Talk:Catholic Church/Archive 3

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Terminology

I have an issue with the expression "Catholicism is a monotheistic religion." I thought that Christianity is the religion. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, etc, are, hmm, denominations? In this case wouldn't it better to write "Catholicism is a monotheistic belief."? Dianelos 05:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

There I fixed it to make it more clear - you should feel free to fix such things yourself if you want. Fishhead64 06:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

This section is inevitably a bit confusing. It origally began "Christianity is a monotheistic religion..." but this made it clearly off-topic for the Roman Catholic Church page; so it got changed to "Catholicism is a monotheistic religion..." which isn't terrific either. My feeling is that stuff general to Christianity should be covered in Christianity and not here; but I've proposed this before and it does not seem to be the general opinion of editors on this article. TSP 17:21, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

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I dare anyone who is confused on the topic of "Roman Catholic" to go to a Greek Catholic Mass (aka - Byzantine Catholic), walk up to the biggest guy after mass and keep insisting he is a "Roman Catholic". Then bring other Greek Catholics in on the coversation. Tell them they are all Roman Catholics. Get in their face and tell them what you think they are. Expect a trip to the hopsital. :)

--Robertsussell 13:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

...or try going to a church ministered to by, say, a member of the Federation of Catholic Priests or the Catholic League - both Anglican organisations - and tell them that their faith is not "Catholic". Your comment is pithy, but not actually helpful. TSP 11:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

By calling the Catholic Church, "the Catholic Church", how do you conclude that Anglican Catholics and other Christians are not Catholics?

In ecumenical circles, we acknowledge the name of the Catholic Church as that, and not "Roman Catholic Church", whch refers only to either the diocese of Rome, or the Latin Rite Catholic Church. Anglicans et al., are catholic, but not Catholic; they are part of the Church catholic, but not the Catholic Church. It really is that simple. Protoclete 08:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Protoclete you've solved the problem Anglicans can be considered catholic, but not in communion with the Catholic Church. Thus this Article should be called the "Catholic Church" as was the original issues of this discussion. Being clear that the not being in communion with the Church did not imply you were not catholic. Now I have a question, why don't anglicans simply call themselves Ango catholics or Episcopo catholic. Wouldn't that clearify all issues. Thus avoiding the erroneous and derogatory nature of behind the Protestant term "Roman" Catholic(the Church in general, not the Catholic Rite).Micael March 31, 2006

Please see my citations lower down this debate of a number of significant ecumenical interactions in which the church has described itself as the "Roman Catholic Church"; including some, such as this, in which the panels representing the "Roman Catholic Church" seem to have included members of Eastern Catholic churches. I'm afraid that if you want your statement to be taken into account, you will need to provide citations, not merely assert it. TSP 12:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

We are going to deal with each Christian Church equally or we are not. "The Church of Christ" is a Protestant denomination, but all Christians belong to the Church of Christ, more specifically a united Church of Christ. Are we to change those Church names in order to not offend anyone? The Catholic Church is an "Orthodox" Church with Eastern Churches within it. If we are to use the same standard, we need to change the article on "Eastern Orthodox Churches" to "National Eastern Orthodox Churches", so as to remain "neutral".

--Robertsussell 13:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

True, to an extent. The particular problem here is that the term "Catholic Church" is one that is explicitly claimed by other large groups (not necessarily to apply to themselves, but to apply to a different set of people to the one this article is about - try searching for 'catholic church' within the Church of England website) and which the church itself admits is too controversial to use in dialogues with many other groups. This is an issue which has been argued over for centuries; for some people it would be an extremely controversial move for Wikipedia to suddenly grant the title to one 'side'.

Why are we selective with the "Catholic Church"? Do various denominations of Christians believe in baptism or are the "Baptists" the only believers in baptism? Are the Orthodox Churches the only "Orthodox" Churches? Are all Christians members of the Church of Christ, or is this restricted to actual members of the "Church of Christ"?

There are two main political parties in the United States. Americans understand that you can be a believer in republicanism, and at the same time not be a member of the "Republican Party". We understand that you can be a believer in democracy, and at the same time not be a member of the "Democratic Party".

Wikipedia has granted the title to one 'side' when it comes to the above churches and political parties, why can't they do the same for the "Catholic Church". Or is there a double standard? --Robertsussell 23:12, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I Have to agree with you. There's a definite push against calling the Church what it officially calls itself. Is it anti-Catholic, I don't think so at least consciously and to be fair many Catholics are now confused by the term, but everyone certainly seems to be very wary of the term in order to appease non-Catholics. Not the stuff of quality in an encyclopedia I think. My .02. Virgil61 23:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

