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Peer Review

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

OK, you asked for it.

  1. 22 autonomous: out of date, or perhaps some uncertainty about definitions?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

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

Comments on Peter jackson's list. The lists are meant for peer review, later in the summer, but errors and minor points could perhaps be quickly touched on, to cut down on time then.
1. A bit delphic... Any solid information on this?
2. We did name some historians in earlier versions, but it was thought better to de-clutter.
3. A complex point. This seems to be the date of critical juncture in a continuous process. Perhaps will need a lot of discussion in PR
5. I think we can correct the "founded" now. For the rest, Presumably it depends which Septuagint you are using. I think the Church decrees of 382 and 397 AD were fundamental in establishing the basic list.
6. We've done this a lot. But I don't think there's much dispute here.
7. We are talking about NOW though.
8. We are not aiming at a specialist audience though - so "early" is useful here.
9. I would presume there is a minimum age. Any reference for this?
13. A bit of a preposterous figure here. No idea where it comes from - unless they're including victims of "religious" wars. In any event the book is a tertiary source - not a preferred source for wikipedia, and the work has been heavily criticised in its main review. here for dodgy statistics... "What results is hundred of pages of utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect, culturally biased, and anthropologically useless."
14. Referenced fact. Popes condemn things. It doesn't mean they then cease. The Spanish inquisition was not under Vatican control anyway. And how many theological death penalties did the Church carry out after this statement? Xandar 14:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 1. Back tomorrow on this, I hope.
  • 2. That doesn't answer the question.
  • 5. Exactly what I said: it depends which Septuagint you're using, so the statement is invalid. There may well be Catholic editions that follow the Catholic canon, but that's circular. Your final statement is basically correct, but doesn't affect my point.
  • 7. Agreed. I'm just asking whether you've checked that what the article says is exactly right.
  • 13. Just raising the issue. This seems to be another example of selection of facts that suit a case. Yes, not many people were actually executed by the Inquisition. Do you know why? Did you think most of the rest were acquitted? Virtually nobody was acquitted (I know only of Eckhardt & Luis de Leon), because of the procedures. You were assumed guilty until proven innocent. Generally speaking the only way of doing this was to prove malicious accusation without being told who your accusers were. The normal practice, authorized by Innocent IV, was to torture people into confessing. If you were tortured into confessing then you'd usually recant while you were about it, & then you usually wouldn't be executed.
  • 14. Agreed, the Spanish Inquisition wasn't under papal control, but it was authorized by the Pope & the authorization wasn't revoked. "And how many theological death penalties did the Church carry out after this statement?" I don't know. The last ones were in Spain in 1826. They were issued by an ordinary episcopal court, not the Inquisition. Again, selection of facts in the article, focusing on the inquisition without mentioning executions by other church authorities, not to mention secular authorities encouraged by the church.
Peter jackson (talk) 16:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
PS. The review you refer to seems to be of the 1st ed. Peter jackson (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Two of the three currently referenced historians for this statement are Catholic. This was not a part of the article I had much hand in, however.
  • 13. I think your view of inquisitorial procedings is extremely jaundiced. It isn't what I have read in coverage of the issue by serious historians. It was certainly possible to argue you were innocent of heresy, and most of those convicted served minor penances such as wearing a large cross on your garments for a period. We probably need more discussion of this.
  • 14. I would be surprised if people were being executed in Spain on theological issues alone as late as 1826. As far as I know the Church did not execute people, (except perhaps for the Papal States) I'm not sure of the legal situation there. Execution was always the preserve of the civil authority - although being convicted of certain crimes by the Church in some countries carried a virtually certain civil penalty. Even the Spanish Inquisiton operated under the same civil laws. SO I don't think there is a category missed. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

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

That's something that can be looked at as part of the review. Though I would probably have to ask in what way the Church allegedly "supported" right-wing dictators. In the case of Spain, the Church was forced into the arms of the Nationalists by widespread Republican massacres of clergy. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Xandar, that's your POV, I don't see how we could reference it adequately. I accept the Republicans were anti-clerical but the reasons for that as well as the Church's support for Franco are more complicated then you suggest. The Spanish civil war itself is complicated by the alliances on both sides, Nationalist (military, landowners, Church) and Republican (socialists, communists, anarchists).Haldraper (talk) 08:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
The massacres certainly aren't POV. They happened. But all the issues are highly relevant for detailed discussion at Peer review. Xandar 18:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Clearly massacres happened on both sides, what is POV is your (unreferenced) claim that they were the only reason the Church supported Franco.Haldraper (talk) 18:54, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Only one side massacred thousands of priests and nuns. That's the point. As far as references go, they certainly exist, but we first need to know how and whether we are covering these matters in the article. Xandar 01:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

