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largest and oldest

Someone inserted "and oldest" into the lead where it talks about the Church being the largest Christian denomination. I removed this because we have to have a source that says this and because it is something that probably needs to be discussed before insertion. NancyHeise 01:06, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of reference another Misplaced Pages page states that: The History of the Catholic Church is traced by the Church back to apostolic times and thus covers a period of nearly 2,000 years, There is no denomination older than 1100 years. We can use this reference: August Franzen, Kleine Kirchengeschichte Neubearbeitung, Herder,Freiburg,1988, p.11. --Rockstone35 (talk) 01:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Apart from other more substantial issues with your addition of "and oldest", you must use English language sources in English language articles. Also, since the Roman Catholic Church asserts that it manifests the fullness of the historical continuation of "the church" as founded by Christ - an assertion already commented on in the article - the addition of "and oldest" is quite meaningless to Roman Catholics and contentiously POV to many others. The article is already highly overloaded with contentious POV claims and assertions. Afterwriting (talk) 08:14, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there's no rule against foreign refs, though English ones are obviously preferred. Your other point is more important. The Orthodox churches would obviously dispute Rome's claim to be the oldest, so asserting it as fact in the article would obviously violate NPOV. Peter jackson (talk) 10:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I double-checked and you are right about the use of non-English sources. They are not, however, advisable due to the difficulties in checking them. Your point about the Orthodox churches is important as they have generally viewed the Roman Catholic Church as schismatic and heretical - especially, at least, until more recent and ecumenical times. Their viewpoint cannot be ignored. Afterwriting (talk) 12:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, an argument could be made that the Catholic Church doesn't claim to be the only oldest Christian church. Many Catholic sources will confirm that the Orthodox faith also has "apostolic succession" and will maintain that the two churches were officially one until 1054. -BaronGrackle (talk) 14:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with BaronGrackle, this is the Catholic Church viewpoint which sees the Eastern Orthodox as part of the whole church. Pope John Paul II called them the other lung. They are considered an apostolic church by the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is viewed as an apostolic church by the Eastern Orthodox. They respect that the primacy given to the pope was one of honor. NancyHeise 16:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

So... "one of the oldest..." or perhaps "one of the original..." with a Note explaining the existence of other churches claiming descent from an apostolic church? Obviously, the Eastern Orthodox make this claim. Saint Thomas Christians also make this claim although there is an assertion that secular historians believe that the Thomas who brought them Christianity was a different Thomas.

Richard, you forgot to sign your post above this one. Yes I agree, maybe we can say "one of the oldest" with a note attached. I am OK with that and I think it would make the article more accurate and informative. NancyHeise 16:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It isn't entirely correct to claim that the Orthodox view the Roman Catholic Church as a valid apostolic church - or even as a "church" at all in the most strict sense. Many Orthodox don't even recognise RC baptisms. The position of the Orthodox on Roman Catholicism and other churches is complex and not at all consistent so it is important to not generalise too much about their attitudes to such issues. Afterwriting (talk) 16:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi all, I'm not a regular contributor here, nor very knowledgeable on church history, but I'd like to offer the following suggestion for a compromise position: it seems to me that to even speak of the Roman Catholic church pror to the great schism (c.1054?) is a bit anachronistic. Not even Rome herself would, I think (and I am open to correction on this by those who know better), have claimed to be an independent entity prior to the schism. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that the See of Rome is ancient. So would it not be a suitable compromise to avoid making a contentious remark about the ancient standing of the Roman Catholic church, and instead refer to the antiquity of the Roman See? Obviously this still leaves some issue about just how ancient is the Roman See and whether she makes a justified claim to unbroken apostolic succession. But that aside, does the idea of speaking of the See, rather than the Church, of Rome, not perhaps satisfy at least one of the major concerns? -- Muzhogg (talk) 23:50, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved section on RCC and POV

The following section has been cut and pasted from my talk page, it belongs here: Thanks, NancyHeise 16:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

RCC and POV

I think the main problem with the RCC page is that inevitably the editors who contribute to it are practising Catholics who not only are (understandably) unable to write from a NPOV as required by Misplaced Pages but see it as their role to defend, excuse and deflect criticsm from the RCC. To go through my rv edits:

1. I think it is OK to say the RCC believes itself to be the continuation of the church founded by Jesus. To say that view is shared by 'many' rather than 'some' historians' is not OK for two reasons. Firstly, how do you quantify 'many': ten out of twenty, fifty out of a hundred? Secondly, there is no consensus amongst historians that Jesus existed as a human being (as opposed to Napoleon or Abraham Lincoln). A historian who asserts that he did is speaking from religious conviction not contemporary evidence.

2. The section on the twentieth century is particularly unbalanced (although the ones on the Middle Ages and European conquest of South America also go out of their way to put the Church in a favourable light). I have no problem with describing the actions of left-wing movements and the regimes in Eastern Europe against the RCC but that should be balanced by a description of the role the Church played in supporting military/fascist regimes in Spain, South America etc.

The use of and captioning of the photograph of the concentration camp being liberated is particularly unbalanced. Why a organisation that lost some two thousand members - as opposed to six million Jews - should seek to present itself as a major victim of the Nazis is beyond me. It is also complicated by the role of the Catholic Centre Party in assisting the Nazis' rise to power in 1933.

3. The sex abuse scandal section is riddled with POV statements that try to put the best case for the Church. The idea that people in the past regarded psychiatric counselling as an suitable alternative to informing the police in cases of child sex abuse is a myth only held by the RCC. Then there is the blurring of homosexuality with paedophilia. Finally, the (from what I can see rather whacky, right-wing commentator) on whose slim shoulders is rested the defence that other institutions are also guilty of turning a blind eye to abuse. I've always found that an odd response to the revelation that the RCC had been engaged in decades-long, systematic abuse of thousands of children: 'Other people did it as well as us'.

4. WYD: 'popular' is subjective, unreferenced and clearly POV.

Ask yourself a simple question: would sometime reading the article as it now stands think it was an objective, encyclopaedic article or one written by adherents of the organisation being described? I think if you're honest, you have to admit it's the latter.Haldraper (talk) 08:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, I'll answer your comments one by one:

• The main contributors to the RCC page are not all Catholics. This was identified in one of our FAC attempts where it turned out that a fair number of contributors are Anglican or of no religious affiliation. There were only three or four known Catholics contributing out of a total of about 20, most of whom identifies as non-Catholic so claims of POV are difficult for many editors to digest here.
• There are virtually no scholarly sources that say Jesus is not a person who actually existed. This is a WP:fringe view wholly unsupported by WP:reliable sources. Use of the word "many" is necessary because the sources used to support the word suggest that "many" historians means including all those throughout history who have held the position that Jesus founded the Church. This comes from our very mainstream Nat. Geographic source as well as the very respected mainstream Haase source, both of which are the products of "many" scholars.
• The Church did not support regimes - individual Catholics supported regimes. The scholarly sources do not speak of any official documents promulgated by the Church in support of regimes. We did include the mention of the one very forceful document condemning Nazism, Mit Brennender Sorge because it constituted the beginning of a wave of persecutions against the Church by the Nazis and because it was so well covered by various Catholic and non-Catholic scholarly sources.
• The picture of the concentration camp was approved at the last peer review as a representative example of the fact that the Church suffered too. It is not POV to include it, it is POV to not include it. The Catholic Centre Party is not part of the Roman Catholic Church organization.
• Sex scandal paragraph was discussed and agreed over several months by many editors. Omission of any sentence deletes relevent referenced and important facts concerning the issue. We may not like information in an article but sometimes it has to be there to tell the whole story from both sides. Here in the US, we have almost weekly cases of sexual abuse of children by public school teachers while we don't see any priest sex abuse cases anymore. The US Dept. of Education issued a report showing that the problem is "10 times worse" in US Pubic Schools than what existed in the Catholic schools. This information is not in our little paragraph even though we have three very prominent references that discuss it. I see any foundation to the charges of POV here. If we wanted to make a POV article, we would certainly have given that information prominence but we didn't.
• WYD is popular, referenced and relevent to Catholicism today. It is an event that takes place every few years and attracts as many people as an Olympic event. It is something that cities have to plan for years in advance to prepare for - not sure how this does not equate to "popular" in your view. NancyHeise 16:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I would agree for the most part with Nancy, although acknowledge there is always room for editorial discretion. For example, calling WYD popular is certainly factually accurate and presumably easily sourceable, but one may reasonably point out that "popular" has connotations which may not be ideal to have in an encyclopedic article, and suggest alternatives such as "well attended", or others.

I would encourage the original poster to read the archived discussions about the above topics and recognize that they have not been the first good faith editor to discover that the some public perceptions of this institution and the perception by the totality of reliable sources are often quite discordant. I am sure they will not be the last either. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:14, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Baccyak, yes, many people have been surprised to find that scholars actually say what they say about the Church. I have often wondered where all the anti-Catholic POV comes from - certainly not from scholars! : ) Also, I noticed that someone eliminated "popular" from the WYD mention and I have not readded it. I don't care if it is in there, World Youth Day is wikilinked and the fact is made clear on that article's lead section. Its fine with me. NancyHeise 18:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Three quick points:

1. of course there are no scholarly references that disprove the existence of Jesus. How do you disprove the existence of something? Jesus, God, leprechauns? They are all theoretical possibilities but to assert their existence requires evidence.

2. the RCC never supported right-wing dictatorships just individual Catholics? How about the Concordat_of_1953?

3. I think it is offensive and unsupported to claim that it was accepted practice in the past not to report child sex offenders to the police but refer them for counselling instead and that homosexual men are more likely to engage in such activity.

On the prevalence of abuse in US schools, it seems to me beside the point and smacking of moral equivalence.Haldraper (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with Hal's point #1. While I would like to see an objective discussion of how many historians believe Jesus actually existed, Hal's point is overreaching. You don't need "scholarly references that disprove the existence of Jesus". What you need is to show that there are non-fringe scholarly assertions that Jesus did not exist. Nancy seems to dismiss Christ myth theory as fringe. Hal's task is to to show that it is a viable scholarly position rather than simply a fringe theory.

I agree with Hal's point #2. Like the United States, the Catholic Church has been perceived as supportive of repressive, reactionary regimes starting with the French monarchy and continuing on through Spain, Mexico and Latin America. This perceived support is a contributing factor to anti-clerical violence (cf. Anti-clericalism) in the aforementioned countries. Moreover, while apologists can make arguments about the Reichskonkordat, there is also the argument made in John Cornwell's book, Hitler's Pope' that, while he was a Papal Nuncio, Pius XII deliberately negotiated the Concordat in such a way that Papal authority would be maximized at the expense of the German Catholic Church even if it meant disempowering the German Catholic Church in the face of Nazi oppression.

As for Hal's point #3, the question to ask is: What is meant by "accepted practice"? It appears that it was "standard operating procedure" for bishops in the United States. Was that "accepted practice" morally right and legally defensible? I think the verdict of the 21st century is that it isn't. Does the possibility of fixing a psychological problem via counseling warrant continuing to take risks with the lives of innocent children? Probably not. The article doesn't say that the hope of a cure via counseling did warrant taking those risks. The article says that "some bishops and psychiatrists contended..." If that's what they said, that is what they said. If you can offer sources that refute their contention, we can present those sources as well. You have to remember that the 60s and 70s were a time when people thought homosexuality could be cured by psychiatric treatment. It was not until 1973 that homosexuality was removed from the APA's official list of mental disorders (see Homosexuality and psychology). Now, before you get started, I am not equating child abuse with homosexuality. What I am saying is that before 1973 psychiatrists thought they could cure homosexuality and so it is also possible that they thought they could cure pedophilia as well. Heck, some people still think it is possible to "cure" homosexuality. Now, with respect to pedophilia, our approach seems to be "throw 'em in jail, put them in a sexual offenders registry, chemically castrate them and hound them so that they cannot find a place to work or live". Is this approach more humane than attempting to help them overcome their problem? No. Is it more effective? Possibly. But now we're in the realm of opinion and judgment, not the realm of fact.

Regarding Hal's unnumbered fourth point, so... what exactly do you mean by "moral equivalence"? Aren't the underlying crimes "morally equivalent" regardless of whether they are committed by a priest or by a teacher? I think what you're really trying to say is that "putting the crimes in numerical perspective" doesn't excuse the crime or diminish it in any way. The opposite argument is that media attention on sexual abuse by Catholic priests is out of proportion and thus possibly motivated by an anti-Catholic animus. Personally, I think we should be honest about what people are alleging and get it out in the open. If some people want to play "injured victim" (poor little Catholic me, picked upon by the nasty anti-Catholic media), then we should report that and let the reader decide whether or not they have sympathy for the Catholics. I think there are many Catholics who are the innocent bystanders to a train wreck caused by a few thousand priests and a handful of bishops. Parish churches and parochial schools have been closed to pay the settlements to the victims. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether the media coverage was overblown or not. The Catholic Church finally realized it had a problem and and is taking steps to address it. That's what counts. Time will tell how effective those steps will be.

--Rudy Waltz (talk) 07:41, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree with NancyHeise. Any thorough review of the edit history of the article, and this talk page, makes it clear that the article is hardly written by a group of catholic apologists alone. Some of the more heated debates and edit wars do indeed appear to begin with an editor with a specific POV, although it is just as likely, if not more likely to be someone with an anti-catholic perspective. But the article is so widely monitored that these issues tend to smooth out through consensus to an acceptable NPOV result. Given the nature of the topic, it is inevitable that POV vigilance will be required. The tag is not necessary, and any specific critiques should be dealt with point-by-point in this talk section. Sweeping POV claims with general criticisms and complaints make for good soap-boxing, but are not constructive. --anietor (talk) 14:34, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

On the issue of concordats - a lot of people misunderstand what a concordat is. It is an agreement with a neutral or potentially hostile government, to protect the rights of the Church, to its property, freedom of worship etc. It is not a political alliance or form of backing for the government concerned. Xandar 12:15, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

John Cornwell's point is that Pacelli (later Pius XII) deliberately negotiated the Reichskonkordat to favor Papal authority rather than the authority of the local bishops, thereby disempowering the German Catholic Church. It is a matter of debate whether Pacelli could have defended the rights of the local bishops and achieved a different concordat with Hitler which favored the German Catholic Church. It's unlikely that Hitler would have respected the rights of the German Catholic Church no matter what the concordat said. Cornwell's point was that Pacelli's philosophy was inclined to ride roughshod over the rights of the local church. Apologists would argue that Pacelli did the best he could in a difficult situation. --Rudy Waltz (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

On the history of Spain, there is a complicated background beyond that of the modern legend, including the fact that the Church had been forced into the arms of the Nationalists by the massacres of Catholics by the "Republican" side. See Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Xandar 12:15, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This is perhaps not the place to go into a deep discussion of Spanish history but I would like to understand more of what Xandar's position is on this topic. It seems to me that the issue is that anti-clericalism was expressed in most of Europe via the Reformation and other subsequent developments such as the French Revolution. The Catholic Church held sway in the Spanish Empire for much longer and the anti-clericalism that swept Europe in earlier centuries did not hit the Spanish Empire until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Franco's regime provided the Church with an exceptional opportunity to enjoy rights that it did not enjoy elsewhere. However, the Church eventually withdrew its support of Franco. I think the argument still holds that the Church has tended to be on the side of the establishment (monarchy in France, landed gentry in Latin America, Franco in Spain, slaveholders in the U.S., etc.) rather than on the side of the "proletariat". (NB: The Russian Orthodox Church was perceived to have the same tainted association with the Russian monarchy and landed aristocracy and thus became the target of the Bolsheviks.) As a result, there is a left-wing anti-clericalism that has often expressed itself in violence. These points should be made, not in a POV attack but in an NPOV dispassionate explanation of history. --Rudy Waltz (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot of unbalanced POV in the article and much of it reads like the worst kind of populist and unscholarly tract of 50 years ago. Unfortunately attempts to make it more NPOV are too often rejected by editors who seem to think it's their personal prerogative and responsibility to keep it at the apologist level instead of a more appropriate encyclopedia level. The main way this seems to happen is by invoking the authority of the references, many of which come from some very unscholarly and biased sources. This article deserves a much better standard but there seems to be little hope of this happening, unfortunately, given the way that Misplaced Pages operates. At least it's not as bad as many other Roman Catholicism articles which seem to be edited by Opus Dei types. Afterwriting (talk) 13:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Unsubstantiated scattergun claims of POV such as that made by Afterwriting are not really helpful here. Simply because the article does not chime in with certain individuals' personal prejudices does not mean that it is biased. People who have made such claims before have been challenged to back up specific points with specific reliable references, and have failed to do so. This article is comparable in content with articles on the same subject in established paper encyclopedias like Britannica and World Book. As far as the theory of Rudy Waltz that anti-clerical violence originates in Church co-operation with establishment power, that is a strand of opinion, but not necessarily a universally accepted fact. Xandar 00:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• RE: Spanish Civil War Our article addresses the anti-clericalism of the Spanish Civil War referenced to Owen Chadwick - a non-Catholic historian expert on the subject. The article states in a neutral manner the point made by Chadwick that large numbers of priests and nuns were killed by republicans and anarchists because they were symbols of conservatism. Perhaps someone could say this is a POV point of view if the historian saying it were a Catholic apologist but it is not. This statement comes from a non-Catholic very respected expert on the subject, a scholar, a source meeting the highest standards of WP:reliable source examples.
• RE: WWII Concordat I have considered putting this in the article but in doing so it would have to also make the point that my scholarly sources make in that the Pope worked very hard to prevent WWII before it began. They discuss his efforts to arrange meetings between the heads of state and each one's acceptance or refusal. The concordat is described as an effort on the part of the Church to exhaust diplomatic efforts before turning to all out war. These sources include both Catholic and non-Catholic. The reason why we did not include them is because I felt it was too much on WWII and did not maintain focus on the Church organization. Mit Brennender Sorge is mentioned because that document precipitated subsequent severe persecution of the Church and murder of thousands of priests. It is a "notable" event with concrete consequences. NancyHeise 01:37, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

However, I would like to bring up possible inclusion of a sentence on the concordat and efforts Pius too toward averting WWII in the next peer review coming up in September. NancyHeise 16:08, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar's comments regarding my alleged "unsubstantiated scattergun claims of POV" must certainly be correct as he regularly reminds us of his considerable expertise regarding unsubstantiated POV pushing. Afterwriting (talk) 13:23, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Historicity of Jesus

HalDraper wrote: "there is no consensus amongst historians that Jesus existed as a human being (as opposed to Napoleon or Abraham Lincoln). A historian who asserts that he did is speaking from religious conviction not contemporary evidence."

The following text is from our article on the Historicity of Jesus:

The historicity of Jesus concerns the historical authenticity of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Scholars often draw a distinction between Jesus as reconstructed through historical methods and the Christ of faith as understood through theological tradition. The historical figure of Jesus is of central importance to various religions, but especially Christianity and Islam, in which the historical details of Jesus’ life are essential.

With few exceptions (such as Robert M. Price), scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee who was regarded as a healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, was accused of sedition against the Roman Empire, and on the orders of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was sentenced to death by crucifixion.

The four canonical Gospels (most commonly estimated to have been written between 65 and 110 A.D) and the writings of Paul of the New Testament are among the earliest known documents relating to Jesus' life. Some scholars also hypothesize the existence of earlier texts such as the Signs Gospel and the Q document. There are arguments that parts of the Gospel of Thomas are likewise early texts.

Scholarly opinions on the historicity of the New Testament accounts are diverse. At the extremes, they range from the view that they are inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus, to the view that they provide no historical information about his life. The sources extant contain little evidence of Jesus' life before the account of Jesus' Baptism, and it has been suggested by many that the events recorded in the gospels cover a period of less than three years. Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis, differentiating authentic, reliable information from inventions, exaggerations, and alterations.

