Talk: Pope

Do we need this? Don't we know what Popes are? Turtle Fan 19:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I put this up for those stories where the Pope is left unnamed.

But it's not important, no. TR 19:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Suddenly it has value

So don't delete it. TR 19:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't planned on it. Turtle Fan 07:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

By virtue of it still being here, I didn't think you did. But it never hurts to issue the general alert. TR 15:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I would ask, if USP gives it value, why said article has not been fleshed out. Turtle Fan 00:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It will be. TR 02:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

So it has. I think I liked it better the old way. Turtle Fan 12:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Rename

Since each section is titled "The Papacy in X," should we consider renaming the article "Papacy"? An article called "Pope" has a certain informality to it, to my mind. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:17, September 19, 2013 (UTC)

Before we move the article, I think it needs to be reformatted to fit in with our other office articles, such as President of the United States and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. That may just resolve any stylistic inconsistency. TR (talk) 16:26, September 19, 2013 (UTC)

The full title is "Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, and Servant of the Servants of God." That certainly won't do for our purposes. "Bishop of Rome" is probably the most recognizable shorthand. Historically it's a bit charged when used alone: Protestant leaders used it to emphasize what they saw as limits on the Pope's ecclesial authority: "His policies only hold in Rome, and we're not in Rome, so what do we care?" At any rate, it's imprecise. "Servant of the Servants of God" is even more imprecise (much as I like it, and much as the incumbent certainly seems to think of it as the most important) and all the intermediate titles are quite obscure. Something like "Pope of the Catholic Church" is informal and a bit of a malapropism. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:33, September 19, 2013 (UTC)

The above is a very thorny problem but I wonder if we might want to take a look at it with fresh eyes. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I think "Pope" is the title everyone is going to look for. We can include the full title in the opening paragraph, but I don't think we need to get that technical about it, myself. TR (talk) 03:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're right, and the full title really is unwieldy. I wouldn't be dead set against adding it to the intro, but I'd feel as though we were just showing off. I just thought, since the discussion ended on an inconclusive note a decade ago, and this talk page is attracting attention once again, we might as well run it up the flag pole. Turtle Fan (talk) 17:30, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I notice that the template is titled "Pope of the Catholic Church." That is a non-existent title, like "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

I think that, as with the article itself, calling the template simply "Popes" would suffice. I suppose a thorough cataloging of AoB could some day give us several Patriarchs of Alexandria, the modern holders of which are given the title of Pope in the Coptic Orthodox Church. We could cross that bridge if we ever come to it. Turtle Fan (talk) 17:13, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

TWoS

I don't know that we need the TWoS section; Innocent is the only pope explicitly named in the text. The incumbent pope isn't named, and does nothing of relevance to the plot. While we learn that 3 or 4 popes died of the Wasting, there were a few popes during this timeframe who were not celibate in OTL. This list would probably be a good place to start speculating about some of those popes.

Interesting, it points fingers at no pope from the last two hundred years (by date of installation) and only one from the last 450 or so. I must say I'm relieved. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this should be moved to the "other popes" section. TR (talk) 20:11, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

The Papal States are much stronger than in OTL, apparently retaining their 16th-century status. There is no talk of Italian unification.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 03:24, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

That the Papal States are much stronger is debatable. The name "Papal States" don't appear anywhere in the book. And this argument doesn't really address any of my reasons for removing Innocent and unnamed pope of 1851 to the "Other Popes" section. (Venetians and other Italians still have some galleys rather than ships with sails, suggesting that Venice is a state. Still doesn't address my arguments.) TR (talk) 06:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

The impression you two have given me is that pretty much every country is stuck at a much earlier point in its history, more or less. It seems that building great empires and modern nation-states is beyond the abilities of societies so ravaged. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a pretty fair assessment. England is only moving over Appalachians in the 1850s, and has made do with holding Mumbai rather than all of India. France has New Orleans and part of what was Louisiana territory, and their own outpost in India. Spain at least encountered the Aztecs, but don't seem to have actually conquered them. They've also had occasional control over Louisiana thanks to "dynastic confusion". The Dutch have New Amsterdam and an Indian outpost. And so forth. TR (talk) 06:45, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

It stands to reason that Italian unification would also be out of reach, an impression that would seem to be corroborated if Venice remains independent.

In OTL the Papal States lasted until 1870, but only because France had been keeping it on life support. Otherwise it would have fallen in 1849. So being stronger in the 1850s than it was in OTL is probably true (much stronger, less so) by virtue of the fact that the bar could scarcely be lower. Turtle Fan (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

And "stronger" really is debatable. The Germans and the Dutch broke with Rome. England didn't, but Portugal did, which strikes me as a wash in the context of this world. Whether Scotland became Protestant is unsaid, as I recall. We have no info on any part of Eastern Europe. Nothing suggests that the papacy has been changed in some fundamental way; no competing line of popes, no vampires, no Vatican serving as an island in a sea of approaching Muslims, or Aquinist fanaticism, or global communist domination. It's just the papacy as we know it. TR (talk) 03:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

How about collaboration with the Lizards?

To be fair to MBS, though, Catholic England and Protestant Portugal don't really affect the strength of the Papal States as such. The Papal States often had horrible relationships with other Catholic countries and occasionally halfway decent ones with a few Protestants. A foreign country's relationship with the Church was often completely unrelated to its relationship with the Papal States, the possibility of which is why the papal tiara had multiple crowns on different tiers. Turtle Fan (talk) 17:28, 2 January 2024 (UTC)