Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching

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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. Coredesat 04:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching

Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)
  • Delete Clear-cut example of a POV-fork (from POV-disputed Purgatory) Itsmejudith (talk) 09:24, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Agreed. Lima (talk) 09:41, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep My action in moving the article Purgatory to Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching, which is how this article was created, may have been a little precipitous but it was, I believe, very necessary. The article is actually about the RC view of purgatory and contains huge amounts of RC doctrine and dogma quoted verbatim. It is very clearly written with teaching in mind rather than informing. IMHO this makes it necessary to rename the article correctly as Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching, which is what I did. This leaves the article Purgatory free for more general use describing, yes, RC teachings but also the many opposing views, plus ideas from other religions concerning purgatory-like afterlife periods/states, plus the modern and fairly widespead use of the word in a secular way. I don't know if this is a pov-fork or not but it would have the benefit of preventing the article Purgatory being over-run by the catholic viewpoint. In addition, I can't quite see why anyone would object to this new name ... Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching ... the only objection put to me, after I flagged my desire to see a move, was that it was like Jesus, in Christian teaching (or something similar Europe on planet earth) which clearly demonstrated a Roman Catholic claim to own the article. Abtract (talk) 10:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Note 1. If the decision is to delete, then something would need to be done to recapture the history and talk of the original Purgatory article which currently resides at Puragtory, RC teaching after the move.
    • Note 2. If the decision is keep then the current article Purgatory needs to be altered because it is simply a mirror of this one. My suggestion is that it is reverted back to the position just before the mirror was cut and pasted in, namely at this point [1]. Abtract (talk) 10:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Purgatory is part of Catholic belief and of absolutely no other belief. For instance, it is not part of Eastern Orthodox or of Lutheran belief. It follows that the only purgatory that can be dealt with is the purgatory of Catholic belief. There is no other. It was for this reason that the comparison was made between the article called "Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching" that Abtract created (by a move carried out against the express opposition of two editors and with no support from even one other editor) and a hypothetical article called "Europe on Planet Earth". (The other comparison that Abtract speaks of was not in fact made by anyone.) There is no other continent of Europe apart from that on Planet Earth. There is no purgatory apart from that in Catholic belief. Distinguishing between the Catholic purgatory and some other purgatory (what other?) is nothing else but creating a fork to enable a particular POV about the one purgatory to be put across. Lima (talk) 12:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
It's just not true that Purgatory is only part of RC belief. Purgatory's nonexistence is a major part of Protestant beliefs, for example. Just because RC is the only modern religion to believe in the existence of Purgatory, that doesn't mean they're the only ones with an opinion on the subject-- and we treat all views equally. --Alecmconroy (talk) 14:24, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
So the view that Purgatory (i.e. the purgatory of Catholic belief) does not exist needs an article of its own! If someone wants to write such an article, he should call it "Purgatory (non-existence)" and let the article on Purgatory be called "Purgatory". Protestant and Eastern Orthodox views on its non-existence are mentioned in an article on the only purgatory whose existence is affirmed by some and denied by others. Their views and the reasons on which they base their views do deserve to be mentioned in the article about the one and only purgatory. But writing an article on a purgatory that nobody believes in is surely nonsense. And writing a separate article on "Objections to (the one) Purgatory" is unnecessary: the objections can be part of the article on the concept. Lima (talk) 17:48, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment POV forks are allowed where the POV are irreconcilable, e.g. Islamic view of Jesus. Is that the case here? Is RC doctrine so much at variance with other viewpoints that it can't exist within the same article? Colonel Warden (talk) 10:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment If this ends up getting kept, the name should be changed to something like Purgatory (Roman Catholicism) or something like that. JuJube (talk) 10:54, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I have no problem with that suggestion. Abtract (talk) 11:35, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Parentheticals is how we usually do this sort of think. --Alecmconroy (talk) 20:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep (with conditions) – either keep Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching and merge Purgatory or visa verse. Both articles are nearly identical. Shoessss |  Chat  14:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
The articles only appear to be nearly identical because people copied the content of Purgatory, Roman Catholic teaching into Purgatory when they proposed deletion. Prior to that, Purgatory did have its own distinct content. look in history and you'll see Purgatory had a different look to it. --14:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alecmconroy (talk • contribs)
  • Keep for now. There's been widespread confusion about Purgatory, the RC doctrine, and Purgatory, the concept about which all Christian religions have an opinion. If having a page devoted just to the RC Doctrine will help matters, I'm inclined to keep it for now and see if it helps. --Alecmconroy (talk) 16:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • delete -d'oh. Other denominations having a view on purgatory belongs as a separate section in the main purgatory article. Purgatory is mainly an RC concept, which other denominations then comment upon, so we don't need this tautological article title.Merkinsmum 22:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The Problem: Let me explain some background here, and point out the problem with this entire process. There was originally one article called Purgatory. Some editors expressed their desire to split off material about groups that don’t believe in the express Catholic doctrine to another article, called Purgatory and world religions. This became an established status quo. Rather suddenly, an editor appeared stating he wished to change the article title to ‘Purgatory as taught by the Roman Catholic Church’. He found much opposition and little support. He decided to violate policy and move the article anyway, then going further and creating a new page entitled ‘Purgatory’ with content from the old ‘Purgatory and world religions’ page. What ensued was a major mess. All the edit histories are bungled. There is a vote over the move, which seems ex post facto, and which shows there is nothing like a consensus for it. Now the deletion issue has appeared. If we delete this article then I fear the history will be lost, and the mess will just get messier. Thus we cannot delete this article at the moment. First, we have to sort out the mess. Then, I totaly agree, we should delete this article and reconstitute the 'Purgatory' article as it was, which was mostly about Catholic doctrine. Ritterschaft (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
    • So perhaps it should be called Purgatory, Catholic doctrine. Abtract (talk) 00:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge, along with Purgatory in world religions, back into Purgatory. Roman Catholic doctrine about purgatory is just the same whether you believe in it or not, therefore it's perfectly possible under WP:NPOV to describe what it states, as well as the stance of believers and non-believers, in one article. Looking at the history, I see the issue in part is that one/some editors feel that it needs a separate article to explain in detail because of the jargon (mortal and venial sin, etc). That really seems an argument for a collective editorial blitz on making that detail accessible, and there's plenty of room for liposuction of un-terse explanation and unnecessary detail, such as the huge verbatim quotes from The Catechism of the Catholic Church (see Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:48, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete and merge material back into Purgatory, per Gordon's suggestion. Despite best intentions, the division functions as a POV fork. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 17:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete there's not enough material to justify a separate article about other Christian ideas of purgatory, and purgatory in other world religions is covered by Gehenna and similar articles, these just need to be mentioned with a link to those articles, not have entire sections duplicating info in another non-RC purgatory article. -Bikinibomb (talk) 03:17, 18 December 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.