So... unless Hal wishes to argue against the text above, I think we can conclude that most scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus existed. I think we can also reasonably assert that "the historical record confirms that the See of Rome in particular was considered a Christian doctrinal authority from its beginning" although it's not 100% clear what relevance this fact has at this particular point in the article.

What I think is shaky is the assertion that "Many scholars agree that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus". First of all, the statement as written contains a bit of an anachronism. There was no point at which Jesus said "I am creating or founding an institution which will be called the Catholic Church". This sentence is shorthand for "the Catholic Church claims to be the continuation of the church founded by Jesus at the event known as the Confession of Peter". Now, there are many challenges to this statement from a number of parties. Not everyone agrees that Jesus meant to confer a primacy to the See of Rome. This view is shared primarily by Catholics and Orthodox and the Orthodox interpret the Primacy of Simon Peter differently than the Catholics do. There are those who question whether Peter was ever in Rome and whether he was ever Bishop of Rome. There are those who question whether there is a legitimate apostolic succession of bishops and particularly whether there is an unbroken line of succession from Peter as the first Bishop of Rome. So... in the context of all these challenges, it's hard to know exactly what is meant by "many scholars agree that...". I think the sentence could be fixed by inserting "Catholic" so as to yield "many Catholic scholars agree that..." but otherwise "many scholars" is too vague and suggests more than can reasonably be claimed.

1. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York: Doubleday, Anchor Bible Reference Library 1994), p. 964; D. A. Carson, et al., p. 50-56; Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Westminster Press, 1987, p. 78, 93, 105, 108; John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, HarperCollins, 1991, p. xi-xiii; Michael Grant, p. 34-35, 78, 166, 200; Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, p. 6-7, 105-110, 232-234, 266; John P. Meier, vol. 1:68, 146, 199, 278, 386, 2:726; E.P. Sanders, pp. 12-13; Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1973), p. 37.; Paul L. Maier, In the Fullness of Time, Kregel, 1991, pp. 1, 99, 121, 171; N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, HarperCollins, 1998, pp. 32, 83, 100-102, 222; Ben Witherington III, pp. 12-20.
2. Mack, Burton L. (1996), "Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth (Harper)
3. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), pages 90-91
4. Howard M. Teeple (1970). "The Oral Tradition That Never Existed". Journal of Biblical Literature. 89 (1): 56–68. doi:10.2307/3263638. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
5. B. Chilton and C. Evans, eds., "Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research" (NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994)
6. Sanders, E. P. The historical figure of Jesus. Penguin, 1993.

--Richard (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The point about Jesus as opposed to Lincoln or Napoleon is that there are no contemporary sources pointing to his existence. The fact that most scholars in biblical studies and church history accept his existence can be put down to two things: either they just assume he existed because that's the commonly accepted view (without applying the normal historical method they would apply in other cases) or they are Christians for whom it is a religious conviction that Jesus existed. For these people, it is a case of starting with a predetermined answer (Jesus existed) and then finding or manipulating evidence to support that view. It is the opposite of genuine historical research where you gather evidence and then draw conclusions from it.Haldraper (talk) 08:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I've added the POV tag for three reasons: the lack of evidence for a historical Jesus but also, and mainly, the unbalanced and apologist tone of the sections on child sex abuse and the RCC and right-wing regimes in the twentieth century.Haldraper (talk) 08:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Your argument seems to be making some broad assumptions about the approaches of most of these scholars which I don't think is justified. The historicity of Jesus doesn't appear to be an issue in this article since this an article about the Catholic Church and its beliefs, not about the man himself. The article neither validates or invalidates the beliefs and the church's positions; it just states the facts as represented in the sources that were used for the article; stating that these are the beliefs/positions held by the church.

As for the sex abuse scandal, it does appear to focus mainly on corrective the actions and people playing down the scandal, do you have any ideas about what could be done to balance that section? Keeping in mind there is an entire article about this topic which is linked to in the text. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 09:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Kraftlos, on the first point it would be helpful if you expanded on the basis as you see it that these scholars accept the historical existence of Jesus, i.e. is it contemporary, eyewitness evidence or is it later, second hand hearsay evidence? The historicity of Jesus is relevant because the article not only states (correctly) that the RCC believes itself to have been founded by him but goes on to claim scholarly support for this view.

On the child sex abuse scandal, I think it would be adequate to state the extent of the problem and steps the Church has taken without seeking to compare it favourably to US schools or quoting fringe commentators.Haldraper (talk) 12:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hal, I've modified my comment above to provide the sources used by Historicity of Jesus to back up the assertions made there. verifiability puts the onus on you to challenge the reliability of the sources. You have two basic approaches: (1) you can examine each source and challenge their credibility as a reliable source or (2) you can present a source which challenges the assertion directly. In essence, the way that we put an end to this kind of discussion is by going to the sources. You have made a reasoned argument that suggests that the sources used may be biased because they are religious scholars. You need to first prove that the sources cited are all religious scholars and second provide a source that asserts that all religious scholars suffer from the bias that you assert they do. Otherwise, all this discussion is original research and the sort of thing that goes round and round for pages and pages without any conclusion. --Richard (talk) 14:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hal, I urge you to read the excerpted passage from Historicity of Jesus carefully and then read the full article focusing on the sections titled "Jesus as a historical person" and "Jesus as myth". Then read Christ myth theory. You make valid points, most of which are probably represented in some way in some articles in Misplaced Pages. The trick here is to determine which is the mainstream opinion and which is the minority opinion (of course, there may not be a single mainstream opinion but rather a number of competing opinions). Feel free to continue your arguments but please back them up with citations to reliable sources rather than relying on your own assumptions and reasoning. --Richard (talk) 15:33, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Last I remember, Michael Grant, arguably one of the best informed and most realied upon writers on the Roman Empire/early Christian era of recent years, accepted the assertion that Jesus was a historical person. I acknowledge that there have been heated discussions regarding the subject in earlier eras, but as far as I remember the overwhelming consensus of current historians doesn't question the existence of Jesus. John Carter (talk) 14:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

It's important to recognize that the consensus of historians only agrees on a limited number of facts about Jesus (basically, he existed, he taught, was regarded as a healer and was probably crucified). Historians do not accept every word of the Gospels as gospel truth. The evidence for the existence of Socrates is equally scant (or maybe even more so). We know darn little about Socrates except through Plato. It is inappropriate to compare what we know about Jesus to what we know about Napoleon or Lincoln.

Richard/John, afaik there are no contemporary historical sources that refer to Jesus. Most historians just assume he existed because that is the Christian tradition that has held sway in Western Europe since the early fifth century. If you know of any primary evidence for his existence, I would be interested to see it. I am not dogmatically against accepting his historical existence, as long as someone can produce some primary rather than second hand evidence.Haldraper (talk) 20:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hal, first of all, please stop making edits to the article until you have formed a consensus to do so here on this Talk Page. The next edit/revert cycle will result in the page being protected and/or editors being blocked.

Second, I am not interested in arguing with you on the basis of your logic OR on the basis of my logic either. Doing that is what Misplaced Pages calls original research. I'm not interested one whit in what "historical evidence" you will or will not accept. Nobody cares what you think. And nobody cares what I think either. What Misplaced Pages relies on is what the reliable sources think. You might not agree with the "consensus of historians" think. If not, that's your problem, not ours. Your call for "primary evidence" suggests a process which is vulnerable to original research. The goal is not to establish the truth but rather to report on what is accepted as scholarly discourse on the topic. There may be more than one perspective to the truth. We should present all perspectives in an NPOV fashion without giving undue weight to minority or fringe opinions.

Now, please consider what is written at this website. It provides a good summary of what a number of well-respected historians think. Here's another good summary from PBS Frontline The Historian's Task What are the challenges in reconstructing Jesus' world?. Here's another bit from PBS Frontline What can we really know about Jesus?

Here is a list of extra-Biblical sources that mention Jesus (admittedly, some of these quotes are open to debate)

Now, can you quote a primary source contemporary with Jesus or the early Christians that asserts that Jesus didn't exist?

I know it's unlikely to expect that such a source exists but the entire point is that we have more mentions of Jesus than assertions that he didn't exist. I'm not talking about proof that he didn't exist. I'm talking about someone who says "Christians are a bother because they worship someone who never existed!" I would wager that non-Christians were more interested in arguing that Jesus had been executed and was dead, gone and buried than in asserting that he never existed.

I offer this next source simply because it seems relevant although I'm not sure if I agree with it. .

Finally, I want to point out that Misplaced Pages is not a discussion forum. We've put forth the sources according to Misplaced Pages's policies on reliable sources. It's your turn to make your case with reliable sources. If we say that "most historians accept that Jesus existed", all you need to do is present sources that assert that "most historians deny that Jesus existed". Otherwise, this would be a more suitable forum for you to make your arguments. Saying "What you wrote is bullshit" without providing sources to back up the assertion seems to be an acceptable form of rebuttal there.

--Richard (talk) 21:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with what Richard is saying, this doesn't appear to be a productive discussion. If you want to challenge something, you will need to address existing sources or introduce other reliable sources that state your viewpoint. And again I say that you are making broad assumptions about the scholars represented in the sources of this article that you did not justify. It's not my job to disprove an accusation that is not followed with proper argumentation. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 08:24, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

As several people have mentioned, the text in the article has been the subject of a lengthy process of referencing, debate and agreement. Removing or altering large swathes of it by an individual editor is therefore NOT the way to proceed. Nor is it right to add POV or other tags to the article because you disagree with some of the content. In both cases the proper thing to do is come to the talk page and discuss your concerns and your hard evidence to back those concerns so that it can be discussed with the existing editors. A page at this stage of development requires significant changes to be made by consensus. Xandar 11:57, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it overkill or not?

Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church is wikilinked three times in the article.

• It is in the Roman Catholic Church template at the top of the page
• It is listed at the top of the "History" section as a "further information" link
• It is in See Also

I am not sure that this represents Misplaced Pages policy. Does anyone have any thoughts on proper presentation here? I can think of some problems that might arise giving this article so many links as charges of excessive weight may be leveled at us. NancyHeise 02:53, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops, mea culpa. I put the link back into the "See also" section not realizing that it was already mentioned as a {{see}} link in the History section. I don't think three links is excessive but it could be cut down to two if you think it necessary. My preference would be to take it out of the {{seealso}} in the History section as the Criticism is not just historical in nature. --Richard (talk) 03:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Taking it out of the see also section as suggested by Richard is a good idea. --anietor (talk) 04:07, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

My comment was written incorrectly and thus wound up being confusing. My apologies. The Criticism article is mentioned at the top of the "History" section using the {{see}] template and also in the "See also" section. My recommendation was to take it out of the "History" section. Your comment suggested something different from what I proposed while attributing your approach to me. Please clarify whether you meant to agree with me or offer a different opinion. Thanx and sorry for the confusion. --Richard (talk) 04:29, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I think your comment had too many "see"s in it! I think I did, indeed, misunderstand your suggestion. Sorry about that. Actually, I would suggest removing the criticism link from the RCC template box (where it's listed under "background") and removing it from the "History" section (which I believe was your recommendation). --anietor (talk) 05:13, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with that recommendation too. I am wondering though if it is OK for large articles like RCC to have more than one wikilink to certain articles. Criticism of the Catholic Church encompasses history and beliefs. I think that it might be good to keep it as a See Also and in the template - one at the top and one at the bottom of the page. Also, this page has some linked articles at the very bottom, it is a template of some sort that I think overlaps with the template at the top of the page. One editor complained to me once that the page took too long to upload on his dial-up before we trimmed it significantly. I am wondering if maybe one of these templates could be eliminated. What do you think? NancyHeise 01:20, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I just glanced at the two templates, the one at the bottom of the page is more comprehensive and I would like to keep that one and eliminate the one at the top of the page. Can we keep the picture of St. Peter's Basilica and toss the template? Consensus? NancyHeise 01:22, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

No. I think the top template is more important. All the major religious articles have a navigation template like this, which is prominent and gives quick links to related articles. If you really must remove a tremplate, the bottom one is the least accessible and least useful, since 95% of users probably never even see it. Actually the templates load separately from the page anyway, so I don't see a great problem. Xandar 14:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I for one would be strongly hesitant to change a template merely for editorial reasons on one particular article. I concur with X that the top template is very standard and important. I do not object to the bottom one either, although admit I tend to use these templates frequently. I recognize the original concern, and think that removing the inline link from the History section would be the right thing to do. That said, the article is quite large so the sky will not fall if it is kept. But in a perfect world, I would remove that one. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 14:46, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it's a bad idea to change a template to suit the needs of one article. That said, calling "Criticism" part of "Background" is not great. Perhaps that template needs a redesign. --Richard (talk) 15:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the consensus is running towards keeping the navigation template at the top of the page and keeping "Criticism" in the "See also" section. There is not a strong insistence on removing "Criticism" from the "History" section but, if one of the three instances must be removed, that is the one that people support removing. I personally don't like the templates at the bottom as they are often not as useful so the one at the bottom could be removed or kept (no strong consensus in either direction). --Richard (talk) 15:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

This page is really the central hub for all Catholicism articles. I am OK with keeping both templates if it helps people navigate and find other articles. I don't have a strong opinion on removing any links including Criticism. We are trying to help Reader find things not make it more difficult for him or her. Maybe we can address this at the next peer review we are planning for this article in September. NancyHeise 16:06, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

More POV

I've rv to remove POV material. I'll go through it in detail but it falls into two sections: child sex abuse and science:

1. "Some commentators, such as journalist Jon Dougherty, have argued that media coverage of the issue has been excessive, given that the same problems plague other institutions, such as the US public school system, with much greater frequency"

The problem with this is it's just not relevant, its only function is to seek to deflect criticsm of the RCC. It is not a question of "the same problems" so is not comparing like with like. Much of the 'abuse' referred to in schools is often minor (inappropriate touching) or consists of consensual relationships between young men and women (or women and men) which in other circumstances would be entirely legal. The same cannot be said of the abuse carried out by Catholic priests which fits neither category.

2."In contrast with periods of perceived religious and scientific intolerance in the past, today's Church seeks dialogue like this with other faiths and Christian denominations."

This is clearly an opinion that is open to debate and therefore POV. It is not an objective fact suitable for a encyclopaedic article. It would be challenged by many within other faith groups, e.g. Muslims, Jews, and many in the scientific community, e.g. those engaged in anti-AIDS work, stem cell research etc.

"It also sponsors the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a body whose international membership includes Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureates such as Charles Hard Townes among many others, and which provides the pope with valuable insights into scientific matters."

It is vague, unreferenced and POV to say it provides "valuable insights". What are they, what have been their effect on the RCC's teaching's? 'Valuable' is a POV word: describe what scientific advice they have provided to the Pope and its consequences and let readers draw their own conclusions.

Haldraper (talk) 12:46, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper: Please STOP making unagreed POV edits to the main page. You have been told that this is not the way to do things, and that you must discuss and agree significant changes here first - yet you persist. I see from your talk page that you are a new editor, and have been warned many times already for this sort of behaviour on other articles. PLEASE CEASE. Xandar 14:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I concur with WP:BRD per Xandar, and offer some specific comments to Haldraper's issues:

1) I think I recognize the concern you express here, but I point out you could have expressed it better. For one, that content has significant function beyond what you claim: it serves to clarify how WP:WEIGHT would have us incorporate the previous content. If there is a significant quantity of reliably sourced material about the abuse, but its coverage is incongruous with its content, then the issue is the coverage may be more "newsy" and less encyclopedic. This tends to happen on topics which pique the public's interest; you do not see that type of issue with e.g., symmetric groups. I don't understand your like-vs-like argument, as it is merely a circular one.

The major issue with Dougherty's comment as included is that the section's writing reflects a he-said-she-said editing style which reads like crap, frankly. That is an artifact of the wiki model of editing, whereas often different editors try to get in their particular POVs in, and rather than writing a well synthesized and constructed section, append on something that reads like a retort.

The solution isn't to omit one "side" or the other, which would run into POV problems, but to rewrite the whole thing. It isn't easy, I know, but that would make for a better article.

2) The second part of that sentence should be sourced, or at least the material supporting it should be. Although frankly, that should be very easy to do. The first part is a weasel construction and designed to set up a strawman, one which would be well done to fix: In actuality the Church has historically been one of the most supportive institutions of science known. So yeah, this could be considerably improved.

3) "valuable" almost certainly can be sourced (I am thinking of a Discover Magazine article about a year ago for one) but I would agree it would be better dropped. The Academy should be mentioned in this article, but that amount of qualification here seems excessive. Since it had its own link, that would be the place for all of that stuff. The simple "It also sponsors the Pontifical Academy of Sciences." should be adequate. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 14:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• I agree with Xandar and Baccyak - I also want to add that the paragraph on sexual abuse was one of the most discussed - large consensus agreed to present form. The paragraph is a compromise between one that was more pro-Catholic POV and another that was less so. JBMurray wrote the present paragraph and we like it as a compromise between the two former suggestions. The commentator who makes the suggestion that media coverage was excessive also makes the comparison that sex abuse in US public school system is "10 times worse than in the Catholic Church". He says this because Charol Shakeshaft, the woman who conducted the study for the US Dept of Education says this very thing in her analysis - she said "You think the Catholic Church has a problem?" and then she introduces her report that shows it is ten times worse in the public schools. This entire analysis is not in our little paragraph, we only have some commentator's comments that obscure this very big comparison that puts the abuse for Catholic Church in perspective. The Church runs the worlds largest non-governmental school system - it appears that pedophiles are attracted to places where children can be found in abundance - in places both Catholic and not. The commentator's point is just this. My personal question is why were there zillions of news articles about the Catholic Church abuse and less than 5 (USA Today, Associated Press, Newsmax - not sure of more) on the more common and greater problem ("10 times worse") of sexual abuse in the US Public Schools Sytem? NancyHeise 16:02, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• As for the Catholicism Today section, I have added to the sentence that Haldraper objects to, the one that says "perceived". It now says "real or perceived". Any objections? I think that is an accurate statement because sometimes it has been real and others just perceived - like now! : ) NancyHeise 16:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

While by saying "real or perceived", you have indeed made the statement demonstrably true, it is emptily so, a tautology. I do not think the whole "In contrast" construction is a good one at all, for the reasons I said just above. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:15, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• As for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences - "valuable" is already cited to that Discover Magazine article - this is it if anyone wants to read what scientists really think of the Church. NancyHeise 16:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Tht's the source, yes. I did not check for "valuable" though because I still am of the opinion that the commentary on the Academy should be consolidated significantly, per my comments above. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:15, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

• These ideas sound like they'd make a better article. I also echo Baccyak's point that WP:BRD is really the best way to work with content on Misplaced Pages, there's no reason for an editor to preemptively restrain themselves from editing as long as they follow up on the talkpage if someone objects. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 17:19, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Can the link to the article by US Catholic bishop objecting to the the ban on ordaining gay priests as blurring the distinction between homosexuality and paedophilia be restored? Haldraper (talk) 16:38, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I would be very uncomfortable with this as it was portrayed before reversion. The content seems to qualify a statement which from itself implies the distinction is clarified, not blurred. That is either extraordinary journalistic sloppiness, undue polemics by the ones quoted in the source, or just simple wrong context to use this particular content. I haven't checked which one as it clearly does not improve the article by having the content where it was. That does mean however that it may be possible to use the material in some other way, although again (cf Academy) the level of detail seems excessive for this article of a worldwide organization that is many centuries old. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:15, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

When you say 'clarified' what do you mean? The sentence as it stands assumes a link between homosexuality and paedophilia that most in the field (not to mention gay men) would deny.Haldraper (talk) 17:19, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The previous sentence ' because the vast majority of victims were teenage boys, the worldwide Church also prohibited the ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies"' (emph mine). If you look up paedophilia, you will see it is not about teenage boys, at least formally. The formal meaning here is clearly implied by talking about a "link" between two sets of psychological preferences. Like I said, either someone there didn't do their journalistic homework, someone they quoted is spouting garbage (likely because paedophilia is a far more recognizable and loaded word), or rather that content just doesn't belong there at all. Actually, the last is pretty obvious in any case; perhaps in context the source and its content aren't as problematic, but that context is not here. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 18:07, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Typical Catholic casuistry, you're not a Jesuit are you :-)?Haldraper (talk) 18:20, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, the article text states "The US Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers; and, because the vast majority of victims were teenage boys, the worldwide Church also prohibited the ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". The sentence is stating a fact not an opinion. The Church took certain steps to prevent future abuse, one of those was to prohibit ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies", their own reason for doing this was based on the fact being that the vast majority of victims were teenage boys. That's the Church's actual reason, we have to state what steps the Church took to prevent future abuse and this is one of those. This is not a slam to homosexuals, this does not say that the Church thinks all homosexuals are paedophils. Where does the article say that? NancyHeise 02:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

No he's probably not a Jesuit, but I wish I was. Gabr-el 02:54, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see without reading every word, neither of the sources cited actually says wht the article cites them for, that child abuse was the, or even a, reason for the ban on homosexual priests. Peter jackson (talk) 11:06, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The sources do support the text but to make it easier for others who may not want to read the long versions, I just added a short article that says the same thing. I hope that helps. See new reference here: . NancyHeise 17:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

All that source says is that was the reason for more effective enforcement of existing poicy: not what the article says. Peter jackson (talk) 09:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with you and I'll explain why with links and quotes from the actual sources. The Worldnetdaily source states "The policy statement is a direct result of the pope's concern about the pedophilia scandal in the church – especially in the U.S. ". The CNS source says "Among issues the board addressed concerning abusive priests were questions of seminary formation, celibacy and homosexual orientation" and "It also noted that the study found 81 percent of the abuse victims were male and 78 percent were between the ages of 11 and 17" and "Noting the preponderance of adolescent males among the victims of clerical sexual abuse of minors, the board devoted several pages of its report to the question of what role sexual orientation of priests played in the abuse scandal. From interviews, evidence and a study of church teachings distinguishing between homosexual orientation and homosexual activity, the board concluded, 'The paramount question in this area must be whether a candidate for the priesthood is capable of living a chaste, celibate life, not what that candidate's sexual orientation must be.' 'But given the nature of the problem of clergy sexual abuse of minors, the realities of the culture today and the male-oriented atmosphere of the seminary, a more searching inquiry is necessary for a homosexually oriented man by those who decide whether he is suitable for the seminary and for ministry,' it said." The sentence in the RCC article reflects these sources. NancyHeise 16:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Here are 2 paragraphs from the worldnet article (quite early on).