Direct research (depending on its nature) can sometimes be a primary source. The stats in the first sentence of the article come from Church returns and the CIA factbook. I don't think these have been challenged in a major review as being "utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect". Anyway this is not the main point since we would need far more detail, reference and solid academically-accepted proof for such an outlandish claim. The Wikipedia mantra is that "extreme claims need extreme proof." That certainly applies here, I think. Xandar 21:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
  1. Why should the CIA be a more reliable source than Oxford University Press?
  2. Church returns are primary sources.
  3. Which claim are you calling outlandish?
    1. Do you mean the claim that there were nearly 5,000,000 martyrs? If so, you can only even start making such a claim if you can find another RS that disagrees. The only other figure I've seen is 9,000,000. that was in an unrelaible source, but might have been derived from a reliable one.
    2. Or do you mean criticism of the figures for numbers of Catholics? I merely point out that these figures include
      1. many millions of "Catholics" in the Western world who are lapsed, nominal, non-churchgoing, rejecting large swathes of church teaching &c
      2. tens or hundreds of millions of semi-pagan "Catholics" in Africa & Latin America, eg
        1. in Brazil, the largest catholic population in the world, about 1/2 also engage in various spiritualist &/or voodoo-type practices
        2. the highest official illegitimacy rate in the world is Panama (83%), because, although the population are 90+% baptized Catholic, most of them get married in the old pagan way, not recognized by Church or state; similarly to a lesser extent in a number of other countries
        3. many millions of polygamous catechumens in Africa
  4. It's misleading to say the Church didn't execute people, when it encouraged the state to do so: Excommunicamus, 1231, incorporated into canon law burning at the stake by the secular arm as punishment for recalcitrant heretics (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed, vol 3, page 87).
Peter jackson (talk) 11:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
1. A publisher is not "reliable", per se. Publishers whose books are peer-reviewd are more reliable for that reason. However the principal peer review in this case said that the statistics were, biased, utterly confusing and suspect. That does not make it a reliable, or even a good source for a very contentious claim.
2. Indeed. But they are the best source for the topic, and do not have to be interpreted. It is the interpretation of primary sources that is problematic in WP terms.
3. The claim of 5 million "martyrs" is indeed outlandish. I have never seen a claim for even a tenth of this figure in any reliable historical source.
1. We do not need another reference that disagrees with a preposterous or unproven claim. If I produced a claim that President Obama was a muslim spy, that is an unusual claim that requires a lot more proof than just one published source. We would not need a source that says "Mr Obama is not a Muslim spy."
2. If the point is that some listed as Catholics do not practice regularly, that is probably something that can be included somehow. On the points od the third world Catholics, this is purely subjective opinionising, and perhaps a little patronising or racist at that. Third world Catholics are no less Catholics than any other. Accusing people of being "semi-pagan" without proof is not on.
4. Again. I don't think anyone is trying to pretend that the Church did not support the death penalty for recalcitrant heretics. States adopted it largely because they feared the civil-strife that extreme heresy almost invariably brought. Practice varied from country to country. Xandar 15:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Peter... First of all, let me say that I appreciate your comments. They provide a useful critique of the article which is canted in a number of places towards a positive presentation of the Church rather than what would be, IMO, a more objective and neutral presentation which provides more of the negative perspective. I am generally keeping out of the discussion because you seem to be more knowledgeable than I so I will let you present the points which need to be addressed.
That said, I think you misunderstood Xandar's point about "interpretation of primary sources". He's basically saying that using primary sources is OK if there can be no question about how to interpret the assertion. We cannot use the Church's returns to assert that "the Catholic Church has x million members" because the definition of member is subject to interpretation; however, we can say that the Catholic Church reports that it has x million members. Any discussion of issues about the meaning of "member" would have to be cited by a reliable source. The issues you raise may be valid but we would need to find a reliable source that raises these issues; otherwise, discussion of these issues is just original research.
--Richard (talk) 16:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Peter. The principal review of this work which I quoted located here, is the one used as the main Editorial Review by Google Books, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. This review is pretty devastating, ripping the statistics apart as "confusing," "highly-suspect" and "biased," , and concludes "Not recommended." The two fairly favourable reviews you mention are both twenty five years old, one from a presbyterian source, and refer to the first edition. However the other modern review here, is also a really bad one, pointing out numerous errors, confusions and contradictions in the statistics. The book seems to be basically a one-man operation, containing thousands of originally researched "facts". OUP will not have the staff to check even a tiny fraction of this stuff, which is why so much dubious content has clearly not been caught. The allegation you quote is itself preposterous, and does not seem to be backed up. Who were these five million? When and where were they killed? By whom? Under what circumstances? Such wild claims really have to be backed up by precise information. See the policy WP:REDFLAG. Exceptional claims not covered by normal sources require exceptional sourcing. Xandar 01:23, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
I've had a look at the review listed at top. (I have to say their layout is unclear & confusing, & I didn't notice this one at first.) What book is it talking about? It describes 3 volumes: vol 2 corresponds to vol 1 in the set we have here; vol 3 corresponds to our vol 2; there are only 2 vols mentioned in the listing of contents. Why should a review in Cahner's Business Information of a book about religion be considered superior to the other 3, which at least are in relevant periodicals? Are Google &c good judges of this sort of thing?
These are the biggest book distributors, all indipendently used the same review despite the fact it would harm sales. That means it is pretty much the prime review. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
"OUP will not have the staff to check even a tiny fraction of this stuff, which is why so much dubious content has clearly not been caught." True. However, this actually applies to all "reliable" sources, to a greater or lesser extent. This is a large part of the problem with Wikipedia. The only way to get round it is by a thorough search of all reliable sources on a particular point. You can then analyse them to find why they disagree & try to reach conclusions on the state of scholarship. You can find an example of where I've tried to move towards this at User:Peter jackson/Sources for early Buddhism, but even that covers only English-language sources & is probably incomplete even among those. In conclusion, the whole thing's probably impossible.
Using one source for a controversial point, even if reliable, is probably bad practice. Significant criticism of a source increases the need to be wary of it. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Your last remarks are simply repeating what you said earlier & don't require a reply.
The point is that the particular claim under discussion is not credible. Xandar 23:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Richard, I agree with what you say. I wasn't really criticizing the article on this point: you can see it wasn't on my original list of points. The reason I raised the issue was that Xandar cited a review criticizing WCE statistics as "anthropologically useless". I was pointing out that the statistics in the article, along with those in articles on other religions, are open to the same criticism. They're basically statistics of nominal adherents, regardless of actual belief & practice. On primary sources, just remember that, even if you phrase carefully to say simply that the primary source says such-&-such, without committing yourself to whether it's true, you're still always selecting, which may be POV in itself. That's a general point; I'm not saying it's relevant here. Peter jackson (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Having just checked, I'd point out that the article at present does not treat the primary sources that way. It asserts simply that there are so many Catholics. But the sources are a news agency reporting the church's own figures, & the CIA. In fact much the same figures are given in standard reliable sources like WCE. Peter jackson (talk) 10:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
And [3]. Peter jackson (talk) 10:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The rest of the list

  • (3,4,5,12) All good points. Have they been fixed? Or are we waiting until "later in the summer" for something?
  • (14) "... condemned religious persecution of all kinds." are peacock words-- what religious persecution specficly did he condemn?
  • (2) Question-- which of the there sources is not a Catholic historian? Also...
  • It should at least say "church historians"
  • I see how the sources support the idea that the Christian community was "founded by Jesus in his consecration of Saint Peter" but none of the three state support for the RCC being the continuation of the Christian community founded by Jesus. Note well that being the continuation would be very different from being a continuation. This does not add up too "many historians support".
Carlaude:Talk 09:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Adherents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter, I think you're right that the RCC regards all those it has baptised as members, whether practising or lapsed (or even excomunicated, who are simply barred from receiving sacraments). As I said before, I think Mass attendance would be the best guide, i.e. practising Catholics (including professed 'cafeteria' Catholics who only follow parts of the Church's teachings). I just dug out the figures published by my local diocese for estimated Catholic population and average weekly Mass attendance for 2004-2007 (the last year for which complete figures are available): 2007: 198,405; 35,348, 2006: 223,132; 36,003, 2005: 195,717; 37,232, 2004: 234,692; 38,814. So on their own figures, discounting those who attend irregularly, about one in six baptised Catholics attends Mass weekly, a basic measure of adherence I would suggest.Haldraper (talk) 13:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
  • These are interesting and important issues, and in my experience not often well covered in the media, or Church sources - perhaps I'm wrong. I think a well-researched section devoted to them would be an excellent addition - ideally with a separate article with fuller details. Johnbod (talk) 14:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