It is seeming increasingly clear to me, in any case, that this article should be at least three articles - "Latin-Rite Church" or similar (referring to that particular church which is based in Rome and headed by the Pope); "Catholicism" or similar (referring to the doctrinal basis which is shared by all churches in communion with the Pope; and "Catholic Communion" or similar (referring to the way in which the various particular churches relate to each other and are in communion). The article at present suggests (to a varying degree in different sections) a unity between the three concepts, which the arguments put forward on this page suggest is not the case. If the Latin-rite church is merely one - admittedly by far the largest - among a number of particular churches in communion, then it is wrong that it does not have an article whereas all the others do. TSP 15:50, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you TSP, I think we are getting somewhere. However, there is no need for three separate articles. Two at most. First “Catholic Church”, where you include everything about the Catholic Church including the "Latin-Rite church"-why separate what is not separate-along with the 20+ other rite/churches in communion with the Pope.(Wiki would simply eliminate the "Roman" and its done!) Then you can either or, OR BOTH , include "catholic" churches not in communion with the Pope within "Catholic Church" article and/or as part of another article on "Catholicism" in general.

I think your initial misunderstanding occurred by implicating that by utilizing the term "Catholic Church" it automatically implied that Anglicans were not catholic. It is simply not the case. For if Anglicans or any other “cathlolic”church believed themselves to be catholic so be it. (they are simply not in communion with the Pope and the chronologically original, “Catholic Church” )

Now, if King Henry the VIII would not have presumed that since the Pope resided in Rome he must be some kind of "Roman" political/religious King thus a "Roman __ Church" (not to mention the desperate a need for a divorce) then we more than likely would not even be having this discussion. You might be curious to look up Anglican Use Liturgy within the Roman rite church... here are a couple of sites http://www.cin.org/anguse.html and http://www.atonementonline.com/anglican_use.php . There you have the best of all worlds you describe: Anglican, Roman(rite)Catholic, and all in communion with the chronologically initial Catholic and Apostolic Church, presently lead here on earth by the German national, but universal Catholic-Christian citizen, Pope Benedict XVI. You see, national boundaries do not exist within an unseparated Universal Church of God as is described biblically "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." (Eph 2:19-20) and united in "mind and thought" (1 Cor 1:10). Honestly,IMO, once you separate by national boundaries and divisions it has lost its very "catholic"(universal) nature. Micael 05:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

"headed by the Pope" (TSP, 15:50, 28 February 2006 ). The whole of the Catholic Church (in Micael's sense) is headed by the Pope. "By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only has power over the universal Church, but also has pre-eminent ordinary power over all particular Churches and their groupings. This reinforces and defends the proper, ordinary and immediate power which the Bishops have in the particular Churches entrusted to their care" (canon 333 of the Code of Canon Law). Apart from using the term "eparchies" in place of "particular Churches", canon 45 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches says exactly the same. I am sure TSP knows this. I am not so sure certain other contributors know it: they seem almost to reduce the Pope to "Patriarch of the West", a title that is no longer among the Pope's official titles (cf. Annuario Pontificio 2006). Lima 10:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

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If the writer admits that the term "Roman" Catholic Church is the less proper term, by stating "commonly known as the Catholic Church". Then it seem the writer admits his stubborn bias. The right thing to do is to use the proper name, avoid ingnorant confusion, recognize that there is an entire half of the world that is not "Roman" Catholic, but Eastern Catholic which are in full communion with the Holy See in the Vatican but not of the Roman(Latin) Rite. Thus, the correct term for the entire(general) Church as simply Catholic Church. See my complete commentary 3 PP below. Micael Feb 18, 2006

I agree with the above. All the titles of Catholic documents in the article, and the quotations taken from them, reflect the fact that the Church calls itself simply "Catholic Church", the term used by an overwhelming majority of Catholics worldwide in all their languages. The filing of the article under "Roman Catholic Church", along with the numerous inclusions of that term in the opening paragraphs of the article, seems to be about something other than description: someone's POV is being served. This impression is not alleviated by the fact that some of the people policing what the Catholic Church may or may not call itself seem far from NPOV on the question (not to single anyone out unfairly, but one ardent defender of the term "Roman Catholic" actually cites on his user page that he is the child of a Protestant Bishop). It's not Wikipedia's role to impose on the Catholic Church a name chosen for it by its opponents: it's an encyclopedia, not a tract. (Unsigned comment added by User:24.201.5.234)

I'm largely 'policing' because of the concensus reached here, after major discussion which you can see here. Whatever your opinions, this change does need to be discussed, not merely changed by one editor.

What concensus? Based on my gloss of the page, it looks like you guarding the door against every other opinion: TSP contra mundum. Or do you represent a larger, unseen constituency?

