Does anyone know a lot about the History of the Catholic Church?

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Everything I know about my religion I learned from this man.

Oh, I'm sure you could learn a thing or two from that thing.  I just wouldn't to spend more than, oh... twenty minutes with it.

[Sarah]

Well look at you Ms. Fancypants!
Have you been training at the feet of Emma?

I was cracking wise long before Emma was born.  Possibly even before her parents were born.

Snark aside, I do think looking at books is a more thorough way of researching, unless you're one of the relatively rare people who don't mind reading long passages of text onscreen.  And then there's being able to have six or ten books open on a table when one wants to compare and contrast stuff.  Flipping among windows or several windows open at once doesn't compare.  But this prejudice could be a result of my great age.

By way of apology, here's a paper you could steal.  At the very least, the short bibliography might come in handy.

[yesno]

I have a theory that the internet makes bad researchers better and good researchers worse.

It can't be beat for speed, though.

[John Junk 2.0]

Sarah,

Thanks for the link.

I agree about books over text.  My thing is, in all honesty, I went to the library at CalArts and got out like ten books, but now I'm at home, thirty miles from there, and I'm realizing that I didn't get books out on what I actually need to research.  I was hoping some people could point me towards some good material because I have a habit of checking out tons of esoteric shit that I read four sentences of.  For instance, a book about feminist theological issues that I checked out even though I can barely list off who wrote the gospels let alone start thinking more in-depth about the significance of Judith in the patriarchal context of her time and of today.

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You still need books because information straight off the internet is so often untrustworthy or incomplete.  The internet is certainly very powerful when it comes to finding and obtaining the right books, however.

The biggest problem with a library is that a person's research potential is limited by the quality of the library(ies) they have access to. 

[chrisfoll577]

When I was a student at Fordham, I found the New Advent Encyclopedia is an authoritative if not biased resource for church history.

[Martin]

religion

science

Irony!

[ughwhy]

You may have looked into this already, but I imagine that checkout privileges at CalArts also means you have access to any number of journal/periodical databases via CalArts--probably some you can even access remotely. Kinda like the Internet only smarter. You might consider calling up the reference desk and posing your question to the folks there, they might have some suggestions to help you narrow your searches.

I mean, my mother's a darn college librarian and she talks this stuff up all the time but I only just realized that my New York Public Library card gave me access to databases. So I feel like it's a thing a person overlooks. And you can do it in your jammies!

[TL]

Didn't we have a pretty good Catholicism thread way back in the beginning of FOTchan, when you could still chose whether to be anonymous or not?
(Or does my memory wear rose-colored glasses?)

[AllisonLeGnome]

You may have looked into this already, but I imagine that checkout privileges at CalArts also means you have access to any number of journal/periodical databases via CalArts--probably some you can even access remotely. Kinda like the Internet only smarter. You might consider calling up the reference desk and posing your question to the folks there, they might have some suggestions to help you narrow your searches.

I mean, my mother's a darn college librarian and she talks this stuff up all the time but I only just realized that my New York Public Library card gave me access to databases. So I feel like it's a thing a person overlooks. And you can do it in your jammies!

I second this suggestion- I've made a lot of research papers sound more impressive than they were by searching journal databases instead of Google.

As far as I can tell from various friends, Catholicism seems like less fun Judaism. Though that observation probably won't help your research much.

[Emily]

In my quest to find more "referency" sites for you, I came across this article, "Navigating your relationship during a recession" accompanied by this great graphic:



on this site: http://www.bustedhalo.com/features/PureSexPureLove72RelationshipsRecession.htm

[Emily]

Maybe this audio book/lecture could be useful:

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/100000710&tab=holdings

[yesno]

As far as I can tell from various friends, Catholicism seems like less fun Judaism. Though that observation probably won't help your research much.

Mardis Gras and a hundred other celebrations are originally catholic... sounds fun to me.  Plus stuff like the "Bad Popes" is great.  A Cadaver Synod is called for now and again, frankly.  My personal experience is that catholic wedding receptions tend to feature a lot more drunkenness and silly dancing than protestant ones-- I'd be curious as to how a jewish one rates on the debauchery scale.  And we all know what the Red Hot Chili Peppers taught us about Catholic school girls.

and for certain values of "fun"--

I generally think that a lot of smart westerners tend to underrate the interestingness and depth of catholic/christian religious thought: from the psychedelic meister eckhart to the insanely systematic aquinas, from the asceticism of thomas à kempis to the seriously interesting life of st. francis: heck, from ignatius of loyola and josemaría escrivá to cardinal newmand and gk chesterton, there are many interesting writers, thinkers and lives bound up in the church.  I think that because it's so close to us, we sometimes have a harder time seeing it, whileas the tripitaka or something seems removed from politics and history.

(And in case you don't remember from older threads-- and why would you?-- I'm a pretty determined atheist.  I just find this stuff interesting.  Not to mention the sheer dungeons and dragons-like pleasure to be had from actually parsing out the specifics of catholic theology like limbo and transubstantiation.)

[Julie]

the borgia popes are fun and historical

[emma]

Didn't we have a pretty good Catholicism thread way back in the beginning of Chinatown, when you could still chose whether to be anonymous or not?
(Or does my memory wear rose-colored glasses?)

Indeed it does not, sir.