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

There are problems with using anything other than the official Church numbers. Unless there are scholarly studies which attempt to apply a rigorous methodology to all religions, anything else smacks of original research. I acknowledge that Haldraper has a point that weekly Mass attendance is an indicator of the level to which a particular Catholic practices his/her faith but it is very risky to try and establish a figure that is somewhere between 100% of reported Catholics vs. 1/6 of reported Catholics who attend Mass on a weekly basis.
For example, Haldraper's suggestion of weekly Mass attendance sounds reasonable but it excludes Christmas/Easter Catholics and the sick and elderly. There are many Catholics (and Protestants) who are derogatorily referred to as "Christmas/Easter" Catholics because that's when they go to church. This is why the churches are packed to the gills on those days. Does this make them a non-Catholic?
Does Haldraper think that adherents of the Protestant denominations go to church every week as well? That's a rhetorical question. Not all of them do. In fact, in my church (Presbyterian), less than half of the membership attends worship on any given Sunday. Our periodic review of the membership rolls starts by identifying members who haven't been seen in any church function (worship or otherwise) for two years. The primary motivation for reviewing the membership rolls is that our church contributes to the presbytery a dollar amount for every member on our rolls so there is a financial incentive to keeping our membership rolls low. However, because membership is about more than money, we make every effort to keep people on our rolls if they show even the slightest interest in remaining a member and only remove them at their request or if we are unable to reach them.
BTW, despite worshiping with my family at a Presbyterian church, I self-identify as a Catholic although it is generally a year or more between the times that I attend Mass. I ain't leaving unless the Church asks me to leave.
I think this entire line of discussion leads nowhere. A change of a few percent could change whether the Catholic Church represents "over half of all Christians" or just "approximately half of all Christians". If this distinction is deemed important, we can make that change.
If the Catholic Church represented 30% of all Christians and the Baptists represented 28%, a change of 2-3% could affect which church was considered the largest. But, since that is not the case, I think we could go round and round this discussion forever and not come up with anything other than original research.
--Richard (talk) 17:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Richard, this conversation will not lead anywhere. Some individuals can be very exercised over what numbers are reported on membership rolls of any church, take your pick. In reality churches do the best they can to report those individuals have been members of the church at some point. Unless an individual asks for their name to be removed, their name stays on the rolls. Who goes to church, who doesn't, who believes, who doesn't, how much of the doctrine does one embrace, how much of the doctrine is not believed, etc. are impossible to report.
I appreciate the old saying, "there are lies, damn lies, and then you have statistics". The best statisticians in the world try to report which candidate will win the presidency on the day of election and they seldom get it right. These same statisticians also try to guesstimate the "correct" number of church members for Christian churches after talking with 30,000 to 50,000 people. Who is right? The churches that report or the statistician? Neither will be; they both have done the best they can. We can report what is said, but nothing more. Those who get hot and bothered...I guess will stay in that state until they just let it go. Cheers. --StormRider 18:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm afraid that's just inadequate. As I said above, free churches like the Baptists count only active adults as members. It doesn't make sense to compare those statistics with Catholic membership figures based on quite different criteria. Treating church figures as fact is not NPOV, & as I again pointed out above it leads to total membership more than population in some countries. This is quite different from the situation in the Far East, where people really do "belong" to 2 or 3 religions at once.
"Unless there are scholarly studies which attempt to apply a rigorous methodology to all religions, anything else smacks of original research." Haven't you been listening? We've repeatedly discussed 2 scholarly sources providing such statistics. Certainly WCE counts as RS by WP criteria.
Now, I've found that source I mentioned. UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends 5, The Future of the Church, Christian Research, ed Peter Brierley, 2005/2006, page 1.3, gives Catholic percentage of world Christians as 50 in 1970, declining to 43 in 1990, 41 in 2010 & 37 in 2050. The actual figures given, in millions, for 2010 are
  • Anglican 97
  • Independent 460
  • Orthodox 226
  • Protestant 399
  • Roman Catholic 910
  • Marginal 36
  • Unaffiliated 117
  • Total 2,245
  • Even on the absurd assumption that all the unaffiliated are nominal Catholics, this still makes them less than 1/2, contradicting other sources. I leave people to argue among themselves as to whether this counts as a reliable source. Peter jackson (talk) 10:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


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

Those figures are not reliable. The review I linked to above for WCE specifically criticised these types of figures, (which seem to come from the same source,) and it is not clear how they have been "gathered". In particular, the reliability of "Independent" and "Unaffiliated" figures. Firstly the selection of categories seems to be arbitrary. Secondly most of these numbers appear to be estimated, since there is no reliable means to assemble or check this data. The figures for these two categories therefore become grossly inflated in my opinion. To use these sources to supplant more established means of enumeration, we would need to be much surer of the methodology used, and the standards of proof used to assign numbers in all these categories, as well as being sure that similar standards were being applied across all groups. Xandar 21:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
From the International Bulletin of Missionary Research review of WCE2, illustrating some of the problems.
The majority of new denominational bodies listed in WCE2 (not found in WCE1) are found in the Independent category. In addition, the new category absorbs the WCE1 category "Non-White ... Indigenous" and picks up a great many other denominations that formerly, in WCE1, were labeled Protestant or Anglican. For instance, in the United States, the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Chur ch, and the Presbyterian Church in America were all labeled Protestant in WCE1, but now, curiously, they are in the Independent category. The Reformed Episcopal Church was labeled Anglican in WCE1; now it is in the Independent list. The result is that Independents now outnumber Protestants in the world, and even in a traditionally Protestant heartland such as the United States, Independents outnumber Protestants--at least as they are defined and rearranged here.
the authors have also introduced three trans-megabloc renewal groupings: Evangelicals, Pentecostals/Charismatics, and Great Commission Christians (no explanation why only "Great Commission Christians" is always in bold-face type). There is extensive description and discussion about Pentecostals/Charismatics (1:19--21). But who are Evangelicals and Great Commission Christians? According to the Glossary (1:25ff.), Evangelicals (capital "E") are "A subdivision mainly of Protestants consisting of all affiliated church members calling themselves Evangelicals, or all persons belonging to Evangelical congregations, churches or denominations; characterized by commitment to personal religion." Great Commission Christians are "Believers in Jesus Christ who are aware of the implications of Christ's Great Commission, who have accepted its personal challenge... are attempting to obey [it], and who are seeking to influence the body of Christ to implement it." To further complicate the picture, "evangelicals" (small "e") are defined as "synonymous with Great Commission Christians," and those labeled "nominal Christians" in the first edition are now called "unaffiliated Christians." These are inadequate and confusing definitions and distinctions, and therefore the enumeration of them is suspect.
Other questionable categories included in the enumeration are "Latent Christians" (defined as "both Church members and unaffiliated, who do not involve themselves in Christ's mission on Earth"), "Non-baptized believers in Christ" ("Members of non-Christian religions who become converted to faith in Christ as Lord but choose not to join denominations but to remain in their religions as witnesses there to Christ"), and "Crypto-Christians" ("Secret believers, hidden Christians, usually known to churches but not to state or secular or non-Christian religious society"). If Cryp to-Christians are secret and hidden, how do the authors know so much about them?
How is one to account for gross discrepancies between information reported in WCE2 and other reliable sources? For instance, in the profile on Kazakhstan, WCE2 says that 8.6 percent of the population is Orthodox, whereas the 2001 World Almanac and the Vatican News Service both say 44 percent is Orthodox. WCE2 says there are 510,000 Roman Catholics in Kazakhstan, but the Vatican claims only 300,000. Peter Brierley, executive director of the Christian Research Association in London, maintains there are only 48,000 churches in Britain, whereas WCE2 says there are 66,000 (1:838, col. 82). Brierley also says that the figure of 12 million adults in the Church of England reported in WCE2 (1:145, col. 6, "Church of England") is about eight times the number on the electoral roll of that church.
This preoccupation with Pentecostalism and conservative Protestantism has led some scholars, such as Jan Jongeneel in Utrecht, to ask if there is an implicit or hidden ecclesiology and agenda a t work in WCE2. Xandar 22:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Adherents