Then you are mis-remembering; please read the page history, and you will find that reverts from "Catholic" back to "Roman Catholic" have also been done, just in the last few weeks, by User:Lima, User:Pollinator and User:WikiCats, and by many others previous to that; at least some of whom are Catholics, and at least one of which came to this article of the opinion that the term used should be 'Catholic' and has been persuaded by the arguments. The majority of regular editors of this page, as far as I can tell, support the article remaining at 'Roman Catholic Church' (see 'Straw Poll', though it wasn't as well-phrased as it might have been so didn't get as many replies as it might have); the issue has been extensively discussed (quite a lot of which discussion, admittedly, is now extremely hard to read because of recent editors inserting their comments into the middle of pre-existing debates) and previous 'rounds of debate' have always ended with the page remaining at 'Roman Catholic Church'. TSP 13:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

As has been said many, many times (which is why it's important to discuss these things and read the previous debates), Roman Catholic is NOT a term chosen for the church by its opponents; it is a compromise term, accepted and used in official documents by the church in ecumenical dealings with churches who do not accept its claim to be the Catholic (i.e. universal) church. TSP 04:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Is this article part of an ecumenical exercise?

It is certainly not a publication on behalf of the Church. The task of presenting the Church in a neutral fashion, as required by Wikipedia's policies, is nearer to the task of presenting the Church in an ecumenical context - i.e. in a way that is acceptable to all - than it is to the task of presenting the Church in the Church's chosen fashion. Wikipedia, to remain neutral, must give equal standing to the views of all churches; so yes, effectively it is an ecumenical context. TSP 13:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

PS: Try to avoid personal attacks; if you disagree with me, do so based on my arguments, not who I am.

It's not a personal attack: I cited information you posted yourself. I think it's fair, once arguments have been dispatched, to speculate about what might be behind your continued and spirited defense of the term "Roman Catholic", when both the Church being described and the vast majority of its adherents are, judging by the evidence, disinclined to use the term except in rare and minor circumstances, such as the ecumenical dialogues to which you refer.

If I were the only person reverting, that just might be relevant (though it is still, in truth, an argument ad hominem). I am not, so it is not. TSP 13:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Two considerations have been brought up: Accuracy and the need to avoid ambiguity. Accuracy dictates using the actual name of the Church when discussing it. Who decides the Church's name, itself, or outside parties? As for avoiding ambiguity, Wikipedia's Naming Convention is to "give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize." When you use the term "Catholic Church" on the street (or anywhere), is your listener *ever* in any doubt as to which Church you are referring to? So the use of "Catholic Church" to refer to the Church of that name will not lead to any real confusion. This means that the use of the name the Church chooses for itself (fulfilling the demands of accuracy) will not cause any real problems of ambiguity; voiding the argument against its use. -- Jack (24.201.5.234)

Who decides the name? Wikipedia policies are clear: outside parties, not the church itself. The Naming Conventions mention many factors to take into account when choosing a name; none of them, as far as I can see, is "use the name which the person or group prefers". As to ambiguity, I know a good many Anglicans who would assert that they are part of the Catholic Church, and call themselves Catholics; if I was in discussion with another Anglican, and they discussed "membership of the Catholic Church", for example, I would take them to mean the whole universal church. Your quote above missed out the second clause of the sentence: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity"; or, elsewhere, "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." "Catholic", "Catholic Church" or "Catholicism" do have two widely-recognised and distinct meanings, as the Catholicism page cites from Webster: "Catholicism has two main ecclesiastical meanings, described in Webster's Dictionary as: a) 'the whole orthodox Christian church, or adherence thereto'; and b) 'the doctrines or faith of the Roman Catholic church, or adherence thereto.'" If Wikipedia were to decide that "Catholic" meant "in communion with the Pope", it would no longer have a term with which to debate the relationship between the church in union with the pope, and the catholic - that is, universal - church; this is, of course, because official Roman Catholic Church doctrine is that they are the same thing. It is not Wikipedia's place to say that either it is or it is not; which is why the term "Roman Catholic" is attractive, for the same reasons it was invented in the early 17th century; it incorporates "Catholic", and thereby the Church's claim to catholicity; but also a distinguisher, to account for the possibility that some may believe there are other Catholic churches. TSP 13:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Please point to the source that claims 'Roman Catholic' is used in official documents during ecumenical dealings to avoid disruption, I'd like to look in this story's validity. Thanks.Virgil61 23:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The effect can be seen in the Church's dealings with the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Methodist Church, the Orthodox Church, the Syrian Church and the World Council of Churches, as well as in such documents as jointly-published notes on bible translations. The Oxford English Dictionary asserts (or asserted, in the most recent version I can find a quote from) that the term was first used "for conciliatory reasons" (between the Church's own preferred "Catholic" and the Protestant "Romish") in the early 17th century, after which it "was generally adopted as a non-controversial term". TSP 13:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. By the way the Catholic Information Network disagrees (http://www.cin.org/users/james/questions/q072.htm) with the statement "Roman" was used as a conciliatory gesture.

