Talk:Counter-Reformation

"Roman Catholic" is standard term among Catholic scholars

I looked at the reliable sources and find "Roman Catholic" is used without any problems as a standard term. I browsed the titles in some self-identified Catholic scholarly journals to demonstrate this: 1) "Faith and Leadership: The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church" in Catholic Historical Review. (Autumn 2015); 2) "The Feast Of Corpus Christi In Mikulov, Moravia: Strategies Of Roman Catholic Counter-Reform (1579-86)" in Catholic Historical Review (Oct 2010); 3) "Divided Friends: Portraits of the Roman Catholic Modernist Crisis in the United States." in U.S. Catholic Historian (Fall 2013); 4) "The church and the seer: Veronica Lueken, the Bayside movement, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy" in American Catholic Studies (Fall 2012); 5) "Incompatible with God's Design: A History of the Women's Ordination Movement in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church." Catholic Historical Review (Oct 2013); 6) "The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, 1966-1976." Catholic Historical Review (Spring 2015); 7) "Mary, star of hope: Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the United States from 1854 to 2010, as seen through the lens of Roman Catholic Marian congregational song." American Catholic Studies (Spring 2013); 8) "Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics In English North America, 1610-58: A Comparative Assessment" CCHA Study Sessions (Canadian Catholic Historical Association). 1999; 9) "Gender, Catholicism, and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe, 1200-1900." American Catholic Studies (Fall 2012); 10) "Master'S Theses And Doctoral Dissertations On Roman Catholic History In The United States: A Selected Bibliography" U.S. Catholic Historian (Jan 1987). Rjensen (talk) 10:01, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

In Catholic terminology, Catholic and Roman Catholic have different meainings. Capital C Catholic churches are those in communion with Rome, accepting the teaching and authority of the Pope and councils: these include the Melkite Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Chaldean Catholics (Church of the East) and so on. The Roman Catholic church is one of these Catholic churches, by far the biggest. Each of these Catholic churches tends to have its own liturgical and language tradition, saints and characteristic spirituality; some go back to the Apostles who founded them (e.g. Peter and Paul at Rome, Thomas in India); others are regarded as separate churches because they split with Rome at some stage then returned subsequently. (However, there are also splinter churches like the Old Catholics who have split but kept the name Catholic, and some movements in other denominations that are Catholic-ish such as the Anglo-Catholics. These tend to use "catholic" with regard to some idea of "universal", rather than as the brand name for churches in communion with Rome.)

Rick Jelliffe (talk) 13:05, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

You realize you are replying to a post from some 8 years ago? What you say is theoretically true, but historians are unlikely to make these fine distinctions often when discussing the Counter-Reformation. Johnbod (talk) 13:12, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Err, doesn't al those citations in the OP prove that in fact some historians do regularly use Roman Catholic? I think there are region and national differences in usage, certainly denominational. In any case, it would depend on what the historian's interest and speciality was, and what they are discussing, wouldn't it? If they were discussing the English Reformation such as Hooker, or the Reformation in Ireland, or Ultraquists after the accommodation with Rome, they may well prefer Roman Catholic to Catholic. But one thing is utterly clear: the "Roman" sometimes carries meaning (as differentiator, as amplifier, etc) and must not be removed thoughtlessly by editors acting on their own idiom. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 04:03, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Counter-Reformation

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Counter-Reformation's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "britannica.com":

• From Venice: "Venice (Italy) :: Economy – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 22 April 2010.
• From Florence: "Florence (Italy)". Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica.com. Retrieved 22 January 2010.
• From Italy: "Italy – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2 August 2010.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 20:41, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Counter-Reformation / Catholic Reformation Terminology Explanation

There should be a section devoted to the title itself. I'm not not suggesting changing the title, only that the historiography of the term 'Counter-Reformation' and the field needs to be explained. It should show that the field originated within German scholarship which considered this 16th century movement to be a reaction to the Protestant Reformers, but that that view is no longer the predominate view amongst scholars of this movement.