"The "Instruction" does not represent a change in church teaching or policy, according to the Vatican.

Catholic leaders have consistently taught that homosexual men should not be ordained to the priesthood. Pope John XXIII approved a formal policy to that effect, which still remains in effect. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, that policy was widely ignored, particularly in North America."

Isn't that clear enough? The policy already existed. The scandal prompted only more effective enforcement. That also can be called a policy, so you have to look at each context to see which is referrred to. Peter jackson (talk) 10:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Peter, the previous policy was not enforced because it was more of a suggestion, an instruction issued from the Vatican to direct worldwide seminaries. Seminaries were still left to decide for themselves, ultimately, who to admit and ordain. Each Bishop's conference is allowed to establish their own seminary formation standards. The scandal resulted in this new policy telling the seminaries they absolutely could not ordain men with deep seated homosexual tendencies - something more than a suggestion - something directly resulting from the sex abuse scandals. The source states also "The pending release of the "Instruction," in the face of certain criticism from liberal forces in America and Western Europe, demonstrates the determination of the Vatican to improve the quality of priestly ministry and to protect the church from some of the scandals that have recently shaken the Catholic community – and no doubt deterred many men from entering priestly training." NancyHeise 23:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, so far so good. Nevertheless, mentioning the recent strict rule without mentioning the preexisting vague policy is liable to give many readers the false impression that the church was quite happy with homosexual priests until recently. Peter jackson (talk) 10:10, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Right, I am not sure of a concise way to fit that in there but will work on it. Thanks, NancyHeise 14:47, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

child abuse - just allegations?

One of my concerns in the last FAC for this article was that it dismissed the sex abuse cases as merely allegations, even though the Church has repeatedly admitted that some cases actually happened. Looking at the current version "Major lawsuits emerged in 2001 claiming some priests had sexually abused minors. In the US, the country with the vast majority of sex abuse cases, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a comprehensive study that found that four percent of all priests who served in the US from 1950 to 2002 faced some sort of sexual accusation. The Church was widely criticized when it emerged that some bishops had known about abuse allegations,". Whilst I don't doubt that some allegations are still disputed or were even disproved, I do think that the article should make it clear that a large amount of child abuse actually did take place. ϢereSpielChequers 11:28, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Because some of the cases have been disproved, even if that is a small percentage, "allegations" is a correct term. I think the fact the article also contains the statement "because the vast majority of victims were teenage boys" it would thus be difficult to infer that the "vast majority" were untrue allegations. NancyHeise 16:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You may find it useful to look at the lead to 21st century Catholic priest sex abuse scandal (formerly titled Catholic sex abuse cases). The article itself needs a lot of work but the lead is in pretty good shape (even if I do say so myself, having written much of it). The point that the lead is trying to make is that there are allegations and accusations which lead to criminal charges and convictions. However, if you look at the the study commissioned by the USCCB, the numbers run like this 4392 priests accused, 384 charged, 252 convicted. This is not say that every one of the other 4008 priests were innocent, just that they were not charged (could have died, found unfit for trial or the evidence may not have been sufficient to prosecute). I think it would be good to summarize the main points from the lead of 21st century Catholic priest sex abuse scandal here. --Richard (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Richard, that article is wikilinked in the very first sentence of the paragraph. I agree it is a great analysis of the whole situation. The paragraph in RCC already contains the most vital information and adheres to WP:summary style that makes use of wikilinks like this to provide more information. NancyHeise 18:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nancy, I agree that the article should make clear that 4% were alleged to have committed abuse, but I think it currently reads in such a way that all cases are still challenged. I've now read and slightly tweaked 21st century Catholic priest sex abuse scandal; and I think we should try and rephrase this paragraph in such a way as to make clear that some abuse is acknowledged to have taken place. ϢereSpielChequers 18:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the phrase "the vast majority of victims" does that already. I don't think stating the fact that only 6% of the accused were convicted will help make the point you want to make. "vast majority of victims" is, I think, more descriptive. NancyHeise 18:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

While I'm open to improvements of the section of this article on the abuse scandals, including some indication of percentage of allegations proven, the current wording is the result of a long process of discussion and agreement among many editors. Caution also has to be maintained on portrayal of this subject as part of the larger article. One factor is Undue Weight. Another is that the approach should be factual rather than sensational. As such, I am not happy with the approach in the lead to the main abuse article. Statements such as "As it became clear that there was truth to many of the allegations and that there was a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-up " and "A major aggravating factor was the actions of Catholic bishops to keep these crimes secret and to reassign the accused to other parishes in positions where they had continued unsupervised contact with youth, thus allowing the abusers to continue their crime" are both opinionated and misleading, making factual allegations against the motives of Catholic bishops which are unproven, as well as not making clear what was standard practice for dealing with abuse allegations at the time. The claim that there is a "world crisis" is also wrong. The article itself has some very serious errors, huge exaggerations and false material that is easily checkable. I will post more on the article talk page. Xandar 22:39, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, not for the first time it has been suggested that moving people on, referring them for counselling, but not informing the police, was 'standard practice', rather than just the practice of the RCC, in cases of alleged child sex abuse in the past so is something it should not be criticised for. Can you back this up with some evidence apart from bishops now asserting that this was the case? Haldraper (talk)

An incredibly small percentage of child abuse allegations were generally reported to police until quite recently. There are reports which make reference to these practices - for example the following report into practice in US Public schools during the 1990s, where less than 1% of alleged abusers were reported to the police, and the practice of sending abusers on to other schools without informing the new school or school board even had a name - "passing on the trash." Full report:In Loco Parentis Report

Xandar 11:35, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

We're back to US schools again. I think a major problem with this whole section is that it is too US-centric. I know numerically the US has the most cases but there is also the ratio of cases to population to take into account. The Ryan Report that has just come out detailing the decades of physical and sexual abuse of thousands of children carried out by priests and nuns in Ireland describes the way in which the RCC not only covered this up but the collusion of doctors, social workers, police, teachers and civil servants. Not too surprising given at the time in Ireland the Church was not so much above the law as in effect the law in all matters political, moral and social.Haldraper (talk) 13:25, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, reading the report you just linked to confirms what I said before on this subject. Much of the 'abuse' referred to in schools is often minor (suggestive comments/inappropriate touching) or consists of consensual relationships between young men and women (or women and men) which in other circumstances would be entirely legal. Read the wiki entry on the Ryan Report produced by the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse which has page after page detailing the horrors of institutionalised physical and sexual assault of children. You are not comparing like with like and your persistence in this amounts to an attempt to minimise the real abuse carried out by your Church.Haldraper (talk) 13:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, the Ireland abuse is a report on the many schools, orphanages and shelters run by the Church which was the country's source of social services. If you look at US foster care system and child services, you find basically the same pattern of abuse. If you want to compare apples to apples, we need to include this comparison. Some abuse happens just because the only people willing to take care of indigents is the Church - and the church makes use of a lot of volunteer help - not all of that volunteer help is qualified - which is why the US Church implemented the Charter for the Protection of Young People. This Charter was the first to require all people, including volunteers, who work with children in the Church environment to be fingerprinted and have a background check. Even moms voluteering at their children's schools now have to do this - I had to do this. The public schools don't do this. NancyHeise 14:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Nancy but you are just deluding yourself here. The abuse in Ireland happened to the extent it did because of the dominant role of the Church there from independence in the 20's up until the 90's. It told teachers, doctors, civil servants journalists,social workers and government ministers what to do. No one, including the victims, felt they could speak out against the Church in a society so rigidly and pervasively controlled by it. Ireland's integration into the EU has led to progress on human rights issues (including access to contraception and divorce for the first time since the 20's) and consequently a loosening of the grip the RCC had on Irish society, allowing the media and victims to finally expose the abuse and the Church's collusion in covering it up.Haldraper (talk) 15:04, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your remarks about US-centrism. It's interesting that even those complaining on this page that the RCC has been singled out don't seem to have mentioned that an Anglican diocese in Canada was actually bankrupted by child abuse suits. Peter jackson (talk) 15:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and we would also see the US Public School System bankrupted too by abuse lawsuits if the lawyers weren't restricted by law as to how much they can receive. That's why they never bother to sue - they can't win a huge judgement because the law caps it at something like a hundred thousand dollars. This is done so that the innocent taxpayers who had nothing to do with the abuse aren't required to pay for someone else's mistake. However, the same logic does not apply to innocent Catholics like me - we have to pay for someone else's mistake and then some - to the point of closing inner city schools where the kids then get tossed into a school system (the public schools) where the problem is "ten times worse" - doesn't make sense to me. NancyHeise 16:16, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Nancy, you haven't answered the point - in fact you've underlined it in your last post - as to why the section is so US-centred when it's an international issue. As with Xandar, you also seem determined to carry on equating often minor incidents in US schools with the kind of institutionalised, systematic abuse uncovered by the Ryan Report, to which journalists, politicians etc under the thumb of the RCC turned a blind eye for decades.Haldraper (talk) 16:26, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, the issue is US centered because we have refs that say the whole sex abuse issue is US centered. The "vast majority" of all sex abuse cases worldwide were in the US. We have indicated in our paragraph this referenced fact and referenced why. NancyHeise 16:43, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, Haldraper, I think you are confusing the Ireland report with the priest sex abuse scandals. The Ireland report was on abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) that existed in Ireland's orphanages, shelters, homes, schools, (social services provided by the Catholic Church). The abuse in that report was not specifically carried out by priests nor even specifically by adults and most of it was not sexual abuse. That is an entirely different issue than the priest sex abuse scandals. NancyHeise 16:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper the report I referred you to covers all levels of sexual abuse, not just "minor" matters, as you put them, just as the Irish report did, and the Irish report listed "minor" matters too. The US schools report covers only four years, however, while the Irish report covered a period of nearly sixty years. In addition the Irish report collected details over a period of nine years with large sums of money (hundreds of thousands of pounds) given out to respondents on the basis of the seriousness of the allegation. In any event you sought proof of other organisations failing to report matters to the police or authorities, and passing on abusers to other schools without warning them - and that point was proven. You have failed to admit this. The US Scouts also have had many allegations with very few prosecutions or reports to the authorities. Turning to Britain. Unfortunately the UK is not so open a society as the US and a lot of details are l;ess accessible. The UK has never done a similar report to the Irish one on abuse in UK secular approved schools, homes and borstals between 1930 and 1990. From the individual incidents that have emerged, I suspect such a report would put the Irish one in the shade. And as Nancy says, the abuse scandals are not worldwide. They are concentrated in the US and Ireland with some cases in Australia. Even in these places the rate of abuse is no higher than among the general population. Xandar 19:32, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

In addition, the notion that the Irish State was somehow terrified of the Church and didn't act on complaints for that reason, is an excuse. Police, the Education Department, (responsible for the institutions), and other officials consistently failed - even in cases when the abuser had nothing to do with the Church. In one prominent case the police refused to act on multiple complaints against one teacher, and, knowing of his abuse over thirty years, the Ministry of Education decided to take no action, and allowed him to finish out his final two years teaching. Xandar 19:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Outcome of mediation

This discussion has been moved to Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Page rename proposal

Overview

This was a multiparty mediation filed on January 19, 2009 by NancyHeise and signed by 19 participants, of which 17 have been active. The mediation was accepted by the Mediation Committee on January 27 and Shell Kinney agreed to mediate on February 10. Due to off-wiki commitments, Shell withdrew from the mediation; Sunray took over as mediator on March 4, 2009.

The mediation centered on the first part of the lead sentence of the Roman Catholic Church article: "The Roman Catholic Church, officially known as the Catholic Church..." At issue was the use of the word "officially" and also the significance and relative importance of the two names. Other issues in dispute pertained to the explanatory note for the two names and the use of sources in the note. Participants reviewed several alternative proposals for the wording of the lead sentence.

Research by participants determined that the name the "Catholic Church" was the most common name and also the name most commonly used by the church, when referring to itself. There was a rough consensus in favor of changing the first part of the lead sentence and much thought and discussion went into rewording the lead. It was agreed to re-draft the explanatory note to accompany this wording. This called into question the name of the article. Participants were guided by WP policy and guidelines on naming.

Consultation process

This summary and action plan are posted to the article talk page for community consultation. Shell Kinney and I will be facilitating the discussion, which will close at 12:00 noon, UTC, on June 26, 2009. The participants in the mediation welcome discussion regarding the action plan. Sunray (talk)

This plan and its discussion have been moved to a subpage, Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Page rename proposal to avoid disrupting other on-going discussions. As issues are discussed and resolved, they will be archived or collapsed on that page. Shell

Removing other people's comments

Yes, we do want editors to find it— but not find a biased, "summary." Please move it ALL back, leave as is, or write an unbiased summary--Carlaude 19:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

If you have a problem with the summary, address it here -- don't remove other people's comments. --User talk:SarekOfVulcan

This is my point!

(1) I am not removing other people's comments-- I am keeping comments altogether. These comments already moved, copied, but only these pro-move comments have been left here and there!

(2) I would rather that none of these be moved-- be if they are moved they should all be moved-- or at least not leave a notice from only one POV (the notice is now suitable NPOV now in my view).--Carlaude 19:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I object that the bias statements made by the "formal Mediation Committee." It was a closed discussion of only certain people, and leaving them behind on Talk:Roman Catholic Church gives them implied status as if they are (a) unbiased (b) Inevitable to be carried out.

I also object that the sub-page name does not reflect what is really at issue. This is not a "Mediation on Naming Convention" nor a discussion on the "Naming Convention" nor a discussion on the "Mediation/Mediation Committee" — it is just a discussion on renaming!

Shell, Please move the subpage to Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Page rename proposal (or the like) and/or state more on why it needs to be done at all. --Carlaude 19:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a summary of the mediation that took place over the last several months. If you disagree with the conclusions that the participants reached, you are welcome to participate in the on-going discussion. Shell 19:48, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

They can participate in 3 hours -- blocked for disruptive editing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Historians and primacy

All that the (non-secular) historians cited have said is that the texts of the Gospel say that Jesus said Peter was to be the rock of the Church. The line as written clearly implies that “historians” agree that the current RCC is *the* church as founded by Jesus. There is no need to be over-reaching. (The Eastern Orthodox Church believes itself to be *the* Church as do others and they have their own historians and parsings of the texts to support their positions). The line reads just fine as edited, no further elaboration is needed as this is still the introduction and the topic is already discussed more expansively within the body of the article. It is not the place of Misplaced Pages to “prove” the RCC has some primacy. Since contemporary documentation from the time is slim (the Gospels were all written 30+ years after Jesus and based on oral traditions) it is surely unprovable in the modern sense. It can surely be stated as a point of belief and interpretation however. BobKawanaka (talk) 15:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You eliminated a whole paragraph of thoroughly referenced, consensus agreed text. I replaced it. You need to have references to support your point of view and agreement from at least some of the over 30 editors who have worked on this page to make such drastic changes. This article is placing facts on the page as they appear in scholalry works, it is not trying to "prove" anything. If you can prove that the scholars did not say what they say, then we can eliminate it. NancyHeise 01:59, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I would agree with this revert, and quote bold, revert and (now) discuss, but will point out that Bob's first removal was bold and not really vandalism, per the edit summary and good faith. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 04:38, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

You need not call me a vandal, I am trying to be helpful here. I have written much to myself on this but in the spirit of trying to reach a compromise rather than inflaming the situation, I will hold my pen and at this point only say that I don’t think that most editors of this page wish to have the page say that historians have proven the RCC is the one true Catholic Church. Intentional or not, this is how that line reads and it should be changed. I believe most editors will agree that this is something to be avoided. BobKawanaka (talk) 02:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Can you produce the exact text which you allege states that Historians have proved the CC the one true Church? And in any event you removed a lot more than text on that issue from the lead. Xandar 11:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