True; but it is clearly not an NPOV source, and provides no justification for its belief, and it makes no distinction between "Romish" and "Roman Catholic". While I accept both fall short of the Church's preferred title, it seems clear that the latter includes reference both to the Church's claim and to the dispute of it, and therefore clearly differs from the former which contains reference only to the church's perceived "Romanity" and not to its claimed Catholicism. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia - also not an NPOV source, but one which is usually useful in that it is written in a scholarly fashion which makes it possible to establish what is provable and what is assertion - does not go nearly as far as that article in its objections to the term. TSP 13:04, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the links to ecumenical statements prove that "Roman Catholic" is what the church calls itself officially but rather a concession to ecumenicalism within those particular meetings due to the sensitive nature of theological politics, in other words it isn't self-identifying outside of ecumenical communications which account for a fraction of the official documents of the church. Wikipedia's stand on Naming Conflicts: [1]. Under How to make a choice among controversial names"/Article names there is a matrix that assists on how to determine naming; Most common name, undisputed official name of entity and current self-identifying name. One is obviously RC.

My opinion is two and three are "Catholic" rather than "Roman Catholic", of course that's where the disagreements lie.Virgil61 23:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thank you; I wasn't aware of that page. To go through the factors one by one:

* Most common name. Google indicates that '"Catholic Church" -"Roman"' is substantially more common than '"Roman Catholic Church"' - which comes close to persuading me to simply accept the term (as commonness is the first among Wikipedia's naming conventions; tempered, though, by ensuring a lack of ambiguity). There are, though, two problems with this particular test; the first is that a large number of hits are from Church-related organisations, which would use the 'preferred' term even if it was not used in ordinary speech. The second is that the bulk of such pages are in the United States; and to take the most populous country's opinion as defining "most common" would not seem to be in line with the Naming Conventions.

* Undisputed official name. I don't think that "Catholic Church" fulfils this; because there are other groups who do dispute the use of the name. I think that this guideline is intended for organisations with a full official name that no-one disputes their right to, even if it is much less commonly-used than other names; for example, the main Mormon church is at Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; because, while "Mormon" is by far the more common term used to refer to this group, it is ambiguous (there are other churches which can be considered Mormon, even though reference to Mormons will almost always mean this church); so the long and relatively rarely-used full name is used. That said, statements made on this page (though relatively short of citations at the moment) seem to be indicating that "Roman Catholic Church" - though also used officially - cannot be considered undisputed either (for opposite reasons).

* Current self-identifying name: Well, I'd have thought that this was "Catholic Church"; but Lima seems to be questioning this, and I have to say I can't really source it. I went to the Vatican Website and clicked around looking for an official use of the term, and the first name I stumbled across (it happened to be on this page, which is admittedly off the beaten track) was actually "Roman Church"! Curiouser and curiouser.... Documents like the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" do seem to indicate, though, that the name is at least officially used, and more widely so (when not in ecumenical discussion) than "Roman Catholic Church".

I am really now at the point where I am as unsure as anyone where this page should be. Though what I am sure of is that it is unhelpful for people to repeatedly change it from its current state until something else has been decided. TSP 13:04, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

TSP has given sources for his statements. Would any of the contributors who insist that "the Catholic Church" is "the official name" of the Church we are discussing please give a source for this repeated assertion?

I am unaware that the Church has ever chosen an "official name". She has called herself many other things as well as "the Catholic Church". Even so large a book as the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the phrase "Catholic Church" only 24 times. I have made no attempt to count the far greater number of times that the book speaks of the (Roman) (Catholic) Church simply as "the Church", the term she most frequently applies to herself - amid a great variety of other descriptions, such as "the People of God", "the Spouse of Christ", "the Church of Christ", "the Body of Christ" etc.

(The 24 places where I find that the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of "the Catholic Church" are sections 119, 816-820, 830, 831, 833, title of 836, 838, 846, 870, 946, 1161, 1271, 1376, 1378, 1399-1401, 1635, 2066 + the title of the book. The English version adds, presumably by a slip, section 843, where both the original French and the official Latin texts have "the Church". In several instances, "Catholic Church" appears in the book in quotations from documents dating from before the Great East-West Schism: for example, 946 quotes the Apostles' Creed, and 1161 the Second Council of Nicea; and many would argue that these references do not apply specifically to the Church under discussion.)

Lima 20:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I've given a statement by a canonical lawyer and priest who advises EWTN, who's identity is available and contact information is easily discovered by a simple google. I think that addresses it to some extent.Virgil61 23:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect for the canon lawyer and priest, he is not the Church. Perhaps Virgil61 would ask him to indicate a source where the Church adopts "the Catholic Church" as "her official name". There may be such a source, but nobody here has yet quoted it. All we have are instances of actual use by the Church of "the Catholic Church" as a self-description, along with many other self-descriptions, which include "the Roman Catholic Church" (cf. TSP's citations), and the most frequent of which is "the Church". Lima 05:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you've part of the answer itself in that the church uses "Catholic Church" much of it's self-description but then muddles it up with that flowery terminology it loves so well. I do think cherry-picking a few documents diplomatically using RC in a theologically sensitive area like ecumenical conferences probably isn't the best of foundations with which to base the use of that term either. I'll try and contact him again and get source clarification.Virgil61 06:30, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone thought of just sending an email to The Vatican and asking them what the official name of the church is? 71.244.163.156 02:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