For example, the opening paragraph cites a 180 year old text to define the parameters of the field: Der geschichtliche Ablauf der Auswanderung aus dem Zillertal. In: 1837-auswanderer.de. Zillertaler Auswanderer 1837. Abgerufen am 11. Oktober 2016.). This citation gives the original view of the field, but today is anachronistic.

I am going to put something together. I'll post it here, wait a bit to see if there are any comments, then add it to the article.

German historians in the 19th century coined the term 'Counter-Reformation' to describe a reforming movement within the Catholic Church in the 16th. The consensus at that time was that this movement originated as a response to the challenges of the Protestant Reformers (e.g. Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli) in the early decades of the 16t century. Following the writings of the Reformers themselves, this historiography held that the Catholic Church (ca. 1520) was corrupt and badly in need of reform. Luther began opened a path towards reform that attacked abuses and in response the Catholic Church began its own program of reform. The historians called this program the 'Counter-Reformation.'

This historiography remained the consensus within the Anglo-American and German historical academies. Scholars in the 1950s seriously began to question this reading of history. Over the next 20 years, historians, such as John Olin (1969), studying the Catholic Church in the 16th century began to use the term 'Catholic Reformation' in place of 'Counter Reformation'; however, there was no consensus to change the terminology. Between the 1960s and the present day, a number of factors have led to the rejection of the 19th century concept of the 'counter-Reformation'. One important factor has been periodization. Historians of the Catholic Church argued that limiting the beginning of the 'Counter-Reformation' to the start of the years after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) ignored important movements of Catholic reform such as: Conciliarism, the observant movement within religious orders, a renewed focus on the bible, the Brethren of Common Life, reformers such as Erasmus, and new spiritual trends that emphasized a closer personal relationship with God rather than a ritualistic faith.

A second factor contributing to the reappraisal was the reexamination of the concept of 'abuse'. Historians in the second half of the 20th century realized that the abuses that concerned Luther (mandatory fast days, an emphasis on the process of sanctification at the cost of the moment of justification) and Catholic reformers (lax episcopal oversight of dioceses and pluralism) were not the same abuses written about by historians such as Jean Delumeau (the continued and widespread existence of pre-Christian/pagan folk religion and practice).

The debate over terminology was summed up by John O'Malley in Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era, published 2000. He examined multiple possible terms to describe the Catholic Church's actions in the years between 1400 and 1600 and examined the faults and benefits of each. Safinski (talk) 20:48, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

You could certainly add a section on historiography/terminology, but not too high up. It would need to be much more densely referenced than this - about say 15 inline refs to cover this. I have to say, as someone primarily concerned with art history, little trace of these inconclusive discussions can be traced there - "Counter-Reformation" still works pretty well as a term and concept there, & bringing in trends going back to the 15th century would be most unhelpful. Johnbod (talk) 21:00, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Footnotes will be forthcoming. Can you clarify some things for me? Do you mean that the discussions I brought up have "little trace" in the art-history context and that 15th century art-trends are unhelpful, or do you mean a larger context? I do academic writing, not wikipedia writing, so the wikipedia citation practices still baffle me. Do I have to cite 19th century German sources, can I use 20th century English sources that discuss 19th century German sources? Safinski (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

The latter - see WP:RS & related instructions. For art history, Trent or about then works pretty nicely as a dividing point, & trying to group the period around 1450 and the one from about 1550 under some larger concept doesn't work well and is not done. Johnbod (talk) 03:37, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Grad-school crib sheet

It's wonderfully clever to package all this up in a single sentence, but to anyone who isn't cramming for the next midterm, after hearing all these terms bandied about in endless permutations and combinations in dull lectures for half a semester, it reads like a grad-school crib sheet.

