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What is the point of us spending days and weeks discussing making this page NPOV when Nancy just takes and break and then comes back and adds all the POV material back in again, with some more as well for good measure?
It's all there, all the ridiculously one-sided, apolgetic stuff on African colonisation, Franco, the Reichskonkordat, all the peacocky language on the 'challenges' the Church faces in converting people and weaselly words on the Pope and science, all the things rejected as POV on the talk page and carefully trimmed away which most of us I think hoped - and some maybe even prayed - we'd seen the last of.
I've come close recently to walking away from this page like so many editors exasperated by Nancy's blatant pro-Catholic POV-pushing. If this behaviour doesn't earn her some kind of ban from the arbitration committee I may well do, otherwise I'm wasting my time in trying to achieve NPOV here. Haldraper ( talk) 18:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
My reponse to Haldrapers accusations of POV above point by point:
+ Haldraper has accused me of POV pushing because I added facts about Africa in the Catholic institutions section and the industrial age that discuss the introduction and presence of Catholic education in that country. Our article never tells Reader about the many persecutions against Catholics and other Christians by Muslims in that country. It never tells Reader about the child sacrifice and polygamy that is commonly practiced there by paganists. There is no mention of female genital destruction and other practices that the Church has consistently fought against. I have not introduced these relevant items into the article but I think the POV accusers do not realize that there is a lot of stuff we could introduce that would help Reader have a better understanding of Catholicism in Africa. Omission of these relevant items makes me think that the article slants toward an anti-Catholic POV. NancyHeise talk 19:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
CARA? Enough said.
It's the assumptions underlying your cheerleading that drive the pro-Catholic POV: the Church faces 'challenges' in reaching people because of the languages they speak? How inconsiderate of them! Maybe they're happy as they are and don't want to be 'reached' by the Catholic Church. The need for European education in Africa is also just assumed ('the white man's burden'), good job the Catholic Church was there to fill the gap! Oppression of Catholics/unjust expulsion of missionaries in North Korea and China or understandable resistance to foreign interference after centuries of colonialism? I'm not arguing either side, just that coming down on the former as you do is POV.
We spent weeks discussing the multiple issues surrounding the Reichskonkordat, the motives of the Catholic Centre party in promoting it etc., all now binned in the interests of yet more pro-Catholic martyrology.
I dispute the Vatican is a state like others, it's only existed since the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Pope and Mussolini's Italian fascist regime so yes I do think describing Benedict XVI as an international rather than religious leader is debateable to say the least. Haldraper ( talk) 20:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
er, I don't need to 'provide sources' to show your POV. Whether your text matches your sources is irrelevant as to whether it's NPOV given most of it is straight from the Church: Bokenkotter, CARA etc. Haldraper ( talk) 21:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Strongly disagree with Haldraper's anti-Franco bias in favour of nun killers beholden to Stalin (I gathered in Trotskyite thought the SU were state capitalist traitors to the "class struggle" anyway?). Regardless, its probably POV to call Caudillo a "rebel". Against what did he rebel? When viewed in the general context of the history of Spain; the Republic's masonic government, Marxist internationalists were the real innovators, the importers of alien creeds, rebels against Eternal Spain. All Franco and the military did was continue the Reconquista, stepping in to liberate Church and country from peresection by her most infamous enemies, restoring a lasting peace, law and order. The truth may sting. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 01:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Let's close this section if we can. Tom Harrison Talk 21:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I have added information to our World War II paragraph that includes the JPII papal apology and a link to the "We Remember, Reflections on the Shoah" page. I know that this section had been trimmed but I would like to look at this again due to the historical importance of the popes apology regarding relations between Catholics and Jews. I noticed that the tertiary sources mention JPII's efforts in this area and I think our article has a huge hole in it in this regard. Please take a look at what I added, perhaps it can be shortened a bit or some of it placed in a note but I think its very important to have it in the article. Let me know what you think. Thanks, NancyHeise talk 20:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
There was no consensus above for the additions that you made. Karanacs ( talk) 21:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
There's no point in these back-and-forth changes. Pick something, discuss, and come to a consensus. Have a not-a-vote if necessary. Tom Harrison Talk 20:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Start with this one, if you want: although the number of practicing Catholics worldwide is not reliably known.<ref name=bbcfact>{{cite news|title=Factfile: Roman Catholics around the world|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4243727.stm|publisher=BBC News|date=1 April 2005|accessdate=24 March 2008}}</ref>
Include, or not? Tom Harrison Talk 20:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Nancy, I've never understood your problem with this: if you're not practicing you're lapsed. The advantage of saying lapsed instead of practicing is that we can then have a piped link to Lapsed Catholic so non-Catholics who unlike you, me and Xandar may not appreciate the distinction can go and see what it means. Haldraper ( talk) 21:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
NOT include. I don't even know why it is there. It is factually incorrect. Whether a catholic practices or not, they are still Catholic unless they renounce. I'm willing to debate this for a little but this is like debating why 2+2=4. Is a Jew not a Jew if they don't practice or a Muslim? And don't say that Jews are not just a religion but a people. Are Americans not Americans if they don't support their country and perhaps even commit acts of treason? Of course not. You cannot revoke citizenship; it can only be given up by the free will of the individual. Again, to show how ridiculous this statement is and how the people who are writing that do not understand Catholicism, it is logically impossible as the statement implies that only perfect Catholics, whatever that means, can actually be Catholics. If you don't understand why think about it for a few minutes. There is far more to Catholicism than a self-identified statement on some survey on why an individual may or may not consider themselves to be "practicing." Phail Saph ( talk) 02:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I have more useful tips. In general, this article needs to be vastly restructured. Here are some of its main problems and some of my ideas about how to solve them....
Anyway, we can start there. This article has lots of problems, I'm afraid. UberCryxic (talk) 22:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm kneejerk Celtic as well but outside Glasgow the Catholic-Protestant thing is definitely exaggerated, certainly in my home town of Manchester where the supposedly Protestant team City have plenty of Catholic fans (including several priests of my acquaintance) and the supposedly Catholic team United have had a long line of Northern Irish Protestant players: George Best, Norman Whiteside, Sammy McIlroy, Keith Gillespie. Haldraper ( talk) 13:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm here because I think can help steer this discussion and this article to a better place. I hope you'll cooperate with me because I certainly plan to cooperate with you, despite current and previous conflict. UberCryxic (talk) 02:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Please review my suggestions below and offer your own as well. The following suggestions are meant to be, at first, very incremental, but they will eventually build up to more substantial proposals. I will label ongoing discussion about these suggestions as Ongoing, I will label discussions where we have reached agreement on a Suggestion as Consensus, and I will label marginal progress as Tentative Agreement (see below). No Suggestion is fully resolved until we hit Consensus. These are the basic ground rules.
I expect to issue hundreds of Suggestions over the next few months, and I hope you all do the same. If it takes scrutinizing every little world, rewriting every paragraph, and citing every controversial thing....then that's what we're going to do to come to some sort of satisfactory conclusion to the saga known as the Catholic Church article on Wikipedia. UberCryxic (talk) 03:52, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
(Opening a subsection for every minor suggestion because I anticipate each one will spark its own war. Again, that's fine...I just want you all to be psychologically well-prepared for this long road ahead) The second sentence should read as follows:
Approximately one-sixth of the world's population is Catholic, although the number of practicing Catholics worldwide is not reliably known.[references].
Ideas? Thoughts? Discuss here. UberCryxic (talk) 02:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Johnbod wrote "I notice by the way we have Catholic Church and slavery, a rambling, incoherent and contradictory account, which ought to benefit from all this learned discussion here, but as usual probably won't."
I created the article because there were editors who wanted to add detailed information about the Catholic Church's position supporting slavery to counter the claim that it helped to end slavery. I felt that that adding all those details would make the article unnecessarily long so I created an article to delve into the topic more deeply.
After I created the article, some editors have built on the initial attempt but not much attention has been given to it. I would welcome some more attention and recommendations for improving that article. Feel free to leave your comments at Talk:Catholic Church and slavery. It's on my watchlist.
-- Richard S ( talk) 19:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
A lot of Jesus disciples were quoted to be vegetarians and tee-totalers although the arguement goes that Jews who did not partake in a weekly sacrificial feast would be in trouble. Anyway, after Jesus death and the scattering of the disciples, his brother James would preach to the congregation. Vegetarianism was part of what James preached and he thought that it was one of the ways of Jesus. A local and rather unsavoury character, violently opposed to Jesus weakling followers, by the name of Saul who had seen Jesus once himself got to learning more about Jesus teachings through stories of James. Saul eventually turned over a new leaf and became a preacher of the ways of Christ renaming himself Paul after a night out homeless trying to sleep with his head on a rock. He also decided to preach that James way of being a vegetarian was weak as a Jew. Shortly afterwards James met an early death through assasination opening a way for Saul/Paul to take over and guide James congregation of what would eventually become the Christian church. Anyway, I don't see any mention of James on this article. Maybe he shouldn't be mentioned here, I don't know. Saul is always considered the major apostle but it's rather interesting to leave a key element out of it entirely. Caretaker managers are rarely left out of the history of a football team. ~ R. T. G 13:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
This Talk Page is automatically archived by MiszaBot I. If a thread has not been added to within five days, the whole thread is archived. The problem is that we are running several threads simultaneously such that several of them have had comments added within the last 5 days. MiszaBot does not archive those threads. The approach of having several subsections on different topics probably exacerbates the problem because, if I correctly understand how MiszaBot I works, none of the subsections will get archived until discussion has ended on all subsections for 5 days. We may need to promote the subsections to Level 2 sections so that individual topics will get archived as soon as discussion on that topic dies down. I'll go do that now. -- Richard S ( talk) 06:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Please go slowly, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Tom Harrison Talk 13:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you Tom. UberCryxic (talk) 16:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Again, please move slowly. I suggest you stop now and give today's changes time to settle. There's always Catholic Church and slavery, or Spanish Civil War, which I see has its own page. Tom Harrison Talk 20:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
The Beliefs section should be retitled Beliefs and practices and all of the material of the Prayer section should go under there, with the section heading for Prayer deleted. This Suggestion does not involve content disputes, although future ones will. Suggestion IV only involves organization. UberCryxic (talk) 03:45, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
← Hmm, I gotta go with Xandar on this one. The two sections are relatively long and full of sub-sections. Merging them together will create a monstrously long section. We can revisit the merging issue if, at some point, the two sections are shorter. Majoreditor ( talk) 01:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Its always the benign twist that exacerbates me. In the "industrial Age", the sentence " By the close of the 19th century European powers had managed ( great euphemism) to gain control of most of the African interior..creating a demand for literacy and western education.." Or put another way, " Arriving as part of the unseemly Scramble for Africa, the latest wave of Christian colonization forced society to run along lines of their choosing - involving intense economic exploitation, and African soldiers in two world wars. When the Nazis captured Africans they were filmed extensively for propaganda purposes with sneering soundtrack "See who fights for Western civilization.." If I saw a missionary I'd say "You may mean well, but please, go away, and take your friends with you". Sayerslle ( talk) 10:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
We should not discuss the British colonial experience as those are not Catholic missionaries for the most part although many of the experiences may be shared.
The bottom line here is that an NPOV treatment of the issue must necessarily mention the good with the bad. We are not doing that in the current text. The Iberian colonial experience reads something along the lines of "Bad Iberians abused native Americans. Noble Catholic missionaries tried to protect them but ultimately disease decimated their numbers." (We thus imply that disease is the main culprit and that Catholic missionaries have no culpability in the destruction of the native American culture and civilization). Now, there is sourceable truth in all that but the juxtaposition of half-truths can lead to a lie. (NB: I'm not calling any editors liars, just saying that the article text presents a lie.) How do we fix this?
I think we should look at what role the Catholic missionaries played in the colonization process. The objective, as I understand it, was to Christianize the natives so that they could become good, productive members of a European-style society in the colonies. In effect, the goal was to make them good serfs. To that end, native religion, languages, customs and leadership were targeted. Did missionaries bring education and health care? Yes. Were their motives good? At the individual level, they probably had the best of intentions. However, we are not just judging motives but describing historical impact which, in my opinion, is mixed. Whether the net impact
Are there sources who criticize the conduct of Catholic missionaries towards the native Americans (i.e. specifically the Catholic missionaries as opposed to the secular colonials)? Such criticism can be found on the Web but those sources are not very reliable. We need a more scholarly source.
