Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism/Archive 2011

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Help needed

Are there any folks here willing to help watch Catholic doctrine regarding the Ten Commandments? It is a featured article, and it's been apparent to me that no one is watching it, at least very closely. Anons and new editors routinely show up and introduce all kinds of unsourced or poorly sourced information. The primary editor doesn't seem to be around any more. --Andy Walsh (talk) 21:48, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

If there is too much vandalism, you can just use Wikipedia:Requests for page protection and ask for the page to be semi-protected. That will slow down the vandals in any case. History2007 (talk) 23:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that you are an Admin. So why not semi=protect it yourself as a start? History2007 (talk) 23:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

We don't semi-protect an article over random poorly sourced edits; we do so for vandalism and other issues. Hence Andy's request for more watchers to keep the sourcing up to FA standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, please do feel free to watch it. But from a philosophical and strategic perspective, my view is that there are just not enough people with subject expertise to keep watching all the articles that have been carefully developed, and then gradually decline in quality through rust and corrosion. Strategies that were suitable in the early days of Wikipedia will gradually need to change as the profile of users and the number of users change. In my view, this is an instance of a lager trend which calls for a wider implementation of the "revised change" policy. I am sure that day will come, we should just accept it now. If I were to watch all articles that I want to watch, I would be doing so 72 hours a day. So there is need for a strategy change, but that is a separate topic. History2007 (talk) 08:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Um, it's rather apparent that Andy asked for watchers for this article because it's a featured article, and if it's quality declines, it could lose that status, via WP:FAR. If that's not a concern for WP Catholicism, carry on. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:13, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I do not think we are going to agree, but obviously I do not speak for everyone. Yet, in my view, it is a question of "allocation of resources". If you look just above here I just made an "ER list" of articles with no references and some articles where the validity of every single sentence is in question. And articles like principle have zero references - so it is a Wiki-wide problem. The facts is that there are not enough people to do all that "needs to be done", so resources need to be used carefully and policy needs to support that. In my view, outdated policy is not supporting us by not having protection of well-edited articles - and the bots need serious improvement. A bot should have caught this, and I am not even going to try to see if the date 1215 that was removed today was valid. Will anyone else check that? I do not know. Personally I do not care about FA vs FB status - what matters now is the "protection of content" via better policy. The fact is: there are now too many IPs out there (and increasing every week) and not enough established editors to clean up after them. That is why there are SOS calls right and left these days. Policy needs to change. Maybe we should all go and add references to principle instead of talking here. Let us leave it at that. I will stop now. History2007 (talk) 21:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Andy, as you probably can already tell, I have added it to my watch list. Thanks. Marauder40 (talk) 14:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Watching. – SMasters (talk) 15:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Including article in Catholicism Portal

Hello. I've recently been working on updating the article for my alma mater, the Cardinal Gibbons School. How would I go about requesting it to be added to the Catholicism portal and be rated? Thanks! Wberkey (talk) 05:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Article on Christ

I see almost no representation of Catholic views in the article on Christ. I commented on: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Christianity#Article_on_Christ as well, but suggestions for fixing that article will be appreciated. I can do the fixes, but would like to get suggestions on what should go in. Else, please do feel free to fix it, for it needs help. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 11:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Mess with the default sorting

Can someone stop user Lukascb from messing up default sort of parishes and churches in Category:Roman Catholic parishes in Connecticut and Category:Roman Catholic churches in Connecticut. He added a lot of stub articles, which confused the matter of the parish and church in the article, and we do not know what is the article about. --WlaKom (talk) 23:02, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Anti-Eastern Catholic edits

24.3.217.6 (talk · contribs) has made about 100 edits in the past few months, pushing a rabid Eastern Orthodox POV that pretty much denies the existence of Eastern Catholic Churches and their validity. He insists that Eastern traditions have been usurped by Latinizations and that Rome "stole" the Eastern Catholic Churches from Orthodoxy. He deletes links to Eastern Catholic Churches from articles and changes the order so that Orthodoxy comes first. I am coping with most of his edits, but it would help if someone else with a good knowledge of Orthodoxy would look over my shoulder too. I am not sure about Eternal sin and his latest whopper, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, for instance. Thanks! Elizium23 (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, the challenge is finding "someone with a good knowledge of Orthodoxy". I have not seen that many people who know that topic in detail, and I do not know it myself. So I am not sure what can be done. You should post to project Christianity in my view, people there may know more, and will cost nothing to post there. History2007 (talk) 08:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, good job finding this prejudice. I'm not too familiar with the topic but I've found that Eastern Catholic Churches in general are not well covered on Wikipedia.---James R (talk) (3 Feb 2011)

Excommunication "too good to be true"

In the List of people excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, there was the item about Nazis being excommunicated in 1931. ref given as http://www.ptwf.org/Downloads/Bavarian_Nuncios_17Feb1931.pdf This seems entirely too convenient. The date is way too early. And no, my Italian is a "bit rusty" (read:non-existent), but assuming that it says what is claimed, I would doubt it anyway. The Vatican signed a (now much maligned) Concordat with Germany after that date. It doesn't seem likely. It was deleted by an unregistered user. I was about to restore it "automatically" but now am wondering if the IP is right. I think I will leave it deleted. (A follow-up question would be, "Why isn't this published all over the place, instead of in a primary reference" (technically illegal in Wikipedia anyway for that reason). Student7 (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. Considering that the Reichskonkordat wasn't signed until later, and the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, not until (as I recall) 1937, I'd say your skepticism is probably well founded. The document certainly wouldn't be a blanket excommunication, since some (such as Hitler) were never excommunicated; possibly on a case-by-case basis? Of course, the Concordat was mainly concerned with guarantees of rights to the Church as well as to clergy and laity in Germany, not as a critique of Nazism.--Lyricmac (talk) 06:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Student7, my Italian is fairly rusty as well, but it seems to be a letter originating with Archbishop Alberto Vassallo-Torregrossa, the nuncio to Berlin, with a copy endorsed at Vatican City to the Sec'y of State, Cardinal Pacelli to the bishops of Bavaria titled, 'Instructions of Bavarian Bishops to the Clergy regarding[or concerning] National Socialism (with 2 attached examples)'...I don't see excommunication mentioned anywhere in the body of the letter, with the possible exception of the fourth section, which mentions in passing the 'participation...in the sacraments of confession and communion'.--Lyricmac (talk) 06:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The last three pages are in German, and, while I've never been very good at reading German, they seem to say things like "Priests are not allowed to join the Nazis" and "Nazis may not wear their uniforms and carry flags while marching in church processions" and "Whether Nazis may receive the sacraments must be decided on a case-by-case basis". The last, BTW, implies that wholesale excommunication is not contemplated in that document, since I understand that reception of what it calls "the holy sacraments of the Altar" is always and automatically forbidden to excommunicated persons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the letter it has some phrases like "what the Nazi regard Christianity is not our Christianity" but practical effect seems very limitted: its says Nazis are forbidden to take part in religious ceremonies - in military formation, uniform (and with flag - german part). They don't like the army to march through their church in full glory but that is far from excommunicating anyone. In the German part, main complaint is that the Nazis give the race a higher priority than the religion and worry about a (independent from Rome) National Religion. Further it elaborates that the Nazis deviated from their original (and apparently church sanctioned) anti-Marxism to anticlericalism. The Italian letter seems like a brief and not very exact summary of the "Pastoralanweisung" which confirms the impression I had after reading the Italian part, ie practical consequences are very limitted although the church might have done much more if it had dared to. It does further try to differentiate several points of Nazi agenda as "acceptable" and "anticlerical" and goes on to compare its stand on Nazi ideology with the likewise unacceptable socialist and marxist ideologies. Richiez (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

(My Italian is far from good; but I know some French, a little Spanish and (very) little Latin, and this helps me some in reading Italian. My German is better. The following short summary is based on that understanding.)

The Italian text is a summary of the enclosed German one, a pastoral letter. The text is authorised by "the archbishops and bishops of Bavaria". There is no indication of either an approval or a disapproval from the Vatican authorities of their decisions.

The text considers the National Socialism party ideology as consisting of two parts, a political on the one hand, and a cultural and religious on the other. The bishops declare that they in no way want to infringe on the right of the Nazis to have their political opinion; but that as regards religion the views and the "cultural struggle" (Kulturkampf) is unacceptible, and not compatible with Christ's Christianity (i.e., with Christianity in a true sence). Therefore, the full party programme is condemned [in the same manner and with similar consequenses] as was the old liberalism and is socialism.

The clergy are completely forbidden to participate in the party activities, as they have enough understanding to know that the religeous standpoints are unacceptable. As for common people, if they support the Nazism just because of its political side, but remain true to the church, it is OK; if they also understand and support the party programme points about religion, it is unacceptible. Party members who have been barred from pertaking in sacraments and die in an unshrifted condition, still may get a Christian burial, if they during their lives in their acts otherwise stayed loyal to and peaceful towards the Church.

If in the future the party should turn to methods such as the Communists use, which is hoped not to be the case, then the barring of remaining followers from the church and its sacraments will be absolute.

I think this could be considered as a condemnation of the NSDAP as a whole; however, not for the reasons we with hindsight might wish. The political views are considered as permissible, and no (unacceptable) bad concrete practices (like violent anti-Jewish campaigns) are recognised to exist. More important: The document in no way clarifies whether or not the church as a whole (i.e., the Holy See) participated in or at least upheld the local decision in Bavaria. However, if the decision was endorsed by the Vatican, it certainly involved excommunication of, or at least an interdict against, those Nazis who actively upheld the whole party programme. JoergenB (talk) 00:43, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Assuming that the letter is true (a puzzler why it isn't analyzed someplace by a competent researcher), it does seem to indicate a "detachment" from National Socialism at a time when most people in America thought that Hitler was "great" for Germany. Shows a certain reluctance that researchers seem to have overlooked. Student7 (talk) 22:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that (assuming this to be no forgery) it should not have been overlooked. I suppose that this is a strong indication that the Holy See did not make the decisions their official policy. Possibly, they directly overruled it.

If it should be a forgery, IMHO it is on the one hand a rather clever one, and on the other a very stupid one. The texts appear to be rather authentic; including minor differences between the German (seemingly printed) pastoral letter, and the Italian hand typed one. On the other hand, as a forgery it is rather stupid, since it is presented as coming from the Vatican archives, and it should be relatively easy for the Vatican to disclose a forgery. (Provided, of course, we do not think that any Vatican archivalists would have forged and inserted this into the archives themselves; but what reason would they have?) It is presented as a report to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli; and it even has a diary number (497/31). There would be no problem at all for Vatican officials to check whether dossier 497 from 1931 is identical to this report, or not.

Still, I think it would be better to have some confirmation from an academically sound secondary source, before employing this primary one in WP. Hopefully, an historian would also be able to provide the response from the central authorities to this report of a local decision. JoergenB (talk) 11:24, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You say that this document "could be considered as a condemnation of the NSDAP as a whole; however, not for the reasons we with hinsight might wish." I think it is fair to say that, in 1931, the concerns of the German bishops, was the persecution of the German Catholics; specifically, the restrictions on their religious freedom and autonomy. This document states that the leaders and active members of the Nazi parties may not partake in the sacraments (i.e., are excommunicated), and leaves to a case-by-case determination the rights of those who may voting for the Nazis. I would note, too, that the determination of the German bishops to separate the leaders of the Nazi party from the sacraments did not need approval from the Vatican; that falls within the jurisdiction of the local bishops. As for explicit condemnations of the anti-semitism of the NSDAP, look to Mit brennender Sorge (a 1937 encyclical). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.9.3.194 (talk) 20:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Very large, multi-article AfD

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Mark Church (Stratford, Connecticut) is a very large, multi-article AfD discussion about a whole bunch of Catholic churches/parishes (that's actually part of what's being discusses). More thoughts would be helpful. LadyofShalott 16:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they want to delete 20 articles or so all at once. I said there it needs to be one discussion per article, can not try 20 people on the same charge in one go. History2007 (talk) 18:33, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree with History2007. Discussion is about everything and nothing, and should stooped and started in this forum about the basics of editing articles churches and parishes in the U.S. and other countries.--WlaKom (talk) 20:49, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I visit here to invite editors who are members of WikiProject Catholicism to consider commenting in the AFD. It is about 64 articles on churches and/or parishes, mostly in Connecticut. I believe that it is likely to result in most of those articles being deleted or redirected, with any substantial content either moved to the creator's userspace and/or with the content moved to a single list-article for each diocese that is involved.

I believe that parishes are NOT being accepted as wikipedia-notable topics for separate articles, unless there is unusual coverage and the topic would meet Wikipedia's General Notability standard. Some information about corresponding parishes can be included in articles about churches, if the church has an article. I believe that church articles are accepted as wikipedia-notable if the church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, or if notability is otherwise established, but most churches are not notable.

Please note: This AFD may be followed by other AFDs addressing parish and church articles in other states. By my brief browsing in Category:Roman Catholic churches in the United States by state, i do not notice a big problem with non-notable churches in other states. But, browsing in Category:Roman Catholic parishes in the United States, I notice 48 parish articles in Massachusetts and a few in other states, that I personally expect should be deleted in another AFD.