"the Church believes itself to be the continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus in his consecration of Saint Peter, a view shared by many historians" italics and bold my own ... as written, it implies that the historians are validating the view that the Church is *the* continuation ... not that they are validating the belief. The Church believing itself to be *the* continuation is a perfectly reasonable statement of the Church and wouldn't seem to be to need any references, I simply removed "a view shared by many historians" ... I do understand now how people would be annoyed at the removal of references but they are really not needed to support a statement about the Church's belief in its primacy. Those quotes do not make a statement on any current primacy of the Church. I think the line is fine the way I cut it originally because I can think of no member of the Church that would disagree with the statement "... the continuation ...". If the references are important then I suggest the line be simply changed to "the Church believes itself to be a continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus in his consecration of Saint Peter, a view shared by many historians" (and this is what the quotes say). I actually think the line reading that way is slighter weaker than my original chop as it suggests some outside confirmation is needed on something quite obvious. So Xandar, if you think that's a fair change, I would ask that you make it. Many thanks. BobKawanaka (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. That's interesting. The proposal seems to boil down to replacing "the continuation of.." with "a continuation of.." Small change, but quite a big shift in emphasis. I suppose that the Church accepts that other good and less good bodies emerged as "continuations" of the original Church of the apostles. The change from "the" to "a" however might be seen as having further implications. I do however think we need to refer to the historians, since many groups claim ancient origins on absolutely no realistic basis - so that needs to remain. What do other editors think? Xandar 22:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you Xandar. NancyHeise 13:18, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I am interpreting Bob's concern as one concerning the conjunction of the Church's own position with that of historians asserting the validity of that position. Clearly the Church believes what it believes. Are there a segment of historians who have corroborated the Church's position with historical scholarship, in a sense of saying "the Church has it right"? I suspect there are but envision that there might not be that many, as doing so would be, at least implicitly, trying to prove a negative ("there are no other continuations"), as well as delving into more theological than historical territory I recognize those need not be mutually exclusive, though. So in short, he may have a point. I would suggest, however, that if so, a gutting of that paragraph is far from ideal, and would recommend in such a case a rewording to make clear exactly what the sources say. The previous solution did not portray the Church's postion the most accurately. But as always, follow the sources. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:28, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The sentence Bob eliminated was this one in the lead "Through apostolic succession, the Church believes itself to be the continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus in his consecration of Saint Peter, a view shared by many historians. " That sentence is a summarization of the text that exists in "Origins and Mission" section of the article. The sentence has three references to support it including National Geographic Society that states historians looked back for centuries and saw Peter as the first pope of the Church. We used the term "many" historians because Nat Geo is referring to many centuries of historians, a fact clearly indicated in the vast amount of historical information throughout history on the Church. This is not a disputed fact. Origins and Mission section includes the only scholarly dispute on the origins of the Church with references to which scholars represent these views. NancyHeise 18:08, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I will assume good faith on this topic one final time and presume that people are simply too busy to read completely what this is about. Nancy, I did not eliminate the sentence. I took out the final bit "a view shared by many historians". I will say again, those quotes do not say that the Church is the only continuation of the Church. As above, I don't believe most editors here want to say, imply or suggest that historians believe that the RCC is the only continuation of the Church as founded by Jesus and Peter. It is not supported by those quotes. You may say historians support it as a continuation and you can say the it is a tenet of the Church and its members that is is the only continuation. But it is not fair to claim that historians/others say the Church is the singular continuation. My proposal is a simple one and should not cause concern, it is not changing much text (one word) but it is an important change. I am only saying that the term "the continuation" needs to be changed to "a continuation". "Through apostolic succession, the Church believes itself to be a continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus in his consecration of Saint Peter, a view shared by many historians. ". This is a fair change. Frankly, it is important that this page, as all Misplaced Pages pages, be seen to be one of give and take and compromise among different editors. BobKawanaka (talk) 21:15, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

But that would then make the sentence inaccurate. The sentence says that the Church believes itself to be the continuation of the Christian community founded by.... - the Church does believe it is the continuation, not a continuation. The sentence persists and says this a view shared by many historians. This is a view shared by many historians. Of course there are those who disagree, the sentence does not say it is the view shared by all historians. It is reflecting the fact that historians looked back for centuries and saw Peter as the first pope - no other church in history has a pope except this one. The sentence has three references to support it. NancyHeise 00:46, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Per BobKawanaka's post here, I have added a reference for the part of the sentence that says the Church believes itself to be the continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus. It is the same reference that is used in the body of the article (Origin and Mission section) that discusses this sentence in the lead in full. Leads do not have to be referenced at all according to Misplaced Pages policy. They are a summary of the body of the article that does contain references. But because every sentence of this article is examined by numerous editors who ask for references, I have added refs to the lead. Please see the added ref which links to the Catechism paragraph number 881 supporting the claim in the sentence. Thanks, NancyHeise 02:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you haven't had a chance to re-read what the specific three references say. I understand that many of the editors of this page feel set upon by "outside" editors and that can make it difficult to chase down the specifics of each objection, so I can also understand how one might not re-read well-travelled ground. But it is important. Those quotes say nothing on the RCC being the *only* continuation of the Church founded by Jesus and Peter. To say that, they need to say that other Catholic Churches have no legitimacy and claim to the same roots. I do not see that anywhere in the quotes. It would be helpful if you can point out the specifics of those quotes that denies that other Catholic Churches are also a continuation of the Church founded by Jesus and Peter. While I do not believe that a historian without ties to the Church can ever make such a determination based on historic facts, let's at least start with ensuring that the current quotes cited are represented properly. BobKawanaka (talk) 16:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

This needs to be changed. The quotes clearly do not say the RCC is the only continuation. BobKawanaka (talk) 11:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I will wait another 24 hours. The cited quotes do not support the contention that there is only one Church. In the absence of further input, I am going to change "the continuation" to "a continuation" in the sentence under discusssion. BobKawanaka (talk) 20:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Bob, while I agree that there is a problem with asserting that the Church is the continuation of the church founded by Jesus Christ (implying that it is the only valid continuation), there is also a problem with asserting that the Church is a continuation of the church founded by Jesus Christ because that is not a neutral description. Making such an assertion would suggest that there are multiple valid continuations of the church when the Catholic, the Orthodox and to a large extent the Anglicans would agree that there is only one church founded by Jesus Christ. This is an important theological point. Even most Protestants claim themselves to be part of the wider Christian community. This is why some Protestants use the word denomination rather than churches per se (although they frequently use "church" in the name of their denomination). Catholics reject the concept of a denomination. In their view, there is only one church. If there are divisions within that church, this is the result of human failing and not one that is not intended by God. I imagine the Orthodox feel the same way. This is why Catholics reject Branch Theory. A possible analogy would be the fact that both the Republic of China AND the People's Republic of China reject the "two China" model. Both sides believe that there is only one China and that reunification is both inevitable and desirable.

Now secular historians might consider that there are multiple continuations of the church founded by Jesus Christ and gloss over the theological problem of such an assertion; however, that is a secular POV and cannot be asserted baldly without making crystal clear what the view of the Catholic Church (among others) is.

I admit that I have no clear proposal to offer but I think the solution lies in the direction of "The Catholic Church considers its bishops to be validly consecrated according to the doctrine of apostolic succession, making them valid successors to the twelve apostles. In addition, the Church lays claim to the Primacy of Simon Peter and the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff by virtue of the Pope's title as the Bishop of Rome. Other churches such as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion recognize the valid consecration of the Catholic Church's bishops as well as the primacy of the Bishop of Rome although they interpret that primacy differently."

The more I think about it, the less I like the phrase "continuation of the church founded by Jesus Christ". Because of this "one church/many churches" question, there seems to be no easy way to make such an assertion without delving into the nuances that I have outlined above. Neither "the continuation" nor "a continuation" can resolve the conundrums that are raised. I think we are better off to avoid the phrase altogether.

--Richard (talk) 23:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Richard, your "The Catholic Church considers its bishops ..." text is perfectly fine (though some are likely to argue its length). You capture the important distinctions, you allow for other theological interpretations while still asserting what the Church believes and we are no longer casting it so strongly as a point that can be decided by historians in favor of one "side" versus another. I think it reads much more strongly and is less likely to be open to future re-edits. Thanks. It would be best if you or another of the longer serving editors made the change. I will only chime in if the wording leans too much toward diminishing other groups or toward "proving" primacy. Thanks again. BobKawanaka (talk) 22:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Deposit of faith - intro

I just linked Deposit of faith to Sacred Tradition, but the sentence already has Sacred Tradition in it. This sentence, IMHO, is redundant in that the Deposit of Faith is the equivalent or same thing as Sacred Tradition...or is this incorrect thinking? --Rider 18:14, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

To explain it mathematically, the deposit of faith equals Sacred Tradition plus Sacred Scriptures. NancyHeise 02:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Still POV

After taking a break from this page and then reading it afresh, it still strikes me as very far from the NPOV Misplaced Pages is supposed to be written from. The four worst bits are:

1. the continued attempt to rope in secular historians to defend the view that the RCC was founded by Jesus.

2. the section on the church and 20th century politics which is incredibly selective and unbalanced (even in regard to Europe which it concentrates on to the exclusion of South America amongst other places).

3. the section on child sex abuse which is apologist in tone and see-saws wildly between presenting the allegations before seeking to rebut, deflect or diminish them.

4. the reference to the pontifical academy of science with its 'valuable insights'.

Honestly guys, parts of this 'encyclopaedic' article read like a promotional flyer from the Vatican. I think the only way it's going to improve is if more editors who are not practising Catholics begin contributing to it.Haldraper (talk) 09:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect, promotional flyers from the Vatican are written considerably better than this . But there are things you can do to help. Rather than resort to such hyberbole which will cause many editors to simply ignore you (or worse), why don't you make a constructive suggestion for one of your points?

Let's take what should be the easiest, the Academy. Here is the current form: "In part because of lessons learned from the Galilei affair, the Church created the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a scientific organization that essentially began in 1603 but developed over time to reach its present form by 1936." Suggest an improvement. Go. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 13:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The trouble seems to be rather the habit of one or two editors of rejecting suggested changes out of hand in a manner that discourages discussion. Most recently, two attempts to draw attention to the fact that a source spoke of the local Church "in Rome", not of the Catholic Church as a whole ("historians looked back and recognized Peter as the first pope of the Christian church in Rome) only drew the response: "Christian Chrch in Rome, is the Roman Catholic Church per thesources"! I found this response, following a simple reversal of the first attempt to point out the difference between what the source says and what the article presents it as saying, too discouraging to wish to face an inevitably hard fight on the Discussion page in attempting to get the editor or editors to see that the Church as a whole is broader than the diocese of Rome. In the context of this subsection, I just mention this, without intending to enter into combat about it. 62.1.92.168 (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if one editor suggests a change, and one or more say no, it is better as is, then that is how things should work around here (but for BLP, copyright etc issues). If it gets discouraging, try to suggest smaller, incremental changes first; those will be more likely to gain traction. Especially as per the OP there are some clumsily worded parts that could really use some tightening, without huge content changes. If you need more eyes, post to Wikiproject:Catholicism, or one of the noticeboards, NPOV and RS may be appropriate depending on the specifics. However, empirically speaking this page gets a lot of views, and went through a thorough (to a fault) GA review recently, so that reaction you describe is probably evidence that your suggestions rally were somewhat wanting. But again, try the other venues if you think you need fresh eyes. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if accurately quoting the source] (nine words, all but one monosyllabic) is not a "small incremental change", I don't know what is. Enough. 62.1.92.168 (talk) 17:56, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Um, that's a start, but there is still no guarantee it will be an improvement. Compare, the discussion below mentions cases of changing one word, but its effect could be profound. Back to this case. I don't know why the reverter did it, but if you note, those nine words backtrack with respect to undue weight. And given the context of the mediation etc, it is hardly incremental in meaning.

With those notes, try to think about how such a change would improve (or not) the article per the pillars et al, not just blindly follow legalistic rules. We will not (and cannot) do your thinking for you. It would help too if you got an account; your talk page might come in handy. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 18:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

An edit is certainly an improvement if it accurately quotes the source and if the reason for undoing it is to maintain the incredible claim that the local Christian church in Rome is the Roman Catholic Church, which on the contrary is described in the article as "the world's largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of the world's population ... a communion of the Western Rite (Latin Rite) and 22 autonomous Eastern Catholic Churches (called particular churches), comprising 2,795 dioceses in 2008". I will definitely close now, and make no further comment whatever. 62.1.92.168 (talk) 19:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I would do two things to improve this page.

Firstly, I would cut it back to facts concerning the Roman Catholic Church rather than contentious opinions, including those couched in weasel phrases such as 'claimed' or 'contended'.

Secondly, given the length of the page, I would remove the section on the history of the Church. There is a link to another page on this (which at a quick glance seems to avoid some of the POV issues we're discussing here). Looking at other Wiki pages, it seems to be common practice to move the history of organisations off their main page to avoid excessive length.Haldraper (talk) 16:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Those two phrases are in most cases not weaselly if they can be sourced. In fact, they are good tactics to maintain NPOV, as otherwise we'd be asserting as truth mere opinions held by whomever did the claiming/contending.

The length of that section has cycled longer and shorter for some time now, and good faith editors can differ as to the ideal length. That said, some level of summary is warranted. Full removal is not. Again, suggest something here, perhaps one paragraph at a time. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Words such as "claimed" and "contended" were demanded by other reviewers precisely to ensure that the article was rigorously NPOV. The point that some new people here often don't appreciate is that this article has had input from literally dozens of editors, and that many passages have been balanced and negotiated, often at great length. This goes particularly for some of the origin of the church sections, much of the history section and the abuse scandal coverage. So significant changes DO have to be negotiated and backed by solid references. It's no use coming here, whipping out a referenced paragraph and complaining when its put back. Expect quite a bit of debate on significant changes.

On the point about the Roman City Church not being the Catholic Church - that is a bone of contention, but Catholics and many historians do affirm that the Church of the City of Rome was the centre of and has always been an intrinsic part of the Catholic Church. Just saying the two are different things, is not that helpful a comment. Berlin may not be Germany, but it is IN Germany. Xandar 23:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it was during the second or third FAC attempt that this was demaned by FAC reviewers. NancyHeise 13:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggested shorter summary of history section

Two things to bear in mind:

1. I have concentrated on the organisational history of the RCC rather than other extraneous matters, e.g. its role in the Spanish civil war, South American missions etc.

2. There would still of course be a link to the 'History of the RCC' page which includes the same material and much more at greater length.Haldraper (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

According to historians, the Apostles traveled to northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and Rome to found the first Christian communities. Early Christians refused to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods or to worship Roman rulers as gods and were thus subject to persecution. This began under Nero in the first century and persisted through the great persecution of Diocletian and Galerius, which was seen as a final attempt to wipe out Christianity. Nevertheless, Christianity continued to spread and was eventually legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan.

Early Middle Ages The Rule of St Benedict, composed by Benedict in 530, became a blueprint for the organization of monasteries throughout Europe. The new monasteries preserved classical craft and artistic skills while maintaining intellectual culture within their schools, scriptoria and libraries. As well as providing a focus for spiritual life, they functioned as agricultural, economic and production centers, particularly in remote regions, becoming major conduits of civilization. Eastern and Western Christendom grew apart in the 9th century. Conflicts arose over ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Byzantine-controlled south of Italy, missionaries to Bulgaria and a brief schism revolving around Photios of Constantinople. Although this was resolved, further disagreements led to Pope and Patriarch excommunicating each other in 1054, commonly considered the date of the East–West Schism. The Western (Latin) branch of Christianity has since become known as the Catholic Church, while the Eastern (Greek) branch became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church.

High Middle Ages At the end of the 13th century, Pope Boniface VIII was involved in a heated conflict with the French king. Subsequently, the Papacy came under French dominance, with Clement V in 1309 moving to Avignon, then located just outside the French borders. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 when the Pope returned to Rome but was soon followed in 1378 by the 38-year-long Western schism with separate claimants to the papacy in Rome, Avignon and (after 1409) Pisa, backed by conflicting secular rulers.''

Late Medieval and Renaissance In 1517, Martin Luther included his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences. Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into a large and all encompassing European movement called the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which became the driving force of the Counter-Reformation. Doctrinally, it reaffirmed central Catholic teachings such as transubstantiation, and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. It also made structural reforms, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and laity and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia.

Industrial age Although the infallibility of the Church in doctrinal matters had always been a Church dogma, the First Vatican Council, which convened in 1870, affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility when exercised in certain specifically defined pronouncements. The loss of the papal states to the Italian unification movement created what came to be known as the Roman Question, a territorial dispute between the papacy and the Italian government that was not resolved until the 1929 Lateran Treaty granted sovereignty to the Holy See over Vatican City.'''

Haldraper, you forgot to sign your post above. I would like for you to please read all four of RCC's FAC's. You will notice that we had shorter versions of Church history has you have proposed above, yet, almost every FAC comment on all of these FAC's has asked for more information, not less, most of it in history. We would be doing the exact opposite of what has been expressed by over 30 different editors at each FAC if we do what you are asking above. NancyHeise 18:46, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, I also have been meaning to ask you if you are new to Misplaced Pages or if you have just changed your name from something else. I welcomed you in March 2009. Is this your first time editing Misplaced Pages? Do you also have another name you under which you edit Misplaced Pages? There is a policy against WP:sockpuppet I just want to make sure that people on this page are following. We have had a problem with that in the past, perhaps by editors without knowledge of the policy. NancyHeise 18:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

1. I signed my post after the initial comments rather than the italicised section.

2. I do not and have never edited under another username.

Haldraper (talk) 19:08, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, did you read the past four Featured Article Candidacy's? If not, please go to the "Article milestone's" at the top of the page and click on each one, you will see the comments from FAC reviewers there, most of them asking for more information in history section, a persistent request with which we have complied. NancyHeise 19:27, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Cutting the history section so drastically is an interesting exercise, but not practical. Major matter about the spread of Catholicism, the Bible, colonialism, and othe r major milestones are not covered. In addition controversial issues like the Cathars, the Inquisitions, the Crusades, the War, the abuse scandal etc. are absent. There is no way the article can fail to cover these issues. The main criticisms have always come if issues like these have not been covered. The wikipedia policy against "undue weight" requires that historical coverage should be balanced and not unduly weighted toward certain events. Therefore if we are dealing with some issues in a certain amount of detail, other significant issues should be covered in a similar manner. Other encyclopedias also cover the history of the church in some detail. Xandar 20:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you Xandar. I also want to throw out on this talk page that there is going to be another peer review for this page in September. I have asked the amazing, wonderful, renowned Misplaced Pages editor with over 26 FAC's, user:Brianboulton to help navigate this article through the next FAC attempt (maybe this fall we'll have to see how the peer review goes). Hopefully, everyone will get their two cents in the peer review and we can come to consensus on issues before they pop up at FAC. NancyHeise 00:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of a Peer Review - although they tend to have been a little disappointing in the past, with little interest shown until the article actually gets to FAC - when we ghet overwhelmed with critics. The article does need another thorough sort-through to deal with potential problems and have another look at criticisms that were made last time. Then it needs another work-over for prose quality - which has suffered via a lot of small changes over past months. Xandar 09:15, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

added ref to "official" per comment by Gimmetrow at mediation

I know we are in mediation about the name issue but until that process is complete, I have added the McBrien reference and quote (peer reviewed scholalry source) to the lead sentence stating that "Catholic Church" is the official name because of a complaint by Gimmetrow at mediation. See . NancyHeise 02:52, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

My ref was eliminated by Afterwriting. It's fine with me if Gimmetrow is OK with it. NancyHeise 03:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

NPOV

I've slightly rewritten the bit on the pontifical academy of sciences and edited the child sex abuse section to make them both more NPOV. Before people start reverting, sending me messages etc., could you please read them and let me know what if anything you object to and whether you think they are in any way anti-RCC POV.Haldraper (talk) 15:55, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think both edits improved the article. The Academy stuff needed some defluffing, and the abuse section reads better without having lost balance. Thanks for your consideration of the feedback received. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:05, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry to disagree but, per WP:BRD, I have reverted some of Haldraper's edit to the sexual abuse section. IMHO, the scandal cannot be limited to the misconduct of the priests because it is really more about the policies and administrative action of the bishops in reaction to that misconduct. Here's the thing: if the reporting of abuse had been encouraged and every priest had been promptly investigated and disciplined (assigned to positions where contact with minors was infrequent, defrocked, etc.), then the scandal would never have surfaced in the form that it did and the visceral reaction to it would not have been so great. People are human and some commit more heinous sins than others. What caused the scandal was the fact that bishops created an environment where a priest could continue to sin over decades. It's much harder to sue an institution for the misconduct of an individual employee if that employee is acting outside of policy and without the knowledge of his/her superiors. However, if the institution authorizes, condones or otherwise enables the actions of the employee, then the institution becomes increasingly liable depending upon the level of complicity. Dioceses and parishes have taken steps to prevent further sexual abuse but, more importantly, they have taken steps to increase the likelihood that any abuse or attempts at abuse are reported and dealt with promptly and effectively. I can't imagine that a bishop in this century would conceal the abuse committed by a priest by covering it up and reassigning the priest to another parish where he would have unsupervised contact with minors. This is the core of the scandal and the Church's reaction to it. Any attempts to explain or excuse the problem can be dealt with in the subsidiary article (currently under the bad title Catholic sex abuse cases). However, we cannot present the scandal as if it is only about the priests and not, in some way and to some significant extent, about the bishops. That would be omitting the core issue. --Richard (talk) 17:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I also disagree with Haldraper's edit but I disagree with the entire edit that eliminated not only mention of the bishops but also the context within which the scandal erupted. Haldraper eliminated key facts that provided balance to a sensitive subject that is often portrayed in the most negative anti-Catholic way. The sentence that discusses how the psychological community dealt with the problem is key to understanding why the bishops did what they did, to omit that sentence makes the entire paragraph very POV anti-Catholic. The fact that the same problems exist in the US public School system but is far worse is part of the context needed to see the issue in a fair, NPOV light. That paragraph was worked out with much effort by many editors to get it in current form, please do not eliminate referenced consensus text without buiding new consensus. NancyHeise 18:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

There are two problems with the section as it stands:

1. it is like a tug of war of opinions. The actions of the bishops are contentious I'm afraid, it's POV to try and alibi them with a in any case disputed history of psychological approaches to child sex abuse. I don't see how it is anti-Catholic POV to stick to the facts of the allegations and the steps taken by the Church in response to them. I think Nancy you're reading criticism into the words that isn't there.