-- Richard S ( talk) 17:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the Note on slavery includes this sentence "Nonetheless, Catholic missionaries such as the Jesuits worked to alleviate the suffering of Native American slaves in the New World. " In light of recent discussion, I wonder if this sentence might be a bit too glib. This tends to suggest that Catholic missionaries primarily were intercessors to "alleviate the suffering of Native Americans". Anyone have opinions on whether this is an accurate portrayal of their role? -- Richard S ( talk) 18:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I think my question was too circumspect. I grant that the primary purpose of all missionaries (not just the Jesuits) was to promote the Catholic faith using education as a tool. In the process, I'm sure the good fathers, friars and sisters all thought they were improving the lot of the Native Americans. I wasn't asking whether their purpose was the benefit of the Native Americans. I was asking whether the efforts of the missionaries was effective in improving their lot. First, were their efforts unequivocally beneficial or were some of their actions detrimental. From my perspective, there is destruction of their way of life (i.e. hunter/gatherer vs. settled agrarian), their language, their leadership hierarchy and their customs. However, at the moment, this is just OR. Does anyone know of a good source to support this assertion? Secondly, I was asking whether the missionaries were truly effective in their purpose. Did they truly differentiate themselves from the secular colonists or were they just colonists working for the Church rather than for their own self-aggrandization? Our text suggests that the missionaries were primarily noble and pure in purpose (and perhaps in action). This might be a somewhat one-sided portrayal. -- Richard S ( talk) 04:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I tagged a sentence as POV on the basis of undue weight and sloppy research and urge it to be removed. J.A. Jungmann, one of the foremost liturgical scholars of the twentieth century wrote in The Mass of the Roman Rite: "The beginnings of the Latin Mass in Rome are wrapped in almost total darkness. The oldest documents to register such a Mass are nearly all the work of diligent Frankish scribes of the eighth and ninth centuries, and even with all the apparatus of literary criticism and textual analysis, we can hardly reconstruct any records back beyond the sixth century, certainly not beyond the fifth. For the most part whatever is here transmitted as the permanent text – especially the canon, but likewise the major portion of the variable prayers of the celebrant, and the readings – is almost identical with present-day usage”. Fr Jungmann wrote this in 1948, and by “present-day usage” he meant of course what we know as the Tridentine rite Mass. No documents have come to light since 1948 which in any way alter or modify this statement. Here is Pope Benedict XVI's (then Cardinal Ratzinger) opinion on this:"After the (2nd Vatican) Council… in place of the liturgy as the fruit of organic development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”-- Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 21:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Last thing I will say, when Xandar changes the text to '6800 were killed,..subsequently some of the hierarchy supported Franco'..does he source that? Do you source that Xandar? The chronology, not the total? On this contentious article in particyular, as if, monomane that you are, this isn't the only article you police anyway- damn right people might suspect Ownership. Source your '6800 killed', 'subsequently..' or else what gives you the right to pontificate, and lay down the law? Sayerslle ( talk) 12:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC) Silentium consentire, thats what it said in man for all seasons - silence agrees, so you admit you twisted the truth. Don't twist things to suit your delusions . Sayerslle ( talk) 00:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Subsequently is a clear misstating of the historical facts. Its not confusing the nationalists with the church facing the obvious support the nationalists got from official church representative. The catholic hierarchy on all levels supported General Franco and his sympathizers rhetorical and with concrete action well before the outbreak of the civil war and did so forcefully after the start of the armed conflicts. As early as in September 1936 first the Pope Pius XI distinguished in blessing of Spaniard exiles between the christian heroes of the right and the savage barbarians of the left (14.) than the Bishop of Salamanca published a long pastoral letter (The Two Cities) naming the nationalist/fascist uprising a crusade(30.) ("Franco" by Paul Preston, Copyright 1994 by Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. S. 184-185).
To even remotely insinuate, the Church would have been kinda neutral in the lengthy struggles of the republic is not just POV, its a clear distorting of historical facts. In 1933 for example Pope Pius XI published a quite frank (no pun intended) enzyclical (dilectissima nobis) which condemns the republic for all kind of things, insinuates that its decision to forfeit any state religion also forfeits any rightful claim for authority and has passages like this:
"24. Meanwhile, however, with all the soul and heart of a father and shepherd, We emphatically exhort Bishops, priests, and all those who in any way intend to dedicate themselves to the education of the young to promote more intensely, with all their strength and by every means, religious teaching and the practice of Christian life. And this is so much more necessary since the new Spanish legislation, with the deleterious introduction of divorce, dares to profane the sanctuary of the family, thus implanting, with the attempted dissolution of domestic society, the germs of saddest ruin for civil well-being. Faced by a menace of such enormous damage, We again recommend to all Catholic Spain that laments and recriminations be put aside, and subordinating to the common welfare of Country and Religion every other ideal, all unite, disciplined for the defense of the Faith and to remove the dangers that threaten the civil welfare.
25. In a special way, We invite all the Faithful to unite in Catholic Action, which We so often have recommended and which, though not constituting a party but rather having set itself above and beyond all political parties, will serve to form the conscience of Catholics, illuminating and corroborating it in defense of the Faith against every snare."
To remove the dangers that threaten the civil welfare (like the right to divorce!). Thats an open call to put away the republic in one way OR another. Full Text here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_03061933_dilectissima-nobis_en.html.
By the way, the "Catholic Action" Pius XI mentions here is a movement which was incorporated in the political group CEDA which supported Francos Rebellion after loosing the 1936 election.
But now, what about the normal clergy, where they involved in the earthly, political and armed fights or really only nuns tending to the sick? Lets here a clear position on that:
"[...] And all this was done with the active involvement of the Catholic Church. In every village, town, and city, it was the Spanish Church hierarchy (which had called for a military coup during the Republican government) and the priests who prepared the lists of people to be executed. A primary target of the repression was teachers, considered major enemies by the Church. Its active opposition to the popular reforms by the Spanish republican governments, and its calling on the Army to rebel against the popularly elected government, explains the fury felt by large sectors of the working class, led by anarcho-syndicalists, toward the Church. The day after Franco’s coup, large numbers of people decided to take justice into their own hands, burning churches and killing priests. These violations took place against the wishes of the democratic state, which actively opposed such actions. Terror was never a policy of the Republic. It was, however, part and parcel of the fascist state. [...]"
Now this quote is not of some radical left ideologist but from Vicente Navarro Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, and The Johns Hopkins University, USA. In 2002 Navarro was awarded the Anagrama Prize (Spain’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize in the USA) for his denunciation of the way in which the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been engineered, in his book Bienestar Insuficiente Democracia Incompleta, De lo que no se hable en nuestro pais (Insufficient Welfare, Incomplete Democracy; a book about what is being silenced in Spain). (The quote is coming from here: http://www.vnavarro.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/the-spanish-civil-war.pdf)
This guy sounds at least as credible as the clearly biased man of the church Monsignor Vicente Carcel Orti which seams to be the main source of the numbers mentioned above, at least if you compare it with this internet source: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7999&CFID=23811582&CFTOKEN=60559071.
-- 84.74.150.14 ( talk) 09:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
It would be useful if editors read Mary Vincent's essay, the part of the collection called Splintering of Spain actually being quoted above. The habit of reading out of context is a serious problem with this article.
As the introduction says, Mary Vincent is expressly writing to deny that the "ahistorical discourse of 'martyrdom', which sees the purge of priests as only the latest episode in a long-established and unchanging persecution" can explain the deaths. To use her article to state that point of view in Wikipedia's voice is manifestly improper; she herself is evidence that it is not consensus among sources.
In addition, she says clearly that the purge was after the coup d'etat of July 1936, a reaction to it, and that incitements to violence were rare; this was not ideological. She also (obviously correctly) calls the Spanish peasants (who did the killing) anarchists - not Marxists, therefore. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
One of the comments of the straw poll was that the shorter version omitted Saint Augustine; this is not true - both versions have the same text.
This is, however, terminally vague; and although all three authors are mentioned in the source quoted, they are an indiscriminate selection among the Church Fathers. What three or four authors should we use, and what should we say about Augustine? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Antony Beevor is not a neutral source with regard to Catholics and the Spanish Civil War. He shows a marked anti-Catholic bias and it has been noted that he will gloss over or rationalize the murderous anti-Catholic rampages of that time. Mamalujo ( talk) 01:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted the paragraph to the state it was in when the page was frozen on the 1st of March. Can we have all sugguestions for alterations discussed here to gain a consensus on any change of wording. Xan dar 02:48, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
In short, Orlandis, Vidmar and Bodenkotter (sp?) must be used and followed, although they are avowedly Catholic authors, arguing for the Church; Beevor can't be used, because he supports the Republican cause and opposes the Church's (undisputed) support for a right dictatorship. This is a recipe for a biased article.
What we should do is include those statements about the Spanish Civil War agreed on by both sides; for which we must cite both sides. If there is someone who denies Beevor's claims, we should consider silence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
How long did the Spanish Civil War last? Tom Harrison Talk 23:09, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh, wait. We have an article on the Spanish Civil War, 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. So three years, I guess. I'd like to get an idea because, "In Germany, the reformation led to a nine-year war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. In 1618 a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, followed. In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion were fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre marked the turning point in this war." See, wow, a nine-year-long war, and then the Thirty Years War, that's going to take some talk page discussion and, what 13 paragraphs in the article if it's to be given proportional coverage. Better get Jimbo to allocate some space on the hard drive for the talk page archives. Tom Harrison Talk 23:21, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmm. Check out the 423 references and 98 books linked to this article. What percentage of them are "neutral"? Almost none. What percentage are even remotely critical or skeptical? Almost none. We don't have "neutrality" in this article - we have almost complete censorship. To be fair, the same is true with any article on any religious or political group that has an assertive and coordinated group of supporters. It's just a systemic flaw with how Wikipedia is edited. -- Tediouspedant ( talk) 03:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This argument is getting unproductive. We are here to concentrate on producing a concise factual text. I propose the following short wording to cover the Spanish Civil War issues as they affect the Church.
I think that, with links, says all that is needed to be said. Xan dar 00:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Where are we on this - is this proposed wording okay with most people, or is there another no-less succinct version that has more support? Tom Harrison Talk 13:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
10:59, 7 March 2010:
Proposed above:
Shorter yet (just for comparison):
That's still longer than "In 1618 a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, followed." Tom Harrison Talk 13:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Shorter yet: Say nothing at all and link Spanish Civil War in the See also section. Or maybe most people are content with the status quo? Tom Harrison Talk 21:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It's not my business, I guess, whether it's long or short, if it has consensus. It seems like it might me easier to keep it as short as possible and push all the detail onto the linked page, but whatever works. Agree on something here, long or short. Tom Harrison Talk 17:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a consensus on this: "In the Spanish Civil War, after over 6,500 priests and members of religious orders were executed by Republicans, the Spanish church hierarchy supported Franco's Nationalists."? Mamalujo ( talk) 00:44, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I have been following this discussion on and off for some time. While no official Arbitration remedies, such as probation or discretionary sanctions, have been authorized in this topic area, something definitely needs to be done to stop the edit warring on this page. Therefore, I highly encourage editors of this page to try to follow WP:1RR while editing the page. Failure to do so may not necessarily result in a block, but certainly would make such a thing far more likely. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. NW ( Talk) 00:40, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
See above section. Current disputes are resolved. Now we have to work on improving the current version. UberCryxic (talk) 01:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I've cut what I thought were the most obvious examples of POV and for the first time in a long while the page has no POV tags on it. Before people RV, can you ask yourself if what's there is NPOV and if you think it's not come and discuss it here first? I don't really want to stick all the tags back on. Haldraper ( talk) 10:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Sentences as overcited as this example are screaming either poor sourcing, synthesis or POV-pushing:
We see overciting throughout, indicative of same:
If Catholics believe something, stated as fact, it shouldn't need five sources. This problem is part of the bulk and unreadability of the article, and gives the impression that high quality sources haven't been consulted and used.
It's also indicative that more aggressive summary style could be applied in the main article; all of these statements that have dozens of citations are not likely to be summaries of key concepts, worthy of inclusion in a broad overview article, and may also indicate WP:UNDUE. Anything that is due weight will likely be mentioned in broad, high-quality sources, and not need a dozen statements to back it. This article had massive structural issues, and was just built all wrong; glad to see it is being fixed bit by bit and such collaboration!! SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 21:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Here's another one:
Was this article written from high quality sources and broad overviews, or just a patch job of whatever text someone thought should be added, based on whatever sources could be found? Why does one sentence need eight citations? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
The article starts off with history. If this were a place article, that would be great! Followed by geography, climate, etc. Kind of funny for a church, though, IMO. Isn't what the church says it does or says it believes in, more important? Usually the subject of an article is permitted to place it's best foot forward, followed by criticism, which is, I'm sure, profound, in this case.
Saying "the church is the sum total of its history" is not quite adequate IMO. Adolf Hitler has a rather positive article, by comparison. You'd think that history/Wikipedia would take a more dim view (by comparison). Student7 ( talk) 23:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Isn't what the church says it does or says it believes in, more important?
Absolutely not, to answer your question. From an encyclopedic perspective, what people actually do is always the most important factor, and that's the quick and easy rationalization for history sections usually coming first. Also, Wikipedia specifically advises us to use secondary sources in large numbers precisely to avoid problems with what people claim they believe, so what the Catholic Church says it believes is generally irrelevant to what reputable scholars say it believes. The latter get more preference. Why? Because you'll find writings from Stalin saying he supported free speech. People could have ulterior motives for making certain statements, and that's why we stick with reputable sources. UBER (talk) 23:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
One caveat to your position Uber is that churches teach, they do not believe. If one is attempting to illustrate the doctrines of a church we necessarily would cite their doctrines as they state them. Secondary sources may be ideal, but the quality of the source becomes paramount. For example, going to a Southern Baptist scholar for a review of Catholicism might introduce a skewed view of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Alternatively, a reputable Catholic scholar should provide a reliable summary of the Church's doctines. I suspect we are saying the same thing, but I think clarity is vital at this point in the process.
The reason so many reference are used in religious topics is because they are so contentious. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) has garnered an enormous amount of critical information over its nearly 2,000 year history. Every point has been disputed in this article and the only way out of conflict is to reference everything. Most of the controversial religious articles incurs the same type of referencing. If you know an alternative way when so much controversy exists, please share it. -- Storm Rider 01:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Truthkeeper, thanks for sharing your story. It might sound maudlin and melodramatic, but you're exactly the kind of user I was trying to help in my efforts to change the article—you and many others across the world who do not have the benefit of DSL or FIOS and who often have to wait up to a minute to load ridiculously long articles (kb-wise) on Wikipedia. You're absolutely right: nothing matters more in Wikipedia than access. It doesn't matter that an article is splendidly or horribly written if people have difficulty getting to it. I only wish that more people had taken your sensible advice instead of making this one of the bitterest and most contested articles in the history of Wikipedia. Thank you again. UBER (talk) 05:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
In the History section, I think it is important that we make sure to tell the reader not just "what happened" but also answer the question "so what?". Too many times, we throw out facts but don't explain why these facts are important.
