What should a case file do when primary sources disagree?

Start with a sentence that could be checked: the act was signed on a particular day, the court awarded a particular sum, or a witness reported seeing a particular action. A loose label such as disputed history is too broad to guide the inquiry. Once you identify the claim, locate the exact words or figures in each document and retain enough surrounding text to see what they modify.

A hypothetical archive supplies a simple exercise. A letter is dated Monday, stamped as received on Wednesday and mentioned in a report published on Friday. Those dates can all be correct. If a later caption merely says the letter’s date without distinguishing composition from receipt, the caption may introduce an ambiguity that the original page did not contain. The comparison must first restore the missing relationship between the date and the action.

Keep a second question beside the first: what would change if the disputed detail changed? A different signing day might alter a sequence of permissions; an incorrect display date might leave the decision itself untouched. This is not a reason to excuse small errors. It helps explain their actual consequence. Readers deserve both an accurate detail and a proportionate account of why it matters.

A document can reach you through several forms: an archived sheet, an official printed edition, a scan, a transcription, a translation and a database entry. Their relationship matters. Two pages repeating the same text do not necessarily represent two independent witnesses, and a translation can be useful without being another event. Note which form you actually read instead of collapsing the chain into the word original.

For an image, inspect the relevant page rather than trusting only text extracted from it. Look for the disputed figure, its line and nearby headings. A search result is a lead; it cannot establish a detail that the displayed document does not show. Equally, a page image is not a complete authentication of the physical object that was scanned. Say what the inspection establishes and avoid adding a custody history you have not obtained.

This distinction changes the language of the conclusion. A writer who has compared a printed page with a webpage may be able to identify a transcription mismatch. The same writer cannot automatically explain how that mismatch entered the website. A report of an observed difference and a theory of its origin are separate statements. Make the first where supported; leave the second open unless another record addresses it.

The Angelelli group’s decree ends 8 June 2018 in AAS, against 10 June in the Dicastery’s Latin transcription; its Italian version agrees with print. (AAS: printed page 1475, PDF page 117.) [SRC-01; SRC-02]

The comparison is reproducible: open the printed page, find the final dateline and compare it with the endings of the two webpage versions. The printed page was visually inspected for this guide. The complete issue and every underlying cause record were not examined. That access statement is important because a precise local check should not sound like an audit of an entire institution’s archive.

For the date of this decree, the printed official edition supplies the better-supported reading. The discrepancy should remain visible as a mismatch in the reproduced text. It provides no basis for inventing a second recognition decision, a secret reversal or a motive for alteration. A narrow finding is useful precisely because another reader can follow it without accepting a much larger speculative story.

Notice also what the correction does not accomplish. It does not reconstruct every earlier stage of the cause, settle a criminal prosecution or verify each sentence of a modern biography. Those matters require their own records. A case file gains credibility by retaining this boundary after making a successful correction, rather than treating one solved detail as permission to speak confidently about everything nearby.

The Dicastery’s 1935 listing places More under 22 June. [SRC-04] Saevis agitata dates More and Fisher’s canonization to 19 May 1935. [SRC-03]

Here the title of the problem needs correcting before the date does. A current listing is later descriptive metadata, even on an official website. The papal act is a source for the decision it records. The disagreement therefore should not be described as two contemporary canonization acts contradicting one another. Naming the different document types makes the reasoning clearer than merely saying one website is more trustworthy.

A practical note would identify the listing, state the date retained from the act and explain which portion of the act supports it. There is no need to accuse the person who entered the metadata or to imagine a technical cause for the error. Several explanations might be possible; none becomes a finding because it sounds familiar to someone who has used a content system.

This example offers a useful habit for other archives. When a catalog label conflicts with the object or document it describes, inspect the description’s relationship to that material. The catalog can still be valuable for locating the item while being mistaken about a particular field. Correcting the field does not require dismissing the collection, and respecting the collection does not require reproducing its mistake.

The Romero v. Saravia judgment awards $5 million compensatory and $5 million punitive damages. Its redacted findings contain $10 million in paragraph 273 and $12 million in paragraph 274, on page 92. [SRC-05; SRC-06]

For the question of the entered award, the judgment’s operative amounts provide the figure to report. A responsible account should still disclose the differing figure in the findings. This is a more difficult example than the catalog field because the inconsistency appears within primary judicial documents. The solution is not to pretend the difference vanished as soon as a preferred figure was selected.