Key events of the period include: the Council of Trent (1545–63); the excommunication of Elizabeth I (1570), the codification of the uniform Roman Rite Mass (1570), and the Battle of Lepanto (1571), occurring during the pontificate of Pius V; the construction of the Gregorian observatory in Rome, the founding of the Gregorian University, the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, and the Jesuit China mission of Matteo Ricci, all under Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572–1585); the French Wars of Religion; the Long Turkish War and the execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600, under Pope Clement VIII; the birth of the Lyncean Academy of the Papal States, of which the main figure was Galileo Galilei (later put on trial); the final phases of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) during the pontificates of Urban VIII and Innocent X; and the formation of the last Holy League by Innocent XI during the Great Turkish War (1683–1699).

Check this micro-fragment out:

the birth of the Lyncean Academy of the Papal States, of which the main figure was Galileo Galilei (later put on trial [under XXX?])

Uniquely not under any particular pontiff, I guess because the birth of the Lyncean Academy, taken together, lacks a clean overlap with the revolving papal door.

In this compacted format, it's very hard for anyone to wade in to edit, to clarify such an omission, whether originally deliberate or otherwise. Not the right register for Wikipedia, IMO. — MaxEnt 17:34, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is strange, arbitrary and surely otiose?

I have moved it out from the lede, as it is not a summary of the article in any way, and put it into a section "Key events".

But I recommend deleting it entirely (or folding into some other page about key events of the period). It has no citations or links. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Y Section removed.

13:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 13:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Lead

I think sentence in the current lead needs improvement: "the Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort composed of apologetic and polemical documents and ecclesiastical configuration as decreed by the Council of Trent. " Apart from the odd phrasing, I don't think it summarizes the article: what "ecclesiastical configuration" changed because of Trent? And it makes the Counter-Reformation into ivory tower thing, rather than something that had devotional and theological impact.

One thing about Trent, and the Counter-Reformation, was that it had two threads: one was acting on the same backlog of needed reforms that fed the Reformation, the other was specific responses to the theology of the Reformers (not always contra, but sometimes pro.) I think it would be better to couch the Counter-Reformation in that way. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 04:17, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Terminology

I am adding a Terminology section, and moved some material into it. This what the Reformation article has, and it is a good approach to handle controversial issues which come down to different definitions used by different groups. Rather than the article coming down in favour of one definition, it exposes that some experts say X and some say Y: this gives NPOV by providing balance.

When we look at many of the discussions above, many would have been better handled by a terminology section. The issue is too complex and fraught to be left to the lead, or to be buried near the bottom Rick Jelliffe (talk) 04:45, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Lead: corruption

I have reverted a recent change to the lead.

• The supposed quotation "cleanse itself from within" is not actually in the cited paper;
• the paper is by an architect not a historian;
• the paper is about urban sanitation in Rome: it seriously treats that subject, but does not seriously treat the general subject of Counter-Reformation: it goes far too far in presenting the analogy as fact;
• the paper is highly biased and not NPOV: indeed, it is bigoted;
  • E.g. "Wracked by sin and corpulent from greed, the Catholic Church was a diseased body that had grown polluted from ‘the long putrefaction of vices
  • "Rome, as the centre of the morally depraved Church, was also polluted.As the primary locus of decay it too was clearly rotten to its core – ‘an asylum of the wicked’ and the centre of abominations – a foul environment that nurtured degeneracy'"
  • "There was also a deep-seated fear that Jews, who were considered by the Church to be physically unclean" (???)
• Reducing the lead to make the Counter-Reformation only (or even mainly) about "cleansing and corruption" is entirely dubious and non-NPOV. (Even the cited paper does not go that far.)

The cited paper might be used in a paragraph in the body, in some section on architecture, to mention that in the 1560s, Popes improved Rome's sanitation and water system (work started in the 1400s), as Rome had been running out of water and they wanted Rome to be beautiful and glorious. But it is not suitable as a justification for dumbing down the the lead.

That being said, I understand if someone thinks the current word "resurgence" does not give the whole picture. Perhaps "resurgence, reform and reaction" might be a better summary? Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:25, 21 October 2023 (UTC)