Peter jackson brings up a very vaild point that had a rather simple improvement. Although it is still not (in IMHO) the ideal way to do things I think a fair compromise is to
(1) change the article lead from "...the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of ..."
to "...the Roman Catholic Church, has the world's largest Christian church membership, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of ..."
and (2) somerwhere lower down in the article-- discuss the number of Roman Catholic members and Roman Catholic adherents and what it means (or doesn't mean) to be a member of the Chuch.-- or if not that, this infomation could be in another "note". --Carlaude:Talk 21:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
That's an interesting point, Carlaude. It would certainly enable us to short-circuit a lot of argument and private interpretation. Xandar 22:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me to be even worse.
  1. On the one hand you're comparing the Catholic Church membership with total numbers of "Christians".
  2. On the other you're comparing its membership with those of churches with much stricter membership criteria.
Neither is comparing like with like. I don't see how this could "short-circuit a lot of argument and private interpretation". Peter jackson (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree; it is not comparing like with like, but this lead was always doing this. The improvement is to state explicitly (or more explicitly) what the article is trying to compare to "total Christians" and "total world population."
Oh course-- this would be a much more fair statement if it only compared RCC membership to total world population, saving the reference to "total Christians" until a fuller explanation can be made. Carlaude:Talk 12:34, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

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

Bob, I agree that claimed membership is problematic but what is the alternative? As the academic study you cite says, "To be sure, the significance of membership (its importance, its criteria, and even its definition) varies greatly from one denomination or faith to another. This study is not in position to evaluate the meaning or importance of religious institutional membership for particular groups. On the other hand, given that about eighty percent of adults identify with some religious group, there appears to be a considerable gap between "identification" with a religion and reported "membership" or "belonging" to a an institutional embodiment of that faith community."
Unless you're saying the CC is inflating figures for weekly Mass attendance, I would still argue they are the most accurate and objective measure of the number of practising as opposed to baptised Catholics.Haldraper (talk) 20:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Weekly mass attendance ("praticicing Catholics") would be better than "membership", or "claimed membership," but not as good as "adherents" only because we will not have real numbers for the weekly attendance of all other Christian Churches, but will have numbers for adherents of all other Christian Churches. (Does weekly mass attendance count people twice if they come twice in the same week?)
But I will agree to anything that is an improvement, anything that says what it is comparing.
Assuming we may not get consensus on comparing adherents to adherents, please comment on comparing the number of Catholics only to total world population in the lead, sidesteping this apples-and-oranges issue until lower down in more detail.Carlaude:Talk 21:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
We're moving off-topic here. The headline figure needed here is Church membership/affiliation - not estimates, arbitrary measures, or Original Research on how committed members are. Weekly mass attendance figures are a) Not available on a global basis, and b) Not an accurate measure of anything. Other religious groups also would have severe problems if measured that way. How many Buddhists attend temple weekly? How many Muslim women go to mosque? How many atheists go to secular societies? Other Christian groups sometimes tend to have wild overestimations of membership - often based on pastor estimates. Evangelicals tend to count people who come forward at meetings to be "saved", even though they may often be repeat offenders who return to their normal lifestyle within weeks. The C of E assumes anyone who isn't something else is a member, while also using Easter Church attendance and the Electoral Roll as very differing means of estimating active numbers. Therefore it's right to stick with the standard figures for the lead, and perhaps have a brief (referenced) discussion of activity issues in the relevant article section. Xandar 00:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Bringing up Buddhist and Muslim attendance numbers is the only moving off-topic I see.
I assure you as someone that has known many Evangelical leaders that none of them have ever confused being "saved" with being a member. In fact, because members vote occationaly, they need a system to know who members are. The point is that counting all the people who are brought forward to be "baptisted" as babies is not a real measure of church affiliation, even if they are "baptisted" just once. Scholars know this and that is why they have developed the adherents measure. Now I cannot speak about Anglians, but if you think everyone else has bad means of keeping track of membership, then why is it that you think we have to use membership as the measure? Carlaude:Talk 02:12, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Xandar, on your point a) I'm not so sure as you seem to be that there are no figures available. Dioceses certainly publish them as I have shown, I'm assuming the Vatican has access to that info and collates it. Whether or not they then release it is another matter. Your point b) is a joke right? You're not seriously comparing atheists' attendance at secular society meetings (completely optional) with practising Catholics at weekly Mass (fundamental requirement) are you?Haldraper (talk) 08:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Also Xandar, you're wrong on the CofE. They don't regard 'anyone who isn't something else is a member', like the CC membership is via baptism. And within that they have a roll of 'registered members', i.e. regular attenders, who have a vote in elections to the lay section of the General Synod.Haldraper (talk) 08:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Attending weekly Mass is no more a "fundamental requirement" than is fidelity in marriage. Infidelity in marriage doesn't mean ceasing to be a Catholic; still less does "missing Mass" make someone cease to be a Catholic. Defteri (talk) 11:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
While I agree that it starts to look like Original Research if editors were to take attendance numbers and deduce adherents, simply using a number from the Church itself is not credible. The Church itself is clearly not an unbiased source on this topic and it vastly overstates membership. As a starting example, the Church claims something like 90% of South America as “Catholic” yet recent polls show that only 71% self-identify as Catholic and only 40% of those self-identify as “practicing” http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm and further only 75% or so of the population is over 18.
0.71*0.4*0.75=21.3% *383 million = only 81.5 million over 18 practicing RCC’s in South America versus
0.9*383=345mm or so claimed by the RCC
The difference is 263 million in S.A. alone.
Similar percentages of self-identified “practicing” are seen in Spain and Italy also (i.e., around 40% of those that declare as Catholic).
The Church can claim and believe that all those baptized under its auspices are Catholic until they say they aren’t, but as I remarked above, this is the sort of statement that could be made by any number of groups and is not one that need be perpetuated by Wikipedia.
I propose that in the introduction, something less specific is warranted … something like “worldwide influence”, “largest Christian church”, “hundreds of millions of members” are all reasonable sorts of statements … and later in the article, a more in-depth discussion of the issues surrounding claimed memberships can be discussed. While I understand that may not please members of the Church, please remember that Wikipedia is separate from religion. Claiming the Church has a billion members surely has a nice ring to it but it’s not really defensible in any secular way. BobKawanaka (talk) 14:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
I agree-- technically-- but if others do not agree, this issue can be posted at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard asking for their input, and/or their informed opinion here. --Carlaude:Talk 15:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Distinctions between "practising" and "Non-practising", going to church weekly or not, are neither here nor there. What we are discussing is religious affiliations. These are counted in a standard way, and we are following suit. Trying to degrade Catholic numbers by applying subjective criteria is OR and would have to be applied to all religions and non-religious groupings across the world. Xandar 01:03, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
This is our point. Religious affiliations are not counted in any standard way (see Major religious groups for example)-- unless you mean adherents. Are you agreeing to adherents now? Carlaude:Talk 02:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Back to sources, please