For example, one could have read the section on the French Revolution and gotten the impression that a bunch of priests were killed and churches destroyed but the Church survived the Revolution and Napoleon and, in the end, won by being stronger for the experience.
Is this true? The Church may have had its prestige enhanced by the Pope's opposition to Napoleon but was the Church in France as strong in the 19th century as it was in the 18th century? I would think that it wasn't.
I think the suggestion that everything was hunky-dory and even better than before after the fall of Napoleon is the result of an excessive focus on positive pro-Church sources rather than an objective look at the Enlightenment-inspired transformation that started with the French Revolution and ends with the loss of the Papal States in 1870.
The 19th century brought waves of anti-clerical violence, harsh anti-clerical laws and milder legislation which ultimately effected a separation of church and state to various degrees in different countries. This theme of "separation of church and state" is not explicitly mentioned in the article and yet is important in any secular understanding of the history of the past 250-300 years (well, maybe even the last 1000 years). This is one of the big "so what?" points that I think the History section of this article should make.
This is not to say that the Church did not play a strong role in the politics and culture of countries after the 19th century. However, the role it played was markedly changed by the loss of temporal power (through loss of land and wealth).
Anti-clericalism probably also affected the Church's politics by pushing it towards the right (specifically affecting Pius XI's opposition of Communism).
-- Richard S ( talk) 16:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
What the encyclopedia needs is a good, neutral, sourced history of the Church of France, beginning well before the Revolution. It would be clearer, and more in accord with what real histories I have seen - including the reliable Papalist ones - to present the French Government and the Papacy as the major players, going back at least to the Gallicans, if not the kidnapping of the Pope in 1308; despite the many arguments for bad text for the sake of links, Gallican is not linked to from here. The Enlightenment and the Protestants are minor figures, although each important in their century. (Whether this will fit here is again another question.)
Presenting this, as we have done up to now, as the martyrdom of the Church at the hands of the EEEE-vil Revolutionaries, is not only partisan ignorance, but flat wrong. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was the work of the King's ministers, not the Jacobins, who were not to come to power for three years. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I would actually say the relationship of Napoleon III with the Church (he protected the Church, then later betrayed it out of cowardice) is more relevent than Napoleon I. Though I think its fair comment, that the Satanic inspired vanities of Philosophism would have pushed the Church closer towards the various masculine monarchies and even, paradoxically Britain (
Congress of Vienna). -
Yorkshirian (
talk)
23:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
One of my pet peeves about the History section has been the lack of broad overviews. The sense that I got from the previous looong version was a rattling narrative of facts with all sorts of hidden agendas but very few overt themes. My mind kept screaming "and so what? Why should I care about that?".
One thing that would help to address this issue is the use of lead paragraphs for every subsection. This lead paragraph should follow many of the same guidelines as lead paragraphs for articles. That is, it should summarize the whole section into a single paragraph. It might only consist of two or three sentences but those few sentences give the reader an overview of what will follow and even allow him to skip the rest of the section if he so chooses. In theory, we should be able to construct a very terse summary of the History section by just combining the lead paragraphs of each section.
I have made a preliminary attempt at implementing this approach with the "Reformation and Counter-Reformation" and "Age of Discovery" sections. I also broke out the treatment of the "Enlightenment" as a separate section again. Doing this makes it easier to write the lead paragraphs. (Or more specifically, merging these two topics makes it difficult to write a good lead paragraph.)
-- Richard S ( talk) 17:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
(Note that this thread is on the article talk page, not the review page.)
Majoreditor asked me to comment. For the readers' digest version, skip to point 4. To see where my conclusion comes from, see points 2-3.
Geometry Guy has been heavily involved in previous FACs here, so cannot really be regarded as "uninvolved". The question of stability obviously depends on what version we end up working with. If it is the old one, the issue is more one of "over-stability" compared to the last GAR version. Johnbod ( talk) 21:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I asked NancyHeise for her input on this question. She responded with the following. Karanacs ( talk) 21:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I read the thread and I agree with Johnbod. Because of Geometry Guy's involvement in the FAC process, particularly his non-neutrally worded and lengthy oppose vote, I think that he would not be viewed as a neutral candidate. NancyHeise talk 21:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC) [16]
The article is unstable, and has other GA criteria issues which means that it is not currently a good article so could reasonably be delisted. My initial view was to delist and recommend a period of one month of stable and productive editing to allow for issues to be addressed before renomination. However I have noticed that there is positive editing taking place. As the aim of GA is both to improve articles, and to motivate editors to improve articles, then it doesn't really matter which way round the process goes (delist and renominate in one month, or allow one month of editing under a GAR), as long as progress is being made. I would be hesitant to impede the progress being made on the article by delisting now and potentially demotivating a bunch of willing editors. So I recommend allowing a period of editing to improve the article, trusting the editors to do the right thing and move the article in the right direction through co-operation and negotiation, and then a close review to look at any unresolved issues. This should be done under a new GAR as the existing GAR has been set up by editors who are involved in the article. I would be hesitant about setting up a community GAR as I feel those responsible for making decisions as to the article's NPOV should be independent and uninvolved - a community GAR might invite heated debate from involved editors. Picking up a suggestion that EyeSerene has made - [17] - I feel a joint GAR between EyeSerene and myself might work. I will get in touch with UberCryxic and Mike Searson to close the current GAR. Then open a new GAR to be conducted by EyeSerene and myself, which would be run under the condition that it would run for at least a month, and if there is any disruptive editing in that time the article would be delisted. The first action of the new GAR would be to put the GAR on hold for seven days to allow productive editing to continue without interference, and then EyeSerene and myself will look at the article in seven days to see how close the article is to GA criteria, and to make our observations. A decision to close the GAR as either keep or delist would be a joint decision between EyeSerene and myself. SilkTork * YES! 16:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
As a reply to the recent set of edit summary remarks and reverts concerning the placement of a comma in the lead sentence, and its replacement by the word "and", the reason editors had a comma in the sentence is because the comma is correct in the sentence context. Its removal and the change to "and" is incorrect.
The comma serves as a parenthetical offset between two related phrases. "approximately one-sixth of the world's population" is an expansion or exposition on the phrase "more than a billion members", and not an introduction of a new fact. The removal of the comma and the addition of "and" in the lead indicates that the world's population statistic is an added fact separate from "one billion members". Here that is not the case.
Consider the following example: "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet, the standard number of pedal extremities." It would not be correct to write "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet and the standard number of pedal extremities." because the addition of "and" makes the final phrase redundant. However, "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet and two hands." would be correct given the introduction of a new fact.
I will not revert the edit, but it would be a minor improvement if a content-involved editor were to change or revert the "and" edit. If the original comma is too confusing as placed, perhaps the lead sentence should be reworded to avoid its use. This need not be a controversial change. -- Michael Devore ( talk) 19:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The article text has this sentence "Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World."
This sentence is factually true but there are a couple of problems with it. First, as I've indicated before, there is the general tendency towards this section being exculpatory... "bad conquistadors/secular colonizers" vs. "good, noble missionaries" but alas! best efforts of missionaries to "save" the Amerindians fails due to the onslaught of European diseases. I remain unconvinced that the role of missionaries in the Americas was primarily salutary. Of course, they did bring many benefits to the natives but I think it is more accurate to see the effect of Christian missions as a "mixed bag". Certainly, there are strong POVs in the "real world" who highlight the negative effects of Christian missionary work. It is arguable whether such POVs represent the mainstream but they are, at least, a strong and salient POV that needs to be presented here to provide a "full picture" of the real world perspective on this topic.
Also, the ending of the sentence "which created a labor vacuum in the New World" begs the question "and so....? what's your point?". It's like we raise the issue of a labor vacuum and then drop the topic, moving on without explaining what the relevance and significance of that labor vacuum is.
Of course, the answer is ... "the inability to enslave and exploit Native Americans as cheap labor led to the importation of African slaves". Until we fix the "big problem" of how to present the role and effect of Catholic missions in the post-Columbian Americas, the least we can do is fix this awkwardness. I propose just deleting the words " which created a labor vacuum in the New World" on the grounds that entering into an explanation of African slaves is a bit of a digression for an article of this scope. If we were talking about History of the Catholic Church in the Americas or Catholic Church and slavery, there is a natural segue into a discussion of the legitimacy of slavery in Catholic teaching and the conflict that African slavery in the New World poses for the anti-slavery stance taken by the Catholic Church. However, I don't think we want to get into this level of detail in this article.
-- Richard S ( talk) 16:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
It is clear from historical accounts that within the Catholic church there were both supporters and opponents of the genocide of the Amerindians. One opponent of the genocide was a Catholic priest, Don Frey Bartolomé de las Casas, OP, who wrote numerous books documenting the events, including The Devastation of the Indies, (1552) [republished by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1992], as well as History of the Indies [translated by Andrée M. Collard, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1971] and In Defense of the Indians [translated by Stafford Poole, C.M., Northern Illinois University, 1974]. A few extracts from The Devastation of the Indies give a flavor of the events: With my own eyes I saw Spaniards cut off the nose, hands and ears of Indians, male and female, without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it. ... Likewise, I saw how they summoned the caciques and the chief rulers to come, assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were taken captive and burned. ... [The Spaniards] took babies from their mothers' breasts, grabbing them by the feet and smashing their heads against rocks. ... They built a long gibbet, low enough for the toes to touch the ground and prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Savior and the twelve Apostles. ...Then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive. ... As the Spaniards went with their war dogs hunting down Indian men and women, it happened that a sick Indian woman who could not escape from the dogs, sought to avoid being torn apart by them, in this fashion: she took a cord and tied her year-old child to her leg, and then she hanged herself from a beam. But the dogs came and tore the child apart; before the creature expired, however, a friar baptized it. Read also the essay Lights in the Darkness in Christian History magazine [Issue 35, 1992] by Dr. Justo L. González [adjunct professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia]. On the Conquest of the Americas he says: It was one of the bleakest times in the history of Christianity. In the name of Christ, thousands were slaughtered, millions enslaved, entire civilizations wiped out. - In the name of Christ, natives were dispossessed of their lands by means of the Requerimiento. This document informed the native owners and rulers of these lands that Christ’s vicar on earth had granted these lands to the crown of Castile. They could accept and submit to this, or be declared rebel subjects and destroyed by force of arms. - In the name of Christ, the natives were dispossessed of their freedom by means of the encomiendas. The crown entrusted natives—sometimes hundreds of them—to a Spanish conquistador to be taught the rudiments of the Christian faith. In exchange, the natives were to work for the conquistador—the encomendero. The system soon became a veiled form of slavery. Even worse, some encomenderos left the natives underfed and overworked to the point of death. González however then proceeds to describe how these events were condemned by several leading priests including Don Frey Bartolomé de las Casas and the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.43.37 ( talk) 13:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
... is still everywhere, but one thing that jumps out is the chart in the "Hierarchy, personnel and institutions" section; that data could be summarized to one sentence, and the chart moved to the daughter article. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 19:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. The titles of the Pope(such as successor of Saint Peter, Vicar of Christ, etc) and what the heirarchy is actually for is very relevent to a summary of the Church. This section actually needs more work, the mentioning of canon law, etc and I think we should mention religious orders in this section too—ie, Dominicans, Francisans, Jesuits, etc. The info about homosexuals been disuaded from being part of the clergy should probably be put into a note. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 22:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I am not opposed to keeping the titles but I would like to offer my perspective. To me, the titles are basically trivial details. I don't disagree with Majoreditor that the titles could "explain much about the structure and history of the church hierarchy, particularly regarding the papacy. It shows continuity with pagan traditions (pontiff), linkage to the apostles (St. Peter), primacy over other churches (prince of the apostles) and linkage to God (vicar of Christ). " if the meanings of the titles are explained. However, I suspect that most Catholics would be unable to explain these meanings "off the cuff" and the meanings of these titles will be absolutely lost on the average reader, especially if that reader is not Catholic. Thus, I would say that we could lose the titles without really detracting from the article. If the titles are as important as Majoreditor asserts, then we should explain them briefly. I think they're not that important and are more important as catechesis for the faithful but not in an encyclopedic article. -- Richard S ( talk) 15:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I know we've been over some of this ground before but I still think the opening sentence of the lead is very see-sawy and choppy:
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the world's largest Christian church with more than a billion members,[note 2] approximately one-sixth of the world's population. The number of practicing Catholics worldwide, however, is not reliably known.[15]
Everything is qualified by the succeeding text or in the two notes. The membership figures are also well discussed in the relevant section. I therefore propose a new opening sentence that avoids these problems:
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the world's largest Christian church.[note 2] Haldraper ( talk) 22:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I also endorse this proposal. Since you made it, go ahead and implement the changes yourself Hald. UBER (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Oppose because it doesn't mention the number of world-wide members. It considers the Church only in relation to schismatic and theologically heretical Christian groups rather than the entire world itself. The CIA World Factbook reference used for it is a reliable source. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 06:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
During the 20th century, the Church had to content with the rise of various authoritarian and politically radical governments. For instance in Mexico, following secularist laws enacted by a predominantly Grand Orient led government, [1] the Cristero War took place which included anti-Catholic killings and religious desecration. [2] [3] [4] Similarly in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, well into the 1930s, [5] execution of clergy and laity, as well as closure and confiscation of church property was common. [6] Along with republican Spain in which violence was also directed against the Church, [7] these regimes were dubbed the Terrible Triangle by Pope Pius XI and the lack of intervention a Conspiracy of Silence. The hierarchy supported Franco and the national forces during the Spanish Civil War, [8] which although authoritarian—like Salazar in Portugal and Dollfuss in Austria—were friendly to the Church and tried to imploment Catholic social teaching into their programs. [9] Following violations of an accord signed between the two, [10] [11] relations with the German Third Reich were more strained. Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical Mit brennender Sorge [10] [12] [13] [14] criticising curtailment of the Church, as well as the paganism and scientific racialism in the political program. [14] [15] [16] [17] Following the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Church condemned the invasion of Catholic Poland and other acts of aggression. [18]
I trimmed this section down to the above yesterday, only to have Haldraper flyby revert the trim with no proper explination. My rationale for the trim is simple; in the current article there is far too much weight to relations between Church and Third Reich (a whole paragraph is obviously undue weight), which in the larger picture are insignificant, it deviated from core facts, with pure opinion, polemic and so on. At the same time the article doesn't mention the Catholic authoritarian governments which were actually supported by the Church (Franco is, but we can also mention Salazar and Dollfuss) as well as explaining why the Church supported it (these governments tried to merge Catholic social teaching with their political program). Also I trimmed the gory details of Mexico down to just "anti-Catholic killings", since it gets the point across in a shorter form. Same with explinations of the term Conspiracy of Silence. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 03:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Yorkshirian opines in his usual fashion: "Calles was a freemason, his government was anti-clerical, therefore international freemasonry was directing anti-clericalism in Mexico." Gosh, its so difficult to argue against this sort of logic. Honestly, Yorkshirian, can't you do better than this? I'm starting to think you are just intentionally winding us up with all this conspiracy theory rhetoric you go on with. Afterwriting ( talk) 15:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
There's a lot of back and forth here about what to include, what not to include, how much weight to give certain issues: it's not clear to me if content is being decided based on due weight according to the highest quality sources, or just personal opinion. Long ago, User:Awadewit offered to help if things settled down here. Has anyone thought of asking her to do a literature search, to hone in on the most desirable sources? It seems to me that some of the content disputes could be resolved by identifying the highest quality sources, and working from them, rather than trying to retrofit patchwork text that was built based on a multitude of lesser quality sources and opinions about what to include. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with SandyGeorgia and Karanacs that we should consider what other sources consider important. Alas, I have neither the time nor the resources to help in that effort. Until then, I would prefer that we keep the current set of topics. I am all in favor of removing excessive detail but I oppose completely deleting any of the following topics: Terrible Triangle, Reichskonkordat/Mit Brennender Sorge, Liberation Theology, Sexual abuse cases. -- Richard S ( talk) 15:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
How is there no mention WHATSOEVER in this article about the sexual abuse that has come along with the Catholic Church for decades?? Seriously. Everywhere in the world, in every newspaper, there are consistently new reports of children being the victims of sexual abuse, at the hands of a Catholic Priest/Bishop... Wikipedia has a duty to discuss this. (Even the Pope's brother is guilty of this. THE POPE'S BROTHER!) Get with it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.5.57.156 ( talk • contribs)
I hadn't read the Beliefs section in full in a while, and overall I'm impressed that the section seems much more accessible. There are still a few things that I think can be improved, but I am certainly not qualified to do so.