No, because (a) that isn't really the question; Wikipedia pages should not necessarily be located at what the institution itself regards as its official name; and (b) that would arguably be original research - Wikipedia is here to document what is commonly accepted fact. TSP 02:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Beliefs section

The section on 'Beliefs' seems to be almost entirely redundant with Christianity. This duplication actually makes it inaccurate in places - for example "Catholicism is also a Trinitarian religion. As opposed to other monotheistic religions, it believes that while God is one in nature, essence, and being, this one God exists in three divine persons" implies that no monotheistic religion apart from Catholicism believes in a Trinity; what it actually means is "Christianity is also a Trinitarian religion...".

The Roman Catholic Church does hold some beliefs which differ from those of other Christians (intercession of the saints, for example, and purgatory); but these are not actually mentioned all that prominently in the Beliefs section (the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, for example, is not mentioned at all). I propose that this section be removed, initially leaving just its first section (before 'the nature of God'. I believe this would give about as much information as the entire section currently gives. Distinctive beliefs of the Catholic Church can then be added, in more detail than at present. If people feel that there are aspects of Christianity not currently well-explained in the Christianity article, they can of course improve that article; including putting beliefs held only by Catholics in there, as long as they are clearly marked as such. TSP 13:47, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

An account of the beliefs of Catholics that only mentioned matters that some individual thinks differ from those of other Christians (probably meaning his own personal beliefs) would only be a distorted caricature of Catholic beliefs.

And what are those matters on which Catholics stand alone? TSP mentions intercession of the saints: all Eastern Christians, pre-Ephesian, pre-Chalcedonian and Chalcedonian alike, would be amazed to be told they do not believe in the intercession of the saints; and do no Anglicans, no Old Catholics, no other Western Christians whatever, believe in the intercession of the saints? Purgatory: surely some of the Westerners who are not members of the Roman Catholic Church believe in a spiritual cleansing after death; the Easterners not in communion think the theological construct sounds too legalistically Latin, but they all pray for the dead and do not think their prayers are in vain. The Assumption of Mary: Easterners out of communion do not consider it a dogma of faith, but they do in fact believe in Mary's preservation from bodily corruption in a tomb ...

In practice, it would be impossible to agree on what, other than the papacy and the binding force of certain solemnly defined dogmas (not the dogmas themselves), is a Roman Catholic belief held by no other Christians. All the more because of the difficulty of deciding what are the beliefs of Christians in general, or even of "Catholics" in the broad sense of the word. We Wikipedians cannot agree even on what is the broad sense of the word "Catholic". As for "Christians", the great variety of conflicting opinions among them would make it extremely difficult to identify beliefs that absolutely all of them hold. Not all of them believe in the Trinity.

Of course, I do not mean by this that the text cannot be improved. It should.

Lima 17:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Lima 17:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think Papal authority, transubstantiation, and the immaculate conception of Mary are three pretty Roman-specific doctrines that could be fairly highlighted. Just one guy's opinion. KHM03 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If what you say is true, Lima - if there is nothing that we can identify encyclopedically to be a Catholic-specific doctrine - then we should remove the Beliefs section altogether. The entire thing should simply be a redirect to Christianity. It's reasonably clear to me at least that the shared doctrine of mainstream Christianity is much greater than the differences between the branches; therefore it is necessarily wasteful to define in an article on every church, the whole of Christian belief. There are clearly differences between churches; but these would probably be better explained at Christianity rather than an inconsistent list being separately prepared for each church. TSP 17:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

A) it is not true that all Christians are trinitarians.

True (well, arguably; different groups vary on whether they include Unitarians in the bracket 'Christian'). I don't see why that's a problem, though; simply say that Roman Catholics are Trinitarian, then refer them to a more general article saying what that means. Actually the Christianity article is currently entirely Trinitarian. TSP 13:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Oneness Pentecostals are also not Trinitarian. Certianly both American and Transylvanian Unitarians were/are historically speaking Christians.--Samuel J. Howard 13:40, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

True. But I note that the articles on all those faiths manage to express themselves in terms of Christianity, without feeling the need to explain monotheism, sin, the crucifixion, salvation, prayer, and so on for themselves. TSP 15:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

B) it is not possible to swap out the beliefs sections of RC and Xtianity w/o taking an anti-NPOV position that either 1) RC is not the sole only true Xtianity or 2) that RC is the only true xtianity.--Samuel J. Howard 12:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Why not? Does that mean that the whole of Christian belief has to be repeated in the articles on every church which claims any kind of exclusivity? It is surely possible to note that the Roman Catholic Church holds the general beliefs outlined in the Christianity article, but also some beliefs distinct to that church; one of which is that they alone constitute the one church founded by Jesus Christ? TSP 13:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll

Before I keep making this change in the future, do we have consensus that the phrasing should be "The Roman Catholic Church, also known as the Catholic Church"?