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

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

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

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

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

One of my points of course is that by citing the disparity between the Church's estimates in Latin America vs. a cited reference with no skin in the game: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm, that it is unreasonable to cite a headline number that is only based on what the Church claims. The number is open to dispute and since the introduction is not really the place for an involved discussion about what the true numbers mean, I feel it would be better to be less specific about the numbers in the introduction. In fact, it is not necessary to a good article to quote numbers in the introduction. The Church is clearly a biased source on the topic, that's not meant to be derogatory or to suggest foul play, but we must be honest, the Church citing its own membership is not an unbiased source. A more in depth discussion can be had later but numbers like a billion are just not defensible and rather than having a back on forth on what the numbers really are in the introduction, it would be better to say things like "largest Christian Church" and "several hundred million ....". BobKawanaka (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Bob, my most recent edits to this article have started to make the point that the Catholic Church's figures are not to be accepted uncritically. I have pointed out some of the issues using citations to reliable sources provided by other editors. However, to attempt to make any assertion about global statistics based upon the regional statistics provided in http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm leaves us open to the charge of original research. If this is truly a substantive issue, surely somebody somewhere has said something on this topic that we can cite as a reliable source. For starters, why not look at how many members the Catholic Church claimed in the mid-1990s and compare that against the Encyclopedia Britannica's figures as cited in adherents.com? If there's a disparity there, we can follow up on why the disparity exists. If, as you say, "numbers like a billion are not defensible", then surely you can find some reliable source which makes this argument. I believe you but Wikipedia isn't about what you think or what I think but about what reliable sources think. Without a citation to a reliable source, any challenge we make is original research. In particular, the chain of logic that you present based upon that statistics in http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503707.htm is original research and synthesis, even if it's true (which it probably is). You can see from my recent edits that I am not opposed to your view. Help me make a similar edit that makes your point. --Richard (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
For most organisations, membership is that cited by the organisation. Taking a different standard with the Catholic Church is itself a bias. So we have the Church's own source, and we have the CIA World Factbook, both of which place Catholics as more than half of world Christians. With regard to the note, the claim of 40% is not credible and not based on reliable sources. This should not be there. The "UK Christian Handbook" which you get this number from is produced by a marginal protestant evangelical organisation, and seems to have got its figures and categories from the heavily criticised WCE2 source, which guesstimates numbers and invents its own categories of believers. When a number is so far out of line, and comes from questionable sources, it should not be in Wikipedia. From what I see, a lot of the argument on this page comes from trying to apply standards to Catholic Church membership which aren't being applied to other groups. We have to stick with the well-established 50% figure. Xandar 00:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey I just started a new church! Its members are all the human beings who have names begining with letters A - M. Its size is 3.5 billion. If you don't accept the standard of membership of my church then it is your bias. If anyone publishes anything different they are a biased source. This is a well-established figure because I said so. Carlaude:Talk 02:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
You provide sound standard references that back up your claim, Carlaude, perhaps show us a few cathedrals and mass rallies, and you can start an article on your new religion. My point is that unreliable sources. O.R. or guesstimations are being used by some to try to undermine more reliable accepted sources. Having changed the lead to the word "claims", despite the sourcing, it would seem that some people are still not satisfied.
So please don't add demonstrably unreliable statistics to the article without agreement. Xandar 10:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

In the main section on membership, it says the CC has 1.147 billion members. Are these baptised or practising Catholics? I suspect the former. I'm in favour of using the CC's own figures on Mass attendance to give a more accurate measure of those who actually practise their faith.Haldraper (talk) 11:53, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Membership is by baptism or conversion, minus those who leave. So this maps out as similar to adherents. The concept of a "practising Catholic" is virtually impossible to objectify in statistical terms. Weekly Mass attendance is a measure of exactly that - not whether anyone prays, holds Catholic beliefs or considers themselves Catholic. Mass attendance figures could feature in the membership section of the article as a commentary on the main figure, IF such reliable worldwide figures existed. However I have not seen them. Xandar 22:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
With regard to the headline figure for Catholics, I have checked some further reliable sources, and they work out as follows:
  • 2007 Catholic Yearbook.................. 1.115 billion Catholics
  • Adherents.com........................... 1,050,000,000 Catholics
  • Oxford Dictionary of World religions.... approaching 1 billion members
  • The World Almanac....................... 1,121,516,000 Catholics
  • 2008 Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook... 1,121,516,000 Catholics
  • Encyclopedia Britannica p877............ 1.1 billion adherents.
  • CIA World Factbook...................... Catholics over 50% of all christians
  • Status of Global Mission, 2009.......... 1,131 million catholics
(quoted by List of Christian denominations by number of members
The reliable sources all pretty much agree with the article text. Xandar 22:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Practising Catholics