Since following AFDs will cite the resolution of this current AFD, please be informed that you might wish to comment in the current AFD on what are, or should be, the standards for notability of parishes and churches. --doncram 00:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Boy, oh boy. Who is even going to read 40 articles to decide "in one go"? Not me. However, does the legalese: "please be informed that you might wish to comment in the current AFD on what are, or should be, the standards for notability of parishes and churches" suggest that Wikipedia policy is being set in an Afd via precedent? That does not make sense to me, for policy setting seems like another issue. Can that be done? This last comment sounds so legal-like it is so unlike Wikipedia. I feel like I need my attorney present before I type here! Or how does one spell WP:Wikilawyering? This is just so very strange. History2007 (talk) 00:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

In any case, the Afd closed shortly after this post with no deletions. History2007 (talk) 04:27, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Notability for parishes or churches

This is an extension of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Mark Church (Stratford, Connecticut), which closed with a suggestion that standards of notability be established or at least discussed and suggested that this page might be the place to do it.

Though I'm not Roman Catholic, I believe in general that the Church is not a building, but the people who are served by the building. WlaKom's definition above:

See the church and the Church. --WlaKom (talk) 18:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The parishioners' + the church buildings (very often more then one) + parish school + cemetery + sometimes more than 100 year history of our ancestors

should be a very workable definition for Wikipedia's use. Occasionally church buildings are, sold, abandoned, etc. and resurface in another church, but that shouldn't be hard to deal with. Also we would probably want to focus on the religious aspects of the history of the church-people.

Rather than start with a definition of notability, let me just list a number of things that could be used to establish notability:

• Listed on the National Register of Historic Places or similar in other countries - all by itself should establish notability
  • Also inclusion on state or city landmarks list, or inclusion in a Historic District
• Is a major pilgrimage site
• Is a cathedral, basilica (major or minor), or the seat of a bishop
• Long documented history, e.g. built before 1800 or one of the first churches in the county, diocese
• A good example of a well-known architect's work
• Is a major tourist attraction (most churches are not visited by tourists, those that are major attractions can be included)
• Relation to well known social movement or historical event (e.g. a big strike, WWII recruitment drive)
• Relation to an ethnic group, especially if the church is known in the home country or related to social movement
• Relation to well known people (e.g. burials, clergy, parishioner/politicians)
• Mentions in a book (check out Google Books) - e.g. for historical event, notability for tourists
• Achievements of school (even in local newspapers) - but an average school is not notable by itself
• A big disaster - e.g. fire or earthquake - that has been mentioned in the press.

I invite other contributions to this list. I don't have a strict rule to say when a church is notable or not, but in regards to the AfD above, I'll say the first thing is to assert notability - i.e. say why the author thinks it is special in some way. As a rule of thumb, I might suggest that 1 item from near the top of the list might establish notability, or 3 items from near the bottom. Hope this helps. Smallbones (talk) 15:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

added a few from below Smallbones (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• Notability: Inclusion in any city or state landmark list. Examples: List of New York City Landmarks and St. James' Church (New York City) on the NYC list. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• I was always under the impression that all churches were notable. I also think that parishes are an important organizational level, and thus notable as well. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Coming from the Bible Belt, it seems to me there is no way that every single church is notable, any more than every single mom and pop restaurant is notable. There needs to be something to indicate that a given church is notable. LadyofShalott 17:38, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to agree with Our Lady of Shalott (not that I find her disagreeable in any way). In America - even outside the Bible Belt - there are multiple diverse churches just about everywhere - often with just a couple of dozen members. It may be different in countries with an established church where a parish church may be something like a city hall in some ways. How many churches are there in the world? Off the top of my head, I'll guess 10,000,000 - add in synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. - make it 100,000,000. Too many for each to have a separate Wikipedia article. So the problem is to determine which are notable. The general rules on notability of course apply - ultimate over-simplification 3 references in reliable sources. But there appears to be some confusion on church's notability, so a discussion of what makes a church notable would be appropriate. Smallbones (talk) 19:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Just a passing comment, provided you do not count me in this discussion because it is not really my discussion. I remember reading somewhere (I can not remember the link) an interview with Jimmy Wales where he said something like: "I don't think every high school deserves a page, but it is not up to me" and he said "it is not up to me" a few times there, and suggested some method of standard setting. And I think not every high school gets a page. Perhaps you guys can use analogical reasoning with high schools and see how they get included/excluded. And what if a church has a school? Does the church get a page if the school gets a page? Anyway, if you manage to find the interview with Jimmy Wales that may give you a basis for analogies, etc. and his suggestions may be used etc. given that he may know a few things about Wikipedia. Cheers. History2007 (talk) 00:49, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to get into this discussion to deep, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. Even though technically a parish is seperate entity then a church, most are tied to a church in some way. Having seperate articles seems like duplicate effort. In general this would mean two pages for EVERY church in the US since most US parishes have their own church. IMHO it makes more sense to have the parish mentioned on the church page for the simple fact that there are churches that don't have parishes assigned to them (i.e. monasteries, friarys, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception), but as far as I know there aren't any the other way around. Yes a single church may have multiple parishes assigned to it, but I don't think there are any American Catholic parishes without some church or other as its homebase. Of course whether this is a hard rule with no possability for change is doubtful because there may be some "historic" parishes that warrent their own page, but that could easily be judged by if the "merged" page becomes to large. As for whether churches belong at all, they like any other page need to have some degree of notability to be on WP. But apparantly that degree isn't to large since most schools can have their own page now, why can't most churches.Marauder40 (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I haven't seen a good resolution of the old High School notability debate, so I think Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) is the controlling guideline. It's quite a bit stricter than WP:High Schools, an essay, and Wikipedia:Notability (schools) (failed proposal). In practice, I'd guess the last 2 are more indicative of what most people would allow, but still a bit lose. WP:High Schools and WP:Schools together suggest that all school districts are notable and most high schools can probably achieve notability. Parallels here? Probably that all dioceses (not all parishes) are notable, but many parishes, especially those with high schools can routinely achieve notability. Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) is a bit tougher and strictly rules out non-independent sources (here it would be church produced materials). Smallbones (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Quoting from that, from Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies): "An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. All content must be verifiable. If no independent, third-party, reliable sources can be found on a topic, then Wikipedia should not have an article on it." Yep, that sounds reasonable. About churches vs. parishes, i think it is best to have the article at a church name, since there usually is a one-to-one correspondence. In Catholicism, "parish" seems to be used to describe the people and area covered by a given church, where other religions use the term "church" to mean both the building and the congregation/area. Nothing is lost by just covering both topics parish and church building in one article at the church name; there usually should be one article not two. --doncram 01:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

• Catholic or not, the vast majority of readers will understand a Church to be a building. If it is meant to be a parish, then it should be stated as such. Some parishes can have several churches. For example, the parish of French's Forest in Sydney has three churches. For the list, you can add:
  • Is a major pilgrimage site
  • Is a cathedral, basilica (major or minor), or the seat of a bishop
  • Is a major tourist attraction (most churches are not visited by tourists, those that are major attractions can be included)

I'll add more if I can think of any later. – SMasters (talk) 03:17, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Added above - Smallbones (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, if an article about both church and parish is really written mostly about the parish, then i agree the article could be titled using the Parish name and have the Church name be a redirect to it. The combo article should show that it is the intended destination for readers looking for either, by including

• a hatnote like Church of St. Ann (City, State) redirects to here
• Lede that mentions both names in bold, e.g.: "The St. Ann Parish is a parish in City, State that is notable for .... It includes Church of St. Ann located on Main Street at First Avenue....".

If the article is more about the church, then put at the church name and redirect from the parish name. One name or the other should be included in the combo disambiguation page at St. Ann Church, which should cover both parishes and churches. --doncram 14:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Next what? St. Ann Church, Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Protestant Church, etc, in the same category? You still don't understand meanings of the church and the parish. They are not exchangeable. Can you redirect City Hall to City or City to City Hall? --WlaKom (talk) 15:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I think you are misunderstanding where people are going with the discussion. It sounds like you want to have a "policy" for every single parish/church on WP. The problem is that policies like this don't usually work because how things are different throughout the country/world. The best thing to do is come up with a policy that fits the "typical" parish/church situation. In a typical parish situation you have a single church for a single parish. There is no reason to seperate the two. Odds are notability is easier to meet with the physical aspects of the church, much more then the nebulous aspects of the parish. It is extremly easy to summarize what the parish has done on the church page. In cases where there are multiple parishes that meet at one church it isn't a big deal to just list multiple parishes on the same page. As for parishes that have multiple churches for the same parish in general there is usually a primary church for the parish and the other churches are outreaches of such. You list all of them under the primary church, unless each of the secondary churches are important enough to be notable in their own right. Links would go between the pages. But still this is part of trying to create one rule for everything. Create the rule for the typical case, then the other cases can be handeled on a case by case basis. You will always have things that are more difficult (i.e. what do you do with "interfaith" centers?) but you can handle them when you get to them. As for churches with the same name, if there are several churches in the same city with the same name with different denominations then you would list St. Anne's Catholic Church (city, state), St. Anne's Byzantine Rite Church (city, state), etc. provided all of the individual churches meet notability.Marauder40 (talk) 16:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Articles are forced to be on physical churches rather than congregation because of sheer numbers, as Smallbones has mentioned above. Having said that, I would think that any organization with several thousand people would have created notability in several years of existence. And, as Smallbones statistics suggest, we don't want articles on a handful of congregants meeting in someone's house.

I hadn't heard Jimmy's arguments about high schools, but I assume this was done some years back. We have "kind of" changed since then. Wikipedia never stands still. I have yet to see a high school article successfully Afd-ed if fully described. Student7 (talk) 22:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I realize this is a more nuanced argument than I can fully comprehend but in light of notability issues, would it be so terrible (and I say this hesitantly so don't jump on me) to be building centric. If an article is about a parish church building, then the opening section is about the parish and a subsection is about the associated buildings. If an article is about a chapel of ease building, or mission church building, then it should reference the fact that it is located in the parish of X, along with mission church Y and chapel of ease Z. If the parish church of X isn't notable enough to have an article, then the parish information should be added to the that article. There's a good deal of redundant information in Wikipedia articles, and for the most part it's beneficial. I can't imagine that parish information could be so complicated to make its inclusion with a building article undesirable. I worry about comparability with other denominational buildings. Splitting parish articles from building articles might lessen the noteworthiness of both. Wikipedia doesn't have separate entries for Methodist Circuits, or (to my knowledge) local presbyteries. Anglican/Episcopalian is the best comparison and I can't see a separate system implemented for them on Wikipedia (not that the absence of alternative denominational examples should preclude RC examples). One potential example where a parish article could be more relevant than many building articles is if that parish has a history of many buildings in many historic locations, all noteworthy for articles, and has changed/rotated its parish church designation amongst those locations (which can happen, especially for older parishes). I realize that those arguing for separate parish articles have their points and are strong defenders of them, I'm proposing a simple amalgamation. Full disclosure, I am interested in historic architecture more than historic parishes.---James R (talk) (3 Feb 2011)

Is there going to be (or is there) a discussion on proper naming for church articles: St. Mary's Church (Town, State); St. Mary Church (Town, State); Church of St. Mary (Town, State); St. Mary's Church (Town); St. Mary's Church (State); St. Mary's RC Church (Town, State); St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church (Town, State); St. Mary's Catholic Church (Town, State), etc.---James R (talk)

See above #Standardization of the articles names of the parish and the church. --WlaKom (talk) 07:47, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move discussion - Pro-life

There is currently a requested move being discussed to rename Pro-life to Anti-abortion. Discuss here: Talk:Pro-life#Requested move --Elizium23 (talk) 05:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move discussion - Australian dioceses

Editors here may be interested in contributing to the discussion at Talk:Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne#Requested move. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 12:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussion closed; not moved. – SMasters (talk) 06:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Family Research Council

Hello, there is a discussion relevant to this WikiProject going on here which involves some users who wish to state that the Christian group, Family Research Council, is in fact a "hate group" in the introduction of the article. This group has worked closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Please see the discussion and consider the arguments for or against this inclusion there. Thanks, Anupam^Talk 06:19, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Project Conservatism

The brand new must-join project for Catholicism members looking for more... Check it out here. Lionel (talk) 00:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I see it as a "must avoid" issue, not a must-join project. As I said there, I wish this project will not fly, given that it was positioned against project liberalism. In my view, it will in the end lead to even a further polarization of editors and may encourage an unfortunate WP:Battleground mentality with them. The end result may be 90% talk page discussion and 10% good content. Then both groups will end up getting backlash from the larger community and there will be no real winners. I hope to see more cooperation and less polarization of editors. History2007 (talk) 17:28, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Propose merging Category:Roman Catholic parishes in the United States to Category:Roman Catholic churches in the United States

See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 26#Catholic parishes in the United States.--WlaKom (talk) 21:18, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Question

If a person (Cardinal who is Blessed, still not Saint) is beatified by Pope, is it more appropriate to use 'Infobox saint' or 'Infobox Cardinal'? Thanks, Kebeta (talk) 18:45, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably Cardinal, because not saint yet. History2007 (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

ProtectMarriage.com is listed at DYK

The latest Catholicism-related article is listed for DYK here. Come join the discussion to help shape the hook. Lionel (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Parishes and churches notability

Sources:

• CODE OF CANON LAW
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - The Parish
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - Ecclesiastical Buildings
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia - The Ecclesiastical Church

For me, all the sacred objects should be notable. Each is a distinctive object in a given location, because of the age and architecture, popularity, etc. Of course, in the initial phase, the lack of information may arise as a stub, but having a base, at least in the diocese. I am opposed to removing them, but if they are underdeveloped, should be transferred to author-sandbox, for better development. I understand objections to the words/names that are not too much on Wikipedia. Many descriptions of objects, for the last few years evolved only slightly or not at all, but that doesn't mean that they should not be. Wikipedia has the advantage that it still is someone who will find new source of the article and expend it. Still there are articles written on topics and categories previously unknown. Discussion should be focused on how to help develop the article and not delete, because some people do not like it.