2. it is far too US-centric. I can accept that as most abuse cases took place there that should be a major focus but to view a worldwide issue solely through the prism of US statistics and practice is excessive, especially the insistence on comparing the abuse favourably with alleged abuse in US schools and the undue weight given to the remarks by Dougherty who is not an independepent source after all. Haldraper (talk) 18:37, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Just another point to think about: Misplaced Pages is an online encyclopaedia. Imagine we were writing an article for an actual encyclopaedia (i.e. a book) on the history of the RCC. Would we include a section on child sex abuse cases? Yes, I think so. Would we then say 'we must have a sentence saying it's not as bad as in US schools and a quote from a controversial commentator saying it's all an anti-Catholic media conspiracy'? I think not.Haldraper (talk) 18:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, these aren't my opinions in the article, they are the referenced facts - agreed by consensus to make the paragraph meet WP:NPOV. You want to remove the stated reasons why the bishops did what they did, a multiply referenced fact. It is POV to remove it. The sex abuse scandal is US centric. The ref notes that almost all of the abuse is in the US with a very minority percentage in Ireland and Australia. The US schools made the comparison to the Catholic Church, context requires us to see the sex scandal in light of the larger sex scandal atmosphere existant throughout the US, the only entity with a greater number of schools than the Catholic Church. The quote from the commentator can be eliminated to state the fact that sex abuse in US school system is ten times worse if you like. However, that sentence was the one preferred by consensus so we left it, and I would like respect that consensus so please do not remove it without building a new consensus. NancyHeise 20:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I hestitate to get into this because it's an unnecessary debate as far as Misplaced Pages is concerned: we should stick to the facts without reporting what people 'contended', 'commented' etc. My version of the para didn't include criticism of the bishops' inaction or their justification for it because both are beside the point in an encyclopaedia article. Just state the facts - number of allegations, steps taken by the Church to deal with problem - and let people draw their own conclusions rather than presenting them with 'X made this criticism of the Church but Y responded by pointing out' which gives it an inappropriate, apologist tone.

Three things strike me as particularly beside the point:

1. How is it relevant to the allegation that the RCC knew about crimes committed by its priests and failed to report them to police to say that psycholgists at the time thought that counselling was appropriate. Wasn't that for the courts to decide?

2. I've re-read the article on US schools: the two situations just aren't comparable. The 'abuse' in schools covers a wide range of activity, including consensual relationships between young adults - e.g. teenage male students and female teachers - that would be legal but for the student-teacher relationship. None of the abuse by priests was consensual, led to marriage in some cases etc. It also adds to the apologist tone, 'bad, but not as bad as in schools'.

3. Jon E. Dougherty is a Catholic commentator whose writings seek to defend the Church. He is not an independent source and his comments are given undue weight. Can anyone present evidence for his claim that child abuse in the RCC has received widespread coverage because the media is anti-Catholic or is that just his opinion? If this section is going to be US-centric, at least let's base it on relevant, referenced facts rather than opinions. Haldraper (talk) 21:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

NPOV means representing all sides of an issue. People will want to have a mention of criticism of the bishops etc. Therefore those putting the opposite view have to be represented too. You can't decide to eliminate important viewpoints because you dislike them. And your view over whether the case of the schools are "compatible" or not is not an issue. In any event the priestly abuse covers a wide range of activity too, some of which was "consensual". You cant make excuses for one, and not another. Similarly these are incidents in which very few cases as a whole across society were reported to the police at the time. So singling out the Church and saying THEY didn't report to the police and that is uniquely evil, when that was not done by anyone at the time, is introducing POV bias by selective reporting. Xandar 22:18, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Jon Doughtrey is not offering his opinion, he is a reporter for a major news organization and the article is reflecting that story which is based on actual facts further substantiated by other references in the article. Doughtrey is not the only person to make the connection here, the US Dept of Education also compared the Catholic Church and US public school abuse. NancyHeise 22:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm against dragging US schools into an article on the RCC but if an independent, verifiiable source exists it would be better to replace Dougherty's POV article with it.Haldraper (talk) 11:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Reading that section again, two things strike me:

1. the bit about the bishops fails to make clear the central charge aginst them, their failure to report to police abuse that had been committed by priests, not just their complicity in allowing such behaviour to happen again. How about this for a rewrite?

The Church was widely criticized when it emerged that some bishops who knew about abuse allegations failed to report them to police. They had also reassigned accused priests after first sending them to psychiatric counseling. Some bishops and psychiatrists contended that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. Pope John Paul II responded by declaring that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young". The US Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers; and, because the vast majority of victims were teenage boys, the worldwide Church also prohibited the ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

2. as well as the lack of independence/undue weight given to Dougherty's comments, the bit that really sticks out is 'same problem' in relation to US schools. The academic report from Hofstra University just doesn't support that assertion, it does not primarily cover men sexually assaulting boys (which is what we're discussing) but has a much wider range, including consensual relationships between teenage male students and female teachers a few years older than them. I think we could easily lose the last sentence (which also adds to the US-centric tone) without losing balance in this section. Haldraper (talk) 11:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

The trouble is you're wanting to add accusations about not reporting matters to the police, but then remove the CONTEXT in which such decisions were made. The schools reports are directly comparable. You seem to think the allegations against Catholics are all one sort. No. They vary. And there are many other comparable groups that could have been included in the article. Baptists, Anglicans, Social Workers etc. However it was decided just to use one example - the teachers. Xandar 11:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I can support Haldraper's last revision. --Richard (talk) 15:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

No Xandar, you are wrong on both points. The context in which the bishops failed to report abuse to police is there: their contention that mainstream psychiatric opinion was that it was possible to alter such behaviour through counselling and therefore that was what they thought it more appropriate to do. 'The schools reports are directly comparable'. Really, have you read them? If the issue in US schools was men raping boys, I'd agree with you. But the tables in the report cited don't reflect that at all. Some of the teachers were engaged in consensual relationships with fellow young adults (some of which have led to marriage). You might think that is inappropriate behaviour but it is not the same thing as what the priests have been accused of. Even if it was, why the need to compare it favourably with other groups unless the you intend like Dougherty to imply an anti-Catholic media conspiracy?Haldraper (talk) 12:15, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Two more points: 1. this section, as evidenced by the link at the start of it, is not about child abuse in the RCC in general (if it was it would need to include much more, e.g. the Ryan Report). It is about the US lawsuits brought against priests who sexually assaulted boys. I'm pretty sure none of those lawsuits involved consensual relationships with young women which is classified as abuse in the Hofstra University statistics cited. 2. on putting the bishops' actions/inaction 'into context': surely their defence, as I said before, is 'we thought we were doing the best thing in line with accepted psychiatric opinion at the time' (which I left in my rewrite) rather than 'what we did was wrong but others are more guilty' which is the (much weaker) defence some editors/Dougherty are trying to construct for them.Haldraper (talk) 13:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what country you're from Haldraper, but in the U.S., if a teacher has sex with someone under the age of 18, it's rape - even if the minor wanted to. Some of those occurrences in the Church were consensual too, but I don't see you mentioning that. Need I wonder why?

And honestly - why does the section even exist? The issue has it's own article. Typically, that means we throw down a sentence or two about it with a link to that article and leave it at that. That paragraph in the article really ought to be cut down if anything.Farsight001 (talk) 13:23, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

While I disagree with Farsight001's attack on Haldraper's motives, I do agree with his argument that there may be too much about the issue in this article. I suspect that some editors at FAC would want more in this article but that is a problem with FAC. Everybody wants more about their favorite topic and the article becomes bloated as a result. I support cutting down the text on this topic and relying on the link to the article about it to provide interested readers with additional detail. --Richard (talk) 15:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Farsight, I'm in Britain and the law here too says that if for e.g. a 23 year old female teacher has a consensual relationship with a 18 year old student she has committed a crime. Would you compare that to the priests' abuse in the lawsuits? You ask why I don't mention that some of the cases involving priests and teenage boys were consensual. It's because I'm not aware that any were and they also involved younger boys thus complicating the issue of consent, not as you seem to think because I'm anti-Catholic (I'm actually a lapsed Catholic myself).

Farsight/Richard: if you look at the history page, you'll see that I recently edited this section down to the facts as to abuse allegations and the RCC's policy changes in response to them, without mention of criticism, defences and other commentators' opinions, but this was reverted by other editors on the grounds it was anti-Catholic POV not to put the Church's actions 'into context' by way of citing alleged psychiatric orthodoxy in the past and spurious comparisons with schools. I'm happy for us to revert to the short, factual action with the link still in place to the longer article that duplicates alot of the material anyway.Haldraper (talk) 16:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Hal, I supported dropping the apologetics but I continue to feel that omitting mention of the bishops mischaracterizes the scandal as being "just" about misconduct by priests. Those who wish to diminish the gravity of this scandal don't get that, in order for the school and church scandals to be comparable, you would have to have principals and school district superintendents involved in covering up abuse cases and reassigning the malefactors to other schools. Just comparing raw numbers of reported cases misses the point.

I would support trimming the text to a few short sentences. Something like

In the early 21st century, a number of lawsuits and criminal cases focused worldwide attention on a pattern of sexual abuse by some Catholic priests that had occurred over several decades. Although most of the cases were in the United States, cases were reported in other countries such as Ireland, Canada and Australia. A focal point of the scandal was the fact that bishops had concealed the abuses and reassigned some priests to posts where they continued to have contact with minors. In response to the scandal, local parishes and dioceses have instituted measures to raise awareness of , prevent and encourage the reporting of sexual abuse. In addition, the Vatican has instructed that measures be taken by seminaries to discourage the ordination of candidates with "deep-rooted homosexual tendencies". --Richard (talk) 18:15, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Richard, I'd have no problem with your suggested rewrite.Haldraper (talk) 18:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

That version is totally unacceptable - since it is removing context and referenced material, for what appear to be POV reasons. It is fair to raise the issue of where Haldraper is coming from. He started off making disruptive edits. His new user page, made 2 months ago, lists the following interests. "baseball, beer, blues/jazz, Civil Service trade unionism, cricket, football, literature, Manchester, Roman Catholicism, rugby league and Trotskyism." Only one religious interest is cited. And from his posts on various topics so far, as well as attempts to whitewash other groups on the abuse issue, it appears that his interest in Roman Catholicism is largely to push negative, and generally uninfomed, viewpoints about the Church. Xandar 20:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Xandar and Farsight. The paragraph is POV either one way or the other if any of those sentences is eliminated. There is no more trimming that can be done to it without elimination of basic facts that meet FA's comprehensiveness rule. Because the issue was very serious and affected the whole Church, it needs to be included in the article with sufficient facts. Please note that the paragraph was the result of several months of negotiations on this talk page and a FAC that saw the participation of many editors. User:Ling.Nut stated in the last FAC that this page had received a lot of attention, his words were something to the effect that Misplaced Pages's best editors had crawled all over it "like ants on a dropped piece of candy". The last FAC, with over 34 editors' reveiws, had no problems with this paragraph. NancyHeise 03:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, where are you coming from? Instead of personal attacks, why not give an example of where I have inserted 'negative, and generally uninfomed, viewpoints about the Church'? If you don't, I will assume you are unable to back up that allegation and therefore withdraw it. Nancy, it's over the top to say as you do to say that the para 'is POV either one way or the other if any of those sentences is eliminated': it's not like it's the Bible where every word is inviolable :-) I could live with the para as it stands as long as we lose the last sentence, i.e. Dougherty's comment that media coverage of the issue has been 'excessive' which is inappropriate on a number of grounds:

1. it's a weasel construction 2. it's from a non-independent source 3. it is off topic (US schools/media rather than the RCC) 4. it breaches NPOV by introducing an apologist tone

Haldraper (talk) 08:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion. If you don't like the Dougherty ref, look up something from one of the works of Philip Jenkins. Using him would settle your points (2) instantly, and we could easily avoid (3). Points (1) and (4) are dependent on our approach so they could be avoided as well.

Jenkins has written some meta-scholarship, if you will, about the abuse scandal. One of his points is that there is a very old and pervasive bigotry archetype of the "predator priest" in American culture. I haven't seen a directly usable statement to this effect in the two works of his I am partially through, but I have to imagine that he has somewhere made the argument that the media coverage of the scandal has been unduly compromised by the presence of that archetype. I'll try to finish the ones I'm reading and may chime back in. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 13:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Wonderful! The problem with the Dougherty quote and even the comparison to schools and "other institutions" is that it just a slender piece of the argument about "anti-Catholic bias" and the "predator priest" canard. Far, far better to make those arguments explicitly in the article with appropriate references and Wikilinks to other articles. Is there enough to create an article on the topic of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests? Consider the 1834 burning of an Ursuline convent. Let's describe the debate rather than making the arguments here. --Richard (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I've had another go at rewriting this section. I've tried to make it more chronological by describing the lawsuits and comments/coverage of them and then the Church's policy changes following them. On the sentence in question, I had a number of problems: that it presented Dougherty as an independent source, that it placed undue weight on his remarks, that it implied a direct correlation with US schools, that it added to US-centricity, had a POV tone and as it was at the end came across as a last retort/final word on the subject that was not helpful. I think I've avoided these problems while keeping the sentence to provide the context some editors demanded but replaced 'the same problems plague US schools' with the more measured and balanced 'similar problems affect other institutions'.Haldraper (talk) 14:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Haldraper, I have replaced some referenced text you AGAIN removed from the article without consensus. You have multiple times now, since coming to this article a month ago, removed consensus and referenced material from the article without agreement. You have been informed many times that this is not the way to do things, but you persist in continuing to push your own POV in this manner. It is beginning to appear like disruptive editing. Material removed on the other occasions has included material on the abuse references, scholarly opinion on the history of the Church, ecumenism and the dissolution of the monasteries. All of these changes have been in a POV direction negative to the subject of this article. You say on your page that you have an "interest" in "Roman Catholicism". What exactly is this interest?

On the substance of your latest arguments: The US schools are an EXAMPLE of many other areas of under-reported abuse. There are many others. We selected one. And we are perfectly right to include opinions that refelect a point of view favourable to Catholicism in this article. It is called balance. Xandar 15:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, I deplore the tendency of you and NancyHeise to question the motives and perspectives of those with whom you disagree. What is YOUR interest in this article? What is YOUR POV? I would argue that your edits have all been in a POV direction positive to the subject of this article. (I qualify this assertion with the admission that I haven't reviewed each and every one of your edits). Does your POV in favor of the subject disqualify you from making edits? If not, why does Haldraper's POV in a negative direction disqualify him?

This page does not belong to the Catholic Church. It is about the Catholic Church, both its positive and negative attributes. Now, we may reasonably disagree with respect to what those are and how much weight to give them. However, this questioning of personal opinions and motives is inappropriate and disruptive.

--Richard (talk) 17:26, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

And I deplore YOUR tendency, Richard, to mouth off in a "holier-than-thou" attitude, and simultaneously start accusing me of being biased! It is quite obvious that Haldraper came here with an agenda, and engaged in disruptive editing of the article without seeking agreement or consensus. I have asked several times what his professed interest in the "Roman Catholic Church" consists of, and he has made no response. I, Nancy, and many others have worked on this article for several years trying to produce a GOOD, FACTUAL, WELL-REFERENCED and BALANCED article. We have put it up several times for Good and Featured article status, as well as Peer reviews - so there is clearly no desire to keep the article the preserve of the Church. Your allegastions in this regard are quite unwarranted. What we have experienced, however, are people who come in with anti-Catholic attitudes or misunderstandings who come here and accuse the article of being biased because it does not conform to their prejudices. We have always tried to discuss and debate issues raised. However Haldraper has leapt into this article, casting allegations of bias and POV, while acting in a disruptive and non-co-operative manner and repeatedly removing consensus and referenced text. he has been told not to act in this way, and then continued. You have made no remark about this, so I woukld trust that you be aware of the facts in future before posting such comments. Xandar 02:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, what was POV about the sentence I wrote? I didn't remove the sentence or the references but rewrote it slightly because the comparison with schools is too narrow and inaccurate and it gives undue weight and prominence to one commentator. You say 'And we are perfectly right to include opinions that refelect a point of view favourable to Catholicism in this article. It is called balance'. You'd have a point if the section highlighted quotations from commentators critical of the Church but as it doesn't you don't.Haldraper (talk) 16:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

You took out the reference to the Public schools and you added that it was only Catholics who thought the Catholic element in abuse scandals were excessively reported. Xandar 02:19, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that Haldrapers eliminations are an improvement. He changes the sentence to say that the abuse is in schools period. The references specifically say that the abuse is of much greater frequency in US Public schools. We don't have any refs speaking to other schools so why would we eliminate the plain fact that it is US Public schools? Also, I don't think I have accused Haldraper of anything that requires a scolding here Richard. I just asked him if he was a sockpuppet given the fact that he is a new account who instantly knows how to edit and has knowledge of Misplaced Pages policies with no apparent training or help from experienced editors, I think my question was fairly worded and should have been asked. NancyHeise 18:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, because I think Haldraper does not realize the pronounced seriousness of this problem in the US, I would like to post this link to my local paper that lists all the public school teachers in South Flordia indicted for sex abuse in the past 12 months. In that same time period, there were no priests or Catholic school teachers in South Florida indicted for same. There are also no high priced lawyers suing the pants off the US Public School System here either because there is law placing a small limit on what victims can collect. I believe Phillip Jenkins makes this point in his book too, a point that we have not covered in this small "bare facts" paragraph. If you ask me, the paragraph is just barely NPOV and would be better to include more info on this disparity. It would answer the question of why the Church has paid out zillions of dollars in settlements and the US Public Schools, who also moved abusers around per the refs, pay nothing and get very little press. NancyHeise 19:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I actually agree with Nancy's latest edits and think that between us we have now achieved a much improved section.Haldraper (talk) 19:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Haldraper, Im glad we could come to agreement. By the way, here's another link to the list of Public School coaches and teachers in South Florida who have sexually abused children . This is a huge problem in the US. The Catholic Church did something to end it and we presented that in our paragraph. The Public Schools have done nothing yet it is the Catholics who are perceived as child molestors and get all the media coverage. Our paragraph included one single sentence to address this huge and current problem, a problem that our sources have addressed by comparing the abuse of priests and US public school teachers. It is very necessary I believe in order to meet the notable fact criteria of WP:FA. NancyHeise 19:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer Review

User:Brianboulton has agreed to help this article through the next WP:FA attempt scheduled for this Fall. In an effort to get everyone's comments on board before going to WP:FAC, we have decided to schedule another peer review in September because some of us will be away for Summer. I want to invite anyone who has any comments for improving this article to please make a list for us on this talk page so we can all consider them when we return. We can use this section for comments or people can post them to my talk page. I will transfer them all to the peer review page when we open it in September. Thanks! NancyHeise 03:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, you asked for it.