Karanacs ( talk) 16:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Xandar mentioned above a concern that Coverage of important and vital issues such as Mary and the Saints, Pilgrimage, purgatory, social teaching, creation, angels, salvation and free will has vanished completely. Coverage of Monasticism has also gone, as well as coverage of the Church's educational and social work.. I agree with him that some of these topics are important to differentiate Catholicism from other Christian denominations (sorry, Yorkshirian, not sure what other word to use here), and thus need to be at least mentioned in this overview (although the details may well belong in other articles). I've restored some of the previous text dealing with monastacism, the afterlife, and free will. I think something ought to be restored about Mary, but I'm not sure what or where it should go (it was previously in traditions of worship, but should it go in beliefs instead?). The information on social teaching in the previous article is not very informative and seems more preachy than encyclopedic. I wouldn't object to a few good sentences that go into a little more detail than that uncited table in the Organization section, but I'm not sure where we need to get that type of info. I'm not attached to any particular wording (this needs a good copyedit anyway), and it may be that I've restored too much detail. It will likely take a few iterations for us to get the right balance. Thoughts? Karanacs ( talk) 15:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, everybody, for acknowledging that Xandar had a point about too much having been deleted. I was dreading having to go through and verify his assertions one-by-one so I'm glad someone else was willing to listen to him and act on his concerns. I disagree with his proposal to go back to the original long version but I do want to make sure that all important topics are covered if only in summary form. -- Richard S ( talk) 16:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
The current text reads "The La Reforma regime which came to power in Mexico in 1860 passed the anti-clerical Calles Law and in the 1926–29 Cristero War[202] over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[203][204] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped and captured priests shot.[202] In the Soviet Union persecution of the Church and Catholics continued well into the 1930s.[205] In addition to the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements and closure of churches was common.[206] During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy supported Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist forces against the Popular Front government,[207] citing Republican violence directed against the Church.[208]"
First of all, mentioning the La Reforma regime of 1860 and the 1926-29 Cristero War together in the same breath is probably conflating too much. Secondly, the text confuses the Calles Law of 1926 with the Lerdo Law of 1856. Finally, what ties persecution of Catholics in Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain is that Pius XI called this the Terrible Triangle and expressed with bitterness his disappointment regarding the failure of Western democracies to publicly oppose and halt them. I know we're trying to keep the History section short but I think it's important to mention the phrase "Terrible Triangle".
Also, this is a bit of OR but I still think the anti-clericalism of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century is part of what drove the Catholic Church to continue seeking accommodation with more conservative governments which could possibly protect it from attacks by Marxists and anarchists. (no POV attack or defense intended here, I'm just stating what I think was going on). Does anybody know of sources which make a similar assertion?
-- Richard S ( talk) 09:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Since 9th March, major, substantive, and largely undiscussed, changes have been made to this article that totally re-order it and reduce its size by more than half, removing key sections and decimating others. I am not at this point going to divert into the manner in which these changes have been introduced. I am, however, going to say why these hastily made changes are not only fundamentally ill-judged, but make the article completely unfit for purpose. I will make proposals for a better and consensus way forward for this article.
If we compare the Longstanding Text of this article with that newly introduced, the principal changes have been:
These changes amount to what one editor called a "Hiroshima" of the article. The rationale for these changes has been extremely vague. The main ostensible reason put forward has been that the article was too long. However this is not the way to make cuts. What has been cut is largely the unique core material of the article, and what has been left is mnaterial largely duplicated by other articles.
This has happened because enormous changes and cuts have not been properly discussed and agreed. They have been hastily and arbitrarily implemented, and therefore have caused the article to fail. If I was currently grading this article (which has been a Good Article for years), I would have to rate it at no more thanClass C ie. Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.
The changes seem to have been inspired by a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of this article. The principal purpose of this article is to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY. The current article fails to do this. The sections that should form the core of the article, and which contain most of the unique core material on the subject have been moved to the end of the article and decimated.
In order to do this, the subsections have been removed and there is a mass of unreadable text. The content itself has had all its logic removed, leaping seemingly at random from subject to ill-explained subject. Coverage of important and vital issues such as Mary and the Saints, Pilgrimage, purgatory, social teaching, creation, angels, salvation and free will has vanished completely. Coverage of Monasticism has also gone, as well as coverage of the Church's educational and social work. Most of this material is not only necessary, but totally uncontroversial and there has never been a proposal to remove it! All such changes would need proper discussion on their substance and consensus on their substance before implementation. The tiny remnants of what should be the core sections of the article have been further downgraded by being tagged on as a sort of postscript to the article, behind a lengthy History section.
I'm afraid the people who have overhastily made these changes, have produced an article which may reflect THEIR personal interests, but it does not reflect the needs of readers or the requirement that this MAJOR Wikipedia article be full, balanced and comprehensive. At present it has become a cut-down duplication of the History of the Catholic Church article, with a little garbled information on the present day Church tagged on the end. This really is an embarrassment to its subject, and to Wikipedia.
Let us compare the Longstanding text and the current UBER/Karanacs text with the coverage on the major foreign language Wikipedias. Here are the Spanish Language, the Italian Language, the French Language, the German Language, the Portuguese Language and the Dutch Language articles. We can also look at the English Wikipedia articles on Anglicanism, the Orthodox Church, the Featured Article, Islam, and Buddhism. They are ALL immensely closer in format, content and weighting to the Longstanding Text of this page. So WHO is out of step? Is everybody wrong except the group of editors supporting this hacked to shreds version? Do their plans include parachuting into Islam or Orthodox Church and Anglicanism and perform the same level of cutting and reorganisation? If not, why not?
Since the version now on the page has lost its slowly built-up, logical and referenced core material, I propose that we restore the Longstanding article text, and work co-operatively on that. In the interests of providing an easy and substantial cut to the length of the article, I would simultaneously agree to the complete removal of the History section with the exception of a section each on Origin and Mission and the Contemporary Church. The "History of the Catholic Church" article, which is at last in a good state, would then be directly linked from the top of this article in the manner of the French and Portuguese Wikipedia articles. This would also have the benefit of removing many of the major POV bones of contention in the present article. ( Example available here.) This would not be to set the reverted portions of text in stone, but to return to a better basis for further collegial and discussed improvement. Xan dar 10:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Xandar has asked for my comments, although he must expect that they will be contrary to his argument; this should be noted.
Xandar is going about this the right way inasmuch as he starts by asserting the purpose of the article, and then proposes actions to move towards that purpose. Naturally if we accept Xandar's premise that the purpose of this article is
"to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY"
then of course it makes sense to cut the history section to make room for more discussion of structure and beliefs. But I for one do not accept that premise. I think it ought to go without saying that this is an overview article, and therefore its purpose is
to give a brief overview of the Catholic Church.
If that is our purpose, then cutting it down from 195kB to 100kB was a step in the right direction, reverting it would be a mistake, and cutting out the history section altogether would be just plain silly.
What do others think? What is the purpose of this article? Since there is dispute on this most fundamental point, there hardly seems any point in discussing anything else until we have settled it.
Hesperian 12:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
So we now have five people who think the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church; no dissenters; and I no longer have any idea what Xandar thinks the purpose of this article is, as he has repudiated my understanding of his position without offering something else in its stead.
Is this consensus? If there is strong consensus that the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church, do we have to right to ask that people buy in or bugger off? Disagreements on how to achieve our purpose can be worked through, but I don't see how collaboration is even possible without a shared purpose. It seems to me that knowingly editing to a purpose other than the consensus purpose is the very epitome of "editing against consensus".
What say you, Xandar? Are you prepared to work towards the consensus goal of making this article a brief overview of the Catholic Church?
Hesperian 14:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Unlike Xandar, my opposition is centred on the way the changes were brought about, not on the changes themselves. All editors, with the exception of Xandar, who was blocked, agreed that the straw poll should decide whether or there was consensus for the new version. That poll didn't come close to establishing consensus yet the new version replaced the old.
Since then Sandy and SV have argued vehemently that the current version should remain in place. Their argument is simply that the end justifies the means. They argue that the article is better now that in was, so it doesn't matter that it was pushed through without consensus. That's not their decision to make. It's not a decision for any individual editor or group of editors to make. A change of this magnitude clearly deserves broader community input.
It does now look as though there will be an RfC at some point, and I think that should be the end of it. If that had happened before the change rather than after it much of the acrimony could have been avoided, and perhaps WP wouldn't have a lost a good admin. The whole thing has been handled very poorly, some experienced editors seem to have been acting completely out of character, and Nancy and Xandar have been given a very raw deal. But what's done is done; there's no point in raking over the coals. I say give Nancy, Xandar, et al, time to prepare their arguments and their alternative versions, have the RfC, and move on.-- MoreThings ( talk) 15:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
It is ridiculous really. This article does not discuss the activities of the Catholic Church. Do they, perchance, make a major contribution to primary, secondary and tertiary education in most parts of the world? Yes? That's funny: the word "education" does not occur outside of the history section. Do they, perchance, send out missionaries? Yes? Run charities? Yes? Welfare agencies? Yes? Hospitals? Yes?
This should be 10% of the article. Instead it is one sentence in the lead: "It operates social programs and institutions throughout the world, including Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, missions and shelters, and the charity confederation Caritas Internationalis."
Hesperian 03:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
[Discussion of RFC/New straw poll moved to new section below this one]
Let's get back to the original issue, shall we? As Hesperian says, there needs to be some mention in the article of the institutions that the Church runs. The previous version of the article had only a single sentence on this issue: As part of its ministry of charity the Church runs Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas Internationalis, Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, shelters and ministries to the poor, as well as ministries to families, the elderly and the marginalized. The ideal way to do this would be a few sentences that explain the table that is in the organization section. Unfortunately, that table is uncited. How shall we present this information? Karanacs ( talk) 14:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
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![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 40 | ← | Archive 42 | Archive 43 | Archive 44 | Archive 45 | Archive 46 | → | Archive 50 |
What is the point of us spending days and weeks discussing making this page NPOV when Nancy just takes and break and then comes back and adds all the POV material back in again, with some more as well for good measure?
