Talk:Catholic Church/Unresolved issues

Since it is intended that the Catholic Church article be submitted for Peer Review and subsequently as a Featured Article Candidate, I am compiling a list of unresolved issues to be considered during those processes. I suggest that editors add here any unresolved issues which would cause them to oppose making this article a Featured Article. I strongly urge all editors to refrain from discussing the issues on this page. In fact, I will revert out any attempts to do so.

Instead of discussing issues on this page, please discuss them on Talk:Catholic Church and leave a pointer to the discussion here.

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Adherents

Archive 29

Catholic institutions, personnel and demographics

Personnel as of 2000^[1]	Members	Institutions as of 2000^[1]	Number
Pope	1	Parishes and missions	408,637
Cardinals	183	Primary and secondary schools	125,016
Archbishops	914	Universities	1,046
Bishops	3,475	Hospitals	5,853
Permanent deacons	27,824	Orphanages	8,695
Lay ecclesial ministers	30,632	Homes for the elderly and handicapped	13,933
Diocesan and religious priests	405,178	Dispensaries, leprosaries, nurseries and other institutions	74,936
Religious brothers and sisters	824,199
Seminarians	110,583
Total	1,402,989	Total	638,116

This table is cited to Froehle's "Global Catholicism" it is created by the same source used by all major newspapers. I have this book if anyone wants to know anything else about Catholic institutions around the world. NancyHeise ^talk 14:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Catholic Church in Europe

Secularism has seen a steady rise in Europe, yet the Catholic presence there remains strong.

Indigenous populations

the Church faces challenges in reaching indigenous populations where over 715 different languages are spoken.

Cultural Influence

The text in this section is transcluded from Talk:Catholic Church/Cultural Influence.

By spreading Christianity it battled, and in certain cases eventually ended, practices like human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy of evangelized cultures beginning with the Roman Empire.

Sources

Bokenkotter, Thomas (2004). A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Doubleday. ISBN 0385505841.
Noble, Thomas; Strauss, Barry (2005). Western Civilization. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0618432779.
Stearns, Peter (2000). Gender in World History. Routledge. ISBN 9780415223102.
Chadwick, Owen (1995). A History of Christianity. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0760773327.
Duffy, Eamon (1997). Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-3000-7332-1.
Stark, Rodney (1996). The Rise of Christianity. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691027494. .
Woods Jr, Thomas (2005). How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Regnery Publishing, Inc. ISBN 0-89526-038-7.
Hall, John (2003). Sociology on Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9780415284844.
Extensive list of more sources and their respective quotes concerning Catholic Church cultural influences can be found at User:NancyHeise/cultural influence sandbox. NancyHeise ^talk 14:48, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Issues

Recent discussions

From Alvin SchmidtHow Christian Charity Changed the World - the entire book, a scholarly work with notes and bibiliography, is about the Church's influence - for a summary see the book's table of contents on page 4 [1]

Science and higher learning

Sources

JL Heilbron The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories Harvard University Press page 3 quote "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions."
Thomas Woods How the Church Built Western Civilization Regnery Publishing 2001 is a scholarly work with notes and bibiliography. From page 4 "For the last fifty years, virtually all historians of science-including AC Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, Stanley Jaki, Thomas Goldstein, and JL Heilbron - have concluded that the Scientific Revolution was indebted to the Church. The Catholic contribution to science went well beyond ideas- including theological ideas- to accomplished practicing scientists, many of whom were priests." This entire book goes into great detail on the various contributions of the Church and its cultural impact.
From David Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science University of Chicago Press 1992 p. 213 "It must be emphatically stated that within this educational system the medieval master had a great deal of freedom. The sterotype of the Middle Ages pictures the professor as spineless and subservient, a slavish follower of Aristotle and the church fathers (exactly how one could be a slavish follower of both, the stereotype does not explain), fearful of departing one iota from the demands of authority. There were broad theological limits, of course, but within those limits the medieval master had remarkable freedom of thought and expression; there was almost no doctrine, philosophical or theological, that was not submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism by scholars in the medieval university."
From Brian Tierney's The Idea of Natural Rights: Origins and Persistence Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights 2 (April 2004): p.6 (He is speaking about church councils, papal statements "and the like" in referring to "jurists") "The important point for us is that, in explaining the various possible senses of ius naturale (natural law), the jurists found a new meaning that was not really present in their ancient texts. Reading the old texts with minds formed in their new, more personalist, rights-based culture, they added a new definition. Sometimes they defined natural right in a subjective sense as a power, force, ability, or faculty inhering in human persons ... Once the old concept of natural right was defined in this subjective way the argument could easily lead to the rightful rules of conduct prescribed by natural law or to the licit claims and powers inhering in individuals that we call natural rights. ... (the canonists) were coming to see that an adequate concept of natural justice had to include a concept of individual rights."
Richard Dales wrote The Intellectual Life of Western Europe in the Middle Ages [2] University Press of America, 1980 which offers a useful study on the Church and education in the Middle ages beginning on page 222.
Randall Collins Weberian Sociological Theory Cambridge University Press 1986 attributes the foundation of Captialism to the Catholic Church beginning on page 45. He discusses the importance of monasteries on beginning on page 52.[3]

