Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abuses of Indulgences

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete. Walton^One 17:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Abuses of Indulgences

Abuses of Indulgences (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is mostly copied from the Catholic Encyclopedia and gives the Catholic POV on the indulgence controversy of the 1500s. The orginal article should be used as a source in WP's other articles on the topic, however it itself could never be a neutral article on WP. Even the title is POV. Steve Dufour 16:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

• Purgatory. No, seriously, delete. Violates WP:NPOV. Realkyhick 16:29, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• DELETE, then say three "hail marys". If you take out the POV problems, there's nothing that couldn't go in the article on Indulgences. Oh, Wait... if you take out the POV problems, there's just nothing. There's no justification for a separate article. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. OfficeGirl 18:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Review of article history finds the creator's comment: "initial article -- taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia online" Nobody likes a thief. Mandsford 19:31, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete, likely copyvio per commentary in history (thanks, Mandsford!). Bless the article's creator, for they have sinned. --Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 19:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Anything useful from this should go in Indulgences. JohnCD 20:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Note The Catholic Encyclopedia in question dates from 1911 and is in the public domain. I didn't intend to imply any copyright problems by my nomination. Other WP articles are copied from it, lives of saints and so forth, and are not a problem. Steve Dufour 21:00, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, other than the Catholic Encyclopedia copy, it has no other sourcing and is seriously POV. Anything that is neutral should just go in the Indulgences article. Ealdgyth | Talk 00:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep as a history of an important controversy which led Martin Luther to initiate the Protestant Reformation, or Merge to Indulgences. No reason to remove from Wikipedia an important part of the history of the Christian religion. Edison 01:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Is the complaint from the various editors that this public domain history of the abuse of indulgences, published by a Catholic source, is POV by being too critical or too exculpatory? For another source with many of the same views, see the 1911 Britannica articles Indulgence and Johann Tetzel, which is a reference for the related Wikipedia article Johann Tetzel. It was a money making tool, Luther criticized it, later the Church agreed there had been abuses. What exactly is the impermissible POV? Edison 01:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

That's part of it. Sentences like this one (besides being terribly LONG and convoluted by modern taste) are pretty full of POV words:

After deploring the fact that, in spite of the remedies prescribed by earlier councils, the traders (quaestores) in indulgences continued their nefarious practice to the great scandal of the faithful, the council ordained that the name and method of these quaestores should be entirely abolished, and that indulgences and other spiritual favors of which the faithful ought not to be deprived should be published by the bishops and bestowed gratuitously, so that all might at length understand that these heavenly treasures were dispensed for the sake of piety and not of lucre (Sess. XXI, c. ix).

nefarious; faithful; heavenly treasures and other words are, in this context, loaded with POV. The other issue is that Indulgences has a Controversy section which would do with some expanding, and the Indulgence article itself is no where long enough to need forking out yet. The NPOV parts of Abuses of Indulgences can easily be placed inside Indulgences, in the controversies section. I think it'd be best if the Catholic Encyclopedia article was used as a source on the Controversies section of Indulgences. Ealdgyth | Talk 02:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

As the nominator, I mainly object to the title (and/or concept -- who is to say what are abuses?) of this article. I agree with you that the history of indulgences is an important topic. Steve Dufour 02:00, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Edison. Dean Wormer 04:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete too pov. Perhaps the article can be recreated with NPOV. But as it is now, no. Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim 01:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Edison. This is not intended to be a NPOV title, as it is a common-use name for topic of historical importance. e.g. 160 books hits. This no different to The Edge being the name of an article instead of "David Howell Evans". John Vandenberg 06:58, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.