1. 22 autonomous: out of date, or perhaps some uncertainty about definitions?
2. "many historians": weasel words; are these Catholic historians? It makes a lot of difference.
3. 11th century schism; later "Pope and Patriarch excommunicated each other in 1054": 14th century mythology, demolished by scholars generations ago; the Bull of excommunication against the Patriarch was delivered after the Pope's death (dubious legality); the Patriarch knew this & didn't excommunicate a non-existent Pope (replacement not chosen till later that year); nobody in Constantinople thought they were in schism with Rome till long after; the main cause of the actual schism was the Crusades, when the patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem & Constantinople were deposed & replaced by Westerners; even after that there were often people in communion with both sides until the 18th century, so the churches weren't fully separate (citations in
4. "councils of the Church, convened by Church leaders": odd phrasing; why not say Popes? Because in fact the early councils were convened by the emperors, with the Popes just rubber-stamping them?
5. "Sacred Scripture, or the Catholic Bible, consists of the same books found in the ... Septuagint—and the 27 New Testament writings first founded in the Codex Vaticanus and listed in Athanasius' Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: wow!
   1. There's no such thing as "the" Septuagint: contents of manuscripts vary, but they usually include books not in the Catholic Bible, such as 1 (3) Esdras, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, Odes, Psalms of Solomon
   2. I'll assume without checking that the statement of contents of Vaticanus is correct, but selecting sources to fit isn't NPOV: the contemporary Sinaiticus includes the Shepherd of Hremas, for example.
   3. Yes, that letter does list exactly the standard contents of the New Testament. It also gives a list of the Old Testament which is roughly, though not exactly, that of Jews & Protestants, not catholics. More selective quotation. Face the facts (this applies to both sides): there simply was no agreed canon in the early church.
6. "Jesus told his Apostles that after his death and resurrection he would send them the "Advocate" ...". Question: is it correct WP procedure to give such statements without an "according to" in such contexts?
7. "confess sins at least once a year": actually, I think the Lateran IV canon says confess mortal sins, if any.
8. "early church father John Chrysostom": in Catholic (as against Orthodox) usage, this is tautological: fathers are by definition early
9. "may select any male member of the Church as Pope": actually, I think there's a minimum age limit (18?); also "male mamber" is an unfortunate choice of phrase.
10. "Baptism is normally performed by clergy but is the only sacrament that may be administerd in emergencies by any Catholic or even a non-Christian ...": misleading: marriage is administered to the parties by each other
11. deaconesses don't seem to be mentioned; perhaps they should be; they've never been officially abolished, though they died out some time in the last few centuries
12. 1st communion &c: this seems to have got a bit confused: in the Eastern rites it remains standard practice for infant baptism to be followed immediately by confirmation & communion
13. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed, Oxford University Press (so a reliable source), 2001, vol 1, page 11, nearly 5,000,000 Christians have been martyred by RCs. Rather a different picture from the one given in the article.
14. "Toward the later part of the 17th century Pope Innocent XI ... condemned religious persecution of all kinds." Really?! So why was the Spanish Inquisition not abolished till 1834? Why was the death penalty for heresy still in the Code of Canon Law much later?
15. "described Adolf Hitler as an insane and arrogant prophet": see the discussion at that article: it has been interpreted as saying that

I could go on, but that should give you some things to think about. Peter jackson (talk) 11:14, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments on Peter jackson's list. The lists are meant for peer review, later in the summer, but errors and minor points could perhaps be quickly touched on, to cut down on time then.

1. A bit delphic... Any solid information on this?

2. We did name some historians in earlier versions, but it was thought better to de-clutter.

3. A complex point. This seems to be the date of critical juncture in a continuous process. Perhaps will need a lot of discussion in PR

5. I think we can correct the "founded" now. For the rest, Presumably it depends which Septuagint you are using. I think the Church decrees of 382 and 397 AD were fundamental in establishing the basic list.

6. We've done this a lot. But I don't think there's much dispute here.

7. We are talking about NOW though.

8. We are not aiming at a specialist audience though - so "early" is useful here.

9. I would presume there is a minimum age. Any reference for this?

13. A bit of a preposterous figure here. No idea where it comes from - unless they're including victims of "religious" wars. In any event the book is a tertiary source - not a preferred source for wikipedia, and the work has been heavily criticised in its main review. here for dodgy statistics... "What results is hundred of pages of utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect, culturally biased, and anthropologically useless."

14. Referenced fact. Popes condemn things. It doesn't mean they then cease. The Spanish inquisition was not under Vatican control anyway. And how many theological death penalties did the Church carry out after this statement? Xandar 14:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• 1. Back tomorrow on this, I hope.
• 2. That doesn't answer the question.
• 5. Exactly what I said: it depends which Septuagint you're using, so the statement is invalid. There may well be Catholic editions that follow the Catholic canon, but that's circular. Your final statement is basically correct, but doesn't affect my point.
• 7. Agreed. I'm just asking whether you've checked that what the article says is exactly right.
• 13. Just raising the issue. This seems to be another example of selection of facts that suit a case. Yes, not many people were actually executed by the Inquisition. Do you know why? Did you think most of the rest were acquitted? Virtually nobody was acquitted (I know only of Eckhardt & Luis de Leon), because of the procedures. You were assumed guilty until proven innocent. Generally speaking the only way of doing this was to prove malicious accusation without being told who your accusers were. The normal practice, authorized by Innocent IV, was to torture people into confessing. If you were tortured into confessing then you'd usually recant while you were about it, & then you usually wouldn't be executed.
• 14. Agreed, the Spanish Inquisition wasn't under papal control, but it was authorized by the Pope & the authorization wasn't revoked. "And how many theological death penalties did the Church carry out after this statement?" I don't know. The last ones were in Spain in 1826. They were issued by an ordinary episcopal court, not the Inquisition. Again, selection of facts in the article, focusing on the inquisition without mentioning executions by other church authorities, not to mention secular authorities encouraged by the church.

Peter jackson (talk) 16:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

PS. The review you refer to seems to be of the 1st ed. Peter jackson (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• 2 Two of the three currently referenced historians for this statement are Catholic. This was not a part of the article I had much hand in, however.
• 13. I think your view of inquisitorial procedings is extremely jaundiced. It isn't what I have read in coverage of the issue by serious historians. It was certainly possible to argue you were innocent of heresy, and most of those convicted served minor penances such as wearing a large cross on your garments for a period. We probably need more discussion of this.
• 14. I would be surprised if people were being executed in Spain on theological issues alone as late as 1826. As far as I know the Church did not execute people, (except perhaps for the Papal States) I'm not sure of the legal situation there. Execution was always the preserve of the civil authority - although being convicted of certain crimes by the Church in some countries carried a virtually certain civil penalty. Even the Spanish Inquisiton operated under the same civil laws. SO I don't think there is a category missed. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the history section needs some more work, in particular the industrial age/20th century which concentrates on persecution of the RCC by left and right-wing regimes without balancing that with the Church's role in supporting right-wing dictatorships in South America and Europe, e.g. Opus Dei in Francoist Spain.Haldraper (talk) 08:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

That's something that can be looked at as part of the review. Though I would probably have to ask in what way the Church allegedly "supported" right-wing dictators. In the case of Spain, the Church was forced into the arms of the Nationalists by widespread Republican massacres of clergy. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, that's your POV, I don't see how we could reference it adequately. I accept the Republicans were anti-clerical but the reasons for that as well as the Church's support for Franco are more complicated then you suggest. The Spanish civil war itself is complicated by the alliances on both sides, Nationalist (military, landowners, Church) and Republican (socialists, communists, anarchists).Haldraper (talk) 08:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The massacres certainly aren't POV. They happened. But all the issues are highly relevant for detailed discussion at Peer review. Xandar 18:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Clearly massacres happened on both sides, what is POV is your (unreferenced) claim that they were the only reason the Church supported Franco.Haldraper (talk) 18:54, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Only one side massacred thousands of priests and nuns. That's the point. As far as references go, they certainly exist, but we first need to know how and whether we are covering these matters in the article. Xandar 01:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I've checked back on the autonomous churches. Annuario Pontificio 2009, pages 1167-70, lists 22 rites, including Latin, but 22 oriental churches, ie excluding it. So the article is correct, but people might like to consider whether more should be said about this distinction.

Another point. The section on afterlife is theologically wrong. Contrary to sensationalist media reports, the Pope hasn't abolished limbo. It remains a permissible theological view. The statement in the article about who goes to hell preludes counting limbo as part of hell as used to be done, so it has to be an optional 4th type of afterlife. Peter jackson (talk) 10:15, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

A potential rewording and reference might be useful here. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, you call WCE a tertiary source. That's not true as a whole: much of it is direct research. You also quote a review criticizing it for statistics that are "anthropolgically useless". Valid enough, but exactly the same criticism applies to the statistics in the 1st sentence of the article, for the same reasons. You can't have it both ways. Peter jackson (talk) 10:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Direct research (depending on its nature) can sometimes be a primary source. The stats in the first sentence of the article come from Church returns and the CIA factbook. I don't think these have been challenged in a major review as being "utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect". Anyway this is not the main point since we would need far more detail, reference and solid academically-accepted proof for such an outlandish claim. The Misplaced Pages mantra is that "extreme claims need extreme proof." That certainly applies here, I think. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

1. Why should the CIA be a more reliable source than Oxford University Press?
2. Church returns are primary sources.
3. Which claim are you calling outlandish?
   1. Do you mean the claim that there were nearly 5,000,000 martyrs? If so, you can only even start making such a claim if you can find another RS that disagrees. The only other figure I've seen is 9,000,000. that was in an unrelaible source, but might have been derived from a reliable one.
   2. Or do you mean criticism of the figures for numbers of Catholics? I merely point out that these figures include
      1. many millions of "Catholics" in the Western world who are lapsed, nominal, non-churchgoing, rejecting large swathes of church teaching &c
      2. tens or hundreds of millions of semi-pagan "Catholics" in Africa & Latin America, eg
         1. in Brazil, the largest catholic population in the world, about 1/2 also engage in various spiritualist &/or voodoo-type practices
         2. the highest official illegitimacy rate in the world is Panama (83%), because, although the population are 90+% baptized Catholic, most of them get married in the old pagan way, not recognized by Church or state; similarly to a lesser extent in a number of other countries
         3. many millions of polygamous catechumens in Africa
4. It's misleading to say the Church didn't execute people, when it encouraged the state to do so: Excommunicamus, 1231, incorporated into canon law burning at the stake by the secular arm as punishment for recalcitrant heretics (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed, vol 3, page 87).

Peter jackson (talk) 11:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

1. A publisher is not "reliable", per se. Publishers whose books are peer-reviewd are more reliable for that reason. However the principal peer review in this case said that the statistics were, biased, utterly confusing and suspect. That does not make it a reliable, or even a good source for a very contentious claim.

2. Indeed. But they are the best source for the topic, and do not have to be interpreted. It is the interpretation of primary sources that is problematic in WP terms.

3. The claim of 5 million "martyrs" is indeed outlandish. I have never seen a claim for even a tenth of this figure in any reliable historical source.

1. We do not need another reference that disagrees with a preposterous or unproven claim. If I produced a claim that President Obama was a muslim spy, that is an unusual claim that requires a lot more proof than just one published source. We would not need a source that says "Mr Obama is not a Muslim spy."

2. If the point is that some listed as Catholics do not practice regularly, that is probably something that can be included somehow. On the points od the third world Catholics, this is purely subjective opinionising, and perhaps a little patronising or racist at that. Third world Catholics are no less Catholics than any other. Accusing people of being "semi-pagan" without proof is not on.

4. Again. I don't think anyone is trying to pretend that the Church did not support the death penalty for recalcitrant heretics. States adopted it largely because they feared the civil-strife that extreme heresy almost invariably brought. Practice varied from country to country. Xandar 15:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I followed your link for WCE review & found a list of 3 reviews:

1. Theology Today, broadly favourable
2. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, which seems to be the one you're referring to
3. Sociological Analysis, vol 44, issue 1, pages 70ff, (I give the print details as the electronic version doesn't seem to be open-access): this is a Catholic periodical, published by Oxford University Press, which describes the book as a masterwork, says most of the data probably are reasonably accurate & that sophisticated demographic procedures are employed

What's your basis for describing the 1 that suits your case as "the principal peer review"?

Read the RS guideline. It clearly does describe publishers as reliable sources (I think the verifiability policy does too). The reason is that reputable academic publishers, like reputable academic periodicals, have a pre-publication peer-review process. For example, Cambridge University Press has its books read & reviewed by 2 or 3 specialists before committing to publishing. They're also read by 2 or 3 other people with degrees in the general subject area, who may suggest improvements. OUP must be similar.

You still haven't quoted any source that disagrees with the 5,000,000 figure. Your subjective opinions of what is outlandish are of no particular relevance to WP. What counts in practice is the consensus:

1. of those currently hanging around this article
2. of those who turn up for peer review
3. of those who turn up for FAC

The term "semi-pagan" was just a convenience. I wasn't suggesting including it in the article. (And in fact I wasn't suggesting that 3rd world people are necessarily more pagan than Westerners, though it's a different sort of paganism.) Are you disputing the more concrete facts I mentioned? I can find sources for most or all of them if necessary, but the facts about Western society at least are notorious & very familiar to most of us.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "It is the interpretation of primary sources that is problematic in WP terms." Perhaps that wasn't intended as a general proposition. Remember the Bible is a primary source. Are you suggesting the articles on Christianity should be based on that? To the contrary, it's the primary sources that are problematic in WP terms. Policy is to give the interpretations in secondary sources.

On the particular question of church membership statistics, bear in mind that, in a number of Latin American countries, the total claimed membership of all churches is greater than the population. Either some of the figures are wrong, or a lot of people belong to more than 1 church, which brings the meaning of the figures into question. I hope you're not claiming that RCC's claims should be treated as more reliable than others. Peter jackson (talk) 16:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Peter... First of all, let me say that I appreciate your comments. They provide a useful critique of the article which is canted in a number of places towards a positive presentation of the Church rather than what would be, IMO, a more objective and neutral presentation which provides more of the negative perspective. I am generally keeping out of the discussion because you seem to be more knowledgeable than I so I will let you present the points which need to be addressed.

That said, I think you misunderstood Xandar's point about "interpretation of primary sources". He's basically saying that using primary sources is OK if there can be no question about how to interpret the assertion. We cannot use the Church's returns to assert that "the Catholic Church has x million members" because the definition of member is subject to interpretation; however, we can say that the Catholic Church reports that it has x million members. Any discussion of issues about the meaning of "member" would have to be cited by a reliable source. The issues you raise may be valid but we would need to find a reliable source that raises these issues; otherwise, discussion of these issues is just original research.

--Richard (talk) 16:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Peter. The principal review of this work which I quoted located here, is the one used as the main Editorial Review by Google Books, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. This review is pretty devastating, ripping the statistics apart as "confusing," "highly-suspect" and "biased," , and concludes "Not recommended." The two fairly favourable reviews you mention are both twenty five years old, one from a presbyterian source, and refer to the first edition. However the other modern review here, is also a really bad one, pointing out numerous errors, confusions and contradictions in the statistics. The book seems to be basically a one-man operation, containing thousands of originally researched "facts". OUP will not have the staff to check even a tiny fraction of this stuff, which is why so much dubious content has clearly not been caught. The allegation you quote is itself preposterous, and does not seem to be backed up. Who were these five million? When and where were they killed? By whom? Under what circumstances? Such wild claims really have to be backed up by precise information. See the policy WP:REDFLAG. Exceptional claims not covered by normal sources require exceptional sourcing. Xandar 01:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I've had a look at the review listed at top. (I have to say their layout is unclear & confusing, & I didn't notice this one at first.) What book is it talking about? It describes 3 volumes: vol 2 corresponds to vol 1 in the set we have here; vol 3 corresponds to our vol 2; there are only 2 vols mentioned in the listing of contents. Why should a review in Cahner's Business Information of a book about religion be considered superior to the other 3, which at least are in relevant periodicals? Are Google &c good judges of this sort of thing?

These are the biggest book distributors, all indipendently used the same review despite the fact it would harm sales. That means it is pretty much the prime review. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

"OUP will not have the staff to check even a tiny fraction of this stuff, which is why so much dubious content has clearly not been caught." True. However, this actually applies to all "reliable" sources, to a greater or lesser extent. This is a large part of the problem with Misplaced Pages. The only way to get round it is by a thorough search of all reliable sources on a particular point. You can then analyse them to find why they disagree & try to reach conclusions on the state of scholarship. You can find an example of where I've tried to move towards this at User:Peter jackson/Sources for early Buddhism, but even that covers only English-language sources & is probably incomplete even among those. In conclusion, the whole thing's probably impossible.

Using one source for a controversial point, even if reliable, is probably bad practice. Significant criticism of a source increases the need to be wary of it. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Your last remarks are simply repeating what you said earlier & don't require a reply.

The point is that the particular claim under discussion is not credible. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Richard, I agree with what you say. I wasn't really criticizing the article on this point: you can see it wasn't on my original list of points. The reason I raised the issue was that Xandar cited a review criticizing WCE statistics as "anthropologically useless". I was pointing out that the statistics in the article, along with those in articles on other religions, are open to the same criticism. They're basically statistics of nominal adherents, regardless of actual belief & practice. On primary sources, just remember that, even if you phrase carefully to say simply that the primary source says such-&-such, without committing yourself to whether it's true, you're still always selecting, which may be POV in itself. That's a general point; I'm not saying it's relevant here. Peter jackson (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Having just checked, I'd point out that the article at present does not treat the primary sources that way. It asserts simply that there are so many Catholics. But the sources are a news agency reporting the church's own figures, & the CIA. In fact much the same figures are given in standard reliable sources like WCE. Peter jackson (talk) 10:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

And . Peter jackson (talk) 10:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Adherents

Peter Jackson has questioned the reliability of the Catholic Church's self-reported figure for adherents. While it should be patently obvious that there are issues with this figure, we have to decide how to characterize the claim and whether to present the issues.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously but I note that the article does not claim an explicit number but rather asserts "is the world's largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of the world's population".

Is there reason to dispute this assertion as stated? Are the issues mentioned by Peter Jackson in the section immediately above significant enough to change the assertion? (viz. could the issues cause the assertion to change to be less than one half of all Christians or say one-seventh of the world's population?).

Adherents.com reports 2.1 billion Christians and 1.1 billion Catholics. So... if the number of Catholics is off by more than 50 million, one could argue that they represent less than half of all Christians. Is there a reliable source that makes this argument? A possible fix would be change the text to say "approximately half of all Christians" which makes sense anyway since 1.1/2.1 is just barely over half and the phrase "over half" suggests significantly more than half.

World population is reported as 6,763,557,000. One-sixth would be 1,127,000,000. One-seventh would be 966,000,000. Difference is approximately 161 million. Would the issues raised by Peter Jackson change the figures by more than 80 million (half the difference between one-sixth and one-seventh)?

Note that one percent of 1.1 billion is 11 million so we are asking whether the numbers claimed by the Catholic Church are off by 4-7%. If the issues raised by Peter Jackson would shift the numbers that much, then we should look more closely at the text. Otherwise, in the absence of a specific number being asserted in the article, I would be inclined not to push the question further.