It's all there, all the ridiculously one-sided, apolgetic stuff on African colonisation, Franco, the Reichskonkordat, all the peacocky language on the 'challenges' the Church faces in converting people and weaselly words on the Pope and science, all the things rejected as POV on the talk page and carefully trimmed away which most of us I think hoped - and some maybe even prayed - we'd seen the last of.
I've come close recently to walking away from this page like so many editors exasperated by Nancy's blatant pro-Catholic POV-pushing. If this behaviour doesn't earn her some kind of ban from the arbitration committee I may well do, otherwise I'm wasting my time in trying to achieve NPOV here. Haldraper ( talk) 18:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
My reponse to Haldrapers accusations of POV above point by point:
+ Haldraper has accused me of POV pushing because I added facts about Africa in the Catholic institutions section and the industrial age that discuss the introduction and presence of Catholic education in that country. Our article never tells Reader about the many persecutions against Catholics and other Christians by Muslims in that country. It never tells Reader about the child sacrifice and polygamy that is commonly practiced there by paganists. There is no mention of female genital destruction and other practices that the Church has consistently fought against. I have not introduced these relevant items into the article but I think the POV accusers do not realize that there is a lot of stuff we could introduce that would help Reader have a better understanding of Catholicism in Africa. Omission of these relevant items makes me think that the article slants toward an anti-Catholic POV. NancyHeise talk 19:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
CARA? Enough said.
It's the assumptions underlying your cheerleading that drive the pro-Catholic POV: the Church faces 'challenges' in reaching people because of the languages they speak? How inconsiderate of them! Maybe they're happy as they are and don't want to be 'reached' by the Catholic Church. The need for European education in Africa is also just assumed ('the white man's burden'), good job the Catholic Church was there to fill the gap! Oppression of Catholics/unjust expulsion of missionaries in North Korea and China or understandable resistance to foreign interference after centuries of colonialism? I'm not arguing either side, just that coming down on the former as you do is POV.
We spent weeks discussing the multiple issues surrounding the Reichskonkordat, the motives of the Catholic Centre party in promoting it etc., all now binned in the interests of yet more pro-Catholic martyrology.
I dispute the Vatican is a state like others, it's only existed since the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Pope and Mussolini's Italian fascist regime so yes I do think describing Benedict XVI as an international rather than religious leader is debateable to say the least. Haldraper ( talk) 20:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
er, I don't need to 'provide sources' to show your POV. Whether your text matches your sources is irrelevant as to whether it's NPOV given most of it is straight from the Church: Bokenkotter, CARA etc. Haldraper ( talk) 21:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Strongly disagree with Haldraper's anti-Franco bias in favour of nun killers beholden to Stalin (I gathered in Trotskyite thought the SU were state capitalist traitors to the "class struggle" anyway?). Regardless, its probably POV to call Caudillo a "rebel". Against what did he rebel? When viewed in the general context of the history of Spain; the Republic's masonic government, Marxist internationalists were the real innovators, the importers of alien creeds, rebels against Eternal Spain. All Franco and the military did was continue the Reconquista, stepping in to liberate Church and country from peresection by her most infamous enemies, restoring a lasting peace, law and order. The truth may sting. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 01:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Let's close this section if we can. Tom Harrison Talk 21:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I have added information to our World War II paragraph that includes the JPII papal apology and a link to the "We Remember, Reflections on the Shoah" page. I know that this section had been trimmed but I would like to look at this again due to the historical importance of the popes apology regarding relations between Catholics and Jews. I noticed that the tertiary sources mention JPII's efforts in this area and I think our article has a huge hole in it in this regard. Please take a look at what I added, perhaps it can be shortened a bit or some of it placed in a note but I think its very important to have it in the article. Let me know what you think. Thanks, NancyHeise talk 20:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
There was no consensus above for the additions that you made. Karanacs ( talk) 21:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
There's no point in these back-and-forth changes. Pick something, discuss, and come to a consensus. Have a not-a-vote if necessary. Tom Harrison Talk 20:31, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Start with this one, if you want: although the number of practicing Catholics worldwide is not reliably known.<ref name=bbcfact>{{cite news|title=Factfile: Roman Catholics around the world|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4243727.stm|publisher=BBC News|date=1 April 2005|accessdate=24 March 2008}}</ref>
Include, or not? Tom Harrison Talk 20:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Nancy, I've never understood your problem with this: if you're not practicing you're lapsed. The advantage of saying lapsed instead of practicing is that we can then have a piped link to Lapsed Catholic so non-Catholics who unlike you, me and Xandar may not appreciate the distinction can go and see what it means. Haldraper ( talk) 21:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
NOT include. I don't even know why it is there. It is factually incorrect. Whether a catholic practices or not, they are still Catholic unless they renounce. I'm willing to debate this for a little but this is like debating why 2+2=4. Is a Jew not a Jew if they don't practice or a Muslim? And don't say that Jews are not just a religion but a people. Are Americans not Americans if they don't support their country and perhaps even commit acts of treason? Of course not. You cannot revoke citizenship; it can only be given up by the free will of the individual. Again, to show how ridiculous this statement is and how the people who are writing that do not understand Catholicism, it is logically impossible as the statement implies that only perfect Catholics, whatever that means, can actually be Catholics. If you don't understand why think about it for a few minutes. There is far more to Catholicism than a self-identified statement on some survey on why an individual may or may not consider themselves to be "practicing." Phail Saph ( talk) 02:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I have more useful tips. In general, this article needs to be vastly restructured. Here are some of its main problems and some of my ideas about how to solve them....
Anyway, we can start there. This article has lots of problems, I'm afraid. UberCryxic (talk) 22:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm kneejerk Celtic as well but outside Glasgow the Catholic-Protestant thing is definitely exaggerated, certainly in my home town of Manchester where the supposedly Protestant team City have plenty of Catholic fans (including several priests of my acquaintance) and the supposedly Catholic team United have had a long line of Northern Irish Protestant players: George Best, Norman Whiteside, Sammy McIlroy, Keith Gillespie. Haldraper ( talk) 13:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm here because I think can help steer this discussion and this article to a better place. I hope you'll cooperate with me because I certainly plan to cooperate with you, despite current and previous conflict. UberCryxic (talk) 02:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Please review my suggestions below and offer your own as well. The following suggestions are meant to be, at first, very incremental, but they will eventually build up to more substantial proposals. I will label ongoing discussion about these suggestions as Ongoing, I will label discussions where we have reached agreement on a Suggestion as Consensus, and I will label marginal progress as Tentative Agreement (see below). No Suggestion is fully resolved until we hit Consensus. These are the basic ground rules.
I expect to issue hundreds of Suggestions over the next few months, and I hope you all do the same. If it takes scrutinizing every little world, rewriting every paragraph, and citing every controversial thing....then that's what we're going to do to come to some sort of satisfactory conclusion to the saga known as the Catholic Church article on Wikipedia. UberCryxic (talk) 03:52, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
(Opening a subsection for every minor suggestion because I anticipate each one will spark its own war. Again, that's fine...I just want you all to be psychologically well-prepared for this long road ahead) The second sentence should read as follows:
Approximately one-sixth of the world's population is Catholic, although the number of practicing Catholics worldwide is not reliably known.[references].
Ideas? Thoughts? Discuss here. UberCryxic (talk) 02:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Johnbod wrote "I notice by the way we have Catholic Church and slavery, a rambling, incoherent and contradictory account, which ought to benefit from all this learned discussion here, but as usual probably won't."
I created the article because there were editors who wanted to add detailed information about the Catholic Church's position supporting slavery to counter the claim that it helped to end slavery. I felt that that adding all those details would make the article unnecessarily long so I created an article to delve into the topic more deeply.
After I created the article, some editors have built on the initial attempt but not much attention has been given to it. I would welcome some more attention and recommendations for improving that article. Feel free to leave your comments at Talk:Catholic Church and slavery. It's on my watchlist.
-- Richard S ( talk) 19:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
A lot of Jesus disciples were quoted to be vegetarians and tee-totalers although the arguement goes that Jews who did not partake in a weekly sacrificial feast would be in trouble. Anyway, after Jesus death and the scattering of the disciples, his brother James would preach to the congregation. Vegetarianism was part of what James preached and he thought that it was one of the ways of Jesus. A local and rather unsavoury character, violently opposed to Jesus weakling followers, by the name of Saul who had seen Jesus once himself got to learning more about Jesus teachings through stories of James. Saul eventually turned over a new leaf and became a preacher of the ways of Christ renaming himself Paul after a night out homeless trying to sleep with his head on a rock. He also decided to preach that James way of being a vegetarian was weak as a Jew. Shortly afterwards James met an early death through assasination opening a way for Saul/Paul to take over and guide James congregation of what would eventually become the Christian church. Anyway, I don't see any mention of James on this article. Maybe he shouldn't be mentioned here, I don't know. Saul is always considered the major apostle but it's rather interesting to leave a key element out of it entirely. Caretaker managers are rarely left out of the history of a football team. ~ R. T. G 13:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
This Talk Page is automatically archived by MiszaBot I. If a thread has not been added to within five days, the whole thread is archived. The problem is that we are running several threads simultaneously such that several of them have had comments added within the last 5 days. MiszaBot does not archive those threads. The approach of having several subsections on different topics probably exacerbates the problem because, if I correctly understand how MiszaBot I works, none of the subsections will get archived until discussion has ended on all subsections for 5 days. We may need to promote the subsections to Level 2 sections so that individual topics will get archived as soon as discussion on that topic dies down. I'll go do that now. -- Richard S ( talk) 06:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Please go slowly, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Tom Harrison Talk 13:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you Tom. UberCryxic (talk) 16:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Again, please move slowly. I suggest you stop now and give today's changes time to settle. There's always Catholic Church and slavery, or Spanish Civil War, which I see has its own page. Tom Harrison Talk 20:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
The Beliefs section should be retitled Beliefs and practices and all of the material of the Prayer section should go under there, with the section heading for Prayer deleted. This Suggestion does not involve content disputes, although future ones will. Suggestion IV only involves organization. UberCryxic (talk) 03:45, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
← Hmm, I gotta go with Xandar on this one. The two sections are relatively long and full of sub-sections. Merging them together will create a monstrously long section. We can revisit the merging issue if, at some point, the two sections are shorter. Majoreditor ( talk) 01:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Its always the benign twist that exacerbates me. In the "industrial Age", the sentence " By the close of the 19th century European powers had managed ( great euphemism) to gain control of most of the African interior..creating a demand for literacy and western education.." Or put another way, " Arriving as part of the unseemly Scramble for Africa, the latest wave of Christian colonization forced society to run along lines of their choosing - involving intense economic exploitation, and African soldiers in two world wars. When the Nazis captured Africans they were filmed extensively for propaganda purposes with sneering soundtrack "See who fights for Western civilization.." If I saw a missionary I'd say "You may mean well, but please, go away, and take your friends with you". Sayerslle ( talk) 10:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
We should not discuss the British colonial experience as those are not Catholic missionaries for the most part although many of the experiences may be shared.
The bottom line here is that an NPOV treatment of the issue must necessarily mention the good with the bad. We are not doing that in the current text. The Iberian colonial experience reads something along the lines of "Bad Iberians abused native Americans. Noble Catholic missionaries tried to protect them but ultimately disease decimated their numbers." (We thus imply that disease is the main culprit and that Catholic missionaries have no culpability in the destruction of the native American culture and civilization). Now, there is sourceable truth in all that but the juxtaposition of half-truths can lead to a lie. (NB: I'm not calling any editors liars, just saying that the article text presents a lie.) How do we fix this?
I think we should look at what role the Catholic missionaries played in the colonization process. The objective, as I understand it, was to Christianize the natives so that they could become good, productive members of a European-style society in the colonies. In effect, the goal was to make them good serfs. To that end, native religion, languages, customs and leadership were targeted. Did missionaries bring education and health care? Yes. Were their motives good? At the individual level, they probably had the best of intentions. However, we are not just judging motives but describing historical impact which, in my opinion, is mixed. Whether the net impact
Are there sources who criticize the conduct of Catholic missionaries towards the native Americans (i.e. specifically the Catholic missionaries as opposed to the secular colonials)? Such criticism can be found on the Web but those sources are not very reliable. We need a more scholarly source.