Leaving aside how you can leave the CC given it regards non-practising baptised Catholics as lapsed members, the figure for members in no way 'maps out as similar to adherents' as Xandar suggests. The concept of 'practising Catholic' is very easy to objectify in statistical terms: the CC already does it by publishing figures for Mass attendance (the criterion for being a practising Catholic, not praying regularly or holding certain beliefs or considering yourself Catholic). I've already reproduced the figures for my local diocese, the only task now is to find out if these figures are collated centrally by the Church. The membership figure cited should either reflect practising Catholics or if we can't get that figure should qualify the current figure with 'it is not clear how many of these are practising Catholics'.Haldraper (talk)07:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

If it is really true that the number of practising Catholics is unknown/unknowable as Anietor and Antique Rose have claimed in reverting the edit I made along the lines suggested in my last post, how about just saying 'there are 1.147 billion baptised Catholics'?Haldraper (talk) 14:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

What would that phrase actually mean? Literally, it excludes both unbaptized Catholics (eg catechumens) & baptized non-Catholics. But how could you decide how many people who've received Catholic baptism aren't Catholics? Peter jackson (talk) 16:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The phrase "although it is not clear how many of these are practising Catholics" is IMHO encyclopedically irrelevant and POV. It's mere speculation, and it's not up to Wikipedia to speculate. Antique Rose — Drop me a line 19:03, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

If it were possible to clearly state a definition as to who is and is not a "practising Catholic" that is defensible via a citation to a reliable source, we could have a discussion about using this phrase. My understanding is that the definition is quite loose and it is unclear whether someone who goes to Mass once a month is or is not a "practising Catholic". How about goes to Mass but not to confession? Using my knowledge of the Presbyterian church where my family worships, I can tell you that there are members (joined the church at one point, maybe a couple of decades ago, not necessarily active), those who attend worship at least once a year (might be a member, might not), those who have made a stewardship pledge this year (others might donate in the collection basket instead of pledging). Which of these would you suggest is a comparable statistic to the proposed "practicising" Catholic? For which Orthodox and Protestant churches do we have statistics from reliable sources that are comparable to the proposed "weekly Mass attendance" statistic? Do we even have a reliable source that provides a statistic for "weekly Mass attendance" across the entire Catholic Church? (as opposed to just in the United States?) If not, wouldn't it be original research to try and create such a statistic ourselves? As I said before, this discussion is just full of proposals to engage in original research. Find us some sources that make these arguments critical of the statistics presented in the article and we can discuss this further. Otherwise, you're just wasting everybody's time. --Richard (talk) 23:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
This is not a unique conversation and the criticisms of membership numbers are the same regardless of the church rolls being attacked. For some reason it is anathema to some editors for churches to discuss their membership numbers and simply report their roll numbers. Every three or four months this is a recurring topic/criticism on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints article. Does this include dead people, are the people active, practicing members, does it include excommunicated members, what about those who have asked to have their names removed, confirmed members is a better measure than baptized, the numbers can't be correct because everyone leaves after they are baptized, Europe is full of members, but devoid of any that go to church, etc. etc. etc.
There is no appropriate way to handle this except to report what the respective church's claims with a clarification of what their numbers mean i.e. baptized, attending meetings, etc. Just state what the church states and move on. If there is legitimate criticism from a reliable source, briefly explain it, cite it, and move on. This is not difficult, it is not rocket science, but it is HIGHLY BIASED to create original research, synthesize criticisms, and use opinion to parade as scholarly criticism, etc. --StormRider 01:57, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Richard, the one thing the rules of the Catholic Church are not is loose. The concept of a 'practising Catholic' is very precisely defined by Canon Law: you are obliged to attend Mass weekly and on holy days of obligation and receive the sacrament of confession at least once a year. It is impossible therefore to make comparisons with membership of other denominations/religions that do not apply such criteria. Haldraper (talk) 06:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Uh huh, precisely. And that is why any attempt to normalize the numbers of total Catholics to count "practising Catholics" rather than "baptized Catholics" so as to be comparable to those reported by other churches is likely to be meaningless. Does the Catholic Church release statistics of how many practising Catholics there are? I doubt it. Unlike, say the Jehovah's Witnesses, who track the number of "publishers", the Catholic Church does not determine record a Catholic attends Mass weekly or not nor does it track whether he receives the Sacrament of Penance annually or not. By "loosely defined", what I meant is that most people will count themselves as "practising" if they attend Mass at least two or three times a month, some might even consider once a month enough. Per our article on the Sacrament of Penance (Catholic Church), "In the UK and USA, at least three-quarters of professed Roman Catholics no longer adhere to this requirement (i.e. the requirement to receive the sacrement at least once a year)." Thus, in the UK and the US at least, what the Church precisely defines and what the laity actually practises are two different things. If the Church reported the number who actually meet the requirements that you indicated above, the number of "practising Catholics" might be significantly less than half of the 1.1 billion number. And what would that prove? Do you suggest that the numbers reported by other churches meet their standards of "practising"? --Richard (talk) 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Rider, I am not trying to attack or criticise, simply clarify. I agree with you that we should 'report what the respective church's claims with a clarification of what their numbers mean', it's the second bit that's missing at the moment and will lead many readers of this page to the false conclusion that the figure refers to practising Catholics. I have no problem with the Church regarding everyone it has baptised as a member and counting them (and me) as such but we should make that clear. I suggest an additional sentence after the current one as follows: 'These figures includes all baptised Catholics, both practising and lapsed'.Haldraper (talk) 06:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

There are two different issues commingled in this discussion...

1. There are those who wish to challenge the figure of 1.1 billion Catholics. Some just wish to qualify it by stating what it represents (e.g. Haldraper). I don't find Haldraper's suggestion totally unacceptable although I'm not sure how much value it contributes (see my comment about "practising" above). Moreover, I would provide the "clarification" (if it does clarify anything) in a Note rather than inline in the article. There are those who would substitute a lower number. I would support inserting a range but Xandar opposes this, arguing that the source of the lower number is unreliable. It would help if Xandar could present sources who challenge the WCE2 source.

2. There are those who wish to challenge the comparison of the number of Catholics against the total number of Christians (i.e. over half/approximately half) on the grounds that the number of Catholics is a wiggly number and its definition (total baptized) is not an "apples-to-apples" comparison against the definition of the number of members of other churches (whatever that may be). So far, most of this discussion has been based on original research and no one has offered any sources that make these arguments. Xandar has provided several sources that report somewhere between 1.05 and 1.13 billion Catholics. Most sources agree that this is roughly half of all Christians. Only one source has suggested that Catholics are 40% of all Christians rather than 50%. IMO, we should focus on discussing whether or not that source is reliable or not. Xandar says "No". I'd like to have a better understanding of why he thinks it is not.

