called the English Reformation and it occurred in approximately the same time period and is notable enough to warrant a paragraph of its own. --Richard S (talk) 15:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What Henry supported varied from year to year, depending on which counsellor he was listening to. In any case, the English Reformation became Protestant immediately after his death; on the scale of this history, those twenty years are a blip. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:30, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In my view the important players in the Reformation are Wycliffe, Luther and Calvin. I'd be happy to see an image of any of them here. Henry jumped on an idea that others spearheaded. As far as I'm concerned we can plug in different images (of Luther et al) until we find one that's not controversial and doesn't require a long caption. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:55, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I would see Erasmus as a better figure to use in an article on the Catholic Church, for while being a pivotal and critical figure, he remained a Catholic.  Xan  dar   22:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was the reasoning I used to replace the image of the massacre. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Circumcision controversy
The treatment of the circumcision controversies strikes me as having been written for those who are already familiar with the history of Early Christianity and written in such a way to facilitate linking to the subarticles. This results in writing that is less good than it could be.

Let's step away from the links for a moment and focus on what we should be trying to say. The key point here is that there was a controversy on whether Gentiles should become Jews and whether they should follow the Law as codified in the Old Testament and the Talmud. Circumcision is just one of the issues although a rather significant and sensitive one. (excuse the pun) Observing the laws of Kashrut (kosher) is another and there are many, many others such as the observance of the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. The resolution of this controversy in favor of allowing Gentiles to ignore the Law arguably marks a critical turning point in the development of Christianity. Without this, Christianity would have developed to be more like Messianic Judaism. It also is arguably a key reason for the success of Christianity among the Gentiles. We also fail to mention Hellenistic Judaism. My impression is that Christianity's first forays into the Greco-Roman world started with the synagogues of the Jewish diaspora and then (if you credit the New Testament account), upon being rejected there, found fertile soil among the Gentiles. To me, explaining this is much more valuable to the reader than the specifics of the circumcision controversies, the Council of Jerusalem and the letter to Antioch, none of which can be properly understood without the background context in which these events took place. --Richard S (talk) 16:05, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The Law was not codified in the Talmud at the time, because the Talmud did not yet exist; what did exist was an oral tradition, with several different schools, and some of that tradition ultimately made its way into the Talmud centuries later. Also, the resolution of the Jewish/Gentile problem was not to allow Gentiles to "ignore the Law", but rather to relieve them of the obligation to fulfill the ritual and ceremonial portions of it; the moral law remained obligatory, and for a time even some ritual prohibitions (such as the rules against eating blood) were imposed on Gentile Christians for the sake of maintaining table fellowship with Jewish Christians who were still sensitive about such things.  But you are correct that the decision not to impose the full rigor of the Law on Gentiles was a critical turning point; without it Christianity would have remained a Jewish sect with little appeal for the rest of the world.    Ha rm ak he ru   &#x270D; 21:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Also, this is a bit of OR on my part but it seems to me that Christianity can be understood as an extension of the tension between Hellenistic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism. Are there reliable sources who take this tack? --Richard S (talk) 16:05, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

We also fail to mention Persecution of Christians in the New Testament which is the Christian support for the narrative that they were rejected by the synagogues of the Jewish diaspora in the Roman Empire. --Richard S (talk) 16:16, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The Ethiopian Orthodox Church maintains the tradition of circumcision. Does the Ethiopian Catholic rite? Peter jackson (talk) 10:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Source verification
Does anyone have easy access to the sources used in the article? Nancy has expressed on her talk page a fear that after the changes the article won't match the sources. Others have expressed concern on this page that the article didn't match the sources before. The easiest way to figure this out is to get the sources. I've copied the list of sources to User:Karanacs/Catholic Sources. Please strike through any books on this list that you've used to verify and sign that line. I ask that if you find a discrepancy, tag that sentence in the article and create a section on the talk page to discuss rather than just remove. Ideally, we should have several editors agree that the interpretation in the article doesn't match the text before we take further action. Karanacs (talk) 20:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, looks like quite a few of those were not used. I have Madrid's book and he is also a personal friend, I can look and see on the others.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Datestamp so won't archive. Karanacs (talk) 16:38, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Datestamp so won't archive. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC) Datestamp so won't archive. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 17:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 6: Sacred Scripture
This sentence The Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Spirit reveals God's truth through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium. cannot be verified in the cited source. Karanacs (talk) 14:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)