-- Richard S ( talk) 17:53, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I noticed that the Note on slavery includes this sentence "Nonetheless, Catholic missionaries such as the Jesuits worked to alleviate the suffering of Native American slaves in the New World. " In light of recent discussion, I wonder if this sentence might be a bit too glib. This tends to suggest that Catholic missionaries primarily were intercessors to "alleviate the suffering of Native Americans". Anyone have opinions on whether this is an accurate portrayal of their role? -- Richard S ( talk) 18:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I think my question was too circumspect. I grant that the primary purpose of all missionaries (not just the Jesuits) was to promote the Catholic faith using education as a tool. In the process, I'm sure the good fathers, friars and sisters all thought they were improving the lot of the Native Americans. I wasn't asking whether their purpose was the benefit of the Native Americans. I was asking whether the efforts of the missionaries was effective in improving their lot. First, were their efforts unequivocally beneficial or were some of their actions detrimental. From my perspective, there is destruction of their way of life (i.e. hunter/gatherer vs. settled agrarian), their language, their leadership hierarchy and their customs. However, at the moment, this is just OR. Does anyone know of a good source to support this assertion? Secondly, I was asking whether the missionaries were truly effective in their purpose. Did they truly differentiate themselves from the secular colonists or were they just colonists working for the Church rather than for their own self-aggrandization? Our text suggests that the missionaries were primarily noble and pure in purpose (and perhaps in action). This might be a somewhat one-sided portrayal. -- Richard S ( talk) 04:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I tagged a sentence as POV on the basis of undue weight and sloppy research and urge it to be removed. J.A. Jungmann, one of the foremost liturgical scholars of the twentieth century wrote in The Mass of the Roman Rite: "The beginnings of the Latin Mass in Rome are wrapped in almost total darkness. The oldest documents to register such a Mass are nearly all the work of diligent Frankish scribes of the eighth and ninth centuries, and even with all the apparatus of literary criticism and textual analysis, we can hardly reconstruct any records back beyond the sixth century, certainly not beyond the fifth. For the most part whatever is here transmitted as the permanent text – especially the canon, but likewise the major portion of the variable prayers of the celebrant, and the readings – is almost identical with present-day usage”. Fr Jungmann wrote this in 1948, and by “present-day usage” he meant of course what we know as the Tridentine rite Mass. No documents have come to light since 1948 which in any way alter or modify this statement. Here is Pope Benedict XVI's (then Cardinal Ratzinger) opinion on this:"After the (2nd Vatican) Council… in place of the liturgy as the fruit of organic development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”-- Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 21:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Last thing I will say, when Xandar changes the text to '6800 were killed,..subsequently some of the hierarchy supported Franco'..does he source that? Do you source that Xandar? The chronology, not the total? On this contentious article in particyular, as if, monomane that you are, this isn't the only article you police anyway- damn right people might suspect Ownership. Source your '6800 killed', 'subsequently..' or else what gives you the right to pontificate, and lay down the law? Sayerslle ( talk) 12:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC) Silentium consentire, thats what it said in man for all seasons - silence agrees, so you admit you twisted the truth. Don't twist things to suit your delusions . Sayerslle ( talk) 00:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Subsequently is a clear misstating of the historical facts. Its not confusing the nationalists with the church facing the obvious support the nationalists got from official church representative. The catholic hierarchy on all levels supported General Franco and his sympathizers rhetorical and with concrete action well before the outbreak of the civil war and did so forcefully after the start of the armed conflicts. As early as in September 1936 first the Pope Pius XI distinguished in blessing of Spaniard exiles between the christian heroes of the right and the savage barbarians of the left (14.) than the Bishop of Salamanca published a long pastoral letter (The Two Cities) naming the nationalist/fascist uprising a crusade(30.) ("Franco" by Paul Preston, Copyright 1994 by Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. S. 184-185).
To even remotely insinuate, the Church would have been kinda neutral in the lengthy struggles of the republic is not just POV, its a clear distorting of historical facts. In 1933 for example Pope Pius XI published a quite frank (no pun intended) enzyclical (dilectissima nobis) which condemns the republic for all kind of things, insinuates that its decision to forfeit any state religion also forfeits any rightful claim for authority and has passages like this:
"24. Meanwhile, however, with all the soul and heart of a father and shepherd, We emphatically exhort Bishops, priests, and all those who in any way intend to dedicate themselves to the education of the young to promote more intensely, with all their strength and by every means, religious teaching and the practice of Christian life. And this is so much more necessary since the new Spanish legislation, with the deleterious introduction of divorce, dares to profane the sanctuary of the family, thus implanting, with the attempted dissolution of domestic society, the germs of saddest ruin for civil well-being. Faced by a menace of such enormous damage, We again recommend to all Catholic Spain that laments and recriminations be put aside, and subordinating to the common welfare of Country and Religion every other ideal, all unite, disciplined for the defense of the Faith and to remove the dangers that threaten the civil welfare.
25. In a special way, We invite all the Faithful to unite in Catholic Action, which We so often have recommended and which, though not constituting a party but rather having set itself above and beyond all political parties, will serve to form the conscience of Catholics, illuminating and corroborating it in defense of the Faith against every snare."
To remove the dangers that threaten the civil welfare (like the right to divorce!). Thats an open call to put away the republic in one way OR another. Full Text here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_03061933_dilectissima-nobis_en.html.
By the way, the "Catholic Action" Pius XI mentions here is a movement which was incorporated in the political group CEDA which supported Francos Rebellion after loosing the 1936 election.
But now, what about the normal clergy, where they involved in the earthly, political and armed fights or really only nuns tending to the sick? Lets here a clear position on that:
"[...] And all this was done with the active involvement of the Catholic Church. In every village, town, and city, it was the Spanish Church hierarchy (which had called for a military coup during the Republican government) and the priests who prepared the lists of people to be executed. A primary target of the repression was teachers, considered major enemies by the Church. Its active opposition to the popular reforms by the Spanish republican governments, and its calling on the Army to rebel against the popularly elected government, explains the fury felt by large sectors of the working class, led by anarcho-syndicalists, toward the Church. The day after Franco’s coup, large numbers of people decided to take justice into their own hands, burning churches and killing priests. These violations took place against the wishes of the democratic state, which actively opposed such actions. Terror was never a policy of the Republic. It was, however, part and parcel of the fascist state. [...]"
Now this quote is not of some radical left ideologist but from Vicente Navarro Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, and The Johns Hopkins University, USA. In 2002 Navarro was awarded the Anagrama Prize (Spain’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize in the USA) for his denunciation of the way in which the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been engineered, in his book Bienestar Insuficiente Democracia Incompleta, De lo que no se hable en nuestro pais (Insufficient Welfare, Incomplete Democracy; a book about what is being silenced in Spain). (The quote is coming from here: http://www.vnavarro.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/the-spanish-civil-war.pdf)
This guy sounds at least as credible as the clearly biased man of the church Monsignor Vicente Carcel Orti which seams to be the main source of the numbers mentioned above, at least if you compare it with this internet source: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7999&CFID=23811582&CFTOKEN=60559071.
-- 84.74.150.14 ( talk) 09:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
It would be useful if editors read Mary Vincent's essay, the part of the collection called Splintering of Spain actually being quoted above. The habit of reading out of context is a serious problem with this article.
As the introduction says, Mary Vincent is expressly writing to deny that the "ahistorical discourse of 'martyrdom', which sees the purge of priests as only the latest episode in a long-established and unchanging persecution" can explain the deaths. To use her article to state that point of view in Wikipedia's voice is manifestly improper; she herself is evidence that it is not consensus among sources.
In addition, she says clearly that the purge was after the coup d'etat of July 1936, a reaction to it, and that incitements to violence were rare; this was not ideological. She also (obviously correctly) calls the Spanish peasants (who did the killing) anarchists - not Marxists, therefore. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
One of the comments of the straw poll was that the shorter version omitted Saint Augustine; this is not true - both versions have the same text.
This is, however, terminally vague; and although all three authors are mentioned in the source quoted, they are an indiscriminate selection among the Church Fathers. What three or four authors should we use, and what should we say about Augustine? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Antony Beevor is not a neutral source with regard to Catholics and the Spanish Civil War. He shows a marked anti-Catholic bias and it has been noted that he will gloss over or rationalize the murderous anti-Catholic rampages of that time. Mamalujo ( talk) 01:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted the paragraph to the state it was in when the page was frozen on the 1st of March. Can we have all sugguestions for alterations discussed here to gain a consensus on any change of wording. Xan dar 02:48, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
In short, Orlandis, Vidmar and Bodenkotter (sp?) must be used and followed, although they are avowedly Catholic authors, arguing for the Church; Beevor can't be used, because he supports the Republican cause and opposes the Church's (undisputed) support for a right dictatorship. This is a recipe for a biased article.
What we should do is include those statements about the Spanish Civil War agreed on by both sides; for which we must cite both sides. If there is someone who denies Beevor's claims, we should consider silence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:06, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
How long did the Spanish Civil War last? Tom Harrison Talk 23:09, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh, wait. We have an article on the Spanish Civil War, 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. So three years, I guess. I'd like to get an idea because, "In Germany, the reformation led to a nine-year war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. In 1618 a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, followed. In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion were fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre marked the turning point in this war." See, wow, a nine-year-long war, and then the Thirty Years War, that's going to take some talk page discussion and, what 13 paragraphs in the article if it's to be given proportional coverage. Better get Jimbo to allocate some space on the hard drive for the talk page archives. Tom Harrison Talk 23:21, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmm. Check out the 423 references and 98 books linked to this article. What percentage of them are "neutral"? Almost none. What percentage are even remotely critical or skeptical? Almost none. We don't have "neutrality" in this article - we have almost complete censorship. To be fair, the same is true with any article on any religious or political group that has an assertive and coordinated group of supporters. It's just a systemic flaw with how Wikipedia is edited. -- Tediouspedant ( talk) 03:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
This argument is getting unproductive. We are here to concentrate on producing a concise factual text. I propose the following short wording to cover the Spanish Civil War issues as they affect the Church.
I think that, with links, says all that is needed to be said. Xan dar 00:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Where are we on this - is this proposed wording okay with most people, or is there another no-less succinct version that has more support? Tom Harrison Talk 13:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
10:59, 7 March 2010:
Proposed above:
Shorter yet (just for comparison):
That's still longer than "In 1618 a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, followed." Tom Harrison Talk 13:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Shorter yet: Say nothing at all and link Spanish Civil War in the See also section. Or maybe most people are content with the status quo? Tom Harrison Talk 21:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It's not my business, I guess, whether it's long or short, if it has consensus. It seems like it might me easier to keep it as short as possible and push all the detail onto the linked page, but whatever works. Agree on something here, long or short. Tom Harrison Talk 17:40, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a consensus on this: "In the Spanish Civil War, after over 6,500 priests and members of religious orders were executed by Republicans, the Spanish church hierarchy supported Franco's Nationalists."? Mamalujo ( talk) 00:44, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I have been following this discussion on and off for some time. While no official Arbitration remedies, such as probation or discretionary sanctions, have been authorized in this topic area, something definitely needs to be done to stop the edit warring on this page. Therefore, I highly encourage editors of this page to try to follow WP:1RR while editing the page. Failure to do so may not necessarily result in a block, but certainly would make such a thing far more likely. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. NW ( Talk) 00:40, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
See above section. Current disputes are resolved. Now we have to work on improving the current version. UberCryxic (talk) 01:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I've cut what I thought were the most obvious examples of POV and for the first time in a long while the page has no POV tags on it. Before people RV, can you ask yourself if what's there is NPOV and if you think it's not come and discuss it here first? I don't really want to stick all the tags back on. Haldraper ( talk) 10:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Sentences as overcited as this example are screaming either poor sourcing, synthesis or POV-pushing:
We see overciting throughout, indicative of same:
If Catholics believe something, stated as fact, it shouldn't need five sources. This problem is part of the bulk and unreadability of the article, and gives the impression that high quality sources haven't been consulted and used.
It's also indicative that more aggressive summary style could be applied in the main article; all of these statements that have dozens of citations are not likely to be summaries of key concepts, worthy of inclusion in a broad overview article, and may also indicate WP:UNDUE. Anything that is due weight will likely be mentioned in broad, high-quality sources, and not need a dozen statements to back it. This article had massive structural issues, and was just built all wrong; glad to see it is being fixed bit by bit and such collaboration!! SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 21:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Here's another one:
Was this article written from high quality sources and broad overviews, or just a patch job of whatever text someone thought should be added, based on whatever sources could be found? Why does one sentence need eight citations? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
The article starts off with history. If this were a place article, that would be great! Followed by geography, climate, etc. Kind of funny for a church, though, IMO. Isn't what the church says it does or says it believes in, more important? Usually the subject of an article is permitted to place it's best foot forward, followed by criticism, which is, I'm sure, profound, in this case.
Saying "the church is the sum total of its history" is not quite adequate IMO. Adolf Hitler has a rather positive article, by comparison. You'd think that history/Wikipedia would take a more dim view (by comparison). Student7 ( talk) 23:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Isn't what the church says it does or says it believes in, more important?
Absolutely not, to answer your question. From an encyclopedic perspective, what people actually do is always the most important factor, and that's the quick and easy rationalization for history sections usually coming first. Also, Wikipedia specifically advises us to use secondary sources in large numbers precisely to avoid problems with what people claim they believe, so what the Catholic Church says it believes is generally irrelevant to what reputable scholars say it believes. The latter get more preference. Why? Because you'll find writings from Stalin saying he supported free speech. People could have ulterior motives for making certain statements, and that's why we stick with reputable sources. UBER (talk) 23:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
One caveat to your position Uber is that churches teach, they do not believe. If one is attempting to illustrate the doctrines of a church we necessarily would cite their doctrines as they state them. Secondary sources may be ideal, but the quality of the source becomes paramount. For example, going to a Southern Baptist scholar for a review of Catholicism might introduce a skewed view of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Alternatively, a reputable Catholic scholar should provide a reliable summary of the Church's doctines. I suspect we are saying the same thing, but I think clarity is vital at this point in the process.
The reason so many reference are used in religious topics is because they are so contentious. The Catholic Church (I am not Catholic) has garnered an enormous amount of critical information over its nearly 2,000 year history. Every point has been disputed in this article and the only way out of conflict is to reference everything. Most of the controversial religious articles incurs the same type of referencing. If you know an alternative way when so much controversy exists, please share it. -- Storm Rider 01:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Truthkeeper, thanks for sharing your story. It might sound maudlin and melodramatic, but you're exactly the kind of user I was trying to help in my efforts to change the article—you and many others across the world who do not have the benefit of DSL or FIOS and who often have to wait up to a minute to load ridiculously long articles (kb-wise) on Wikipedia. You're absolutely right: nothing matters more in Wikipedia than access. It doesn't matter that an article is splendidly or horribly written if people have difficulty getting to it. I only wish that more people had taken your sensible advice instead of making this one of the bitterest and most contested articles in the history of Wikipedia. Thank you again. UBER (talk) 05:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
In the History section, I think it is important that we make sure to tell the reader not just "what happened" but also answer the question "so what?". Too many times, we throw out facts but don't explain why these facts are important.