--Richard (talk) 15:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

A few points here.
Most of the religion articles on Wikipedia don't go into this subject of "practising"/"non-practising," probably because it is a minefield for defining terms and proving them.
One of the few articles that does - Church of Sweden - has a figure claiming that only 2% of the church's members regularly attend Sunday services. This is an extreme of apathy, but goes to show that it Catholics are not the chief group who have members who don't practice.
In fact Church attendance varies from country to country, (often inversely related to prosperity) so taking European attendance rates and trying to apply them to Asia or Africa would be very poor practice.
The Lead has already been modified to include the word "claimed" before the headline membershirship, which enables the reader to know that figures are largely self-assessed.
With regard to WCE2, I have already posted reasons why this is an unreliable source. Apart from the fact that it is hugely out of line with the consensus of other estimates - always a matter for suspicion; WCE2 has been badly reviewed by its two main expert reviewers on the validity of its statistics.
The International Bulletin of Missionary Research, a non-Catholic body, with particular expertise in the field, says (selected paragraphs):
the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Chur ch, and the Presbyterian Church in America were all labeled Protestant in WCE1, but now, curiously, they are in the Independent category. The Reformed Episcopal Church was labeled Anglican in WCE1; now it is in the Independent list. The result is that Independents now outnumber Protestants in the world, and even in a traditionally Protestant heartland such as the United States, Independents outnumber Protestants--at least as they are defined and rearranged here.
evangelicals" (small "e") are defined as "synonymous with Great Commission Christians," and those labeled "nominal Christians" in the first edition are now called "unaffiliated Christians." These are inadequate and confusing definitions and distinctions, and therefore the enumeration of them is suspect.
Other questionable categories included in the enumeration are "Latent Christians" (defined as "both Church members and unaffiliated, who do not involve themselves in Christ's mission on Earth"), "Non-baptized believers in Christ" ("Members of non-Christian religions who become converted to faith in Christ as Lord but choose not to join denominations but to remain in their religions as witnesses there to Christ"), and "Crypto-Christians" ("Secret believers, hidden Christians, usually known to churches but not to state or secular or non-Christian religious society"). If Crypto-Christians are secret and hidden, how do the authors know so much about them?
How is one to account for gross discrepancies between information reported in WCE2 and other reliable sources? For instance, in the profile on Kazakhstan, WCE2 says that 8.6 percent of the population is Orthodox, whereas the 2001 World Almanac and the Vatican News Service both say 44 percent is Orthodox. WCE2 says there are 510,000 Roman Catholics in Kazakhstan, but the Vatican claims only 300,000. Peter Brierley, executive director of the Christian Research Association in London, maintains there are only 48,000 churches in Britain, whereas WCE2 says there are 66,000 (1:838, col. 82). Brierley also says that the figure of 12 million adults in the Church of England reported in WCE2 (1:145, col. 6, "Church of England") is about eight times the number on the electoral roll of that church.
preoccupation with Pentecostalism and conservative Protestantism has led some scholars, such as Jan Jongeneel in Utrecht, to ask if there is an implicit or hidden ecclesiology and agenda at work in WCE2
These are quite severe criticisms of the unreliable statistical methods of WCE2 and its maverick way of delineating Christians.
In addition, the other major Library review of WCE2 says:
The subtitle is not a misprint: it does say "AD 2200." This epitomizes the major dilemma of this encyclopedia: the reader cannot tell what is being reported as an empirically derived fact or accepted by theological faith... What follows is an infuriating use of categories, subcategories, and sub-subcategories, which divide and subdivide parts to give the statistics the appearance of being scientifically derived... All this leads to lists and lists of statistics and facts. Among these: in the year 14.5 billion B.C.E., God created dark matter and black holes, and beyond the "eschatofuture" of 10 to the 100 power year (the year google), God creates infinite parallel universes... There is no workable index for finding the facts or the statistics listed. Volume 2 is an alphabetized listing of the world's countries, and each entry is a readable narrative about its history, "liberty," and religions populations. This is the most useful of the volumes, but it suffers from the shadow of doubt cast by the first volume concerning the reliability of the encyclopedia's facts... What results is hundred of pages of utterly confusing statistics, some highly suspect, culturally biased, and anthropologically useless... There is a need for a comparative survey of world Christian churches and other religions. This is not it. Not recommended.
I think this work is the definition of an unreliable source. Xandar 01:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Since you raise the issue of definition of reliable source, here's the one given in the policy page WP:V:
"Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.[nb 1] Reliable sources are needed to substantiate material within articles, and citations directing the reader to those sources are needed to give credit to authors and publishers, in order to avoid plagiarism and copyright violations. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require high-quality sources.

In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. Electronic media may also be used. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable the source is.

Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text."

Notice that "books published in university presses" come only 2nd on the list, & bear in mind that Oxford is 1 of the world's leading universities.
See above for further discussion on this topic. Peter jackson (talk) 10:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Notice also that the policy states "peer-reviewed" publications. Why does this provide reliability? Because other experts in the field can examine the claims and methodology of the work and back them or criticise them. In the case of WCE2, the prominent reviews by Peers state clearly that the source is UNRELIABLE. The fact that it also contradicts multiple reliable sources adds futher weight to this. Xandar 23:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
Rubbish. As I've already explained, peer-reviewed means before publication. And reliable sources frequently contradict each other. That brings NPOV into play.
Why are you arguing about WCE in this section anyway? It doesn't give figures for Catholic adherents or practising Catholics. The only figure it gives for Catholics is 1,057,328,093 affiliated Catholics in 2000, the figure supplied by the church itself. It gives similar figures for other churches, again usually supplied by them. Its methodology makes clear that there are
  1. people who call themselves Christians but aren't affiliated to any church
  2. people who are counted in the affiliation figures of 2 churches
  3. people who are counted in the affiliation figures of a church but have in fact abandoned it
It gives figures for these categories for Christianity as a whole, but not specifically for Catholics &c. Peter jackson (talk) 10:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Catholics as a percentage of Christianity as a whole

Using the numbers presented by Xandar, total Catholics fall into a range between 1.05 and 1.13 billion (basically 1.08 billion +/- 30million). The one outlier is UK Christian Handbook, Religious Trends 5, The Future of the Church, Christian Research, ed Peter Brierley. This work suggests that Catholics are more like 40% of the total population of Christians as opposed to 50% which seems to be what most other sources report. A couple of weeks ago, I made an edit which included the range 40%-50% but Xandar reverted it saying that the Brierley work had not been agreed to on the Talk Page.

We should consider what a "reliable source" is. We're not looking for the one correct answer, we are looking to report what the range of answers is that is used by scholars and professionals. Some reviewers have criticized the statistics in the UK Christian Handbook; however, this alone does not argue that the source is unreliable. If a substantial number of scholars and professionals rely on this source, then it is reliable, at least to establish the existence of an alternate POV.