--Richard (talk) 15:33, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Is there a distinction between members and adherents? For instance, as a baptised (and confirmed) Roman Catholic, the Church still counts me as a (lapsed) member but as I haven't been to Mass for years I am hardly an adherent of the faith. What do the figures relate to? The best guide would be Mass attendance. I know my local diocese publishes these in its annual directory, is there a central source for this worldwide, i.e. a department of the Vatican that collates the figures?Haldraper (talk) 08:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

, as its name suggests, counts adherents. In theory this means people who call themselves Catholics, Hindus ... regardless of belief, practice or instituional links. This is determined for most countries on the basis of census returns &/or public opinion polls. There are all sorts of problems with this, eg

1. non-existent religions: the Australian census records significant numbers of people calling themselves Methodists, even many years after the Australian Methodist Church united with other mainstream Protestant churches
2. answers can vary with form & context of the question
3. neither the website nor WCE actually applies this principle consistently: eg they have a category called something like Chinese folk religion, which seems unlikely to be the answer of any significant number of people

Nevertheless, statistics of adherents are regularly included in all sorts of reference books.

Membership means different things to different religious groups. For the Catholic church it means, I think, subject to correction, all baptized Catholics who haven't told the church they no longer wish to be considered members. (For all I know they still count my mother, who's been a Methodist for decades.) This is why statistics for some Latin American countries add up to more than the population: many Catholics have joined various American(-inspired) evangelical/pentecostal groups. For "free churches", membership means something much more active. Thus comparing membership statistics for different religious groups is not comparing like with like.

On the question of whether Catholics are a majority of Christians, most of the sources I've come across say they are. An exception is the Bible Society, which gave them rather less than 1/2. I'll see if I can find the ref.

You have to be careful about comparing figures from different sections of that website. They seem to be derived often from different sources, perhaps using different methodologies, & sometimes contradict each other.

Now to the issue actually raised at the head of this section. I'm not sure whether the issues I raised actually affect things very much. What I was highlighting was the fact that (nominal) adherence can have little to do with actual belief & practice. Large numbers of people who call themselves Catholics

1. reject substantial amounts of Church belief
2. &/or don't practise it
3. &/or practise elements of other religions (or quasi-religions) as well

This applies to other religions too. How would you define a "true" Catholic? Misplaced Pages policy is to avoid taking sides in such disputes: if any reliable sources have expressed opinions on the point, &/or given statistics of "true" Catholics, then it might report those. Otherwise, adherent statistics are about the only comparable ones available. That leaves the question of whether to say anything about this, & if so what? As I said, this applies to other religions too, so maybe it should be referred to the religion project. Peter jackson (talk) 11:04, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Peter, I think you're right that the RCC regards all those it has baptised as members, whether practising or lapsed (or even excomunicated, who are simply barred from receiving sacraments). As I said before, I think Mass attendance would be the best guide, i.e. practising Catholics (including professed 'cafeteria' Catholics who only follow parts of the Church's teachings). I just dug out the figures published by my local diocese for estimated Catholic population and average weekly Mass attendance for 2004-2007 (the last year for which complete figures are available): 2007: 198,405; 35,348, 2006: 223,132; 36,003, 2005: 195,717; 37,232, 2004: 234,692; 38,814. So on their own figures, discounting those who attend irregularly, about one in six baptised Catholics attends Mass weekly, a basic measure of adherence I would suggest.Haldraper (talk) 13:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• These are interesting and important issues, and in my experience not often well covered in the media, or Church sources - perhaps I'm wrong. I think a well-researched section devoted to them would be an excellent addition - ideally with a separate article with fuller details. Johnbod (talk) 14:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with having such inforamtion, but just remember that you can't use that sort of thing to compare sizes of different religions. They have all sorts of different criteria. Peter jackson (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

There are problems with using anything other than the official Church numbers. Unless there are scholarly studies which attempt to apply a rigorous methodology to all religions, anything else smacks of original research. I acknowledge that Haldraper has a point that weekly Mass attendance is an indicator of the level to which a particular Catholic practices his/her faith but it is very risky to try and establish a figure that is somewhere between 100% of reported Catholics vs. 1/6 of reported Catholics who attend Mass on a weekly basis.

For example, Haldraper's suggestion of weekly Mass attendance sounds reasonable but it excludes Christmas/Easter Catholics and the sick and elderly. There are many Catholics (and Protestants) who are derogatorily referred to as "Christmas/Easter" Catholics because that's when they go to church. This is why the churches are packed to the gills on those days. Does this make them a non-Catholic?

Does Haldraper think that adherents of the Protestant denominations go to church every week as well? That's a rhetorical question. Not all of them do. In fact, in my church (Presbyterian), less than half of the membership attends worship on any given Sunday. Our periodic review of the membership rolls starts by identifying members who haven't been seen in any church function (worship or otherwise) for two years. The primary motivation for reviewing the membership rolls is that our church contributes to the presbytery a dollar amount for every member on our rolls so there is a financial incentive to keeping our membership rolls low. However, because membership is about more than money, we make every effort to keep people on our rolls if they show even the slightest interest in remaining a member and only remove them at their request or if we are unable to reach them.

BTW, despite worshiping with my family at a Presbyterian church, I self-identify as a Catholic although it is generally a year or more between the times that I attend Mass. I ain't leaving unless the Church asks me to leave.

I think this entire line of discussion leads nowhere. A change of a few percent could change whether the Catholic Church represents "over half of all Christians" or just "approximately half of all Christians". If this distinction is deemed important, we can make that change.

If the Catholic Church represented 30% of all Christians and the Baptists represented 28%, a change of 2-3% could affect which church was considered the largest. But, since that is not the case, I think we could go round and round this discussion forever and not come up with anything other than original research.

--Richard (talk) 17:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Richard, this conversation will not lead anywhere. Some individuals can be very exercised over what numbers are reported on membership rolls of any church, take your pick. In reality churches do the best they can to report those individuals have been members of the church at some point. Unless an individual asks for their name to be removed, their name stays on the rolls. Who goes to church, who doesn't, who believes, who doesn't, how much of the doctrine does one embrace, how much of the doctrine is not believed, etc. are impossible to report.

I appreciate the old saying, "there are lies, damn lies, and then you have statistics". The best statisticians in the world try to report which candidate will win the presidency on the day of election and they seldom get it right. These same statisticians also try to guesstimate the "correct" number of church members for Christian churches after talking with 30,000 to 50,000 people. Who is right? The churches that report or the statistician? Neither will be; they both have done the best they can. We can report what is said, but nothing more. Those who get hot and bothered...I guess will stay in that state until they just let it go. Cheers. --Rider 18:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid that's just inadequate. As I said above, free churches like the Baptists count only active adults as members. It doesn't make sense to compare those statistics with Catholic membership figures based on quite different criteria. Treating church figures as fact is not NPOV, & as I again pointed out above it leads to total membership more than population in some countries. This is quite different from the situation in the Far East, where people really do "belong" to 2 or 3 religions at once.

"Unless there are scholarly studies which attempt to apply a rigorous methodology to all religions, anything else smacks of original research." Haven't you been listening? We've repeatedly discussed 2 scholarly sources providing such statistics. Certainly WCE counts as RS by WP criteria.

Now, I've found that source I mentioned. UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends 5, The Future of the Church, Christian Research, ed Peter Brierley, 2005/2006, page 1.3, gives Catholic percentage of world Christians as 50 in 1970, declining to 43 in 1990, 41 in 2010 & 37 in 2050. The actual figures given, in millions, for 2010 are

• Anglican 97
• Independent 460
• Orthodox 226
• Protestant 399
• Roman Catholic 910
• Marginal 36
• Unaffiliated 117
• Total 2,245

• Even on the absurd assumption that all the unaffiliated are nominal Catholics, this still makes them less than 1/2, contradicting other sources. I leave people to argue among themselves as to whether this counts as a reliable source. Peter jackson (talk) 10:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I find that reliable. Especially since they group protestant alltogether. Also, those who do not attend mass should be counted- otherwise, all christian Denominations would be much lower. --Rockstone35 (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Those figures are not reliable. The review I linked to above for WCE specifically criticised these types of figures, (which seem to come from the same source,) and it is not clear how they have been "gathered". In particular, the reliability of "Independent" and "Unaffiliated" figures. Firstly the selection of categories seems to be arbitrary. Secondly most of these numbers appear to be estimated, since there is no reliable means to assemble or check this data. The figures for these two categories therefore become grossly inflated in my opinion. To use these sources to supplant more established means of enumeration, we would need to be much surer of the methodology used, and the standards of proof used to assign numbers in all these categories, as well as being sure that similar standards were being applied across all groups. Xandar 21:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

From the International Bulletin of Missionary Research review of WCE2, illustrating some of the problems.

The majority of new denominational bodies listed in WCE2 (not found in WCE1) are found in the Independent category. In addition, the new category absorbs the WCE1 category "Non-White ... Indigenous" and picks up a great many other denominations that formerly, in WCE1, were labeled Protestant or Anglican. For instance, in the United States, the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Chur ch, and the Presbyterian Church in America were all labeled Protestant in WCE1, but now, curiously, they are in the Independent category. The Reformed Episcopal Church was labeled Anglican in WCE1; now it is in the Independent list. The result is that Independents now outnumber Protestants in the world, and even in a traditionally Protestant heartland such as the United States, Independents outnumber Protestants--at least as they are defined and rearranged here.

the authors have also introduced three trans-megabloc renewal groupings: Evangelicals, Pentecostals/Charismatics, and Great Commission Christians (no explanation why only "Great Commission Christians" is always in bold-face type). There is extensive description and discussion about Pentecostals/Charismatics (1:19--21). But who are Evangelicals and Great Commission Christians? According to the Glossary (1:25ff.), Evangelicals (capital "E") are "A subdivision mainly of Protestants consisting of all affiliated church members calling themselves Evangelicals, or all persons belonging to Evangelical congregations, churches or denominations; characterized by commitment to personal religion." Great Commission Christians are "Believers in Jesus Christ who are aware of the implications of Christ's Great Commission, who have accepted its personal challenge... are attempting to obey , and who are seeking to influence the body of Christ to implement it." To further complicate the picture, "evangelicals" (small "e") are defined as "synonymous with Great Commission Christians," and those labeled "nominal Christians" in the first edition are now called "unaffiliated Christians." These are inadequate and confusing definitions and distinctions, and therefore the enumeration of them is suspect.

Other questionable categories included in the enumeration are "Latent Christians" (defined as "both Church members and unaffiliated, who do not involve themselves in Christ's mission on Earth"), "Non-baptized believers in Christ" ("Members of non-Christian religions who become converted to faith in Christ as Lord but choose not to join denominations but to remain in their religions as witnesses there to Christ"), and "Crypto-Christians" ("Secret believers, hidden Christians, usually known to churches but not to state or secular or non-Christian religious society"). If Cryp to-Christians are secret and hidden, how do the authors know so much about them?

How is one to account for gross discrepancies between information reported in WCE2 and other reliable sources? For instance, in the profile on Kazakhstan, WCE2 says that 8.6 percent of the population is Orthodox, whereas the 2001 World Almanac and the Vatican News Service both say 44 percent is Orthodox. WCE2 says there are 510,000 Roman Catholics in Kazakhstan, but the Vatican claims only 300,000. Peter Brierley, executive director of the Christian Research Association in London, maintains there are only 48,000 churches in Britain, whereas WCE2 says there are 66,000 (1:838, col. 82). Brierley also says that the figure of 12 million adults in the Church of England reported in WCE2 (1:145, col. 6, "Church of England") is about eight times the number on the electoral roll of that church.

This preoccupation with Pentecostalism and conservative Protestantism has led some scholars, such as Jan Jongeneel in Utrecht, to ask if there is an implicit or hidden ecclesiology and agenda a t work in WCE2. Xandar 22:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

"If Cryp to-Christians are secret and hidden, how do the authors know so much about them?" This suggests the reviewer hasn't studied the book carefully. Crypto-Christians are defined as those affiliated to churches but secret to society at large.

I'm not sure what these "more established means of enumeration" that you mention are. WCE's method is for the most part standard. They take census figures, public opinion polls, church membership figures (obtained from the churches themselves) &c. If the figures for adherents in censuses & polls are bigger than church figures, the difference is attributed to what were called in the 1st edn nominal Christians & are now called unaffiliated Christians. I think that's a more accurate term, since a lot of affiliated "Christians" are probably pretty nominal too. All this seems rather unexceptionable to me, with some qualifications.

The problems come when it goes the other way round. If the churches claim more members than publicly claim to belong to Christianity, then they usually count the difference as crypto-Christian. There's often a lot of justification for this. In most Muslim countries it's still legally a capital offence for Muslims to leave Islam, though I don't know about enforcement. However, even they have to admit that this won't wash in some cases:

1. in some Latin American countries, total claimed church membership exceeds population
2. crypto-Christians in Scandinavia seem a bit unlikely

But of course, once you establish from this that church figures are sometimes exaggerated, that raises the question of how much more of the same thing is happening. (Note that this doesn't mean deliberate exaggeration. Simply counting in people you haven't heard from in ages has the same effect.)

There's certainly some questionable categorization. They count Unitarians as Christian, even though their main international body had disclaimed the name some years before. WCE1 even counted scientologists as Christians; I haven't checked WCE2 on this. Contrariwise, 100,000,000 people who call themselves Muslims & Buddhists are hived off into a category called New Religions.

What's the alternative? As far as I know, nobody has produced statistics of the world's religions by any fundamentally different methodology. They all count nominal adherents without reference to belief, practice & organizational links, because there's no alternative. If you try to count by beliefs, which indeed you can do through public opinion polls, the question is what beliefs count. What do you have to believe to count as a Christian? What do you have to believe to count as a Catholic? Who decides? Any answer adopted by Misplaced Pages is likely to be OR & POV at once. Much the same goes for practice. Is a practising Catholic one who goes to church weekly? (Was that rule introduced in the 16th century?) Or one who receives the sacraments annually? As to organizational links, I already mentioned above the difference between traditional churches counting all baptized members & free churches counting active participants. And most non-Christian religions aren't really organized at all & have no membership figures.

What can you do without figures? You could say without fear of contradiction that RCC is the largest religious organization in the world. That's simply a notorious fact that's not going to be affected by any of these considerations. But you can't even say it's the largest denomination, because Sunni Muslims are similar in numbers (but not organized). Peter jackson (talk) 16:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Rockstone inadvertently made a interesting point when they said 'those who do not attend mass should be counted- otherwise, all christian Denominations would be much lower'. The opposite is actually the case: the figures quoted for not only the Catholic but other Christian churches should be lower than they are shown now. Peter Jackson has a point when he says you can't count those who actually believe in what the Church teaches but that's beside the point: under canon law, a practising Catholic is someone who attends Mass weekly (unless physically unable to do so) and goes to confession at least once a year, irrespective of how much of the Church's teachings they ignore/reject. That's easy to count, the figures I quoted for my local Catholic diocese show that. Even the Church of England has a roll of registered members, just under a million iirc.Haldraper (talk) 13:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Still Adherents

Peter jackson brings up a very vaild point that had a rather simple improvement. Although it is still not (in IMHO) the ideal way to do things I think a fair compromise is to

(1) change the article lead from "...the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of ..."

to "...the Roman Catholic Church, has the world's largest Christian church membership, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of ..."

and (2) somerwhere lower down in the article-- discuss the number of Roman Catholic members and Roman Catholic adherents and what it means (or doesn't mean) to be a member of the Chuch.-- or if not that, this infomation could be in another "note". -- 21:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting point, Carlaude. It would certainly enable us to short-circuit a lot of argument and private interpretation. Xandar 22:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me to be even worse.

1. On the one hand you're comparing the Catholic Church membership with total numbers of "Christians".
2. On the other you're comparing its membership with those of churches with much stricter membership criteria.

Neither is comparing like with like. I don't see how this could "short-circuit a lot of argument and private interpretation". Peter jackson (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree; it is not comparing like with like, but this lead was always doing this. The improvement is to state explicitly (or more explicitly) what the article is trying to compare to "total Christians" and "total world population."

Oh course-- this would be a much more fair statement if it only compared RCC membership to total world population, saving the reference to "total Christians" until a fuller explanation can be made. 12:34, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Claimed membership should be irrelevant, even if referred to as "claimed". Self-identified is the more appropriate measure and should be used if available. In extremis, imagine another Church which claims all humans as members based on its own criteria ... this would clearly be a nonsensical number and not used. The Church claiming members on their own definitions is clearly not a reliable, independent source on this topic. A possible start (for US numbers) is http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm BobKawanaka (talk) 13:37, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Bob, I agree that claimed membership is problematic but what is the alternative? As the academic study you cite says, "To be sure, the significance of membership (its importance, its criteria, and even its definition) varies greatly from one denomination or faith to another. This study is not in position to evaluate the meaning or importance of religious institutional membership for particular groups. On the other hand, given that about eighty percent of adults identify with some religious group, there appears to be a considerable gap between "identification" with a religion and reported "membership" or "belonging" to a an institutional embodiment of that faith community."

Unless you're saying the CC is inflating figures for weekly Mass attendance, I would still argue they are the most accurate and objective measure of the number of practising as opposed to baptised Catholics.Haldraper (talk) 20:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Weekly mass attendance ("praticicing Catholics") would be better than "membership", or "claimed membership," but not as good as "adherents" only because we will not have real numbers for the weekly attendance of all other Christian Churches, but will have numbers for adherents of all other Christian Churches. (Does weekly mass attendance count people twice if they come twice in the same week?)

But I will agree to anything that is an improvement, anything that says what it is comparing.

Assuming we may not get consensus on comparing adherents to adherents, please comment on comparing the number of Catholics only to total world population in the lead, sidesteping this apples-and-oranges issue until lower down in more detail. 21:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

We're moving off-topic here. The headline figure needed here is Church membership/affiliation - not estimates, arbitrary measures, or Original Research on how committed members are. Weekly mass attendance figures are a) Not available on a global basis, and b) Not an accurate measure of anything. Other religious groups also would have severe problems if measured that way. How many Buddhists attend temple weekly? How many Muslim women go to mosque? How many atheists go to secular societies? Other Christian groups sometimes tend to have wild overestimations of membership - often based on pastor estimates. Evangelicals tend to count people who come forward at meetings to be "saved", even though they may often be repeat offenders who return to their normal lifestyle within weeks. The C of E assumes anyone who isn't something else is a member, while also using Easter Church attendance and the Electoral Roll as very differing means of estimating active numbers. Therefore it's right to stick with the standard figures for the lead, and perhaps have a brief (referenced) discussion of activity issues in the relevant article section. Xandar 00:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Bringing up Buddhist and Muslim attendance numbers is the only moving off-topic I see.

I assure you as someone that has known many Evangelical leaders that none of them have ever confused being "saved" with being a member. In fact, because members vote occationaly, they need a system to know who members are. The point is that counting all the people who are brought forward to be "baptisted" as babies is not a real measure of church affiliation, even if they are "baptisted" just once. Scholars know this and that is why they have developed the adherents measure. Now I cannot speak about Anglians, but if you think everyone else has bad means of keeping track of membership, then why is it that you think we have to use membership as the measure? 02:12, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Xandar, on your point a) I'm not so sure as you seem to be that there are no figures available. Dioceses certainly publish them as I have shown, I'm assuming the Vatican has access to that info and collates it. Whether or not they then release it is another matter. Your point b) is a joke right? You're not seriously comparing atheists' attendance at secular society meetings (completely optional) with practising Catholics at weekly Mass (fundamental requirement) are you?Haldraper (talk) 08:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Also Xandar, you're wrong on the CofE. They don't regard 'anyone who isn't something else is a member', like the CC membership is via baptism. And within that they have a roll of 'registered members', i.e. regular attenders, who have a vote in elections to the lay section of the General Synod.Haldraper (talk) 08:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Attending weekly Mass is no more a "fundamental requirement" than is fidelity in marriage. Infidelity in marriage doesn't mean ceasing to be a Catholic; still less does "missing Mass" make someone cease to be a Catholic. Defteri (talk) 11:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that it starts to look like Original Research if editors were to take attendance numbers and deduce adherents, simply using a number from the Church itself is not credible. The Church itself is clearly not an unbiased source on this topic and it vastly overstates membership. As a starting example, the Church claims something like 90% of South America as “Catholic” yet recent polls show that only 71% self-identify as Catholic and only 40% of those self-identify as “practicing” http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm and further only 75% or so of the population is over 18.