Law

From Harold Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition Harvard University Press 1983 p. 166 "(Western legal systems) are a secular residue of religious attitudes and assumptions which historically found expression first in the liturgy and rituals and doctrine of the church and thereafter in the institutions and concepts and values of the law. When these historical roots are not understood, many parts of the law appear to lack any underlying source and validity."
Berman p. 195 "Western concepts of law are in their origins, and thereafter in their nature, intimately bound up with distinctively Western theological and liturgical concepts of the atonement and of the sacraments."
Berman p. 228 "(speaking about canon law of marriage) Here were the foundations not only of the modern law of marriage but also of certain basic elements of modern contract law, namely, the concept of free will and related concepts of mistake, duress, and fraud."

Economics

Joseph Schumpeter wrote a scholarly work entitled History of Economics which talks about the Church's influence see [4]

More sources to come. Thanks, NancyHeise ^talk 15:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Social services

Guenter Risse Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals[5] Oxford University Press 1999 discusses the Church and developement of the hospital system in chapters 2, 3 and 10.

Women

Thomas Greer and Gavin Lewis' A Brief History of the Western World published by Thompson Wadsworth 2005, used as a university textbook for Western Civilization courses in many universities. From page 167 "the teaching and practice of charity - especially caring for the sick - held rich and poor together within the Christian communities. Likewise, although Christianity accepted the subordination of women to men, the doctrine of equality in Christ made a real difference to the position of women in early Christian congregations. Christianity denounced the common practice of infanticide, of which girl babies were usually the victims, and preached that adultery by husbands was as sinful as by wives. Both Christian and non-Christian observers agreed that women formed the majority of converts ..."

Same book from page 130 describing Roman household customs "The father was responsible for the education and devotions of his children and, in theory at least, was absolute master of his household. He alone (as in Greece) decided the fate of newborn infants. Those showing physical defects were ordered abandoned; sons were more likely than daughters to be chosen for rearing. Significantly, upper-class daughters were not given personal names. They were called simply by the names of the aristocratic clans ... to which they belonged, and identified by such terms as "the elder" or "the third," or by the names of individual families to which their fathers or husbands belonged. ... If spared at birth, girls were expected to marry in their early teens and to bear children soon afterward."

Same book from page 172 "Thus unity of practice was achieved through the acceptance of a higher authority. Of the five patriarchs, Rome seemed to have the strongest claim to exercise this power. The Eternal City still enjoyed great prestige among the communities of the empire; Rome was the scene of the missionary work and martyrdom of the two leading apostles, Peter and Paul; and according to tradition, the Roman diocese had been founded by Christ's first disciple, Peter. Furthermore, the Roman bishops interpreted a passage in the Gospel of Matthew (16:18-19) to mean that Christ had founded his Church on Peter and had entrusted to him alone the 'keys of the kingdom of heaven.' This, they insisted made Peter supreme among the apostles. And since each bishop of Rome was the direct successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome was clearly supreme among the bishops of the world." NancyHeise ^talk 21:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Slavery

Relevant articles

Issues

Whether the article accurately presents the Church's teaching and actual practice with regards slavery over the course of history Slavery and Slavery II and Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36#Slavery
- Whether the long note summarizing the Church's relationship to slavery is needed and of appropriate length and detail
Whether the article accurately presents the Church's teaching and actual practice with regards the equality of women over the course of history Cultural Influence II and Polygamy-Roman Empire and Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36#Equality_of_the_sexes
Whether the article adequately explains "excesses of the colonial era" Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36#Excesses_of_the_colonial_era

Sources

Joel Panzer's The Popes and Slavery - brief overview here [6] NancyHeise ^talk 03:21, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brett, Stephen F. (1994). Slavery and the Catholic Tradition: Rights in the Balance (American University Studies Series V, Philosophy. Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 978-0820423586.
Maxwell, John Francis. (1975). Slavery and the Catholic Church: The history of Catholic teaching concerning the moral legitimacy of the institution of slavery . isbn 978-0859920155.
Hastings, Adrian (2004). The Church in Africa 1450–1950. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198263996.
Noll, Mark (2006). The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807830127. [7].

