Talk:Order of Friars Minor Conventual

Merge?
I noticed someone slapped a merge tag with Franciscan at the top of the page. I oppose such a move, as the two orders are different, and should have different articles. Gentgeen 09:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree- --KomandorskiMaru 05:18, 4 September 2006 (UTC)KomandorskiMaru

As it has been said, these are two, very distinct orders recognized by the Catholic Church.

Well, no -- they are not "very distinct." They are, with the Capuchins, the three branches of the First Order of St. Francis. However, as they did branch off early on and have had their own history, they should have their own entry, cross referenced to a general article on the Franciscan family.HarvardOxon 01:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, they are individual, and should remain so.

Greyfriars
People including a recent IP editor keep trying to add that the Conventual Franciscans is also known as Greyfriars. This is not the case. A group of Conventual Franciscans went to England and was nicknamed Greyfriars. This was due to the fact that their habits were usually grey. That group adopted the reference and began calling themselves Greyfriars. They also spread out a little, and the groups they created also called themselves Greyfriars. But the overall Order didn't change its name to Greyfriars. If someone wants to come up with all the references and correct wording for this they can add it to the article but putting the name "Greyfriars" on equal footing with "Conventual Franciscan" is not appropriate. The Greyfriars primarily only exist in the UK, while the Conventual Franciscans exist throughout the world. There is a small reference to this already in the Franciscan article. Marauder40 (talk) 14:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Rewritten
I re-wrote the history section to make it encyclopedic, but I didn't add any citations (maybe I'll tackle that next). I also removed the Academics section because I could find no way to rewrite that and make it relevent enough to warrant a section, it mostly talked about the universities at the time and I couldn't find much that talked specifically about the Conventual Franciscans. If anyone is interested in the Academics section, it's on my sandbox page and I encourage anyone to go and see if they can salvage anything from it. Chris (talk) 02:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Abysmal overall quality (an admittedly very critical opinion)
This article is about an important subject; and it definitely deserves to be its own article. However, the note at the top of the article which says "[t]his article is written like a personal reflection or essay" is a gross understatement.

"From the time of Anthony of Padua, friars preached not only on Sundays and holidays - preaching was not common practice at the time - but also during the rainy seasons." What?  The only logical alternative to "Sundays and holidays" would be times which are non-Sundays and non-holidays, but still days of the week or month or year. Otherwise, what is set up by the "not only" part of the sentence is never resolved. An analog to the convoluted logic of this sentence would be something along the lines of "not only did she work during the summer months, but she worked on Tuesdays and Fridays, too!" The connection between the parts on either side of "but" is never made. I'd not make such a big deal of it, except that it is fairly representative of the kinds of things that are inherently wrong with this article.

And since when do we refer to time by when someone lived... at least exclusively? How many average readers have any idea when was the time of Anthony of Padua? Or even Dwight Eisenhower, for at least some readers, truth be known? Shouldn't specific dates and/or time periods be referred to by years or spans of years?

It's hard to know where to even begin regarding: "Therefore, at a time when vast tracts of land were understood as power, the minority of the Conventuals led them to nestle their large houses into small plots where "Lady Poverty" could dwell with her handmaid, Community. There, the concentration of talented men living a regularized life steeped in prayer, study and work, became like a well-armed garrison that fought against the power of darkness and despondency on the battleground of urban and suburban life. The friary acted as a fortress of faith where disciplined austerity, focused generosity, and harmonized prayer grounded the friars in stability, while their itinerant hearts were missioned into the farthest corners of earthly possibilities."  And when I say "hard to know where to begin," I mean in terms of sentence structure, allegory, analog, passion, sympathy, perspective, the arcane, etc. It reads, frankly, a little like it's from the group's promotional literature; and I'm aware of no fewer than a half dozen articles which got flat-out deleted from this place because of that sort of thing.

And there are many other issues.

I'm sorry, but to characterize how it's now written as merely like "a personal reflection or essay," and/or to give it as high as a "B class" on the quality scale, is... well... it's just brow-furrowing.

I'd tackle rewriting it myself, but I'm just not qualified, nor have the time... at least not the time (or expertise) to do it truly properly, pursuant to Wikipedia standards. It would be really excellent if the original author took the time to learn how to do it right (as we all must do, so there's no shame in that), and then came back and fixed it. That would end-up making not only the article better, but him/her a better article writer, too... sort of win-win for all concerned.

Believe me, I know what it's like. I once wrote a piece for this place that was chock-full of facts, and was at least as neutral as a hard-news newspaper article. However, though I didn't realize it back then, my enthusiasm for the subject bled sufficiently through that it came across a little too promotional in nature. And so, though it offended me at the time, it got entirely removed (though the guy who removed it said I could re-work it, once I more carefully read about Wikipedia standards... which I later realized was quite fair). Yes, it stung; but I learned.

If I'm out of line, here, then someone please tell me so, and I'll then both wear it and apologize. But I just want articles like this to be of the highest possible quality. I hate it that so many in academia discredit this place; and I worry that the reason is, in part, precisely because of this quality of article. I want to see all articles around here so good that no one can reasonably find very much fault with them. I especially want this particular subject, among others of its general type, to be well, authoritatively, and dispassionately both represented and explained.

And, you know what? On second thought, shame on people who complain like I'm now complaining, but offer no solution and/or aren't willing to help. So if the original author would (after s/he stops being upset with me, as I'm quite sure s/he temporarily is, having just read all this) like me to somehow help, I will. If s/he rolls-up his/her sleeves, then I'll by-golly do so, too... contrary to what I just wrote about not having the time. I just wouldn't want to try it without having his/her kind of expertise handy. Gregg L. DesElms (Username: Deselms) 01:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deselms (talk • contribs)
 * Based on the history of the article it looks like it was created in 2005 so appealing to the original editor probably won't help. It looks like it was probably a cut and paste from somewhere, either the IP editors own source or some place on the internet.  My bet somewhere on the internet.  Like any WP article it has developed since then, but not much.  I personally have only just kept it on my watchlist to watch for vandalism edits but I don't have easy access to the sources for making major edits.  I know the topic well, being a Franciscan myself, so can tell when stuff being added is BS or something like that but don't have the time to research everything that is needed to improve the article.Marauder40 (talk) 13:20, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Order of Friars Minor
Hello, I started a thread on Franciscans and the Order of Friars Minor at Talk:Order of Friars Minor (I believe the Conventuals are the oldest surviving and, arguably, the "more original" of the three current Franciscan first orders). I will appreciate any comment. --Checco (talk) 23:07, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

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