Church, temple of other religious groups, it is just an empty building and as such should never be considered as a notable.

Strange for me is linking the sexual abuse scandal to the church as a building (unless you understand the Church as a faith). Whether it happened in the church (building)? That did the priest. If the information on this priest is associated with the construction/renovation of the church, this may be added to the article about the church where the information about this priest is part of article, but if he was a staff member of the parish or diocese, the information about him should be in the article about the parish / diocese. --WlaKom (talk) 12:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Based on a misunderstanding in the discussion about categorization of Roman Catholic parishes and churches, I add this comment again here:

Given that this is about faith, the classification of articles on enWiki must be based on full respect for the faith, its values and the official classification. People who write on Wikipedia does not have the right to force the classification of the articles and their notability based on their perception that the general principles of Wikipedia are in the first place, and then based on the classifications of the Protestant Church. Each religion has its own criteria for validity and division that must be respected. Statements of some people show a lack of knowledge about the Roman Catholic Church or religious intolerance. If in any religious group is the most important place and other objects are subordinate to it, is not allowed to change this.--WlaKom (talk) 18:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Parish vs church

Do not be confused the parish vs the church. The parish is the area, and the church is a building. So, the church is part of the parish not opposite. Some people don't recognize the difference between the ecclesiastical parish and the civil administration in other counties then Europe.

Also the church and the Church as a faith.

First of all, we have to decide what is the article about. Parish or church? We can't merge article about parish and church, area and buildings. Of course, text about the church can be section of the article about the parish. Also text about the parish can be section of the diocese. Then make the proper name of the article.

The best comparison is a city (area) <-> City Hall (the building). Nobody remove the article about the City because it is short and City Hall has a longer article. If we don't have enough information about the City Hall, we create a section in the article about the city, but when City Hall is well known, so even though we have little information on it, we create an article about it. In our case, when there is no information about the parish but we have information about the church, which has its own characteristics, then we create an article about the church. --WlaKom (talk) 12:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Notability of Ethnic parishes in U.S.

The parish is not just a group of people. It is:

The parishioners' + the church buildings (very often more then one) + parish school + cemetery + sometimes more than 100 year history of our ancestors (almost half the time the existence of the USA). Churches do not create the story. It parishes founded by immigrants formed the history of the United States, what is obvious for US citizens. It is the average immigrants, grouped in parishes, developed the city and created history. Wikipedia articles are created to broaden our knowledge about the past, discover it, rather than eliminate because it is not widely known at the time. Thousands of people browsing the Internet in search of their roots, information on how their ancestors lived. Then travel long distances to these places to see, touch.

On plWiki all parishes are notable and include also a list of parish groups, a lists of priests since its formation, a list of streets or places, even those parishes that are more recent, and the church is just under construction. Personally, I wrote articles about the parishes in New England built by the Polish community. More articles on the parishes in the U.S. I have written on plWiki. Most of the information about them is in the parish archives or private property of the faithful.

I chose the parishes in New England because they were more than 100 years old. They were created by Polish immigrants often bringing the sacred things from the former church in Poland and its priests (some cases where the whole village migrated to the U.S., such as parishes near Worcester, MA). Those parishes, often formed a large neighborhood that affect the expansion of the city. Polish ethnic parishes in the U.S. even had a representative at the Vatican. That is why I wrote only about those parishes. Sources of them, and of many, small, ethnic parishes, are not too much. Most are occasional bulletins, mentions in the press, parish chronicles, parishioners, or personal archives. Although my personal contact with the priests of some churches, I could not get more material, but I believe that there are many people who can develop these articles. Such discussions as this, many people are deterred from engaging. I have heard many times "I will not waste my time. because they will remove what I wrote anyway". --WlaKom (talk) 12:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with WlaKom that these articles have a great potential to collect information not found elsewhere and it is a shame they are so quickly questioned for notability. Ethnic parishes have the advantage of added notability though, especially if they are national parishes, and can have added notability from related ethnic culture articles (and ethnic history/events).---James R (talk) (3 Feb 2011)

Standardization of the articles names of the parish and the church

The names of articles should be written according to established rules for objects of worship. Patron/Call, Church, City. For example, "St. Mary Church, Middletown". But not "Church of St Mary. " Location in its name is compulsory in order to properly distinguish between when we have many similar names.

Sorting - Sorting is wrong now. If you sort by location: Country, State, City, it can not interfere with mixture of random names. There should be no separate "Church of St. Ann" and "St. Ann Church. " This is the same patron. You can always create a category by the patron, and sorting as "Ann, Hartford, "Holy Cross, Hartford", etc., more in the Help: Category.

I have noticed a tendency to change the name of the article without a place or put the city in brackets. Also I would like to point out that we should add the name of the state to the city's name, only if there are similar cities. I believe that such changes should be discussed in advance, because it concerns not only one state, but hundreds of articles, and change for all of the articles should be reported to Wikipedia:Bot requests.

The first sentence should be:

For the church: St. Ann Church in Hartford - Roman Catholic church in Hartford of St. Ann Parish Hartford, [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford|Archdiocese of Hartford]].

For the parish: St. Ann Parish in Hartford - Roman Catholic parish in Hartford of the Archdiocese of Hartford. --WlaKom (talk) 12:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Those need modifying to be actual sentences (rather than fragments):

"St. Ann Church in Hartford is a Roman Catholic church in Hartford of St. Ann Parish Hartford, Archdiocese of Hartford."

"St. Ann Parish in Hartford is a Roman Catholic parish in Hartford of the Archdiocese of Hartford." LadyofShalott 17:11, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The name of article for a church should be the actual common name of the church, and if it goes by "Church of St. Ann" then that is what its article title should be (with addition of "(City, State)" disambiguation for a U.S. church or other disambiguation if needed in the title). But, there should be one combo disambiguation page listing the wikipedia articles for places named Church of St. Ann and St. Ann Church and close variations, in just one combined disambiguation page. We do not get to impose an "orderly" or otherwise attractive naming system (besides in our addition of parenthetical disambiguation) upon the disorderly world out there. --doncram 01:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I: Who wrote the above? Was that all doncram? Naming American church articles "St. Mary Church, Middletown" or "St. Mary Church in Middletown" would be very problematic. The use of the preposition would be overly confusing in church article titles. In the UK, Wikipedia church articles generally follow the church dedication separated by a comma from its town. Th UK generally has very distinct town names so this not become a problem. This doesn't work in the U.S. because there many towns of the same name to each state: think Springfield. And it would be overly confusing to have the most significant town stand alone without a state while others would be labeled with states. Would Portland stand for Maine or Oregon? It's not worth the decision. For clarity's sake, it is best to follow the church's dedication with a town and state unless the combination would be overly confusing and/or redundant. Following that reasoning that both town and state are listed with the church dedication, the location should follow the dedication and be distinguished in parenthesis (), not brackets [], because a title followed by two commas is confusing. Containing the location in parenthesis adds to the clarity of the article title and helps the structure stand out when listed in various categories. Hence the way for best clarity should be St. Mary's Church (Portland, Oregon).---James R (talk)

II: I also believe that since most churches are titled with the possessive on their notice boards and official permit titles, than this should be reflected in the article name. St. Mary's Church (Town, State), instead of St. Mary Church, which does not sound right and rarely appears printed.---James R (talk)

The US church followed by the town and state makes good sense generally. We just fought a similar case out for neighborhoods in San Diego. It was determined that where names were not going to be ambiguous, the formal Wikipedia title could be shortened. So it probably should be "St. Mary's Church, Midville, Iowa" but it could be "Mary, Queen of the Universe Cathedral, Orlando" without the state. It can be up to the editor, but I agree that s/he really needs to be aware of future additions of similarly named churches. Student7 (talk) 21:13, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Avvenire links

It seems they recently changed something on their website and most if not all links are dead. It may also involve many other language wikies... does anyone know of a method to repair it with minimal effort? Richiez (talk) 19:55, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you have an old and new example? I can take a look, but I would say 10% chance for repair, when they change the site, it is just time to calmly panic, then hope you were dreaming. That is why external links are not a good idea. If the Vatican ever changes links, then we know the 2nd coming of Christ is close... History2007 (talk) 21:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I can only produce examples of not working links and did not find the replacement - some of the refs do not give a precise title or much help to search. I hoped there was some mechanized way to search archive sites and such given an old URL. Richiez (talk) 21:40, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

What is the Wikipage and what is the nonworking link? 3 examples will be good. History2007 (talk) 21:45, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Could find only 2 + one which already has a webarchive link, so maybe I was just unlucky to stumble upon those links which happened to break.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_crimes_and_the_Vatican http://www.avvenireonline.it/Famiglia/Speciali/bbc
• http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Vaticano_e_i_crimini_sessuali http://www.db.avvenire.it/pls/avvenire/ne_cn_avvenire.c_leggi_articolo?id=759317

Here is one that is broken but with a working webarchive citation

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrizio_Castori http://www.db.avvenire.it/avvenire/edizione_2005_10_15/sport.html

Here is one that is working: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Orsini_%28sociologist%29 http://www.avvenire.it/Cultura/Br+il+terrorista+gnostico_201003160902334370000.htm

Richiez (talk) 23:15, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Well if there are just 2 of them, then the 2nd coming i snot that close and no need to worry. History2007 (talk) 00:56, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well it depends how to count it, the it:Il Vaticano e i crimini sessuali page alone has 4-5 dead Avvenire links. I sure thought that is the end of the world when I first saw that and expected thousands of pages to be affected. Then again, it is probably not a good idea for the article to depend on so many sources from Avvenire so let them bitrot in peace. Richiez (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

On the Vatican front, one would have hoped that they would have put the encyclicals in the public domain etc. and they could have gone to WikiSource. But I read somewhere that they want money for the reprinting of encyclicals and sued a newspaper in Milan (really !) for a few thousand dollars to make a point. So for now one has to use links and Wikisource can not include Vatican items, etc. History2007 (talk) 22:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"Roman Catholic organizations" categories

There's been a small kerfuffle in the past couple of days over the assignment of the category "Roman Catholic organizations established in X century" to articles. The kernel of the problem appears to be that "Roman Catholic organizations by century" is a subcategory of "Roman Catholic Church organizations" - the first implies that organizations of Catholics can go in the category, while the second implies that this can only happen if they are official Church groups. Current practice appears to favor the former, with unofficial organizations such as Priests for Life, the Catholic League, the National Organization for Decent Literature, etc. being categorized there. (Some of these are recognized associations of the faithful, some apparently not.)

So:

• is this status quo good? if not,
• should all unofficial organizations be removed?
• should the category be further divided to separate official groups from unofficial groups, while retaining everything as a subcat of "Roman Catholic Church organizations"?
• should the category tree be split higher up, creating a separate category for unofficial groups that is not a subcat of "RCC organizations"?
• should organizations that are unofficial but recognized be categorized separately?
• etc. etc.

-- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:56, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I already removed some of the ones that appeared to be unofficial, like CatholicVote.org, per the parent category noted above.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:45, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

What I think you are looking for is something like Roman Catholic Church splinter groups but worded in such a way as not to sound 'negative.' To answer your question from the reliable sources page. Yes, the Catholic Church does have the authority to declare that a group is not part of the Catholic Church. Recognition of membership, in organizations with a centralized authority, is generally two ways... the sub group has to claim membership and the main group has to recognize said membership. If either group says no, then the relationship doesn't exist. What we need is a neutral term for movements within the Catholic Church that are not recognized by the heirarchy... hell, that might be the term Roman Catholic movements?---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if the distinction would be easily apparent (nor do I find "movement" a particularly apt word for describing some of these, just based on usage of the term "movement")...maybe distinguish "Roman Catholic organizations" (organizations of Roman Catholics, same format for groups of any other species of believer) from ""Official Roman Catholic Church organizations," which highlights both the officialness and the fact that it's an organization associated with the governing body? (Or in the latter, a word to replace "organizations" - "bodies"?) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

A sub-cat for say "Unrecognised/Unofficial Roman Catholic groups" might be appropriate - there are some historical examples too. A note can expand on the scope of the category. Johnbod (talk) 03:44, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This is troublesome, because organizations not sanctioned by their bishop or the Holy See have no right to call themselves "Catholic" according to the Church. But this is not the Church, this is Wikipedia. I offer no easy solution here. I would also mention that we should not indiscriminately use the term "Roman" in categories, because Eastern Catholics would be excluded by doing this. Catholic organizations are usually inclusive of Catholics belonging to all 23 sui iuris Churches in communion with the Holy See. One improvement you could make to an official category is to term it "canonically erected organizations" since this is the terminology used by the Church for recognizing them. Elizium23 (talk) 05:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

By Wikipedia convention "Roman Catholic" includes the whole church, which is indeed one of the normal meanings of the term. Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

By what Wikipedia convention? Where was this consensus established? I once again object to categories containing the term "Roman" on behalf of all Eastern Catholics. The Eastern Churches are not a ghetto, they are 22 out of 23 of the communion of Catholic Churches. Elizium23 (talk) 16:31, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

You actual proved the point, though. If we are using the term "Roman Catholic" then we are explicitly talking about the Roman Catholic we are explicitly discussing groups that are derived from Latin Rite churches.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I know of very few organizations that restrict membership to the Latin Church. (There is only one "Latin rite church.") The category heirarchy Category:Eastern Catholic organizations exists. What category would you suggest for all the organizations that do not restrict membership? Knights of Columbus for starters - their requirement is for "practical Catholics in communion with the Holy See." A recent article in Columbia magazine portrayed Canadian Knights helping a Ukranian Greek Catholic parish with remodeling and restoration. That parish has no council of its own, but it is likely they aroused interest among the parishioners. "Catholic organizations" should be a superset of the union of "Roman Catholic organizations" and "Eastern Catholic organizations". There is no confusion. The article Catholic Church was moved from Roman Catholic Church long ago. Please do not perpetuate the discrimination against Eastern Catholics. Elizium23 (talk) 19:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

"Roman Catholic" doesn't imply we're only talking about the Latin Rite church. There's no meaningful distinction between "Roman Catholic" and "Catholic" when talking about the Catholic Church. "Roman Catholic" should probably be avoided, however, as its use encourages misconceptions.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

And "canonically erected" would be things like curia and episcopal conferences, or...? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

There are actually about three types of Catholic organizations. Associations and Movements (canonical erection) - Roman Catholic lay ecclesial movement - Secular institute - Catholic Encyclopedia: Pious Associations - Society of Apostolic Life

I will note that Priests for Life is a Private Association of the Faithful, approved by their archbishop - that is official: every (arch)bishop has wide powers in his own (arch)diocese. Elizium23 (talk) 05:35, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I noted that in my original post. I don't think that makes it quite on the same level as, to choose randomly, the Pontifical Mission for Palestine. So how manifold should the subcategorization be? Do we distinguish between recognized and unrecognized, set up by the hierarchy or not set up by the hierarchy, all of these things? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that organizations approved of/formed inside the Catholic Church can be called Catholic organizations. Organizations outside the Church cannot really be called Church organizations. - Haymaker (talk) 15:28, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

They would not be called church organizations, but organizations of Catholics. A note on the category Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd say anything that's been officially recognized, as Priests for Life above, probably counts, unless we want to draw the line above the archdiocese level (which I'd actually feel more comfortable with, but it seems too far from current practice). --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm comfortable with Archdiocese but would not oppose a higher level. - Haymaker (talk) 15:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not concerned with the level that the group is "authorized" but rather whether or not a higher level has said "no". Married Priests Now! was created by an Archbishop, but is not recognized as such by higher church authorities and lead to the Archbishop being defrocked.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Capping at the "Archdiocese" level would be unhelpful. An archdiocese is really just a diocese headed by an archbishop. Generally, they are just one of several dioceses within a larger ecclesiastical province. Its archbishop may be metropolitan over the other dioceses, but that does not mean that all dioceses are part of the archdiocese.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:57, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

(EC-after a delay)In order for it to be considered a Roman Catholic organization, I would think it would have to be established by a Church/diocese or later recognized by one. If the local catholic church establishes a youth mission to Hondoras, that would be a Catholic organization even if it was just at the parish level. If, however, the priest/bishop/archbishop/pope/etc said, "No, you can't have a youth mission to Hondoras, and members of the Church proceeded to start one any way" then that would not be a Catholic Organization. Because we are dealing with a body that does have a defined structure/authority, that authority allows them to define membership. (To carry on your original question at ANI RS related to Roman Catholic Organization founded in the 20th century... If the organization were originally founded or recognized after its founding as a Catholic Organization and then excommunicated, it would still count as an RC Organization. In that scenario, we would be looking at the historical status of the group, not the current status thereof.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

So would "Organizations of Roman Catholics" be a good category name for the others (Catholic League (U.S.) et al.)? It'd depart from convention in terms of how categories are named, but it would get rid of some confusion. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:51, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It would work for me.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:02, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Upon more thought... The other idea I had was "Independent Roman Catholic Organizations." "Organizations of Roman Catholics" might be too broad because then you run into the question of "Well, is boy scout troop 2222 an Organization of Roman Catholics because 92% of its members are Catholic?" What percentage of the organization needs to be RC to be considered an Organization of Roman Catholics? And, does the group have to claim to be an Organization of Roman Catholics to qualify? "Independent Roman Catholic Organizations" could be used when the group is created explicitly to be a "Roman Catholic Organization" but may not have the backing/endorsement of the Church (capital C.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

That's a good point. (Also, I think it would make categorization easier if we used separate category trees - ie. "RC organizations by century" would still hold both official and independent organizations, but each organization's page would also be categorized according to whether it was official or independent.) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:13, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously a group would have to claim some connection to the Catholic Church (and this would have to be said in the sources) for it to be in any category related to Catholicism. So yes, the Catholic League would qualify; a boyscout troop that happens to be made up of Catholics would not. Also I'd shy away from a title like "independent Roman Catholic" so as not to cause confusion with independent Catholic groups.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, true. What other words could be used instead? - nothing's coming to mind that isn't either confusing/inaccurate or vaguely pejorative. (And of course your point about the organization claiming a Catholic affiliation is true. The current Supreme Court of the United States doesn't count. :P) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:34, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think Independent Catholic Churches would be a prime example of the usage for "Independent Catholic Organizations." Those groups claim to be true Roman Catholic Organizations, but are independent from Rome and the normal heirarchy. I would be concerned if "Independent Catholic Churches" was the specific name for a specific denomination or sect within the Catholic Church (ala Old Catholic or SSPX), but as it is a catch all for Roman Catholic Churches which exist independent of Rome, I think the term is ideal for them.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it would be a very good idea. The independent churches aren't in communion with Rome, but plenty of the groups which would be placed in this category are made up of people and churches who are in communion. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. There should be a distinction made between "organizations of people from independent Catholic churches" and "organizations of people from the Catholic Church (the one with the pope) that are not official church organizations". I don't think those should be the titles, though ;)--Cúchullain ^t/c 21:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Lots of good thoughts here. We had an allied problem with the LDS Church. In their article, they can be considered "Christian" but outside of articles dedicated to them, they are considered "non-Christian." Here, we can make the distinction inside their articles while calling them whatever they want to be called. Outside their articles, they are "Catholic churches not in communion with Rome." I sure hate to include the Episcopals by mistake though! :) Student7 (talk) 19:45, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you point to some articles where that distinction is made evident? It seems to me that LDS organizations and other LDS topics are categorized (for it is categorization that we still seem to be discussing) under Christianity. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

That seems very strange to me too. I've never heard of a consensus to the effect that Mormons should be treated as "non-Christians" outside of articles on Mormons (and would oppose it). As far as Catholic articles go, I think it would be fair to have a category for official Catholic organizations, one for unofficial organizations of Catholics (as in members or those associated with the Catholic Church), and then separate cats for Independent Catholic organizations. And none of those should contain the Episcopalians/Anglicans.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a brief and passing comment, given the length of this discussion. First, I totally agree with Cúchullain's suggestion about the category structure. Secondly, I think it would make a good Candid Camera episode to walk into a theology class at BYU and tell them they are not Christians. I would pay to see that episode. History2007 (talk) 15:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that they believe they are, which is why that is stated in articles about LDS. No other Christian group agrees with that, however. (Not really trying to change the topic here. I think may have succeeded though!  :) Student7 (talk) 17:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Even still, I doubt there's any actual consensus anywhere on Wikipedia that Mormons are not to be referred to as Christians outside of Mormon articles.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Okayyyy, focus. Concrete proposal:

1. "Organizations of Roman Catholics" will be a subcat of Category:Roman Catholic Church and of Category:Christian organizations by denomination. "Official Roman Catholic Church organizations" will be a subcat of "Organizations of Roman Catholics."
2. Category:Roman Catholic Church organisation will remain a subcat of Category:Roman Catholic Church but will be given a clearer name ("hierarchy"?).
3. "Roman Catholic organizations by century" will be a subcat of "Organizations of Roman Catholics."
4. Notwithstanding the above, an article will have categories indicating both the century it was founded and its status, eg. Catholic League (U.S.) would be in both Category:Roman Catholic organizations established in the 20th century and "Organizations of Roman Catholics."

-- Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

This seems like a fairly complex solution to a relatively simple problem. - Haymaker (talk) 15:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, the simpler solution would be to allow organizations like the Catholic League (U.S.) into the existing category, but everyone seems already to have voted that one down. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Haymaker himself said it wasn't clear that the Catholic League should go with official church organizations. The problem obviously isn't that simple, and the solution isn't that complex.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Merton

The Thomas Merton is marked as being of "high importance" to this project. However many sections and passages have been marked as needing footnotes for a long time, including claims of a bastard child. I intend to start deleting inadequately cited material next month. Perhaps someone from this project could take an interest in improving the article and make the deletions unnecessary.   Will Beback  talk  08:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I do not know where the "high importance" flag came from - I changed it now. And the rating as a B was too generous as well, given the patchy quality. While a notable figure in some circles, Merton is not central to Catholic teachings or thinking and the whole series of articles on Christian mysticism need a great deal of work - there is one incorrect statement there after another. I would encourage the deletion of the unsourced material and an overall trim of over 50%. The general flow of facts e.g. France, England, etc. is correct, but the article as a whole is unsourced and I would not be surprised to find copyvio therein. Eventually, those articles need clean up (I do not have time to do it now) and Merton will be one part of it, but not the central element by any measure. The reason Merton gets attention is that so few other talented writers existed in his time, but compared to what was before him (Avila etc.), he is not a first class element of thought on the subject - just the most contemporary. The article has missed that point. History2007 (talk) 10:02, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

American Social Conservatism is up for deletion

The nav box {{American Social Conservatism}} is up for deletion. Is a nav box for important articles where Catholicism and politics intersect such as Judeo-Christian values, Pro-life, National Right to Life Committee, School prayer, Manhattan Declaration. You can join the discussion here. Lionel (talk) 00:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I pray in church, not school, and hence have no particular interest in a navbox mentioning School prayer. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:07, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Your own POV aside, your ambassadorship, school prayer is a crucial topic in social conservatism.Lionel (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

New article on the Pope's visit to the US

Hi folks, I just created an article for the Pope's visit to the US in 2008. (It didn't have its own article before.) Please come and contribute! NYyankees51 (talk) 23:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Pro-life movement

This incredibly useful nav box, which perfectly encapsulates the pro-life movement, and will provide ease-of-navigation for readers for centuries to come, is up for deletion. I know, say it aint so. You can express your opinion here. Lionel (talk) 01:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Christian terrorism

Did did know that Pope Gregory was a Christian terrorist? There is a discussion of interest to the project here. Lionel (talk) 10:09, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Request to update article on Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi

Hi! The article Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi is a candidate to be featured on the main page in the Wikipedia:In the news template due to the recent restoration of the crypt (see discussion at WP:ITNC. In order to qualify, the article needs to have a substantial update, preferably detailing the recent restoration. I'd do it myself, but news reports that I can casually find on this event are surprisingly uninformative. It'd be great if the article were looked at by someone with more expertise on the matter.--Johnsemlak (talk) 12:55, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Deadline? I am busy now, so I can make no promises, but there are over 40 news articles on it some saying there are cameras now for long distance prayer! I could take a look after Easter, but can not be sure when. This will take work. History2007 (talk) 13:53, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

For WP:ITN's purposes it'd have to be in the next day or two, while the event is 'fresh' in the news. Thanks for the link to google news in Italian, didn't think to look that way. I might be able to fashion an update out of that. But if you or anyone has time to give the article a look it would be appreciated.--Johnsemlak (talk) 15:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I hope someone else can help you, given that I can not even look at the project until after Easter. Sorry. History2007 (talk) 16:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Church music

I built a page for Agnus Dei (music) a while ago from the Lamb of God material and I have been cleaning up a lot of unsourced and spam type items that point to specific artists (and some seem to be just short of a 800 number type statement). Now we are getting more of that type of link again. Suggestions on this type of link which I think of as Wiki-spam will be appreciated, so we can set some type of standard for stopping these pages from becoming the "new Craig's list" of semi-published music promotion. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 14:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, minutes after I typed that, we got another one here. So something needs to be done so every new artist does not use these pages as free advertising. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 14:45, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I think we are on solid ground to eliminate it when it is .com. I find that inserting a comment at the top of the list sometimes helps. Ground rules for externals. Hard to be clear about .org and .net sites. But your idea of self-promotion, WP:SPAM, seems to hold up IMO. Student7 (talk) 22:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and it relates to my other post below, when some of the people adding their latest CD or youtube link get close to the 3RR line. In that case if we have an agreement on a posting here or a subpage for that purpse that would help. Personally I feel I do need help in general, because I realized that I have 1,143 pages on my watchlist and I can not start debates with spammers all day. So if I can post somewhere for anti-spam help that would be nice. I do think that Wikipedia is running the risk of becoming the new Craig's List unless more protection is used, because the price for advertising here can not be beat. History2007 (talk) 22:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion for a Catholic opinion subpage

The burden of dealing with new users is ever increasing, and various statistics suggest that it will be a problem. How about a subpage here to deal with issues such as Our Lady of Sorrows today where unsourced material is added, and informed attention from other users will be helpful. All we need is a subpage so other people can give informed 3rd and 4th opinions without going to the 3O route, given that in this case I could not go to 3O because the new user refused discussion and there were already 3 parties involved. Shall we start a opinion subpage? This revert process with newcomers and unsourced material and never ending spam is just taking too much time. History2007 (talk) 19:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I stopped trusting 3O when I discovered (in another topic) that there was a collaborator who loitered there, carefully never contributing, but offering anything but npov opinions on the topic when requested! It was an unpleasant discovery for me. I haven't used 3O since. Some of the other opinions I had from there were essentially uninformed from near-newbies. I have since requested people that I knew would be objective, to comment. I haven't always won those either, but at least I had the comfort of knowing that the editor giving the opinion had some sense and experience!