Previous discussions

Origins and mission

Previous discussions

History - Early Christianity / Roman Empire

Previous discussions

"Destined for prominence"

Ecumenical councils

Second paragraph: "Church doctrines have been defined through various ecumenical councils ..." First, "various" is unacceptably vague, especially since there is an official numbered list stating which and how many councils are considered "ecumenical". Second, it is wholly inadequate to the complexity of the matter, since the bulk of official Catholic teaching has never been formally defined but falls under the rubric of the "ordinary and universal magisterium" of the bishops in dispersion. (See the article on Magisterium for details.) ✍ 00:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- 21 ecumenical councils

Previous discussions

Archive 39

Nicene Creed

"Those beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed ..." Not really. The Nicene Creed is primarily a resolution of early conflicts over trinitarianism and christology; the rest of the faith is barely even in view. For example, the Eucharist, the "source and summit" of Catholic life, is not even mentioned. User:Harmakheru 00:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- removed
  - Still present in a second location at the end of the "Beliefs" section. It might be worthwhile to change "summarized in the Nicene Creed" to "summarized in a number of official creeds" since creeds are indeed important and the link gives a good overview of them. Harmakheru ✍ 00:54, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think Harmakheru's comments here are an example of the problems this article faces in trying to create an accurate Beliefs section. The Nicene creed is the only one that is cited at Catholic Mass. There are no other "creeds" that are considered to be the central statement of Catholic faith. It has been my observation over the past few days that none of the people currently editing the section seems to have any knowledge or sources to support their article text and the citations are almost wholly to original documents in violation of WP:OR. The section needs to be created by by someone who has some knowledge of Church beliefs and uses Nihil obstat, Imprimatur sources as well as those used in Catholic catechesis. I suggest reinserting the old Beliefs section and allowing someone like myself to trim it. A trimmed version can already be found in this article here User:NancyHeise/Catholic Church medium version. The Beliefs section in that article to be transferred to the new article should include both Beliefs and Prayer and Worship to be representative of Catholic Beliefs as they are detailed in the Catechism. To omit one would make the section inaccurate and incomplete. NancyHeise ^talk 14:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History - High Middle Ages

Albigensian Crusade - First papal inquisition

After a papal legate was put to death by the Cathars in 1208, Pope Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade. Abuses committed during the crusade prompted Innocent III to informally institute the first papal inquisition to prevent future abuses

Issues

Multiple issues with section on Catharism and the Medieval Inquisition
- Whether to list the beliefs of Catharism
- Whether it is important to mention the murder of the papal legate
- Whether it is necessary to mention the low frequency of executions in the Medieval Inquisition

Previous discussions

Archive 41

History - Age of Discovery

Amerindian populations

Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World.

Past discussions

Archive 44

History - Anti-clericalism

Anti-clericalism in Latin America and Europe

Previous discussions

Spain in the 1930s

Previous discussions

History - Nazism and Fascism

The text in this section is transcluded from Talk:Catholic Church/History - Nazism and Fascism.

Previous discussions

Relevant articles

Pope Pius XI and Germany

Reichskonkordat

Relevant articles

Reichskonkordat

Recent discussions

Archive 35

Mit brennender Sorge

Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI "condemned the neopaganism of the Nazi ideology-especially its theory of racial superiority...". Drafted by the future Pope Pius XII and read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it described Hitler as an insane and arrogant prophet and was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization

Relevant articles

Mit brennender Sorge

Issues

Whether to use Bokenkotter's characterization of "Mit Brennender Sorge" which appears to be a selective quote from Falconi

Recent discussions

Holocaust

Relevant articles

Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Issues

Whether it is appropriate to get into the details of what David Kertzer and Pinchas Lapide asserted and what others though of Lapide's work
Whether the characterization of persecution in the Soviet Union is appropriate (considering that the persecution assuredly targeted Orthodox clergy more than Catholic clergy)
Whether it is necessary to cite the text of John Paul II's apology and to mention that he made it by inserting a prayer into the Western Wall
Whether the Church has encouraged or tolerated antisemitism over the course of history
Whether to mention the antisemitic statements and actions of Catholic clergy in Croatia The Catholic Church in Croatia and anti-Semitism

Liberation Theology

Previous discussions

Archive 42

Sexual abuse crisis

Previous discussions

Present

Previous discussions

Archive 42

Challenges facing the Church

Previous discussions

Archive 41

^ ^a ^b Froehle, p. 17–20, p. 30–35, p. 41–43.

[Froehle30-1] Froehle, p. 17–20, p. 30–35, p. 41–43.

[1]