• Roman Catholic --SarekOfVulcan 21:20, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As opposed to what? Yes, it is the Roman Catholic Church, otherwise known as "the Catholic Church." Nrgdocadams 23:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Nrgdocadams

Catholics themselves refer to it as "The Catholic Church" that is why so many people have been changing it to "Catholic Church". But I believe that because of confusion within Wiki, it needs to be called "The Roman Catholic Church". Maybe we should better explain this at the top of the article page. --WikiCats 05:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm Catholic, and I refer to it as the Roman Catholic church often enough. I'm not convinced that "many people" have been changing it, I think it's one person with multiple IPs.--SarekOfVulcan 05:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

This really isn't a matter of opinion. The official name is simply, "The Catholic Church". period. Roman Catholic CHurch refers only to the Latin Rite church. Period. You can take the word of canonists (like below) and ecclesiolgists (like myself) or the word of people with strong opinions and personal experience but no expertise. As the church is not a democracy i am inclined to agree with the persons who know what they are talking about. [Unsigned by Anonymous, 20:55, 18 February 2006]

The preceding paragraph was inserted, unsigned, by an anonymous editor who believes that s/he, as an ecclesiologist, knows what s/he is talking about, and that everyone should take his/her word about the matter. S/He has quoted no source for the declaration: "The official name is simply, 'The Catholic Church'. period. Roman Catholic CHurch refers only to the Latin Rite church. Period." Am I mistaken in thinking that, in reality, the Church has never adopted an official name? That outsiders need a distinguishing name for her, but the Church herself does not? That she has never taken a name for herself, and has only described herself, using in fact many descriptions? That only a Church newly sprung up needs to adopt an official distinguishing name? Perhaps indeed I am mistaken. Lima 06:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not that concerned that is was unsigned, most people aren't wikipedians and understand the correct signing conventions. It's obvious there are some of us who disagree, I think the views of the priest and canonical lawyer below--who's background and present assignment is easily googled--is instructive. I'm confused as to your present statement, you first implied that the Church called itself "Roman Catholic" on the basis of a phrase in a document from the First Vatican council and now you're claiming doubt that it has ever adopted an official name. Again, I'd defer to the canonical authority quoted below. Virgil61 08:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I still wonder whether I am or am not mistaken in thinking that, when the (Roman) Catholic Church calls itself something, such as the Mystical Body of Christ, it is only giving a description of what it is, not assuming a name for itself. (And, of course, I am not at all concerned about someone not signing. I sometimes forget to do so myself.) Lima 08:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll give you this, it calls itself by so many descriptive names it'll make your head spin. I think you're on the money in stating that it's only describing itself when it says things like the "Holy Church" rather than giving an official name. A large part of the confusion is the church's fault of course, they love those mystical, flowery phrases to death. With the Roman rite so predominate people have associated it with the whole church and forgotten that long ago fact that "Roman Catholic" was, as I've said earlier, originally started an insult towards English Catholics to associate them with Rome and take away the singular Catholic=Universal connotation.Virgil61 17:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Here's an interesting answer to a question I posed to a priest trained in canon law: While the latin rite is called the Roman Catholic Church is it technically incorrect to call the church as a whole, including the eastern rites, the Roman Catholic Church?

Here's the answer given by Father Mark J. Gantley, JCL

(received his licentiate in canon law from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C...):

The Church that I am a member of is the "Catholic Church."

The Catholic Church includes a number of ritual Churches -- e.g., Latin Church, Maronite Church, Armenian Church, Coptic Church, Ukrainian Church. It is also appropriate to include tyhe term "Catholic" in the title of each of these Churches -- e.g., Latin Catholic Church, Maronite Catholic Church, Armenian Catholic Church, Coptic Catholic Church, Ukrainian Catholic Church. Related to this, your use of the term "rite" is incorrect. The correct term would be "ritual Church" or "Church sui iuris." Each of these Churches is a "ritual Church" or "Church sui iuris." Together, all of these Churches is the Catholic Church.

Personally, I never use the term "Roman Catholic Church," as it is not a term that the Church uses to apply to herself in official documents. I realize this is common usage, however, for many people in the secular world, and this usage has been taken over frequently by many in the Catholic Church. It is often used by people in the Catholic Church to distinguish "true" Catholics from pretenders. Still, I avoid using it because it does not originate in usage with the Church herself.

When the Church uses the term "Roman Church," it is referring to the Church of the Diocese of Rome. "Roman" is also used in matters related to the liturgy (e.g., the Roman Missal, the Roman RItual, the Roman Pontifical).

...

So let me sum up -- there is the one universal Catholic Church. There are the various ritual Catholic Churches (I believe 22 in all) that together are the one Catholic Church. Each ritual Church has many dioceses that are complete expressions of the Catholic Church. And there are church buildings related to parishes. Like many words, one word has been uses and shades of meaning.