0.71*0.4*0.75=21.3% *383 million = only 81.5 million over 18 practicing RCC’s in South America versus

0.9*383=345mm or so claimed by the RCC

The difference is 263 million in S.A. alone.

Similar percentages of self-identified “practicing” are seen in Spain and Italy also (i.e., around 40% of those that declare as Catholic).

The Church can claim and believe that all those baptized under its auspices are Catholic until they say they aren’t, but as I remarked above, this is the sort of statement that could be made by any number of groups and is not one that need be perpetuated by Misplaced Pages.

I propose that in the introduction, something less specific is warranted … something like “worldwide influence”, “largest Christian church”, “hundreds of millions of members” are all reasonable sorts of statements … and later in the article, a more in-depth discussion of the issues surrounding claimed memberships can be discussed. While I understand that may not please members of the Church, please remember that Misplaced Pages is separate from religion. Claiming the Church has a billion members surely has a nice ring to it but it’s not really defensible in any secular way. BobKawanaka (talk) 14:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree-- technically-- but if others do not agree, this issue can be posted at Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard asking for their input, and/or their informed opinion here. -- 15:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Back to sources, please

I have not read every word of the discussion above but it seems clear to me that there is a lot of original research going on as evidenced by sentences that start with the phrase "I think...". It's fine to challenge the Church's claim based on baptized members, just provide other sources who offer different statistics. Is there a number for Mass attendance or other measures of "adherents"? Is adherents.com a reliable source? By this, I don't mean "are their numbers more reliable than those of the Catholic Church?". What I mean is "Are the numbers provided by adherents.com reliable enough that their numbers are used by other reliable sources?". We should not be looking for a single reliable source that provides a single definitive number. We could keep the Catholic Church's number of 1.1 billion members in the lead and then provide a note which amplifies the issue of what membership means including the fact that this includes lapsed Catholics and others who may practice their faith in unorthodox ways. The note could also include figures from adherents.com and any other reliable sources.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Richardshusr (talk • contribs)

I have modified the lead to say "approximately half" instead of "over half". In truth, it is only slightly over half and a small difference in the way the figures are computed could change it to "slightly less than half" rather than "slightly over half". "Approximately half" seems like a good way to hedge our bets.

Peter Jackson cited the UK Christian Handbook which suggested that Catholics accounted for 40% of all Christians worldwide. Xandar dismissed this source as unreliable. I think the principle to use here is that it is not our job to present in the article what we think. It is our job to present what reliable sources think. I would object to using only the 40% figure provided by the UK Christian Handbook but I think it is reasonable to present it as one data point in a range of estimates. If we provide all our sources and leave it up to the reader to decide which source is most reliable, we have done our job.

One source that I have left out is http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm which was presented by BobKawanaka. I think Bob presents valid arguments but since the source that he provided focuses on Latin America, it would be original research for us to use this source to make assertions in the article about the worldwide figures for Catholicism and Christianity. I would be open to presenting Bob's arguments if it was based on sources which provide figures for the worldwide memberships of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.

--Richard (talk) 16:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

One of my points of course is that by citing the disparity between the Church's estimates in Latin America vs. a cited reference with no skin in the game: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm, that it is unreasonable to cite a headline number that is only based on what the Church claims. The number is open to dispute and since the introduction is not really the place for an involved discussion about what the true numbers mean, I feel it would be better to be less specific about the numbers in the introduction. In fact, it is not necessary to a good article to quote numbers in the introduction. The Church is clearly a biased source on the topic, that's not meant to be derogatory or to suggest foul play, but we must be honest, the Church citing its own membership is not an unbiased source. A more in depth discussion can be had later but numbers like a billion are just not defensible and rather than having a back on forth on what the numbers really are in the introduction, it would be better to say things like "largest Christian Church" and "several hundred million ....". BobKawanaka (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Bob, my most recent edits to this article have started to make the point that the Catholic Church's figures are not to be accepted uncritically. I have pointed out some of the issues using citations to reliable sources provided by other editors. However, to attempt to make any assertion about global statistics based upon the regional statistics provided in http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm leaves us open to the charge of original research. If this is truly a substantive issue, surely somebody somewhere has said something on this topic that we can cite as a reliable source. For starters, why not look at how many members the Catholic Church claimed in the mid-1990s and compare that against the Encyclopedia Britannica's figures as cited in adherents.com? If there's a disparity there, we can follow up on why the disparity exists. If, as you say, "numbers like a billion are not defensible", then surely you can find some reliable source which makes this argument. I believe you but Misplaced Pages isn't about what you think or what I think but about what reliable sources think. Without a citation to a reliable source, any challenge we make is original research. In particular, the chain of logic that you present based upon that statistics in http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm is original research and synthesis, even if it's true (which it probably is). You can see from my recent edits that I am not opposed to your view. Help me make a similar edit that makes your point. --Richard (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion of mediation

The mediation on the name of the Church is now concluded successfully. Part of the action plan that arose from the mediation was to hold a community-wide consultation regarding a proposed article name change to "Catholic

Church." The consultation centered on one key question: Can one church appropriate a name for itself? The discussion on this topic examined other churches' use of the term “catholic.” The related topic of whether the term “Catholic Church” was thereby ambiguous was also discussed. There were lengthy discussions regarding the process of the consultation and the interpretation of WP policy and guidelines on article naming.

There was general agreement on the following:

• The Church most commonly refers to itself as the “Catholic Church.”
• The Church also refers to itself as the “Roman Catholic Church” in some contexts.
• The proposed lead, supported by a new explanatory note, adequately reflects this.

A majority of those who commented expressed the view that the proposed name change was in accordance with Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines on article naming and indicated their support for it. This, in the view of the mediators supports the consensus of the mediation to rename the article, modify the lead sentence to read: "The Catholic Church also known as the Roman Catholic Church...," and add the new explanatory note prepared as part of the mediation. These actions will be taken within the next few days. All editors are enjoined to respect this consensus. Sunray (talk) 19:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you choosing your words carefully? In legal language "enjoined" refers to an enforceable order. Peter jackson (talk) 10:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

A common dictionary meaning is "instruct or urge." I like that better. And since most will recognize that consensus is a policy, rather than a court order, I figured that this would be a good word. There may be a better one, but there it is... :) Sunray (talk) 15:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I had the same reaction as Peter jackson. On the other hand, it's just a word and I accept Sunray's explanation. At the end of the day, the point is that there is a consensus of over 20 editors supporting these changes or at least agreeing not to object. This dispute has lasted nearly a year. Anyone seeking to overturn the consensus should be aware of the lengthy discussion that has gone into the forging of the consensus and should consider the difficulty of getting 10-15 of those editors to change their minds. I would want to see at least 7-10 editors offering dissent before reopening this discussion.

That said, the core of the mediation hinged on the status of "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" as "official" names of the Church. The nub of the agreement was that Misplaced Pages would neither assert nor deny that the Church had a single "official" name; however, the consensus agreed that there could be a strong implication that the most commonly used name in official documents and contexts was the "Catholic Church". At the same time, Misplaced Pages will assert that "Roman Catholic Church" is sometimes used in official documents and contexts although some Catholics dislike this name because of its use to further sectarian polemic.

Any other text in the lead or the Note is open to debate although much of that text was extensively discussed and so shifting the consensus on that text is also likely to be difficult.

--Richard (talk) 16:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Since we needed an admin to make the move, I've gone ahead and done it. It didn't seem to make much sense to do that and not make the rest of the changes, so I gave that a stab as well. One thing I wasn't clear on was the hatnote - I think I've got that correct, but feel free to fix it if that's not quite right (I had no idea how many otheruses and redirect template variations there were!). Shell 18:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't the talk also be renamed?--Rockstone35 (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I should have specifically checked that the talk page worked correctly. It and the archives should now all be properly moved. If you see anything else funny, please let me know. Shell 19:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Questions about explanatory note

Points #1-3

Carlaude contacted me on my talk page to remind me that some questions and concerns he had raised during the page rename consultation had not been dealt with. The issues he raised during the consultation are the following;

As some of the participants are aware, but have not addressed, the new explanatory note cantains unsouced allegations, namely:

(1) While I am sure Protestants have used the term, so have other Christians, NonChristians, and as is clear elsewhere, "Catholics" have used the term of themselves.

More to the point the cited souce does not attripute this to Protestants; it attributes it just to others and Misplaced Pages should only attribute it to others."

(2) The reference cites only a basic info about the book and a http address at books.google.com that will be a dead link once the book falls below sales quotas someday. It should quote the source, Walsh, Michael (2005). Roman Catholicism as such:

If the whole quote is deemed too long including part of it could be fine.

(3) Since RCs have theological reasons for objecting to "Roman Catholic Church" then (to not be POV) you have to include the theological reasons of other Christians for objecting to "Catholic Church."

Non-RC Christians, object that rather than merely being under the implication that their Church is "one of other, equally valid, kinds" of Christians, Catholic Church implies that every other church is not even "one of other, equally valid, kinds."

--Carlaude 11:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

In his first point, Carlaude notes that the citation (Walsh) does not use the term "Protestants." I think he is correct that it is misleading to do so in the explanatory note. It seems to me that a fairly simple change to the note might address this concern. For example, by simply eliminating the word "Protestant" or substituting the word "others" for it, the statement conforms to the citation.

His second point seems to me to be a technical fix needed for the citation. His third point is more complex. He is questioning whether the note is neutral in not mentioning that many Christians are opposed to the name "Catholic Church." This seems like something we should consider. i will hold my own view for now, but will participate in the discussion (not as mediator). Sunray (talk) 21:48, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't like to reopen the issue of the note this quickly. However Carlaude's points may have got buried in the other discussion. The first and second point seem fairly minor. As far as the third point goes, I am loath to put too much in the article on the views of other Christian groups on every issue. I don't want to set any sort of precedent on that line, since the article would quickly become a debating ground between differing denominations. On Carlaude's proposed wording: "many Roman Catholics dislike the label "Roman Catholic Church" as a suggestion that theirs is only one of several equally valid churches; whereas other Christians object that the label "Catholic Church" presumes it is the one uniquely valid church."

I doubt this is mandated by WP rules. If this were so, then "Orthodox Church," "Assembly of God", and "Church of England" would probably have to have the same disclaimer. If we were to accept this wording, I would certainly add "some" before "other Christians". Xandar 22:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

As for other Churches and there article names-- we would not be in the same situation for any other group. "Church of England" is a name that supports the implaction that other denominations are valid. The name of "Assemblies of God" (and other groups) could be misunderstood to have implication, but they have no history or doctine to support such an idea. It is not really an issue because they have no other name.

The "Orthodox Church" (meaning the Eastern Orthodox Church) might well have some history of claiming itself to be the "one uniquely valid church" but its article uses the name Eastern Orthodox Church-- a name that does not imply one uniquely valid church, like "the Orthodox Church" could. In fact until a few weeks ago "Orthodox Church" pointed to a disabiguation page, mostly due to the Oriental Orthodoxy; the article is not named Orthodox Church and if it were it would cause a bit of difficulty with Oriental Orthodoxy-- which is not part of it.-- 06:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that "some" should be inserted before "other Christians" if the second clause is inserted. I also would like to see sources for the second clause. I don't doubt the truth of the statement but I think we need to be clear as to what percentage of other Christians feel this way (I don't mean an exact percentage but are we talking 10%, 50% or 80%?). I know that there are evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who feel this way but what percentage does that represent? It may take a while before we are able to wrap our brains around this issue. I also think this belongs more in "Criticism" than in the Note. A whole section or even article can be devoted to "Ecumenical relations between the Catholic Church and other churches". --Richard (talk) 00:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the premise of #3, the statement is: "Since RCs have theological reasons for objecting to "Roman Catholic Church" then (to not be POV) you have to include the theological reasons of other Christians for objecting to "Catholic Church." This position is of the CC, not other Christians. The beliefs, doctrines, etc. of other Christians is irrelevant at this stage because it is the CC's teaching, belief, etc. Carlude, do you have a reference for stating that other Christians object to the name Catholic Church? All we have been talking about is what the CC believes, teaches, etc. in relationship to the name of their church. How others feel about it is a different topic entirely.

I think it is more appropriate to abbreviate CC, rather than RC. --Rider 01:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

But we have not just talking about what the RCC believes and teaches. This part of the note talks about why some prefer one name over another. If we wanted to remove all the langage that indicated why many Roman Catholics dislike the label "Roman Catholic Church" over "Catholic Church" it would also be NPOV but I didn't think we wanted to do that. -- 07:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with number one, I thought we had caught that while we were still in mediation, but I guess that slipped through. Number two, I have no problem with adjusting the referencing and abbreviating as long as the meaning is preserved. I've read somewhere on Misplaced Pages that there's an archive site that will preserve a link, though I don't remember off the top of my head where that was. As far as #3, I agree with you; but I think this needs to be treated delicately. I don't think we lose anything by not stating the non-catholic position, but it does seem to naturally follow from the CC objection to the name RCC. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 05:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure inserting "some other Christians" is fine.

The source for the second clause is the the source for the first clause. That is also why it is best to leave them togther. There are two sorts of Christians here, as Walsh makes clear-- those that understand "Roman" before "Catholic Church" to imply there are other "equally valid" Churches-- and those that do not.

"Catholic" is not a word invented or used only by Roman Catholicism so there is no reason to think it is only the Roman Catholics that understand the words to have such a theological implication. I also do not see what being evangelical or fundamentalist whould have to do with it. To me, I would think it be more common among the Anglicans or "other" Catholic, but I am just saying "other" Christians.

There was never provided a "percentage" of how many Catholics had an opinion and there should be no like burden to find a poll of all other Christians. -- 07:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Umm... did you intend to put this below my comment? Because I was agreeing with you, this is kind of confusing. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 11:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for posting your agreement. I my comments were more directed to those above you but I was just trying to post at least some of my comments at the bottom, per normal people. Sorry if that was unclear.-- 21:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

1. The name "Church of England" historically meant the C of E, & excluded eg Presbyterian Church of England
2. Some radical Protestants would reject the whole idea of "catholic" as simply unbiblical, & wouldn't care less who claims it

Peter jackson (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I made the first change proposed above, substituting "others" for "Protestants," as several people agreed with that and no one opposed. The second change, I am unsure about. I don't think that we necessarily need to make the change now. If the book drops off google's radar, we can simply re-work the citation accordingly. Does anyone hold strong views either way on this? Sunray (talk)

Point #4

• While we're here. This line, "The name "Catholic Church", rather than "Roman Catholic Church", is usually the term that the Church uses in its own documents", is supposedly meant to say "The name CC is used by the Church more often than RCC in its own documents". Why can we not just say that? Gimmetrow 13:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Is that an issue of substance or semantics? They both seem to mean the same. Do you think the second version sounds better, or is there a difference or nuance you attribute to version # 2?--anietor (talk) 16:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The "rather than" line is separated off by commas, so it doesn't restrict the main clause. Thus it makes the statement: "CC is usually the term". The other form makes the statement restricted to two terms, "CC is used more than RCC". Gimmetrow 16:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That sentence has long bothered me. I think that Gimmetrow's suggested change is simpler, and, thus, likely to be more easily understood by the average reader. Sunray (talk) 22:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The existing sentence is a little ugly, however Gimmetrow's proposed change significantly weakens what it states. "..used more often than RCC.." would tend to imply that the Church might use CC 51% of the time and RCC 49% of the time - which is false. Better would be: "The name CC is generally used by the Church in preference to RCC in its own documents", or something similar. Xandar 23:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Then say "The name CC is usually used by the Church over RCC in its own documents." 01:32, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Words like "preference" and "over" would imply things that are more controversial than relative frequency of terms in a document, and they aren't sourced. Would "The term CC appears more often than RCC in its own documents" make Xandar happy? Gimmetrow 16:54, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with what Gimmetrow is proposing although I think a better wording would be "In its own documents, the Church uses "CC" more frequently than "RCC". (add "much more frequently" if you like although "much more" is kind of vague and subjective). Using Xandar's "generally used" approach, I would prefer "In its own documents, the Church generally uses "CC" and, less frequently, "RCC". (or "much less frequently" if you insist) --Richard (talk) 17:09, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Richard's wording: "In its own documents, the Church uses "CC" more frequently than "RCC"." Each proposed version has been a slight improvement. Great collaboration! Sunray (talk) 23:11, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Changing the series name

Now that we have offically changed the name on Misplaced Pages to it's real name, Catholic Church- we should begin changing all references to Roman Catholic Church. First up "Part of a series on the Roman Catholic Church" is in the name of the series, we need to change the name —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rockstone35 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Some of us realised all along that it wouldn't be too long before this sort of nonsense started if this article's name was changed. Good luck trying - you'll need it! Afterwriting (talk) 16:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It was stated during the discussion, that the result only applied to this article. Other articles would have to be dealt with on an individual basis. For example I would see that "Roman Catholic" might be useful on articles on theology, where confusion could arise as to "catholic" beliefs accepted by all churches with a claim to catholicity, and beliefs specifically belonging th the Church subject to this article. With organisations, "Catholic" should be used if it is used by the orgainisation. In names of bishoprics, where Eastern and Western Catholic bishops, or bishops of other denominations also exist with the same title, "Roman Catholic Diocese of..." might be the better choice. In other places "Catholic Diocese of..." or just "Diocese of..." might be more accurate, easily found, and in co-ordance with popular and actual usage. It is silly for example to talk of the "Roman Catholic Diocese of Rheims" - as if there were others. Xandar 22:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree that article renames and the like should be done carefully and on a case-by-case basis. In some instances Roman Catholic is still appropriate. When in doubt it's best to pose the question on the talk page of the appropriate article. Majoreditor (talk) 03:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

need help re footnotes (Origin & Mission)

I just added footnotes 47-51 (re "Origin & Mission"), which are external links for CRS, Cath. Charities, Caritas Int'l, St. Vincent dePaul Society, & Worldwide Marr Encounter (to their websites). Although I used the cheatsheet, I unfortunately did not do them correctly. When you look at nn. 47-51, you'll see that each one has red lettering, indicating my error(s). I just printed out Wiki's "Tutorial (External links)", which I will try to understand and work on -- in the Sandbox, which may take me a while .... In the meantime, would one of my fellow users be so kind as to correct my footnotes, by adding the reference name for each footnote, e.g., Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas International, Society of St. Vincent dePaul, and Worldwide Marriage Encounter. Thank you for your help and your patience. Happy Independence Day! Eagle4000 (talk) 21:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I've removed these links. Citations shouldn't be needed for these well-known charities. Sunray (talk) 06:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

mea culpa; Wiki is worldwide

Yesterday, in my request for help re correct Wiki citation formatting, I wished everyone "Happy Independence Day". A fellow user gently reminded me that not all users are Americans, i.e., that Wiki is worldwide. To my fellow users who are not in the United States, please accept my apologies. It just occurred to me -- as a new user -- that it is amazing to realize that I am now part of a "worldwide" group of people, who are using the computer to collaborate on a worldwide project, i.e., the various Wiki pages ...! Just as other inventions -- e.g, the wireless, the telephone, the airplane, etc. -- made the world smaller, so too has the Internet. Eagle4000 (talk) 17:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No need, Eagle. As someone in Britain of English and Irish descent, I'm happy to accept (and return) your best wishes on the 4th July: there were more Englishmen and Irishmen on the American side of the War and Independence than on that of a German monarch with a mercenary army. Raise a glass for me!Haldraper (talk) 19:01, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

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