Talk:Catholic Church

GA Reassessment

Catholic Church

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: No consensus. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Several uncited sections, including almost the entire first section of the History section. History focuses disproportionately on 20th and 21st century. Z1720 (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Disagree that the history weighting is a significant problem. Might require a minor rebalancing—-I’m not sure why John Paul II has his own section while other popes do not (aside from Francis, but the case for having a section on the current pope is strong)—-but that’s a modest edit, not a reason to delist. The several uncited paragraphs in the History section (which look to be the only significantly uncited section to me) do need fixed, but I note that History of the Catholic Church has a pretty well-cited early history section, so that shouldn’t be a hard fix. Reassessment seems a pretty big overreaction for these problems—-it’s pretty firmly WP:JUSTDOIT territory. El Sandifer (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• Keep on grounds offered. The first part of the History section appears to be a lede-style summary of the subsections afterward (a la WP:LEADCITE), with the relevant citations in the respective subsections. If truly desired, go and move the relevant citations back up, but this is a style that isn't unreasonable. As for focus - the Catholic Church is a topic where multi-volume books have been written on it, there is no one perfect amount to cover on each time period. I will say that random readers are probably more interested in the recent history aspect, so it wouldn't shock me if the 2424 article on the Catholic Church disproportionately focuses on the 24th century. SnowFire (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
• Delist 1) if the unsourced content in the history section is a sourced elsewhere in the article, it is redundant and needs to be removed per GACR#3b 2) obvious recentism in the history section. The Catholic Church has a really long history so the twentieth and twenty first centuries need to be covered in similar amount of detail as other historical epochs, and summary style needs to be used. Note that I did not look at the rest of the article (t · c) buidhe 17:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
• Keep There is no obvious "recentism" in the history section. The 20th century section does not appear disproportionately long compared to the rest of the section. I also see no uncited sections. Note that my comments pertain to this most recent revision. –Zfish118^⋉talk 18:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that Zfish118's comment follows my examination and removal of the offending parts. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Excellent work in trimming the history section! –Zfish118^⋉talk 03:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Words "Anticatholic" and "Pseudocatholic"

"Anticatholic" signifies "against Catholicism" and "Pseudocatholic" "Catholically false" or "false Catholic". Its derivated words are "Anticatholicity", "Anticatholicism", "Pseudocatholicity" and "Pseudocatholicism".

200.155.122.146 (talk) 11:50, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Ehrman is not a "protestant scholar"

Greetings, @Pbritti! You reverted my edit removing the descriptor "protestant" from Bart Ehrman, saying that "He was, at the time, Protestant (or in the Protestant school, at least)" and I think this is worth discussing. First, Ehrman was not any kind of Christian at the time. The work cited is the 2006 book Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, but already in the 2005 book Misquoting Jesus he writes about having left the Christian faith altogether. From the postscript: "I eventually decided that I could no longer be a Christian... about seven or eight years ago, I became an agnostic".

As for "Protestant school", I don't really know what that means- if there is any "school" his scholarship is affiliated with, it would the historical-critical school- not affiliated with a Christian denominational viewpoint. In any case, "protestant scholar" isn't an appropriate descriptor for an agnostic historian affiliated with a secular university.

If you would like to preserve the phrase "protestant scholar" for the other two, I suggest the sentence as "On this basis Bart D. Ehrman, as well as protestant scholars Oscar Cullmann and Henry Chadwick, question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy". Please let me know what you think and have a nice day. Nukeychess (talk) 04:28, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Top-level characterization needed in lead?

I think a general reader, arriving in ignorance, would find the current lead (and article) fairly daunting for all the technical terms: I understand that the lead needs to summarize the article, and that Wikipedia operates by hyperlinking rather than always needing to explain technical terms, but you should not have to click to understand the first paragraphs of the lead...

But I think the introduction is missing a top-level description of the Catholicism. (I am not re-visiting the discussion on "Catholicism" versus "Catholic Church" merely saying that since there is only one article, it needs to meet the needs of people coming from the keyword "Catholicism".

In concrete terms I suggest something like this:

Catholicism may be categorized as Christian (following Christ), monotheistic (one God), trinitarian (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), incarnationist (Son became a man), synergistic (humans need to cooperate with divine grace), sacramentist (divine made present within creation), liturgical (common regulated ceremonies), apostolic (continuous line from the original Apostles), priestly, eschatological (return of Christ, resurrection of the dead,  purgatory, judgment, beatific vision, etc.), creedal (having a shared statement of core tenets), developing (growing in understanding, liturgy and institutions), universal (made for all humans), pro-life (promoting a culture of life), and Marian (honouring and emulating Mary).

Of course, you could go on forever (A "Syllabus of Non-Errors"?), or just find the relevant -isms for each line of the creed: the intent being to give the general distinctives of Catholicism to, say, a reader in China interested in how Catholicism differs from Buddhism, rather than, say, how Catholicism differs from Orthodoxy.

I left out "hierarchical" and used "Apostolic" and "priestly" instead, as the modern usage of "hierarchy" does not fit how it is used in the church (coined by ps-dionysius I believe, b.t.w.). And there is good stuff in the lead already there. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 17:33, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 28 April 2025

Catholic Church → Catholicism – Catholicism is the ideological term similar to Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Interstellarity (talk) 00:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

• Speedy close: This has been discussed previously, but the faith is integrally tied to the church. Protestantism comprises thousands of churches, and recent discussions indicate general interest in merging Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodox Church due to their inseparability. ~ Pbritti (talk) 02:09, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

• Support - per consistency. 🗽Freedoxm🗽(talk · contribs) 04:07, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

• Mildly against - "Catholicism" is broader than this article, so it is not a good name for the article without inviting scope creep. The article is not about fringe groups that also claim to be Catholics: Palmerians, Old Catholics, (some) Anglicans, etc. The page Catholicism_(disambiguation) is adequate. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)