Hopefully this statement from a priest and canonical lawyer will be somewhat helpful if not interesting.Virgil61 07:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

When the Catholic Church declared: "The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection" (First Vatican Council, Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith),[2] it was clearly not "referring to the Church of the Diocese of Rome" - though in other contexts this could be the meaning. The Catholic Church also regularly signs inter-Church documents in which it is called the Roman Catholic Church, accepting this name for the whole of itself, not just for a single diocese.

The Eastern Orthodox Church considers itself to be the Orthodox Church, and most often refers to itself as such; but it accepts the name of "Eastern Orthodox Church", which is the title of the Wikipedia article about that Church. The (Roman) Catholic Church considers itself to be the Catholic Church, and nearly always refers to itself as such; but it accepts the name of "Roman Catholic Church". Why should Wikipedia describe it only as "the Catholic Church"?

Lima 15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to add here that I've reviewed the First Vatican Council statement you quoted and it isn't obvious that that is what the church 'officially' calls itself. It's buried in the document, not a headline. In fact the term "Catholic Church" is used right up front in the Profession of Faith where the residing Pope, Pius is called the bishop of the "Catholic Church". It also calls itself other names such as the 'Holy Roman Church', 'Holy Mother Church', etc all of which clearly are not the official name. Search the Vatican II documents and you'll not find it referring to itself as the "Roman Catholic Church". I'd also like to know where and how many 'official' documents are signed as the "Roman Catholic Church" and what the source for that is. Thanks. Virgil61 23:20, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Because it calls itself the "Catholic Church". You've misinterpreted a self-description with what the church names itself officially, they are two different things. Your logic dictates not the use of "Roman Catholic" but the use of "The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church" or various combinations of "Apostolic Church", "Holy Church", etc. None of the last two examples are acceptable I think you'd agree, so the question is why is "Roman Catholic" acceptable? It's not because that is what the Church calls itself it's for two reasons, "Roman" Catholic--which began as an insult in 17th century England--has become acceptable shorthand for all Catholicism and secondly some Protestants bristle at the thought of "Catholic" being used exclusively by that church. I would use 'Catholic Church' but recognize the opposition against it and would only include a statement to the effect that is what it calls itself. I do sympathize with your opinion below about using RC 'in a context, such as Wikipedia...', that's certainly a stronger argument.

Not to be combatative with you, but I'll go with a priest and canonical lawyer's opinion--whose answer is quoted above (who can be contacted or whose answer is searchable on the EWTN page)--on the matter of what the church calls itself. Virgil61 23:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

In a context, such as Wikipedia, involving more than (Roman) Catholics, I agree that "Roman Catholic Church" is the more suitable expression. The phrase in the Terminology section about considering equivalent, within this article, the two terms was intended to reduce, to some extent, the long-standing contest between those who favoured one term or the other. I think "Roman Catholic Church" should predominate, but that allowing some instances of "Catholic Church", even outside quotations from documents, may help pacate those who strongly prefer the shorter phrase. Lima 05:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I propose that the word “also” be changed to (commonly known as the Catholic Church). --WikiCats 08:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Lima 15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced by that; firstly because 'commonly known as' implies to me that 'Roman Catholic Church' is the formal name and 'Catholic Church' the informal name, which isn't really the case (one is the organisation's term for itself, the other is the disambiguated term used to distinguish it from other claimants to that title); and secondly because it suggests, to me at least, that 'Catholic Church' is the more common term; which I'm not sure is true, in British English anyway. TSP 01:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia recognizes that as a common name because it redirects from “Catholic Church” and there is consensus. --WikiCats 04:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

No, there is not concensus - there is a majority, which Wikipedia guidelines are clear is not the same thing. A concensus will be achieved when you have addressed my concerns about the wording in a way I am happy with (or when the majority of editors are convinced that my arguments are unreasonable, which does not yet appear to be the case either).

The existence of a redirect states that Wikipedia believes that "Catholic Church", when used, most commonly refers to the Roman Catholic Church; whereas "commonly known as" - I believe - states that Wikipedia believes that "Catholic Church" is the term commonly used when referring to the Roman Catholic Church. The two are quite different. TSP 13:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The term "commonly known as" is a small concession to those people who have been changing “Roman Catholic Church” to “Catholic Church”. --WikiCats 13:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

It just seems less accurate to me. "Catholic Church" is not a 'common' name; it's the official name, whereas "Roman Catholic Church" is the neutral and unambiguous name. TSP 13:40, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. You're right it should read-- 'the Catholic Church (commonly known as the Roman Catholic Church)'. Roman Catholic being the better known popular connotation, "Catholic Church" being the official name. Virgil61 17:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

small change to membership

I made one small change to the membership section. CIC only allows for entrance to the Church. Technically, even those who are lapsed or excommunicated are members. This flows from understanding Baptism as a one time, non repeatable event. What is included in Canon Law, is the provision for not being held to Canonical Form of marriage for those who have Defected from the Church by Formal Act (whether schismatic, heretic, or apostate). However, as a person can always freely return WITHOUT "converting", it makes no logical sense to speak of "leaving" in the ordinary sense.DaveTroy 21:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

But is that the meaning as reflected in the membership figures? That being the context in which the statement on membership is made. If so, I think that most impartial observers would consider those membership figures to be a somewhat skewed estimate of the 'number of Roman Catholics' (given that it could include in it large parts of the membership of other churches and religions, let alone those who profess no faith). Even the method of counting which allows for formally leaving the church - but does not allow for informal 'lapsing' - is a pretty generous measure.