 * A more accurate statement would be, "The Catholic Church teaches that divine truth is revealed to the Church through the Deposit of Faith (which contains both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition) interpreted by the Magisterium." Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 04:15, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 8: Liberation theology
The sentence on Liberation theology (Pope John Paul II criticised the emergence of liberation theology among some clergy in South America, asserting that the Church should champion the poor unconnected to radicalism and violence.) is cited to a BBC religion overview. Do we consider this an appropriate source for the statement, or should we look for a higher-quality source? Karanacs (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Or should we delete? It is indeed a news item that John Paul II said this; it is indicative of church policy under the last pontiff, but that statement does not constitute policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * This is too recent for me - without reading more books on the Church in the 20th century I have no idea whether this is important or not. Karanacs (talk) 15:10, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd move to strike it.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:26, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. To put the case in full: I do not know whether this is present policy or not - as opposed to one news conference. If it is, it needs a better, secondary, source; if it is not, it has no business here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:04, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It is present policy; Pope Benedict XVI stated the Church's apprehension about liberation theology here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/benedict_xvi_cautions_against_dangers_of_marxist_liberation_theology/ Resolver-Aphelion (talk) 04:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 10: Bauckham?
There is a citation called "Bauckham, p. 373. ", but no corresponding book by that author listed. It's the sole source for ''Reception of the council has formed the basis of multifaceted internal positions within the Catholic Church since then. A so-called spirit of the times followed the council, influenced by exponents of Nouvelle Théologie such as Karl Rahner. Some dissident liberals such as Hans Küng even claimed Vatican II had not gone far enough''. I searched for author=Bauckham in Google Books, and he's written a lot of books; I'm not sure which one this is referring to. Karanacs (talk) 15:16, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification Issue 12: U of M website
This U of M description of a historical document collection is really not an appropriate source for The Curia functioned as the civil government of the Papal States until 1870.. Surely we can find a better source for this? Karanacs (talk) 15:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Needs rewording anyway; the Papal States did have officials. Almost all of the highest ones were Cardinals, but that's not quite the same. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:21, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Verification issue 18: Middle Ages - question about sentence cited to Duffy
If anyone has access to Duffy, can this statement be verified? The book I'm currently reading, The History of the Medieval World does not verify this sequence in chronology. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The papal coronation of the Frankish King Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans in 774 created a paradigm of Western emperors imposing control over the popes.[43] is cited to Duffy pp. 63 -78. I did combine some sentence during the copyedit. The pre-copyedit version, however, is substantially the same.
 * 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.[55]
 * I doubt it; the coronation which actually took place is usually interpreted as the Pope asserting his own right to elect an Emperor, and not being what Charlemagne had in mind. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Septentrionalis. Speaking of the coronation, Philip Hughes in vol. 2 p. 145 of his History of the Church (originally published 1935, but several times reprinted) said: "The deed had been done which was to haunt the imagination of the next five hundred years; the pope, so it came to be considered, had made the King of the Franks into the Roman Emperor. This it was - wahtever the realities which, in the mind of Leo III and Charlemagne, underlay that astonishing gesture - which never left the popular imagination, the pope creating the new power and bestowing it upon the Frankish kings, the all powerful king kneeling before the pope to receive it."  Esoglou (talk) 15:02, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's exactly how it's characterized in the book I'm reading. Essentially, as written, the sentence is quite wrong unless it's verified in Duffy, to which it's cited. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:10, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * ONe issue. CHarlemagne wasn't crowned in 774, but in 800. He was in Rome in 774, but wasn't crowned emperor until 800. If Duffy says both 774 AND 800, we've got an issue with Duffy. Charlemagne in 774 appears to have issued some sort of confirmation of his father's gift to the papacy, but the exact nature of what transpired is unclear. This is from Riche's The Carolingians pp. 96-98. Collins Early Medieval Europe p. 282 also says that Charlemagne was in Italy/Rome in 774, but that he was beseiging Pavia (held by the Lombards) and in 774 Pavia fell to Charlemagne and "the Lombard king was required to surrender himself, his family and the royal treasure. The Lombards were obliged to submit to Frankish rule, and Charles himself took the title fo King of the Lombards. By the late summer he had returned to Francia..." which seems to also agree - no crowning by the pope in 774. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I have a newer edition of Duffy and the page numbers don't match the older edition. In my edition, Duffy puts the papal states creation at the time of the Donation of Pepin (p 88), and Nothing is said to link the creation of the papal states with iconoclasm (which is the missing sentence above). It also says that "Charlemagne "believed that his staus as protector of the Roman Church gave him extensive rights of intervention - Hadrian thought of it as interference - in papal territory." (p 91) and that "The ambiguities of Charlemagne's coronation were to haunt the history of both pope and empire during the Middle Ages." (p 96). Karanacs (talk) 16:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The book I'm reading has the coronation in 800 as well, so that much should be fixed. Bauer in The History of the Medieval World calls the Donation of Pepin the Sutri Donation. No link between this sequence of events and iconoclasm in her book. Duffy's statement is interesting. Thanks for looking it up. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Verification issue 19: Teutonic Knights
The crusades saw the formation of various military orders that provided social services as well as protection of pilgrim routes.[55] The Teutonic Knights, one of the orders, conquered the then-pagan Prussia.[55] is cited to Norman p. 62-65. However I can't find it. I can find that the Knights Hospitallers were created around 1070 and the Knights Templar in 1120 on page 62. Unless we can verify and place the Teutonic Knights in the relevant timeframe, I like to delete the sentence. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 19:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This is well known. The first book I found on them dates them to the Third Crusade - as they must be to have conquered Prussia while it was still pagan. (page 4, in case Google Books is recalcitrant.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for findind a source. I'll change the reference for the Teutonic Knights, and also add the Hospitallers to the section.Truthkeeper88 (talk) 12:50, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Verification issue 20: Hus and Hussite Wars
This sentence is citied to Norman but not in book (which I now have):'' In the 14th century John Wycliffe of England and Jan Hus of Bohemia challenged the Church. The Council of Constance (1414–1417) condemned Hus and ordered his execution, but could not prevent the Hussite Wars in Bohemia.'' I've tagged as uncited, and we need a new source for it. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it likely to be challenged? Aside from the implication that the Council was trying to avoid the wars against heresy, it seems thoroughly uncontroversial and routine. Source from any life of Hus (which should also mention Wycliffe, at least if it's in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)