For example, one could have read the section on the French Revolution and gotten the impression that a bunch of priests were killed and churches destroyed but the Church survived the Revolution and Napoleon and, in the end, won by being stronger for the experience.
Is this true? The Church may have had its prestige enhanced by the Pope's opposition to Napoleon but was the Church in France as strong in the 19th century as it was in the 18th century? I would think that it wasn't.
I think the suggestion that everything was hunky-dory and even better than before after the fall of Napoleon is the result of an excessive focus on positive pro-Church sources rather than an objective look at the Enlightenment-inspired transformation that started with the French Revolution and ends with the loss of the Papal States in 1870.
The 19th century brought waves of anti-clerical violence, harsh anti-clerical laws and milder legislation which ultimately effected a separation of church and state to various degrees in different countries. This theme of "separation of church and state" is not explicitly mentioned in the article and yet is important in any secular understanding of the history of the past 250-300 years (well, maybe even the last 1000 years). This is one of the big "so what?" points that I think the History section of this article should make.
This is not to say that the Church did not play a strong role in the politics and culture of countries after the 19th century. However, the role it played was markedly changed by the loss of temporal power (through loss of land and wealth).
Anti-clericalism probably also affected the Church's politics by pushing it towards the right (specifically affecting Pius XI's opposition of Communism).
-- Richard S ( talk) 16:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
What the encyclopedia needs is a good, neutral, sourced history of the Church of France, beginning well before the Revolution. It would be clearer, and more in accord with what real histories I have seen - including the reliable Papalist ones - to present the French Government and the Papacy as the major players, going back at least to the Gallicans, if not the kidnapping of the Pope in 1308; despite the many arguments for bad text for the sake of links, Gallican is not linked to from here. The Enlightenment and the Protestants are minor figures, although each important in their century. (Whether this will fit here is again another question.)
Presenting this, as we have done up to now, as the martyrdom of the Church at the hands of the EEEE-vil Revolutionaries, is not only partisan ignorance, but flat wrong. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was the work of the King's ministers, not the Jacobins, who were not to come to power for three years. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I would actually say the relationship of Napoleon III with the Church (he protected the Church, then later betrayed it out of cowardice) is more relevent than Napoleon I. Though I think its fair comment, that the Satanic inspired vanities of Philosophism would have pushed the Church closer towards the various masculine monarchies and even, paradoxically Britain (
Congress of Vienna). -
Yorkshirian (
talk)
23:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
One of my pet peeves about the History section has been the lack of broad overviews. The sense that I got from the previous looong version was a rattling narrative of facts with all sorts of hidden agendas but very few overt themes. My mind kept screaming "and so what? Why should I care about that?".
One thing that would help to address this issue is the use of lead paragraphs for every subsection. This lead paragraph should follow many of the same guidelines as lead paragraphs for articles. That is, it should summarize the whole section into a single paragraph. It might only consist of two or three sentences but those few sentences give the reader an overview of what will follow and even allow him to skip the rest of the section if he so chooses. In theory, we should be able to construct a very terse summary of the History section by just combining the lead paragraphs of each section.
I have made a preliminary attempt at implementing this approach with the "Reformation and Counter-Reformation" and "Age of Discovery" sections. I also broke out the treatment of the "Enlightenment" as a separate section again. Doing this makes it easier to write the lead paragraphs. (Or more specifically, merging these two topics makes it difficult to write a good lead paragraph.)
-- Richard S ( talk) 17:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
(Note that this thread is on the article talk page, not the review page.)
Majoreditor asked me to comment. For the readers' digest version, skip to point 4. To see where my conclusion comes from, see points 2-3.
Geometry Guy has been heavily involved in previous FACs here, so cannot really be regarded as "uninvolved". The question of stability obviously depends on what version we end up working with. If it is the old one, the issue is more one of "over-stability" compared to the last GAR version. Johnbod ( talk) 21:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I asked NancyHeise for her input on this question. She responded with the following. Karanacs ( talk) 21:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I read the thread and I agree with Johnbod. Because of Geometry Guy's involvement in the FAC process, particularly his non-neutrally worded and lengthy oppose vote, I think that he would not be viewed as a neutral candidate. NancyHeise talk 21:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC) [16]
The article is unstable, and has other GA criteria issues which means that it is not currently a good article so could reasonably be delisted. My initial view was to delist and recommend a period of one month of stable and productive editing to allow for issues to be addressed before renomination. However I have noticed that there is positive editing taking place. As the aim of GA is both to improve articles, and to motivate editors to improve articles, then it doesn't really matter which way round the process goes (delist and renominate in one month, or allow one month of editing under a GAR), as long as progress is being made. I would be hesitant to impede the progress being made on the article by delisting now and potentially demotivating a bunch of willing editors. So I recommend allowing a period of editing to improve the article, trusting the editors to do the right thing and move the article in the right direction through co-operation and negotiation, and then a close review to look at any unresolved issues. This should be done under a new GAR as the existing GAR has been set up by editors who are involved in the article. I would be hesitant about setting up a community GAR as I feel those responsible for making decisions as to the article's NPOV should be independent and uninvolved - a community GAR might invite heated debate from involved editors. Picking up a suggestion that EyeSerene has made - [17] - I feel a joint GAR between EyeSerene and myself might work. I will get in touch with UberCryxic and Mike Searson to close the current GAR. Then open a new GAR to be conducted by EyeSerene and myself, which would be run under the condition that it would run for at least a month, and if there is any disruptive editing in that time the article would be delisted. The first action of the new GAR would be to put the GAR on hold for seven days to allow productive editing to continue without interference, and then EyeSerene and myself will look at the article in seven days to see how close the article is to GA criteria, and to make our observations. A decision to close the GAR as either keep or delist would be a joint decision between EyeSerene and myself. SilkTork * YES! 16:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
As a reply to the recent set of edit summary remarks and reverts concerning the placement of a comma in the lead sentence, and its replacement by the word "and", the reason editors had a comma in the sentence is because the comma is correct in the sentence context. Its removal and the change to "and" is incorrect.
The comma serves as a parenthetical offset between two related phrases. "approximately one-sixth of the world's population" is an expansion or exposition on the phrase "more than a billion members", and not an introduction of a new fact. The removal of the comma and the addition of "and" in the lead indicates that the world's population statistic is an added fact separate from "one billion members". Here that is not the case.
Consider the following example: "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet, the standard number of pedal extremities." It would not be correct to write "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet and the standard number of pedal extremities." because the addition of "and" makes the final phrase redundant. However, "Joe is a typical human, possessing two feet and two hands." would be correct given the introduction of a new fact.
I will not revert the edit, but it would be a minor improvement if a content-involved editor were to change or revert the "and" edit. If the original comma is too confusing as placed, perhaps the lead sentence should be reworded to avoid its use. This need not be a controversial change. -- Michael Devore ( talk) 19:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The article text has this sentence "Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World."
This sentence is factually true but there are a couple of problems with it. First, as I've indicated before, there is the general tendency towards this section being exculpatory... "bad conquistadors/secular colonizers" vs. "good, noble missionaries" but alas! best efforts of missionaries to "save" the Amerindians fails due to the onslaught of European diseases. I remain unconvinced that the role of missionaries in the Americas was primarily salutary. Of course, they did bring many benefits to the natives but I think it is more accurate to see the effect of Christian missions as a "mixed bag". Certainly, there are strong POVs in the "real world" who highlight the negative effects of Christian missionary work. It is arguable whether such POVs represent the mainstream but they are, at least, a strong and salient POV that needs to be presented here to provide a "full picture" of the real world perspective on this topic.
Also, the ending of the sentence "which created a labor vacuum in the New World" begs the question "and so....? what's your point?". It's like we raise the issue of a labor vacuum and then drop the topic, moving on without explaining what the relevance and significance of that labor vacuum is.
Of course, the answer is ... "the inability to enslave and exploit Native Americans as cheap labor led to the importation of African slaves". Until we fix the "big problem" of how to present the role and effect of Catholic missions in the post-Columbian Americas, the least we can do is fix this awkwardness. I propose just deleting the words " which created a labor vacuum in the New World" on the grounds that entering into an explanation of African slaves is a bit of a digression for an article of this scope. If we were talking about History of the Catholic Church in the Americas or Catholic Church and slavery, there is a natural segue into a discussion of the legitimacy of slavery in Catholic teaching and the conflict that African slavery in the New World poses for the anti-slavery stance taken by the Catholic Church. However, I don't think we want to get into this level of detail in this article.
-- Richard S ( talk) 16:27, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
It is clear from historical accounts that within the Catholic church there were both supporters and opponents of the genocide of the Amerindians. One opponent of the genocide was a Catholic priest, Don Frey Bartolomé de las Casas, OP, who wrote numerous books documenting the events, including The Devastation of the Indies, (1552) [republished by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, 1992], as well as History of the Indies [translated by Andrée M. Collard, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1971] and In Defense of the Indians [translated by Stafford Poole, C.M., Northern Illinois University, 1974]. A few extracts from The Devastation of the Indies give a flavor of the events: With my own eyes I saw Spaniards cut off the nose, hands and ears of Indians, male and female, without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it. ... Likewise, I saw how they summoned the caciques and the chief rulers to come, assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were taken captive and burned. ... [The Spaniards] took babies from their mothers' breasts, grabbing them by the feet and smashing their heads against rocks. ... They built a long gibbet, low enough for the toes to touch the ground and prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Savior and the twelve Apostles. ...Then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive. ... As the Spaniards went with their war dogs hunting down Indian men and women, it happened that a sick Indian woman who could not escape from the dogs, sought to avoid being torn apart by them, in this fashion: she took a cord and tied her year-old child to her leg, and then she hanged herself from a beam. But the dogs came and tore the child apart; before the creature expired, however, a friar baptized it. Read also the essay Lights in the Darkness in Christian History magazine [Issue 35, 1992] by Dr. Justo L. González [adjunct professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia]. On the Conquest of the Americas he says: It was one of the bleakest times in the history of Christianity. In the name of Christ, thousands were slaughtered, millions enslaved, entire civilizations wiped out. - In the name of Christ, natives were dispossessed of their lands by means of the Requerimiento. This document informed the native owners and rulers of these lands that Christ’s vicar on earth had granted these lands to the crown of Castile. They could accept and submit to this, or be declared rebel subjects and destroyed by force of arms. - In the name of Christ, the natives were dispossessed of their freedom by means of the encomiendas. The crown entrusted natives—sometimes hundreds of them—to a Spanish conquistador to be taught the rudiments of the Christian faith. In exchange, the natives were to work for the conquistador—the encomendero. The system soon became a veiled form of slavery. Even worse, some encomenderos left the natives underfed and overworked to the point of death. González however then proceeds to describe how these events were condemned by several leading priests including Don Frey Bartolomé de las Casas and the Dominican Antonio de Montesinos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.43.37 ( talk) 13:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
... is still everywhere, but one thing that jumps out is the chart in the "Hierarchy, personnel and institutions" section; that data could be summarized to one sentence, and the chart moved to the daughter article. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 19:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. The titles of the Pope(such as successor of Saint Peter, Vicar of Christ, etc) and what the heirarchy is actually for is very relevent to a summary of the Church. This section actually needs more work, the mentioning of canon law, etc and I think we should mention religious orders in this section too—ie, Dominicans, Francisans, Jesuits, etc. The info about homosexuals been disuaded from being part of the clergy should probably be put into a note. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 22:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I am not opposed to keeping the titles but I would like to offer my perspective. To me, the titles are basically trivial details. I don't disagree with Majoreditor that the titles could "explain much about the structure and history of the church hierarchy, particularly regarding the papacy. It shows continuity with pagan traditions (pontiff), linkage to the apostles (St. Peter), primacy over other churches (prince of the apostles) and linkage to God (vicar of Christ). " if the meanings of the titles are explained. However, I suspect that most Catholics would be unable to explain these meanings "off the cuff" and the meanings of these titles will be absolutely lost on the average reader, especially if that reader is not Catholic. Thus, I would say that we could lose the titles without really detracting from the article. If the titles are as important as Majoreditor asserts, then we should explain them briefly. I think they're not that important and are more important as catechesis for the faithful but not in an encyclopedic article. -- Richard S ( talk) 15:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I know we've been over some of this ground before but I still think the opening sentence of the lead is very see-sawy and choppy:
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the world's largest Christian church with more than a billion members,[note 2] approximately one-sixth of the world's population. The number of practicing Catholics worldwide, however, is not reliably known.[15]
Everything is qualified by the succeeding text or in the two notes. The membership figures are also well discussed in the relevant section. I therefore propose a new opening sentence that avoids these problems:
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church,[note 1] is the world's largest Christian church.[note 2] Haldraper ( talk) 22:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I also endorse this proposal. Since you made it, go ahead and implement the changes yourself Hald. UBER (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Oppose because it doesn't mention the number of world-wide members. It considers the Church only in relation to schismatic and theologically heretical Christian groups rather than the entire world itself. The CIA World Factbook reference used for it is a reliable source. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 06:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
During the 20th century, the Church had to content with the rise of various authoritarian and politically radical governments. For instance in Mexico, following secularist laws enacted by a predominantly Grand Orient led government, [1] the Cristero War took place which included anti-Catholic killings and religious desecration. [2] [3] [4] Similarly in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, well into the 1930s, [5] execution of clergy and laity, as well as closure and confiscation of church property was common. [6] Along with republican Spain in which violence was also directed against the Church, [7] these regimes were dubbed the Terrible Triangle by Pope Pius XI and the lack of intervention a Conspiracy of Silence. The hierarchy supported Franco and the national forces during the Spanish Civil War, [8] which although authoritarian—like Salazar in Portugal and Dollfuss in Austria—were friendly to the Church and tried to imploment Catholic social teaching into their programs. [9] Following violations of an accord signed between the two, [10] [11] relations with the German Third Reich were more strained. Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical Mit brennender Sorge [10] [12] [13] [14] criticising curtailment of the Church, as well as the paganism and scientific racialism in the political program. [14] [15] [16] [17] Following the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Church condemned the invasion of Catholic Poland and other acts of aggression. [18]
I trimmed this section down to the above yesterday, only to have Haldraper flyby revert the trim with no proper explination. My rationale for the trim is simple; in the current article there is far too much weight to relations between Church and Third Reich (a whole paragraph is obviously undue weight), which in the larger picture are insignificant, it deviated from core facts, with pure opinion, polemic and so on. At the same time the article doesn't mention the Catholic authoritarian governments which were actually supported by the Church (Franco is, but we can also mention Salazar and Dollfuss) as well as explaining why the Church supported it (these governments tried to merge Catholic social teaching with their political program). Also I trimmed the gory details of Mexico down to just "anti-Catholic killings", since it gets the point across in a shorter form. Same with explinations of the term Conspiracy of Silence. - Yorkshirian ( talk) 03:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Yorkshirian opines in his usual fashion: "Calles was a freemason, his government was anti-clerical, therefore international freemasonry was directing anti-clericalism in Mexico." Gosh, its so difficult to argue against this sort of logic. Honestly, Yorkshirian, can't you do better than this? I'm starting to think you are just intentionally winding us up with all this conspiracy theory rhetoric you go on with. Afterwriting ( talk) 15:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
There's a lot of back and forth here about what to include, what not to include, how much weight to give certain issues: it's not clear to me if content is being decided based on due weight according to the highest quality sources, or just personal opinion. Long ago, User:Awadewit offered to help if things settled down here. Has anyone thought of asking her to do a literature search, to hone in on the most desirable sources? It seems to me that some of the content disputes could be resolved by identifying the highest quality sources, and working from them, rather than trying to retrofit patchwork text that was built based on a multitude of lesser quality sources and opinions about what to include. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with SandyGeorgia and Karanacs that we should consider what other sources consider important. Alas, I have neither the time nor the resources to help in that effort. Until then, I would prefer that we keep the current set of topics. I am all in favor of removing excessive detail but I oppose completely deleting any of the following topics: Terrible Triangle, Reichskonkordat/Mit Brennender Sorge, Liberation Theology, Sexual abuse cases. -- Richard S ( talk) 15:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
How is there no mention WHATSOEVER in this article about the sexual abuse that has come along with the Catholic Church for decades?? Seriously. Everywhere in the world, in every newspaper, there are consistently new reports of children being the victims of sexual abuse, at the hands of a Catholic Priest/Bishop... Wikipedia has a duty to discuss this. (Even the Pope's brother is guilty of this. THE POPE'S BROTHER!) Get with it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.5.57.156 ( talk • contribs)
I hadn't read the Beliefs section in full in a while, and overall I'm impressed that the section seems much more accessible. There are still a few things that I think can be improved, but I am certainly not qualified to do so.
