User:Rursus/newintro

What is this?
You've apparently stumbled into a hole digged into the ground under the page Talk:Catholicism. This hole contains what is intended to be the new intro of the article Catholicism - specifically defined to not offend, to be WP:NPOV (towards wikipedia that is, ), infinitely socially polished, and so cute and sweet that grizzly bears would consider us being poisonous.  Said: Rursus   ☻   18:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Article intro
Catholicism and catholic are terms used within Christianity to describe the aims and goals of their own churches or other Christian church organisations, as a general policy describing who can be regarded as belonging to the church, who can not, who can count on the grace of God, and who can not. The word derives from the Greek adjective καθολικός &#x5B;IPA: &#x5D;, meaning "general" or "universal". Some Christian groups describe themselves as non-catholic, thereby putting themselves at distance from other Christians.

There is no universally accepted definition of "catholicism", but the word is used to express a quality of "universality" of the church, universal validity for every human everywhere, universal acceptance from everyone, or some universal availability to all humans.

In opposition to this universalist position of "catholicism", there are vindications of clearly non-universal positions such as the gnostic hylic/psychic/pneumatic subdivision of humankind delivering "gnosis" only to the pneumatics, and the Calvinist limited atonement, which constitute different kinds of elitist systems discerning between "those who will be saved, and those who will not".

In colloquial language, catholicism refers to the organisation and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, which also is the largest church describing themselves as catholic. But also the Anglican Church describe themselves as catholic, while the Lutheran churches instead define themselves in terms of "universal", "for all humans", implying that this is the true meaning of "catholicism".

On the other hand, catholicism have in some Christian subcultures gotten a subjective side connotation of oppression and hunt for heresies, a connotation that reflects anti-Papal protestant attitudes from the times of the violent conflicts of the Hussite Wars and the Reformation. In the main stream West Churches, this confrontational attitude is on a fast retreat for an advance of high church and ecumenic tendencies.