So establishing an alternative makes sense IMO. Student7 (talk) 22:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I think many of the people giving 3Os have good intentions, but they can not research every topic from biochemistry to economics, to the Old Testament to give opinions, so some hold off, and others just jump in and do their best, if the topic is general enough. So how would you suggest doing this? A subpage, or is there an easy way to setup a semi-noticeboard, whatever that might look like. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 23:19, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Jeffrey Lena

I've created a new article titled Jeffrey Lena, about the lawyer who represents the Vatican in the USA. To do:

• Expand the article.
• Link to it from appropriate other articles. For now, it's an "orphan".

Michael Hardy (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Pope Infobox

User:Frietjes may have jumped the gun a bit on changing Project Catholicism's Templates table {{Infobox pope}}, to substitute the Christian leader infobox. The discussion is ongoing.

And it makes sense to include {{Infobox cardinal}} in the discussion at the same time. --Bwpach (talk) 14:14, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Ruello spam

We have been having unending spam by Vincenzo Ruello, the latest page being on Veil of Veronica‎, but also on Shroud of Turin, and there by consensus his edits were reverted. In many cases it is done by IPs in NSW, and sometimes he claims to be "a friend of Ruello". Elsewhere on the internet he has apologized for pretending to be a friend of himself, etc. I have not seen all the pages he spammed, but I think there needs to be a central place to stop this. Just takes too much attention. So please just revert it based on the Shroud page discussion. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 07:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Congregation, mission, church - terminology

In regards to St. Malachi Church I'm afraid I may have mucked up the terminology in using the terms church, congregation and mission. I'd guess that any terminologically-aware Catholic would be able to clean up after me on that article in about 5 minutes. Any help appreciated. Smallbones (talk) 16:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Not that bad, really. I made minor changes. Student7 (talk) 18:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. If I understand correctly - a mission has a congregation and the building can be called a mission church. Of course, parish the thought, a congregation could also have a mission! Smallbones (talk) 23:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps not exactly. But the fact that you even have to ask means only one thing: There are no clean and clear discussions of this issue in Wikipedia. It needs to be discussed. I do not have time to do it now, but they need to be added with refs. History2007 (talk) 00:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I brought up the topic of "mission dioceses" once, intending to label dioceses in the US. Several editors were quite annoyed saying that most members of those dioceses did not know this. They were apparently quite humiliated by the label! BTW, a substantial number of US dioceses are "mission", particularly in the West. Student7 (talk) 13:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the west is mission-land, but probably an entry in Wikitionary or a small Wikipedia article explaining the different terms will be useful. History2007 (talk) 14:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Assessment

Not too sure why Heralds of the Gospel is claimed to be A-class...AnonMoos (talk) 03:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Not any more. History2007 (talk) 03:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

And try this. Says the same. It is good for a new release. Will be on DYK in about 10 days, so will get used on these things. History2007 (talk) 03:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Move proposal for Pope Clement I article

Discussion is open on a proposal to move Pope Clement I to Clement of Rome. Esoglou (talk) 14:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you were right, not a good idea. History2007 (talk) 15:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

A similar discussion has been opened on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (clergy)#Pope article titles. Esoglou (talk) 18:20, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

New spirituality redirect pages created, please edit as necessary

I've been correcting the redlinks in the some of the Category:Catholic spirituality pages, and I created several redirect pages that link to appropriate sections of Catholic spirituality: Benedictine spirituality, Dominican spirituality, Franciscan spirituality and Carmelite spirituality. If any of these topics have a better redirect target, please change them accordingly. Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I see no problem with your redirects, but that page itself is in need of serious help. A lot of it is flat incorrect, e.g. Montfort, etc. Not that I have time to fix it now, but you may want to add more warning flags on it. It is just a collection of incorrect statements added by a lot of IPs. And please see this. That tool seems to work well for a 1st release software item, although to generous at times. And yes, I am plugging that tool (I just DYKed it), for I think the future of reliability testing is in that type of automation. History2007 (talk) 21:16, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. I was thinking much more simply, that maybe redirects to Benedictine or Dominican Order#Spirituality might be more appropriate. Aristophanes68 (talk) 22:27, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately this topic is just low quality across the board. In my view, this and digital signal processing (DSP) compete for the title of important but neglected and low quality topics. Almost every other DSP article has a low quality flag on it. The same would apply to spirituality if one checks them carefully. I am planning to do DSP in 2015 if no one else does (seriously). I hope someone will fix spirituality before then. Come to think of it spirituality is a form of divine signal processing anyway.... so maybe there is some hidden element there.... History2007 (talk) 23:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

New Pope template

There is a new 'incumbent pope' template which is designed for use in Diocese info boxes but can be used anywhere where the name of the pope needs to be updated. The idea is that when one pope dies and another is elected all that needs to happen is for the template itself to be update rather than manually changing the names individually. This template can be found here: {{Incumbent pope}}. Mangwanani ^(talk) 22:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The Deputy

We could use some comments/input on the article The Deputy from those knowledgeable or interested in Pius XII and the influence of KGB's propaganda campaign to impugn him (see Operation Seat 12) on the play. The section discussing this influence on the play was recently deleted and replaced with only a dismissive sentence. Mamalujo (talk) 23:13, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that was a lot of material that was deleted, and there were Ok references for some of it. But it did seem to repeat the other article, so I trimmed it back so it is just one paragraph, with a Main, not an entire article, as discussed there. History2007 (talk) 10:52, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

An editor to watch

71.50.28.249 (talk · contribs) has been making mass changes to articles in our project. He has been removing the term "Roman" from "Roman Catholic Church" and other terms, which would normally be fine by me, but he has no consensus, and is removing them from specifically Latin Church usages! Also, he is breaking wikilinks and categories by doing this. Another editor and I have reverted most of his work, but if anyone else would care to chime in on reasons he should not be doing this, feel free. Thanks. Elizium23 (talk) 05:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

There have been several IPs that geolocate to that area, they come and get reverted every 3 months or so, then persist again. He does not debate the issue any more, before used to debate it. But this again shows that as the number of Wikipages increases, reality is catching up with us, as this thesis predicted by stating:

an untenable trend towards progressive increase of the effort spent by the most active authors, as time passes by. This trend may eventually cause that these authors will reach their upper limit in the number of revisions they can perform each month, thus starting a decreasing trend in the number of monthly revisions, and an overall recession of the content creation and reviewing process in Wikipedia.

He was right, I no longer bother to revert that IP. It is time for policy change for more protection and many more bots. I think there should be a bot request just to revert this fellow. History2007 (talk) 09:22, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Found another editor doing the same thing. Twmerrigan (talk · contribs). Only a few edits from him. He has a manifesto on his Talk page about it already. Elizium23 (talk) 18:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

If does the same thing, we can ask for a Wikipedia:PUPPET check and it will show quickly. History2007 (talk) 01:56, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Requesting comment

...on a proposal to change the guidelines on the disambiguation of archbishops' articles: here DBD 13:10, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:20th century persecutions of the Catholic Church

Template:20th century persecutions of the Catholic Church has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. No such user (talk) 11:22, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

As I said there, too many items, but no need to persecute the template itself - can just reduce the size. History2007 (talk) 19:24, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Name Changes Needed

Sorry, I'm still fairly new at editing in Wiki. I can't figure out how to change the title of an article. Two articles need to be renamed due to recent boundary/name changes. The Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of Arabia is now the Roman Catholic Vicariate Apostolic of Southern Arabia (covering Oman, UAE, and Yemen). Likewise the Apostolic Vicariate of Kuwait is now the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia (covering Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). IMO, forwards from the old names to the new would also be appropriate.--Dcheney (talk) 20:41, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not know if the new name is correct or not, but next to the star symbol on the menu there is a small triangle pointing down, and will move it. History2007 (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Full instructions are at Wikipedia:Moving a page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:21, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I knew it had to be fairly easy :-) A first draft at the needed changes has now been made.--Dcheney (talk) 22:01, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Pro-life

The effort to rename Pro-life continues unabated. The discussion to rename Pro-life for the month of June is here. It is in mediation. The mediator said "I feel mediation could bring a final resolution to this matter." His idea of final is renaming Pro-life.

This representation of the mediation proposal is untrue by omission, and I'm sure I don't have to remind you that notifications of discussions intended to incline the invited parties to one side or another constitute canvassing. Please rephrase your notification so that it accurately represents the proposal, if you choose to summarize it, and so that it does not attempt to sway users for or against the proposal. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:48, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Prayer shawl in Catholicism

I came across the article Prayer shawl, which says these are common in Catholic churches. If so, would anyone knowledgeable care to comment on Talk:Prayer shawl. I'm asking if this is similar to the Pentecostal concept of "prayer cloth". Thanks. Ltwin (talk) 04:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Defrocking#Requested move

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Defrocking#Requested move. Elizium23 (talk) 19:30, 6 July 2011 (UTC) (Using {{pls}})

Andrew Pataki

I recently created an article for Andrew Pataki, Bishop Emeritus of the Byz. Catholic Eparchy of Passaic. Can anyone find a possible Did-You-Know?-able fact in that article? (Or if you can find an interesting somewhere that could be added and sourced?) I'm having difficulty finding anything that would make for a good hook. — AJDS ^talk 19:48, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I can see two possible hooks. One would be good as an April Fools DYK and the other a general DYK:

1. ...that Bishop Andrew Pataki was considered a byzantine? (AFDYK allows for the non-capitalization of proper nouns if it would give it away, this would play upon the the use of byzantine as a slur and thus a good AFDYK.)
2. ... that it is customary for Catholic Bishops, such as Andrew Pataki to retire when they turn 75?---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 21:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I have to be honest, I've never heard of someone being called a "byzantine" as a slur. (I can't find it in a dictionary; is that a common usage? Would people understand it as being a joke?) The second one might be okay, except that Bp. Pataki actually retired five years past the retirement age, it not being uncommon for the Holy See to wait to accept the customary petition for retirement. — AJDS ^talk 01:22, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I mean, maybe I'm just overthinking all of this. — AJDS ^talk 01:23, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I have a feeling that the perjorative byzantine 'joke' would fall pretty flat(I would never make the connection). It is a requirement, of course, for bishops to tender their resignations at age 75, and not uncommon for them to serve past their 75th birthdays, so the DYK about retirement might be okay. Its certainly the truth, the way Balloonman phrased it.Lyricmac (talk) 15:52, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Byzantine would be a slur in an manner that it could mean old fashions/out of touch---it's not a common slur and would work primarily with people who thought Byzantines were strictly historical characters. The second one could simply be updated to:

1. ...that despite the customary practice of Bishops tenuring their resignation when they turn 75, Andrew Pataki retirement was not accepte by the Pope until after he turned 80?---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 16:28, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

We'll go with that. Thanks for your help! — AJDS ^talk 17:02, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Here's how using byzantine would be a slur, think of it in the same terms that somebody might say, "That's so 1980s of you!" "That's so byzantine of you!" Not really a slur as a term by itself, but in context it could be used as such.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 17:24, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Bishop Pataki was aged 80 years, 3 months and 7 days, according to catholic-hierarchy.org(http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bpataki.html), just to be precise(yeah, yeah, I know, enough with the precise stuff, okay?...)Lyricmac (talk) 20:43, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Please be careful about confusing the Eastern and Western sides of the Catholic Church. The requirement to submit a resignation upon reaching the age of 75 is in the Code of Canon Law for the West only (Canon 401§1). There is no equivalent in the Eastern Code. Bishop Pataki is Ruthenian.--Dcheney (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I knew that there were different Codes, but I had no idea that the retirement ages were different. Many of the articles on Bp. Pataki's retirement reference the mandatory resignation of 75-year-old bishops. (Here's one: [1]) — AJDS ^talk 01:05, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Help needed at Catholics for Choice

There's material at Catholics for Choice which is repeatedly being deleted. Here is the material:

Critics of Catholics for Choice argue that only a negligible fraction of CFC's income come from subscription fees and over 97% of its funds are donated by tax-exempt groups and private foundations [10] including the Ford Foundation[11] and George Soros.[12][13] [14] Other contributors have included the Playboy Foundation.[15] Its original offices were provided by Planned Parenthood and it was originally funded by the Unitarian Church.[16] It has also been noted that, despite the Catholic moniker, its top contributors are supporters of abortion but don't appear to support the Church in any way: "While all of CFFC's five principal backers have supported Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League or NOW, not one is known to have contributed to officially recognized Catholic nonprofits."[17]

One example of the deletion is [here]. Contributions and assistance at the page would be helpful. Mamalujo (talk) 22:35, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Beware edit wars at this article, because it is covered by Wikipedia general sanctions which cover abortion-related articles. Elizium23 (talk) 22:48, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The material described by Mamalujo is from very poor sources, which is why it is not in the article. And yes, Elizium23 is correct: the article is under 1RR restriction because it is an abortion topic. Binksternet (talk) 23:25, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The bulk of the section is from two sources. CNA, like AP, is a news service and is a reliable source. The other major source is Insight on the News which was a news magazine. Mamalujo (talk) 01:15, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Removing the Catholic News Agency is simply absurd. User Roscelese claims that it is not reliable because it has a pro-life view. However, if that was a valid reason, then the New York Times would be unreliable on abortion, since it (as is amply documented) has a pro-choice view; indeed, its executive director describes pro-lifers as "zealots", and one of its editors said "Anybody who reads The New York Times who doesn’t think the New York Times is pro-choice, they are out of their minds". Therefore, if the CNA is unreliable, the NYT is too. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 18:34, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

If the two sides can not agree, try posting on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard and let them make suggestions as independent observers. History2007 (talk) 18:40, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I thought this were an arbitration process, and not simply a place for we to agree. We are unlikely to agree. We need arbitration. Are you saying that, for arbitration, we need to go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard ? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 19:26, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Note to Roscelese and Binksternet: if we go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, let's discuss it first so both parties can participate in the arbitration. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 19:25, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I will never cease to be amused at all these editors who claim that CNA and LifeNews are exactly equivalent to the New York Times. Even putting aside the (shall we say) not insubstantial difference in journalistic quality, tell me, does furthering a pro-choice agenda form any part of the NYT's stated mission? No, I didn't think so. Is furthering an anti-abortion agenda central to CNA's stated mission? Yup.

As a side note, a. the NYT uses "zealots" to refer to all sorts of people, so that's kind of a stupid argument b. I can't find that quote about the NYT being pro-choice anywhere but in far-right anti-abortion websites and in a laughable book by Bernard Goldberg. Completely uncited every time. Have you considered that one of them might have made it up? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:32, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course, because your definition of "far-right" is broad enough that it even includes the Catholic News Agency. Apparently, positions that 40% of the population agree with are "far-right" for you. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 22:02, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard is not a formal arbitration process, but at least will give both sides some fresh ideas. As is, you guys can talk among yourselves for a year and not agree at least the people on that noticeboard can give you further ideas and maybe agree on something in some middle ground. But it is up to you what you want to do, of course. History2007 (talk) 22:17, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

NPOVN already rejected the smear piece from the publication with a reputation for blatantly making things up (ie. Mobray's piece in Insight on the News) and the Catholic League's claims about Soros (whether they're published by the Catholic League or by another partisan source). I doubt RSN will decide any differently. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:23, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I do not know the details and could not be bothered to look through it. But that noticeboard would be the natural place to get further ideas. And it will cost nothing. History2007 (talk) 22:31, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

If that is the case, I ask Roscelese and Binksternet for we to wait until Friday or Saturday to take this to the noticeboard. I am busy right now, and I would like to participate. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 14:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Look, it may seem like a big dispute "now" but in 2 years you will not even remember it and the page will have changed a lot. So just take it easy, post on the noticeboard early Friday, then deal with it the next 2 days. The world will continue, I promise, I promise. History2007 (talk) 14:30, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Page watch

Given that so many people helped out on the Andrew Pataki article, I thought I should ask for some long term help in watching the key pages not just on Catholicism, bu Christianity because there are helpful editors here.

The pages Miracles of Jesus and Parables of Jesus have about 50 subpages that do not seem to be watched that carefully. There was an editor (Radagast3) who cleaned up all the parables pages and used to watch them, but unfortunately he left after an ANI incident that was not fair to him. So those pages (and the miracles) need help much of the time, not just against vandals, but for clarifications as I did on Coin in the fish's mouth yesterday. But I have over 1,000 pages on my watch list now and responding to new people and IPS is just too heavy. And there are about 20 main topic pages about the life of Jesus e.g. Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, etc. that also need help in IP discussions.

The lists, are of course within the miracles and parables pages. If some of you guys can add some of those pages to your watchlists, your help will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 13:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

AGREED: National Catholic Register's importance

I have rated National Catholic Register as of Mid importance. Anyone disagrees? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 17:29, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe mid-importance for the US, but I'd think low importance world-wide, yes? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:31, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I think mid is appropriate. It is arguably THE Catholic Newspaper in the US and one of the most influencial ones globally. Plus, while Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, this is the EN wiki and NCR is going to be one of the more accessible newspapers to this Wiki's audience.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 17:35, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, so it's mid-importance. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 21:09, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the problem always lies in balancing the need to counter systemic bias with the need to prioritize information that will be useful to readers of the English-language Wikipedia. We also have to consider the other articles handled by this project (from high-level clergy and important encyclicals to apparently every Catholic secondary school that exists) and its importance relative to them, I think. I definitely wouldn't put it higher than mid, but I think low wouldn't be inappropriate either...I wish there were more gradations. Humanae Vitae is currently ranked as mid! Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:48, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

AGREED: Catholic News Agency's importance

I have rated Catholic News Agency as of Mid importance. I did this because I know of few other similar Catholic new sources with the same breadth, quality and fidelity of CNA. (By the way, the article is currently lacking in quality; I will improve it later when I have time). Anyone disagrees? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 18:12, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Here I would agree with Sarek, mid might be too high. I don't see CNA at the same level of importance as NCR. Here's the difference between the two in my mind. If you are investigating something related to Catholicism in English, what are the odds of your stumbling upon an article on NCR? What are the odds of finding an article from CNA? If you talked to the typical person, which are they more likely to have heard of and which is going to have a higher "reliability" level?---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 18:41, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I personally disagree. In my opinion, the reliability is like

Oficial documents > Zenit > Catholic News Agency > National Catholic Register.

Anyway, you probably understand this more than me, so I'll accept your opinion unless a number of users appear here agreeing with me. I'll wait until Saturday -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 19:17, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, so it's "low importance" then. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I think these are all guesses anyway, so no need to sweat it. Where did Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair write? CNA or Zenit or the Register? Alas I noticed that United States journalism scandals was just deleted, else you could have looked on there and laughed alittle. But I think "reliable newspaper" is subjective and the scores will change via consensus in Wikipedia. Personally, I always, always believe all the weather reports in all newspapers, from the day before, however. History2007 (talk) 19:27, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I think more people are familiar with and would turn to NCR before CNA. But as History puts it, it's all subjective.---Balloonman ^{Poppa Balloon} 21:37, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Saint Paul name usage

Please view my comment here DBD 12:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:V

In User talk:Lloydbaltazar, the edits show zero respect for WP:V, needs to be reverted. I tagged the section in question about Haiti as unsourced. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 02:38, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

This is fairly blatant WP:CANVASSing. Please take complaints with specific editors to the appropriate venue, ie. WQA, ANI, AIV, ANEW etc. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:50, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

No. Give us a break, that article is part of this project. This is an appropriate place to post and that material is directly related to this project. Are the two of us starting a mutual admiration fest now for no apparent reason? It is not necessary. I really do not want to interact with you. History2007 (talk) 06:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

There are several parts to canvassing. One is posting the message to people you believe will agree with you - that wasn't the problem here, because the articles are related to this project. But another is the posting of a non-neutral message - for example, one that specifically ask the other editors to revert. If you don't want to interact with me, don't reply to my comments. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:19, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Silence is golden. Let us part company for ever. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 06:25, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

If you want help dealing with the problematic editor, some links: WP:AIV or WP:EWN might be good places to start. 'nite. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Ros, it kinda sounds like you're the problematic editor. – Lionel ^(talk) 03:15, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Reliable sources?

There is an ongoing discussion about whether certain sources are sufficiently reliable for certain statements made about Talk:John Favalora. Student7 (talk) 15:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration?

Anyone interested in firing up a project-wide collaboration? – Lionel ^(talk) 03:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I would encourage a "general cleanup" of articles that seem unkempt, before doing anything new. E.g. as of yesterday, Good Shepherd looks pretty disorganized with images scattered around, table of contents out of place, etc. And there are 100 more cases like that in need of general attention and clean up, reference checks, etc. History2007 (talk) 09:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, I went ahead and cleaned up that one, so I guess there are just 99 more to go. History2007 (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Reference fixes

Along those lines, in the past day some articles are getting AWB-tagged as bare-referenced, I will build a list here and help in removing the tags by fixing the refs will be appreciated:

• Ave Maris Stella‎
• Hail Mary.

The text is mostly correct, as far as I can see, but the http-only refs need better formatting. History2007 (talk) 02:59, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

There is a discussion going on at Talk:Ave_Maria_University#.22Controversial.22 about how much space the college's founder should have in the lead. Student7 (talk) 19:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Organizations...again

I see that in spite of the consensus reached not even six months ago about using Category:Roman Catholic Church organizations and its chronological subcategories only for official organizations, a bunch of non-RCC organizations have slipped in again (or never been removed in the first place). Does this indicate that the previous consensus was weak and should be re-evaluated, or should organizations like the Catholic League, Catholic Democrats, Minuto de Dios, National Legion of Decency etc. etc. be removed? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:44, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I guess it would depend upon whether the organisation was an official organ of the Church or not-none of the above fill that bill to my knowledge, then again, the KofC isn't an official group either; are they included?--Lyricmac (talk) 05:01, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the last consensus was that "official" organizations (ie. those founded by the hierarchy) as well as recognized organizations (ie. Voluntary Organizations of the Faithful) would get the category. The problem with this was that it left "organizations of Catholics" like the Catholic League (I don't know how the KofC would be handled under that consensus - they were founded by a priest, but I don't know their actual status) without a category. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Where is the discussion located regarding the consensus on this topic? Maybe there is something there that sheds a light on this.--Lyricmac (talk) 18:49, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Here we go. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:00, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, after reading the entire section, I'm left to ask: Was your proposal accepted, or not? From what I see, there wasn't any official consensus formed either for or against it, with which(by the way,) I see no problem, and could live with it. But I would suggest asking the other principals of that conversation to get their heads together and sweat this out[an aside here-as an observant and orthodox Catholic, groups such as KofC, Priests for Life, Aid to the Church in Need should be fall into a separate cat or subcat from those such as Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, or even Catholics for Choice(which is not Catholic in essence but a small group aligned with the Pro-Choice mvt.), as even Call and VotF are movements of Catholics, albeit dissidents. Roman Catholic Womenpriests' status would be slightly different, I guess, as they have all incurred excommunication]. So, a sub-cat for those groups that are established with the official connivance :) of the hierarchy at some level(Pontifical on down, such as Aid to the Church in Need), another for those which are unofficial but include Catholics in good standing(KofC, Catholic League) another for those primarily made up of dissident or not-necessarily-in-good-standing Catholics(VotF) and one for those that simply use the Catholic name for identity's sake, such as Catholics for Choice? Names of sub-cats to be determined? Or something else?--Lyricmac (talk) 01:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Lyricmac's proposal of multiple categories. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:48, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Lyricmac makes sense to me. Put the heretics in their own cat. – Lionel ^(talk) 02:44, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I like the idea as well, but foresee numerous fights over who goes in what category. And activists from the various organizations attempting to change their category.--Dcheney (talk) 02:58, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I am sure that something may be accomplished in this matter; as I had said, I don't, in essence, have a problem with Roscelese's ideas, but I think that something should be done to delineate the different classes of 'Catholic organisations'-there are so many with so many different motives.Lyricmac (talk) 03:07, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

As I was saying on the talkpage of our CFC article, only those members in the Diocese of Lincoln are excommunicated, so we can't categorize the organization based on the status of one small subset of its members. Ditto for similar organizations. More generally, we run into a POV (and, to a degree, BLP) minefield when we start trying to determine who is in good enough standing, as you're suggesting we do. What sources are you suggesting we use? What would be the "cutoff"? (Also, I honestly don't see your logic at all re: having CFC and CtA in separate categories. Insofar as any were excommunicated, both were.)

Re: your comment on my proposal last time - I think the simplest and best solution is just to include any "organization of Catholics" in the category. It's easy to deal with, it's what people are probably looking for when they look in that category, and it's consistent with all the other religious organization categories. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:44, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

That would be problematic. This way even one of those communist faux-Christian organizations (like existed in certain communist countries, where the government forced Catholics to join "patriotic" faux-Churches) would be in the Catholic organizations category.