I am inclined to include the 40% figure arrived at by computing percentages from the UK Christian Handbook figures and then add a Note which presents the negative reviews of the source.

--Richard (talk) 17:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I have not attempted to review the source to determine if it meets the standards of RS, but I make the assumption that it does. Truth is meaningless to us on Wikipedia for the simple reason that we as editors make a foundational assumption that Wikipedia is incapable of identifying truth. We only report what experts or reliable references state regarding a topic. If this position is a fringe position, then it may not need to be mentioned. If it is fringe, then it can be ignored; however, I find this a difficult application given that it not an theory, but the result of a mathematical/statistical analysis. Including it with the attendant criticism seems an acceptable choice. This also does not need to be in the body of the article, but can easily be included in a note that explains/supports the statement of the membership totals. --StormRider 18:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
No. We have an overwhelming unity of reliable sources saying that the figure for Catholics is over 1 Billion, and that Catholics amount to roughly half Christians worldwide. We have one, unreliable and fringe source saying something different. Moreover the UK Christian Handbook is not a world authority on anything. It is hardly a serious puiblication, being self-published by various Baptist and other Church groups in the UK, funded and produced largely to advertise various schools, campsites and retreat services. These people have no resource to gather or process the information they claim to have about World Church adherence, and, as a largely denominational group, they have a built in bias to overemphasise their group numbers. In addition the quoted numbers give the incredible figure of 400 million "independent" Christians in the world - more than protestants or Orthodox! This defies serious analysis. Who are these people? How have these highly-divergent figures been gathered and collated? The UK Christian handbook figure is a fringe source of no academic reputation, and it presents figures way out of those accepted by the major reliable sources. Such dodgy claims should not be in the article. Xandar 21:36, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Richard, if this source is self-published from a denomination without any review by scholars or the equivalent of peer-review, I am not sure it fits the standards of a reliable reference. This source may more closely fit the definition of a fringe position at best.
Xandar, as an aside, please take this in the spirit it is given. Wikipedia is an odd beast; it does some things very well and other things it fails miserably. Those of us with strong religious affiliation or grasp of firm belief often have difficulty hearing negative information, particularly when we have heard so much of it in our real life. As a LDS, having served a mission in southern France, been a student of religion most of life, worked with many different Protestants and other Christian groups, I have heard more than my share of doctrinal criticism, anti-Mormonism, and other similar attacks. So much of the criticism that is written about Mormons is utter balderdash. Seldom do I meet a knowledgeable critic either inside or outside of the LDS Church. What I have learned and use editing Wikipedia is not to be concerned about honest criticism. I wish the purpose of Wikipedia (as far as religion goes) was an investigation about each respective church from their position and allowing a modest section for honest criticism. Unfortunately, it is not the case, and criticism can run rampant and some articles get twisted horribly. I don't think this article is overly harsh to Catholicism and some rather potent criticism has been omitted, which I agree with. However, we don't need to overly diligent to exclude all negative information. In this context, is the source valid? Probably not, but it is not completely devoid of merit. It can easily be included for no other reason than this specific groups says xyz as a counter to all other statements. The criticism does not need to be in the body and can easily be included as a note. This may not be something to do, but when honest, negative or critical information presents itself, it is OK to include it in articles. Readers appreciate reading a balanced approach to a topic. Bottom line is that we don't need to protest to strongly sometimes; sometimes it doesn't really matter. This may be one of them.
Having said that, I do think that all church articles should emulate the example of this article. I appreciate the note it strikes, the depth of information it presents, and the grasp of such a broad topic with such a rich history covered. I think as you peruse the other church articles you will find how different and better this one is. --StormRider 05:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you have to look carefully at each reliable source to see what it actually says:

  1. does it simply report church figures without saying whether it agrees?
  2. does it claim to give numbers of Catholic adherents?
  3. does it claim to give numbers of Catholic church members?
  4. ...

Peter jackson (talk) 10:18, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

My main point is simply not to mislead. To me, as I have said before, this all seems like a WP:REDFLAG issue. When a source comes up with claimed facts that defy the established consensus, and there isn't some pretty sound and widely-checked detailing of this "new" information - it should be treated with a good deal of suspicion. The figures on Catholic population - and that it is around 50% of all Christians - are very well established. Come up with figures that say Catholic percentage has suddenly dropped by 20% and "Independents" and "Unaffiliated" have suddenly exploded to nearly 600 million! - and you need some pretty good evidential back-up to take them seriously. This would be the fastest growth of a religious group in history. Whole nations converting in months would be necessary. It took Muslims from 650 AD to 1900 to reach that figure - even with benefit of Jihad! Having helped edit Catholic articles on Wikipedia for several years I am very aware of the amount of nonsense and pseudo-information that gets bandied about on the net and elsewhere about Catholicism. Thats why we need to ensure that our facts are from the best sources. On this issue Richard proposed adding that estimates of Catholic numbers are between 40-50% of world christian population. However that would be giving one unreliable source undue weight over the consensus of reliable sources. Even to quote the UK handbook figure without sound verification of its methodolity by the academic community would fall into the trap of misleading readers by giving an unverified marginal source equality with established sources. It's not about blotting out criticism, but taking a responsible attitude to facts. Xandar 12:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Richard, I would still like to hear your comments so that we can put this to bed. Based upon what Xandar has stated, I don't see this source meeting the standards of a reliable reference and the information should not be included in the article. This is not an issue of balance or criticism, but of reliability. Does this make sense? --StormRider 13:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Storm Rider, I'm OK to drop this for now. It's not my source. It was proposed by others and I was just looking to find a compromise to the running debate about "baptized Catholics" vs. "practising Catholics". I had not fully understood Xandar's argument against the source. Some of Xandar's arguments in his last post (responding to Peter Jackson) are a bit hyperbolic but his basic arguments against reliability of the source sound credible to me. I still think the "less than 50% of Christians" argument might have merit. Problem is we only have OR and this one dodgy source to back it up. --Richard (talk) 14:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure in what way Xandar's last post is responding to me. It seems to be discussing a different topic. I never claimed that this source was reliable. What's more, I myself said all the other sources I knew of said Catholics were a majority of Christians. Nevertheless, I do think you should examine all your sources as I indicated, & also to consider which ones actually qualify as reliable. Peter jackson (talk) 10:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Maybe it wasn't you, Peter. Xandar might have been responding to User:Haldraper. The point that I was making was that the source had been offered by someone else other than me and I was just trying to broker a compromise. I don't have a dog in this fight. --Richard (talk) 16:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


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