All three judgment pages and the findings’ opening and closing portions were visually read. The complete docket and the middle of the findings were not examined for this guide. Consequently, the account does not invent an amendment, a clerical explanation or a subsequent collection of the award. Those would be further claims requiring additional records. A plausible explanation of the difference should remain a hypothesis until the relevant evidence is found.

The procedural setting also matters: these documents concern civil liability. They should not be relabeled a criminal conviction because a summary uses the word guilty loosely. [SRC-05; SRC-06] The difference is consequential for the language of accountability. A reader can take the court’s actual result seriously while declining to turn it into a different kind of judgment. Precision preserves what the record accomplished.

Sanctorum Mater calls for contrary evidence and distinguishes direct knowledge from information received through an eyewitness; it requires concrete facts and identification of a witness’s source of knowledge. (Articles 17, 37, 96, 98 and 103.) These are provisions for causes of saints, not rules retroactively governing every historical tribunal. [SRC-07]

As an original reading exercise, imagine three accounts of a public speech. One writer stood nearby and heard part of it. Another copied that writer’s letter. A third remembered hearing about the speech years afterward. Agreement among all three may preserve one line of transmission rather than three separate observations. The reader needs to know where their information came from before deciding how much independent support their agreement supplies.

Now suppose the first writer gives a shorter version than the later account. That difference could reflect omission, expansion, memory or access to another source. You cannot decide which merely by preferring the more vivid wording. Identify the earliest accessible form, the later form and any evidence connecting them. If the connection is missing, mark it as missing. A compelling scene is not improved by quietly presenting reconstructed dialogue as an eyewitness transcript.

The same caution applies to adverse material. A hostile witness may preserve information worth testing, and a friendly witness may know the subject closely. Neither relationship makes every statement automatically true or false. Ask what the person observed, when it was recorded and how the disputed detail can be compared with other evidence. Source criticism becomes useful when it reaches the particular claim.

A good conclusion answers the question you actually investigated. If a page comparison resolves the printed date, say so. If it identifies two amounts without explaining the mismatch, say that instead. The words unresolved and verified become misleading when they are attached to an entire life rather than to a defined proposition. A case file should make that proposition visible beside its assessment.

Consider a hypothetical account in which two witnesses agree that an arrest occurred but disagree about the hour. The disagreement may matter greatly if someone’s presence depends on the timing. In another inquiry it may leave the central event well supported while its exact time remains uncertain. You cannot decide the significance from the size of the numerical difference alone. Explain its relationship to the conclusion being drawn.

When the available material cannot resolve a point, identify the next useful record. That might be a signed original, a complete deposition, an amendment or a dated image of an earlier version. Do not promise that it will settle the matter before you have read it. A specific research lead is more helpful than an unbounded demand for more evidence, because another person can understand what question the proposed retrieval is meant to answer.

The Catechism rejects rash judgment about a neighbor’s moral fault and joins truthfulness with respect for reputation. It also calls for reparation when truth and justice have been harmed. (Paragraphs 2477–2478, 2482 and 2487.) Those principles matter when a factual correction could otherwise become an unsupported accusation of dishonesty. [SRC-08]

A mistaken figure is evidence of a mistaken figure. To say that someone knowingly deceived readers adds a claim about knowledge and intention. Sometimes records support such a claim; the error alone does not. The same discipline that keeps a cherished story from being exaggerated should keep a correction from becoming a personal attack. Charity does not require retaining the error, and accuracy does not require supplying an imagined culprit.

For a Catholic reading group, it can be helpful to ask what is emotionally at stake in the disagreement. Does a detail feel indispensable because it has been repeated in a favorite story? Does finding an error create a temptation to dismiss every account from the same institution? Naming those reactions need not decide the evidence. It can make room to examine it without turning either loyalty or disappointment into a substitute for comparison.

A concise final note can contain four things in connected prose: the disputed proposition, the exact records compared, the reason for the reading retained and the remaining limit. Put locators close to the claim. If you read a selected page, say selected page. If you read a reproduction, say reproduction. That level of attribution gives the reader an honest path back to the evidence.

For a resolved mismatch, keep enough information to explain why the correction was made. For an unresolved one, avoid an artificially balanced list that treats every unsupported possibility as equally likely. Describe the live documentary problem and the evidence that currently carries weight. Uncertainty is useful when it is specific; a cloud of possibilities can obscure the very distinction the article set out to clarify.

The aim is an account that can improve without concealing its earlier limitations. A newly recovered record may change one conclusion, confirm another or introduce a further question. The reader should be able to see which. In a case file about faith, this patient approach allows devotion and intellectual honesty to accompany one another: remembering people carefully, reporting institutions precisely and leaving an unanswered question in its proper place.