At the very very least, we have to distinguish between Catholic organizations (those recognized by the Church) and "organizations of Catholics". -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 04:03, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "As I was saying on the talkpage of our CFC article, only those members in the Diocese of Lincoln are excommunicated,": I think most people here would agree that, ever since the USCCB judgment that CFC is not Catholic (and in fact has an anti-Catholic behavior), they can't be in the category "Catholic organizations". -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 04:06, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

That would violate WP:SPS - a USCCB press release can't be used as a source for statements about a third party. (WP:EGRS is also relevant here - basically, we accept that people are the religion they say they are.) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:EGRS#Religion:

Categories regarding religious beliefs of a living person should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question (see WP:BLPCAT). For a dead person, there must be a verified consensus of reliable published sources that the description is appropriate.

(my emphasis).

EGRS says nothing you think it says. It applies to living people, not to organizations; and it restricts ("should not [...] unless") categories, which is the opposite of mandating categories.

Regarding SPS, I think it applies to content in the article, not to the process of removing categories. Also, let me quote (with my emphasis) Wikipedia:SPS#Self-published_sources:

Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so.

(my emphasis) -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 13:22, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

EGRS applies to living people and so isn't the primary guideline to be applied, but the members of these organization being living persons, it's something that should be kept in mind, hence my saying it is relevant rather than that it is being violated. Catholics for Choice states that it is Catholic. Sourcing that justifies overriding this self-identification would have to be really good, and that sourcing simply is not present.

WP:RSN would be the place to determine if the USCCB is an "expert" in whether someone is or is not Catholic, though because of the aforementioned EGRS guideline (and because of the related-to-SPS guideline WP:QS - an organization that campaigns politically against CFC is unlikely to be a good source on them), I doubt you'd get the result you want there. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Identifying the Catholicness of individual persons is not the point. The point here is identifying Catholic organizations. And I bet Wikipedia consensus would agree that the college of bishops is an experct in identifying Catholic organizations, because this is common sense.

And frankly, the proposal to add every self-identified "Catholic" organization to the "Roman Catholic organizations" category is unacceptable. Do you think that those government-enforced "Catholic" organizations in Marxist countries should be in that category? For example, should the "Patriotic Church" of China be considered a "Roman Catholic organization"? That is frankly absurd. We need, at the very very least, two categories: one for official organizations and one for all other self-identified organizations. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 17:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

If you're so sure you're right, why don't you take it to RSN and ask them if an organization that campaigns politically against CFC and CtA is qualified to decide if they're really Catholic?

Of course the Patriotic Church would be in the category. It's an organization composed of Roman Catholics. That's the way every other "Religious organizations" category works. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:44, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I may go to RSN in the future, but I have other things to do now. When I do it, I think they will agree with me. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Jorge, there should be a distinction between official and self-identified not-officially-affiliated organizations. NYyankees51 (talk) 21:50, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

What would you suggest that the categories be called, and how would the current tree be affected? (Ie. it's currently subdivided chronologically - would both types go in "RCC organizations by century"? And it's currently a subcat of "RCC organisation," which sort of implies the hierarchical organization, I feel - would only the official organizations go in that cat? If so, which category would appear in Category:Christian organizations by denomination?) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:01, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. Maybe "Roman Catholic Church organizations" for the official organizations, "Organizations of Roman Catholics" for most unofficial orgs (such as Catholic League) and "Dissenting organizations of Roman Catholics" for orgs like Voice of the Faithful. I think this shouldn't generate controversy; the dissenters may take an exception to being called fake-Catholics, but they shouldn't take an exception to being called "dissenters"; many of them will even be proud of it. And it isn't hard to find reliable secondary sources that say these orgs are dissenters. As for the supercat, rename "RCC organization" to "Organization of Roman Catholics", which would include all three cases. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that would lead to sourcing problems. How many sources are enough to classify an organization as dissenting - what's the cutoff? What if the sources say they dissent on some positions but not on others? Do we need sources positively classifying organizations as orthodox in order to go in the second category or is it enough that there aren't sources saying they're dissenting?

(Let me explain that last one a little. On the face of it, it seems obvious that organizations sourced as dissenters go in their own category, while organizations which sourcing does not establish as dissenters go in another. However, it's a little more complicated. The presence of a dissenters category implies that the unmarked category is orthodox (particularly if the dissenters are a separate category rather than a subcategory). We are implicitly making a statement about the beliefs of the members of the unmarked category just as surely as we are making a statement about the beliefs of those in the dissenters category. The Catholic League, for example, supports capital punishment, which is against orthodox Catholic beliefs.) Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:40, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

How about "Official Roman Catholic Church organizations" for official orgs, "Organizations of Roman Catholics" for all others, and "Dissenting organizations of Roman Catholics" as a subcat of "Organizations of Roman Catholics"? That would be easier to implement, because if we are not sure about whether a given org is dissenting or not, we can simply omit the subcat and still include it in the supercat "Organizations of Roman Catholics", which would have an inclusive definition.

We would include in the "dissenting" subcat any organization that has generated significant coverage, on reliable sources, from its dissent. This would of course include some orgs who are faithful to certain points of the Catechism, but dissent on others. As long as they publicly dissent on important points of the Faith (as in the Catechism) or the discipline (as in the Canon Law), and this has generated significant coverage, they get classified as dissenters. I believe that the vast majority of dissenters (even the SSPX, which, AFAIK, is dissenting and proud of it) will be proud of it. They consider it as a proof that they are brave reform-minded mavericks -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 13:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think having the dissenters cat as a subcat of the regular cat is the right thing to do if we have separate categories. We would still need to decide what degree of coverage of the dissent, and how much dissent, determines inclusion in the former, though it might have to be on a case-by-case basis. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 15:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it is better done on a case-by-case basis. I think it shouldn't be too hard, because, as far as I have seen, dissenting organizations will proudly admit they are dissenting. I don't know of a single organization that is considered dissenting by the Church but still claims to be obedient to the faith of the "hierarchy" (to use their terminology). -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we agree here. Let me create another section as a summary of this one, because this one is so big that no one will be able to follow this discussion. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

There, I created it. If you thing the summary is wrong, please comment here. Then

I will update the summary. I don't want the summary section to include back-and-forth discussion between you and me, because it would become huge and would lose its purpose as a summary. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:29, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

On a side note: AFAIK, favoring the death penalty in the USA is not dissenting on the Catholic faith (the Catechism permits the death penalty under extreme circunstances), but merely dissenting from the personal, prudential political judgment of certain bishops (even if the bishop of Rome was among them), which an orthodox faithful Catholic is perfectly entitled to do. Not that I actually favor the death penalty in the US, but I am pedantic. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 12:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I have an idea for slight improvement: instead of "dissenting organizations of Roman Catholics" how about "dissident organizations of Roman Catholics" ?

I'm fine with that too, though "dissenter" has slightly more of the religious connotation than "dissident" (irony: in early modern England, Catholics were dissenters from the C of E) but we should probably just find out the predominant term used by sources. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

But it can be used as a source for the USCCB and that is the heart of the matter. - Haymaker (talk) 11:04, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Metropolitan

I have noticed a pretty widespread error on the infoboxes for dioceses. Over, and over, they indicate that the local see city where the bishop's residence is located is the "Metropolitan." This is just not accurate. For example, Diocese of Gaylord says that the Metropolitan is "Gaylord, Michigan." This is wrong twice over, first because a metropolitan is a bishop, not a town; and second because it is (for Gaylord) the Archbishop of Detroit, not the Bishop of Gaylord. Virtually any other infobox has the same mistake; see, e.g., Diocese of Burlington. MrArticleOne (talk) 18:05, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

See also http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10244c.htm MrArticleOne (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

This should be discussed primarly at Template talk:Infobox diocese, but thanks for mentioning it here, for a wider audience. My observations: there is already a "metro_archbishop" field in the "Leadership" section of the infobox, which is correctly filled out in the example of Diocese of Burlington. The "metropolitan" field should probably renamed to "metropolis" because it is in the "Location" section and appears to want the principal see of a province. Elizium23 (talk) 20:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Summary of the discussion at the previous section. PLEASE comment!

The previous section is huge; this is a summary.

• Whether or not to add Catholics for Choice to the category [[Category:Roman Catholic Church organizations]] has led to a bitter edit war
• This could be solved by adding additional categories, which would differentiate official Catholic organizations from unofficial organizations.
• Me and user Roscelese have largely agreed of the following proposal:
  • Rename [[Category:Roman Catholic Church organizations]] to [[Category:Official Roman Catholic Church organizations]] . This category would include only official organizations. The Catholic League for example would be excluded
  • Create [[Category:Organizations of Roman Catholics]] for any religious organization of self-identified Catholics. This would include the Catholic League and the Catholics for Choice.
  • Create [[Category:Dissenting organizations of Roman Catholics]] as a subcat of [[Category:Organizations of Roman Catholics]] . This would include organizations of self-identified Catholics who publicly dissent against Catholic Faith (as in the Catechism) or Catholic discipline (as in the Cannon Law), as long as the dissenting persists and has generated significant coverage. The threshold to include an organization in this subcat will be decide on a case-by-case basis. This shouldn't generate controversy, because dissenting organizations are often proud of it. I don't know of a single organization who is considered dissenting by the clergy but still claims to be obedient to the Church's faith and discipline.

Do you agree? Please comment. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Short comments

• I agree. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
• Sounds okay to me. NYyankees51 (talk) 16:49, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
• Disagree based on no support for Eastern Catholicism. What is to be done with their organizations, leave them in the ghetto? Elizium23 (talk) 20:15, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

How are they categorized at present? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I use the term "Roman Catholic" to refer to all Catholics. I of course prefer the term "Catholic", but it seems that "Roman Catholic" is the most common term used in the USA. Anyway, if I was referring just to the Latin-rite Catholics, that is what I would say: "Latin-rite Catholics". See Latin_church#.22Latin_Catholic.22_and_.22Roman_Catholic.22. and Roman_Catholic_(term) -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 20:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing incorrect or ambiguous about using the term "Catholic" instead of "Roman Catholic". I propose that the categories be named e.g. Category:Catholic Church organizations in order to include all 23 Catholic Churches as equal members. Elizium23 (talk) 00:54, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Other people agree with this? Please comment. I agree. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:03, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Agree with general principle, but I think I have a better plan for the technicalities. The official organizations should be a subcategory of the "orgs of Catholics" category, since obviously all official RCC organizations fit that description; and just as affirmative sourcing is needed to put an organization in the dissenters category, so too in the official category. Am I right in saying that being founded by a priest is not sufficient? Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I know little about ecclesiology, but I guess that yes, a priest can found an unofficial org. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 20:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the subcate proposal: AFAIK, an official Roman Catholic Church organization can have some non-Catholic members. In a Catholic college for example, I bet that many of the students and even professors are not Catholic. But I may be being pedantic though - what do you think? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 20:38, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Without checking, I'm still 100% certain that there exists a category of RC universities. Maybe I'm assuming too much, but I think people will know that universities like Georgetown do have non-Catholic students even if we include it in the category. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Another technicality: the chronological subcats. I propose that the chronological subcats include official, orthodox, and dissenting, because to split into "Official RCC orgs established in the 20th century," "RCC orgs established in the 20th century," and "Dissenting RCC orgs established in the 20th century," and to do this for every century, would be tedious and not particularly helpful to the reader. So an organization would have a category that indicates its status and one that indicates its founding. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

So it seems we would have to rename every "Roman Catholic Church organization established in the nth century" to "Organization of Catholics established in the nth century". Is there an automated way to do that, or will I have to do it by hand? -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 00:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure. There may be admin tools that we can get someone to use that make this process faster, once there's an established consensus*. However - the current category title is "Roman Catholic organizations by century" etc. with the parent cat "Roman Catholic Church organizations" (titles are not currently consistent). I personally don't think there's anything wrong with "Roman Catholic organizations" as a parent title for all of them, including dissenters (I think it is obvious that it conveys "organizations of Roman Catholics" in the same way that "Jewish organizations" does not indicate that all member organizations conform to the major tenets of Judaism, etc.), meaning that the change you describe would be unnecessary, but I don't feel strongly about it - I'm just trying to minimize the work for everyone and to make it similar to the other religious organization category titles. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I prefer to make the change. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:21, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

• This sounds fine to me. A comment: look up sedevacantism to see some groups that consider themselves obedient to Catholic faith and discipline yet are rejected by the Holy See. LovesMacs (talk) 15:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

sedevacantists may consider themselves obedient to the true faith and discipline, but I think even they will agree that they dissent against pope Benedict XVI, who is widely recognized to be the Pope. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 16:39, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, in the case of sedevacantism I imagine 100% of secondary sources will agree that they are dissenters, so we will have no problem. -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 18:51, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

• Also! One more thing. I think that once we've agreed on something amongst ourselves, we should submit it to the broader community in some fashion, or at the very least to WikiProject Religion, for approval and further suggestions. This way, we can make sure we're not venturing out of step with current consensus or practice. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I will submit to Wikiproject Religion. Regards, Jorge Peixoto (talk) 01:21, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

To have the cats changed automatically you can make a request here WP:BOTREQ. This is a nice piece of work: we should all pat ourselves on the back. I know many of you are thinking my contribution was pivotal in finally reaching consensus, but while I agree that my participation was indispensible, I think not quite pivotal. – Lionel ^(talk) 02:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Input requested

The article on Malachy Sullivan could use some help from your project.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:36, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Personal parish

According to Google, the phrase "personal parish" shows up about two dozen times on Wikipedia, such as in the following articles:

• Basilica of St. Louis, King of France
• Church of San Vicente Ferrer
• Governing Council
• Immaculate Conception Church and School
• Roman Catholic Diocese of Pasig
• St. Stanislaus Kostka Church (St. Louis, Missouri)
• Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

I'd like to suggest that an article on personal parish be created by one of the 169 people interested in this wikiproject. Thank you. 67.101.7.161 (talk) 02:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

To be upfront with you, there are now 168 remaining - count me out. There are so many key articles (e.g. Salvation) that need help, this will be the last on my list. I think we should clean up the key articles first, improve overall quality, get distracted later. The same comment applies to Malachy Sullivan above. History2007 (talk) 02:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

It might make more sense to simply expand the rather terse Parish (Catholic Church) article.--Dcheney (talk) 02:21, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Good idea, and just a few sentences will do it. History2007 (talk) 02:25, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I wikified the uses in the articles listed above, so once someone has updated Parish (Catholic Church) to address the subject and created personal parish as a redirect. we're all set. Thanks. 67.101.7.161 (talk) 02:39, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think you're both right: we could definitely have an article on personal parish someday, and there should be some kind of minimal explanation on the site, but that article doesn't have to be created now because the project has more important priorities. IP 67, perhaps you could add a few lines to Parish (Catholic Church? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Project consensus and repetition of basic policy

I can not remember how many times I have had to explain WP:RS to newbies on various pages. But as in Talk:Marian_apparition#Our_Lady_of_Good_Success it needs to be done again. That page is a magnet for self-published items. The talk page starts by a proclamation that You tube is not WP:RS, etc.

