The internet is full of religious speech that would be a sin if it were spoken to a man’s face. Piece of Humanity will not add to that pile.
This page governs every public page on the site except the personal About page. Articles may later carry a named author’s voice. The rest of the house speaks with one rule:
Write as if a saint could have signed the page.
Write as if you will answer for the sentence.
Write so that a priest, a priestless reader, an inquirer, an atheist, and a guest from another faith can all say: this was honest.
The site is a light, not a weapon. It is a door toward Church, not a courtroom for the seventeenth century.
The rule
1. Do not sin in the sentence
Do not write what you would have to confess. Do not curse. Do not slander. Do not take the Lord’s name as decoration. Do not bear false witness against a parish, a priest, a rite, or a whole people.
2. Do not do the devil’s favorite church-work
Do not use the page to deepen a schism. Do not tell one part of Christ’s Church how rotten the other part is. Pain is real. This site will not farm it.
3. Tell the truth without a sneer
History may be hard. Lives of saints may contain wounds, courts, exiles, and broken years. Keep the story. Drop the gloat.
4. Name the Trinity without using the Trinity as a club
Speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Church speaks. Do not turn doctrine into a taunt.
5. Honor the saints as human beings who loved God
They lived in different centuries and under different customs. The site does not flatten them into one party, and it does not draft them into today’s fight.
6. Support the living Church
Support clergy who keep the faith. Support parishes. Support inquirers, guests, visitors, and the newly illumined. The last line of a page should make it easier to walk into church, not easier to stay home and argue.
7. Do not recruit to a jurisdiction in the site voice
The site may say: go to Church. Find a parish. It may not say: this is the only altar left on earth. That sentence belongs to a pastor, not to a website.
8. Keep Old Rite fidelity without Old Rite venom
The Old Rite kept what it received at a cost. That cost is honorable. It is not a license to defame. Piece of Humanity will use Old Rite sources and New Rite sources as sources, not as ammunition.
9. Let the book speak, and let the house be quiet
A translated chapter may contain a hard line from 1793 or from Rostov. The website voice around that chapter does not add spite, preface, or score-settling.
10. Leave the reader cleaner than you found him
If a page cannot heal, teach, or send someone to prayer, it is not ready. If a page makes the reader proud that he is on the right team, rewrite it.
What this standard is for
It is for saints pages, translation pages, feast pages, reference pages, and the Standards pages themselves.
It is not for erasing history.
It is not for making every saint sound modern.
It is not for pretending there was never a wound in the Church.
The wound may be told. The wound may not be used.
The test before publish
Read the page out loud and ask:
Would I say this in front of a priest?
Would I say this in front of a guest who has never been to liturgy?
Would I say this in front of someone whose family was hurt by church division?
Does this sentence open a door, or nail one shut?
If you would need confession for the tone, the page is not a Piece of Humanity page.
Read it in its historical context.
Listen to what it says.
Then go to Church.
A website cannot pastor you.
Find a parish.
Image Standards: https://pieceofhumanity.com/piece-of-humanity-images/
Translation Standards: https://pieceofhumanity.com/piece-of-humanity-translations/
All standards: https://pieceofhumanity.com/piece-of-humanity-standards/