Karanacs ( talk) 16:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
Xandar mentioned above a concern that Coverage of important and vital issues such as Mary and the Saints, Pilgrimage, purgatory, social teaching, creation, angels, salvation and free will has vanished completely. Coverage of Monasticism has also gone, as well as coverage of the Church's educational and social work.. I agree with him that some of these topics are important to differentiate Catholicism from other Christian denominations (sorry, Yorkshirian, not sure what other word to use here), and thus need to be at least mentioned in this overview (although the details may well belong in other articles). I've restored some of the previous text dealing with monastacism, the afterlife, and free will. I think something ought to be restored about Mary, but I'm not sure what or where it should go (it was previously in traditions of worship, but should it go in beliefs instead?). The information on social teaching in the previous article is not very informative and seems more preachy than encyclopedic. I wouldn't object to a few good sentences that go into a little more detail than that uncited table in the Organization section, but I'm not sure where we need to get that type of info. I'm not attached to any particular wording (this needs a good copyedit anyway), and it may be that I've restored too much detail. It will likely take a few iterations for us to get the right balance. Thoughts? Karanacs ( talk) 15:35, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, everybody, for acknowledging that Xandar had a point about too much having been deleted. I was dreading having to go through and verify his assertions one-by-one so I'm glad someone else was willing to listen to him and act on his concerns. I disagree with his proposal to go back to the original long version but I do want to make sure that all important topics are covered if only in summary form. -- Richard S ( talk) 16:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
The current text reads "The La Reforma regime which came to power in Mexico in 1860 passed the anti-clerical Calles Law and in the 1926–29 Cristero War[202] over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated,[203][204] churches desecrated, services mocked, nuns raped and captured priests shot.[202] In the Soviet Union persecution of the Church and Catholics continued well into the 1930s.[205] In addition to the execution and exiling of clerics, monks and laymen, the confiscation of religious implements and closure of churches was common.[206] During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy supported Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist forces against the Popular Front government,[207] citing Republican violence directed against the Church.[208]"
First of all, mentioning the La Reforma regime of 1860 and the 1926-29 Cristero War together in the same breath is probably conflating too much. Secondly, the text confuses the Calles Law of 1926 with the Lerdo Law of 1856. Finally, what ties persecution of Catholics in Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain is that Pius XI called this the Terrible Triangle and expressed with bitterness his disappointment regarding the failure of Western democracies to publicly oppose and halt them. I know we're trying to keep the History section short but I think it's important to mention the phrase "Terrible Triangle".
Also, this is a bit of OR but I still think the anti-clericalism of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century is part of what drove the Catholic Church to continue seeking accommodation with more conservative governments which could possibly protect it from attacks by Marxists and anarchists. (no POV attack or defense intended here, I'm just stating what I think was going on). Does anybody know of sources which make a similar assertion?
-- Richard S ( talk) 09:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Since 9th March, major, substantive, and largely undiscussed, changes have been made to this article that totally re-order it and reduce its size by more than half, removing key sections and decimating others. I am not at this point going to divert into the manner in which these changes have been introduced. I am, however, going to say why these hastily made changes are not only fundamentally ill-judged, but make the article completely unfit for purpose. I will make proposals for a better and consensus way forward for this article.
If we compare the Longstanding Text of this article with that newly introduced, the principal changes have been:
These changes amount to what one editor called a "Hiroshima" of the article. The rationale for these changes has been extremely vague. The main ostensible reason put forward has been that the article was too long. However this is not the way to make cuts. What has been cut is largely the unique core material of the article, and what has been left is mnaterial largely duplicated by other articles.
This has happened because enormous changes and cuts have not been properly discussed and agreed. They have been hastily and arbitrarily implemented, and therefore have caused the article to fail. If I was currently grading this article (which has been a Good Article for years), I would have to rate it at no more thanClass C ie. Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.
The changes seem to have been inspired by a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of this article. The principal purpose of this article is to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY. The current article fails to do this. The sections that should form the core of the article, and which contain most of the unique core material on the subject have been moved to the end of the article and decimated.
In order to do this, the subsections have been removed and there is a mass of unreadable text. The content itself has had all its logic removed, leaping seemingly at random from subject to ill-explained subject. Coverage of important and vital issues such as Mary and the Saints, Pilgrimage, purgatory, social teaching, creation, angels, salvation and free will has vanished completely. Coverage of Monasticism has also gone, as well as coverage of the Church's educational and social work. Most of this material is not only necessary, but totally uncontroversial and there has never been a proposal to remove it! All such changes would need proper discussion on their substance and consensus on their substance before implementation. The tiny remnants of what should be the core sections of the article have been further downgraded by being tagged on as a sort of postscript to the article, behind a lengthy History section.
I'm afraid the people who have overhastily made these changes, have produced an article which may reflect THEIR personal interests, but it does not reflect the needs of readers or the requirement that this MAJOR Wikipedia article be full, balanced and comprehensive. At present it has become a cut-down duplication of the History of the Catholic Church article, with a little garbled information on the present day Church tagged on the end. This really is an embarrassment to its subject, and to Wikipedia.
Let us compare the Longstanding text and the current UBER/Karanacs text with the coverage on the major foreign language Wikipedias. Here are the Spanish Language, the Italian Language, the French Language, the German Language, the Portuguese Language and the Dutch Language articles. We can also look at the English Wikipedia articles on Anglicanism, the Orthodox Church, the Featured Article, Islam, and Buddhism. They are ALL immensely closer in format, content and weighting to the Longstanding Text of this page. So WHO is out of step? Is everybody wrong except the group of editors supporting this hacked to shreds version? Do their plans include parachuting into Islam or Orthodox Church and Anglicanism and perform the same level of cutting and reorganisation? If not, why not?
Since the version now on the page has lost its slowly built-up, logical and referenced core material, I propose that we restore the Longstanding article text, and work co-operatively on that. In the interests of providing an easy and substantial cut to the length of the article, I would simultaneously agree to the complete removal of the History section with the exception of a section each on Origin and Mission and the Contemporary Church. The "History of the Catholic Church" article, which is at last in a good state, would then be directly linked from the top of this article in the manner of the French and Portuguese Wikipedia articles. This would also have the benefit of removing many of the major POV bones of contention in the present article. ( Example available here.) This would not be to set the reverted portions of text in stone, but to return to a better basis for further collegial and discussed improvement. Xan dar 10:57, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Xandar has asked for my comments, although he must expect that they will be contrary to his argument; this should be noted.
Xandar is going about this the right way inasmuch as he starts by asserting the purpose of the article, and then proposes actions to move towards that purpose. Naturally if we accept Xandar's premise that the purpose of this article is
"to inform the reader about the Structure, beliefs, practices and organisation of the Catholic Church TODAY"
then of course it makes sense to cut the history section to make room for more discussion of structure and beliefs. But I for one do not accept that premise. I think it ought to go without saying that this is an overview article, and therefore its purpose is
to give a brief overview of the Catholic Church.
If that is our purpose, then cutting it down from 195kB to 100kB was a step in the right direction, reverting it would be a mistake, and cutting out the history section altogether would be just plain silly.
What do others think? What is the purpose of this article? Since there is dispute on this most fundamental point, there hardly seems any point in discussing anything else until we have settled it.
Hesperian 12:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
So we now have five people who think the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church; no dissenters; and I no longer have any idea what Xandar thinks the purpose of this article is, as he has repudiated my understanding of his position without offering something else in its stead.
Is this consensus? If there is strong consensus that the purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the Catholic Church, do we have to right to ask that people buy in or bugger off? Disagreements on how to achieve our purpose can be worked through, but I don't see how collaboration is even possible without a shared purpose. It seems to me that knowingly editing to a purpose other than the consensus purpose is the very epitome of "editing against consensus".
What say you, Xandar? Are you prepared to work towards the consensus goal of making this article a brief overview of the Catholic Church?
Hesperian 14:33, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Unlike Xandar, my opposition is centred on the way the changes were brought about, not on the changes themselves. All editors, with the exception of Xandar, who was blocked, agreed that the straw poll should decide whether or there was consensus for the new version. That poll didn't come close to establishing consensus yet the new version replaced the old.
Since then Sandy and SV have argued vehemently that the current version should remain in place. Their argument is simply that the end justifies the means. They argue that the article is better now that in was, so it doesn't matter that it was pushed through without consensus. That's not their decision to make. It's not a decision for any individual editor or group of editors to make. A change of this magnitude clearly deserves broader community input.
It does now look as though there will be an RfC at some point, and I think that should be the end of it. If that had happened before the change rather than after it much of the acrimony could have been avoided, and perhaps WP wouldn't have a lost a good admin. The whole thing has been handled very poorly, some experienced editors seem to have been acting completely out of character, and Nancy and Xandar have been given a very raw deal. But what's done is done; there's no point in raking over the coals. I say give Nancy, Xandar, et al, time to prepare their arguments and their alternative versions, have the RfC, and move on.-- MoreThings ( talk) 15:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
It is ridiculous really. This article does not discuss the activities of the Catholic Church. Do they, perchance, make a major contribution to primary, secondary and tertiary education in most parts of the world? Yes? That's funny: the word "education" does not occur outside of the history section. Do they, perchance, send out missionaries? Yes? Run charities? Yes? Welfare agencies? Yes? Hospitals? Yes?
This should be 10% of the article. Instead it is one sentence in the lead: "It operates social programs and institutions throughout the world, including Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, missions and shelters, and the charity confederation Caritas Internationalis."
Hesperian 03:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
[Discussion of RFC/New straw poll moved to new section below this one]
Let's get back to the original issue, shall we? As Hesperian says, there needs to be some mention in the article of the institutions that the Church runs. The previous version of the article had only a single sentence on this issue: As part of its ministry of charity the Church runs Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas Internationalis, Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, shelters and ministries to the poor, as well as ministries to families, the elderly and the marginalized. The ideal way to do this would be a few sentences that explain the table that is in the organization section. Unfortunately, that table is uncited. How shall we present this information? Karanacs ( talk) 14:40, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
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