Can a couple of people from this project help achieve agreement on a "we know these are not approved" list for that page, and then keep it on that page (or talk page) based on said consensus so policy does not need to be repeated again and again. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 09:00, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

WPConservatism had similar problems with project banner removal & assessments. They created a FAQ and stuck it on top on the talk page. Check out WT:RIGHT. The subpage is here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism/FAQ. – Lionel ^(talk) 12:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that is a good idea. I will try to get the FAQ material together. I don't know how many times I have had to explain that Michael's Journal is not a journal and is not WP:RS and that self-pub websites are not usable, etc. History2007 (talk) 14:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Scandal (theology)

Hi, I nominated Scandal (theology) for move to stumbling block. It had it's origins in a cut paste of some material from the old Catholic Encyclopedia in 2006, but, at least in the form it is in now, apart from 1 paragraph, isn't particularly Catholic. The main problem is that a more generic stumbling block (which is what the New Jerusalem Bible says) article doesn't exist. And in modern English the term "scandal" (Latin scandalum, Greek scandalon) is not used as much now as it was in 1912, most commentaries and Bible texts and versions Catholic/Protestant/Jewish just use "stumbling block."

BTW This isn't an aversion to Latin, but following Wikipedia naming conventions, and in line with other nominations to move korban Olah back to burnt offering and korban Pesach to Passover sacrifice, if anyone disagrees with my proposed move they are welcome to vote against. :) Cheers In ictu oculi (talk) 10:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

It is a non-controversial move and I think should just move without fanfare. I do not even see the need for a lengthy request and I think could have just been moved or now be WP:SNOW or something of the type . History2007 (talk) 12:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Opinion sought regarding Eternal Life

We are having a 3 way discussion on the issue of Eternal Life in Christianity.

The specific issue at hand is that of eternal life being only "here and now" vs having a component "in the future" as well.

A few informed comments based on suitable sources will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 07:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Militant atheism RfC

There is a raging RfC at Militant atheism. Don't miss out on the discussion of the year! Click here. – Lionel ^(talk) 04:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

POV at Mother Theresa

See note. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for comments/contribution at Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber

We could use some comments/contribution at Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, in partiular in regards to this issue. Mamalujo (talk) 21:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Death (personification), Samael, Angel of Death, Michael (archangel)

"In Roman Catholicism, the archangel Michael is viewed as the good Angel of Death (as opposed to Samael, the controversial Angel of Death), carrying the souls of the deceased to Heaven."

Can someone check this and similar on these pages? Looks like OR?In ictu oculi (talk) 14:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Editor removing red links

The editor OOODDD (talk · contribs) has been working in Catholicism-related articles since September 22, removing red links en masse from articles, in edits such as this. As you may know, red links are considered helpful in many cases, and Wikipedia:Red link explains why and how. I have pointed this out to him, but he has ignored the advice and continued to delink in many articles. Many of his edits are acceptable because they delink personal names, of which red links are discouraged by the above guideline. Therefore, it is not useful to mass-revert his edits; instead they must be examined one-by-one. For example, this edit contains four red links that should be kept, and two that can be removed. If anyone else would like to take a look at these edits, I would appreciate the help. Elizium23 (talk) 05:27, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

This is somewhat strange. This fellow has done over 100k edits and is not what one would call a vandal. But the word that does come to mind is "eccentric editing", which however has generated good content in many cases. Some of the links he removes such as Vulturia have pages on other Wikis, e.g. it:Diocesi di Vulturia. But removing these is not against policy as far as I know. I do not know that anything can be done here, for it is not even a content dispute and each case would need to be discussed separately, I guess. I will leave him a message too, but I doubt if he will pay attention. My feeling is that we need to shrug our shoulders and move on. History2007 (talk) 07:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Redlinks are for topics that could someday be articles. A temporary workaround would be to create redirects or stubs. Then the redlink would become blue. By "temporary" I mean until he gets bored and moves on, lol. – Lionel ^(talk) 09:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Antoni Gaudí GA review

The article Antoni Gaudí is currently under Good Article review. There are just a few more cleanup details left so it can pass. Any help would be appreciated. Elizium23 (talk) 07:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Pope Honorius III was pope from...

Hello. I could not help noticing that the lead sentences in articles about many, if not all, popes begin that way. Per WP:Lead sentence, there is no need for such redundancy; it is like saying "Barrack Obama, President of the United States, has been President of the United States since 2008." Surtsicna (talk) 19:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that this is because people wanted to avoid a questionably accurate active verb like "reigned"? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

It's possible they don't even know about it. I would support using "reigned". Elizium23 (talk) 23:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Hm, our article on JPII already uses "reigned." I guess it sounds weird to me as I live in a modern age where the Pope's role as the leader of a country is much smaller than his role as the leader of a religion, but the Papal States were much more of a political entity in Honorius's time, of course. Is there another verb in common use? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

During the time of Honorius, 'ruled' would have been very apropos, moreso than 'reigned', as he would have wielded real temporal power.Lyricmac (talk) 03:37, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a significant difference between the two - what I'm thinking of is a verb to describe the tenure of more recent Popes, but we do use "reigned" for JP2 so it seems to be generally accepted. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 06:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

According to thesaurus.com: 'Reign -- Part of Speech: verb -- Definition: rule, have power --Synonyms: administer, boss, charge, check, coach, coerce, compel, conduct, conquer, constrain, control, curb, determine, dictate, direct, dominate, domineer, exact, exercise power, force, govern, guide, have authority, head, hinder, hold office, influence, lead, manage, officiate, oppress, overbear, override, predominate, prescribe, preside over, prevail, push, regulate, reign over, repress, restrain, run, stop, subdue, superintend, supervise, sway, take over, tyrannize, wield'. All of which mean precisely diddly in this case, I'm afraid; I am not sure that there is a suitable synonym that would work from the above. Admittedly reign is overused re: sovrans and the papacy precisely as there is nothing remotely usable in the list.

(An editorial comment, if I may: We were taught at school that the primary difference between reign and rule is implication: Reign implies holding an office with influence but little real power, while a ruler is one who wields actual temporal power and influence over ones subjects, sort of the difference between Elizabeth II and Elizbeth I.) That said, I give up: I am at a loss to think of anything better than the time-honored reign. Lyricmac (talk) 12:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Pope Boniface IX

I've just now deleted a chunk of recently added stuff from this page; as it was a pretty sizable change I am requesting comment on what I've done, on the talk page here. Any observations etc would be welcome. Moonraker12 (talk) 12:01, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Saint Colette wikipedia entry is problematic because...

...it is extremely close to the online entry for Saint Colette in the Catholic Encyclopedia. The wikipedia article is nearly word-for-word plagiarized from the C.E. online entry, in fact, but the wikipedia version of the article does not indicate that the text is virtually identical to the C.E. version - instead, it merely lists the C.E. version as one of 3 sources. I noticed this while looking for biographies of Saint Colette - I just happened to read the C.E. online entry first and the wikipedia entry immediately afterward and realized I had read the same article twice in 10 minutes. Quoting entire paragraphs or articles is fine, as long as you're up-front about it. Inline paragraphs with appropriate quotation marks and citations would be appropriate for the length of the article in question. I can't imagine that the plagiarizing of this article was done with malicious intent, but it's plagiarism nonetheless and the article should either be rewritten, or it should be clearly stated that the Catholic Encyclopedia is where the article actually comes from.

Wildabeastx (talk) 20:52, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Catholic encyclopedia is public domain, so can not be plagiarized, even if copied verbatim. In any case, better than doing WP:OR. Unlike many others, that article does not seem to have major errors. I added a Wikisource tag anyway. History2007 (talk) 20:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

We actually have a standard template for this - Template:Catholic. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This looks important

I found "Order of precedence in the Catholic Church" while doing backlog work. It looks sort of important to this admittedly ignorant non-Catholic and it definitely needs some care. I deliver it to your loving arms. Danger ^{High voltage!} 15:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Saint Dominic#Lack of Verifiable Information

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Saint Dominic#Lack of Verifiable Information. Elizium23 (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Henry Garnet

Hello, I've recently rewritten this article and wondered if you guys wouldn't mind taking a look over it to make sure there aren't any serious problems with it? I'm mostly ignorant of religious history. Parrot of Doom 22:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

No worries, lack of familiarity with a subject never stopped anyone else from editing Wikipedia. Overall looks clean, but I did not have time to check the details. The lede is probably a bit long. You should add other sources beside Fraser, else will get a WP:ONESOURCE flag on it sooner or later. History2007 (talk) 02:08, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

What an interesting coincidence - I just bought a book that discusses the Garnet case and Macbeth. Unfortunately, having just bought it, I haven't yet read it, so I can't contribute much –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Lots of Fraser (2005) is inevitable as she's one of the best sources available on the Gunpowder Plot, articles related to which I've mostly written single-handedly. Which reminds me, there's a Nicholls book I haven't checked for this.

Actually my main concerns are that his early life, particularly with regard to the Wisbech Stirs, doesn't offer enough explanation. I need to slide something in there about Weston being the only Jesuit priest in England before Garnet and Southwell's arrival. I'm afraid I summarised much of the ODNB source without really understanding the bigger picture, so there will be obvious omissions to sort out. Parrot of Doom 00:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Compared to the rest of Wikipedia that is a reasonably well done article. There are larger problems all over the place e.g. the entire article set on Salvation (Christianity) and related items, etc. and no one is even working on them. History2007 (talk) 06:19, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I draw the line after gruesome executions, which I can write about all day. Episcopal governance, Jesuits, lay this that and the other - way out of my league. :) Parrot of Doom 22:42, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Reading an article of this quality is itself a gruesome mental execution, but we will let that one be... History2007 (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

AfD of article in project

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conservative Christianity BigJim707 (talk) 18:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

"St" vs "St." vs "Saint" in church/cathedral names

Hello, all. Please see my question at WP Christianity. Thanks, Lithoderm 19:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Contribution, comments needed at Catholic Church and Nazi Germany

Comments and contributions are needed at Catholic Church and Nazi Germany regarding this and other issues. Mamalujo (talk) 18:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Historical English Roman Catholics

It has been suggested that most historical persons before the 16th century should be removed from Category:English Roman Catholics - at least those who were Roman Catholics by default without a significant impact of their Catholicism on their lives, such as, say, Henry V of England. Input would be welcome at Category talk:English Roman Catholics. Huon (talk) 17:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Ordination question

I was wondering, should I write that someone was "ordained a priest in 1820" or "ordained as a priest in 1820"? I've seen both versions used recently and didn't know if there is a preferred version here. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Our Lady of La Salette

This article needs help. I tried, but I'm afraid the prose is so awful it hurts my head. It is tedious and reads like a native German Speaker tried translating it from French into Spanish and then ran it through Babelfish to get the English. It's way too long and the sourcing is awful, too. I have never heard of this apparition before, so I may need someone who owns more Holy Cards than I do, to pitch in.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 06:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

That was funny. And also true. The article is just an embarrassment. Yet the problems are not just linguistic, but factual. The reason you had not heard of it may well be that the Vatican would prefer to forget it all - given the endless controversies. In the early days it gained attention and John Vianney visited it, etc. But then there was one controversy after another and I no longer even remember the details. But the article lede is flatly incorrect that "together with Our Lady of Lourdes (1858) and Our Lady of Fátima (1917) La Salette remains one of the most famous Marian apparitions of the modern age". That is just not so, given the published number of pilgrims.

The article is so messy (as is the subject) that the tears on the image are but appropriate. It is so messy that I have avoided it altogether. But it does deserve a few more waring tags at the top. History2007 (talk) 08:08, 30 December 2011 (UTC)