Does the Roman Catholic Church rebaptise people coming from other Christian churches? If so, does that apply to all churches not under the authority of the Pope?

What is the formal meaning of "converting" here (i.e. what is it that differentiates the process that, say, a baptised Anglican must go through to enter the Catholic Church, from that which someone who was baptised a Catholic, then became an Anglican, and now wishes to return)? TSP 21:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

My wife was not re-baptized when she became Catholic a couple of years ago.--SarekOfVulcan 22:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe church doctrine holds that as a rule converts who have been baptised outside the Catholic church do not have to undergo another baptism. There may be some exceptions to this.Virgil61 16:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

There is no exception. The Catholic Church holds that there is "one baptism for the remission of sins"; if baptism has been validly conferred, it cannot be repeated. Baptism is conferred for the first and only time on converts who have not been baptized; it may be conferred, but only conditionally ("If you are not already baptized, I baptize you ..."), in doubtful cases. Lima 17:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

For a baptism outside the church to be valid, it must be performed properly. If the other jurisdiction doesn't use the correct procedure (baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while getting water dumped on you), then the convert would be "rebaptized". Regardless of whether a baptism is required or not, adult converts go through classes, called RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) in the US, and usually formally join the church during the Easter Vigil Mass. For an adult who left the church and then decided to return, if they haven't received the sacrament of confirmation, they would have to go through the RCIA program. If they have, I'm not sure what the process is. It might be a simple as talking to the parish pastor. Gentgeen 07:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Gentgeen rightly puts quotation marks around "rebaptized". A convert not validly baptized will be baptized, for the first and only time, not rebaptized, which is impossible. In Catholic teaching, anyone can baptize validly, if intending to do what the Church does; but administration of confirmation requires valid orders. Accordingly, a member of an Eastern Church who becomes a Catholic, being already confirmed, is not "re-confirmed"; but converts from Protestantism are confirmed, for the first and only time. A Catholic who becomes an apostate, heretic or schismatic incurs automatic excommunication (canon 1364), provided, of course, that the various general conditions for such a censure are met, e.g. being at least fully sixteen years old. On returning to the Church, such a person must have the excommunication lifted. "The apostate, heretic, or schismatic who has not incurred the censure of excommunications does not need to be absolved from this censure in order to be admitted to full communion with the Catholic Church. If baptized in heresy or schism in good faith, only the profession of faith is necessary. If the person is guilty of apostatizing, that person will be required to forswear the error" [commentary on canon 751 in Code of Canon Law Annotated (Wilson & Lafleur Limitée, Montréal, 1993)]. Lima 15:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

"traces its origins"

An anonymous user clearly finds the phrase "The Roman Catholic Church traces its origins to the Apostles Peter and Paul" controversial, and has repeatedly replaced "traces" with "claims to trace". My reading of that sentence is not to imply that there is a provable historical link, but that that is the source to which the church attributes its roots - just as you might say "American football traces its origins to the British sport of rugby", without implying that the game is officially supported by William Webb Ellis. That being the case, "claims to trace" seems to have no meaning, except to introduce a POV sense of dubiousness. Do other people feel differently? Would the anonymous user like to explain their concerns? And can anyone suggest an alternative wording that might please everyone? TSP 02:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not the anon user, but, as a Methodist, I don't have a problem with "traces its origins". The Mormons trace their origins to the early Church; that doesn't make them any more or less accurate or legitimate, but they are free to trace their origins however they want to do so. Same with the RCC. Saying they "trace their origins" isn't a claim of veracity. KHM03 11:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The phrase "traces its origins" states simply that the RCC says that it goes back as far as the Apostles. It makes no implication as to whether or not the Church is correct in saying that. To use "claims to trace" suggests that the Church knows quite well that it doesn't go back that far, but continues dishonestly to make the claim anyway. The NPOV policy discourages words like "claims", "alleges", etc. AnnH ^(talk) 15:15, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

A BIG SUGGESTION

This page seems completely unwieldy and wierdly including absolute trivia and major issues.

Perhaps, it should be agreed that the whole page be reworked to create separate entries for sub-issues.

Just as one of a multitude of examples: state that the Catholic Church recognizes seven sacraments, briefly describe what a sacrament is, and briefly note how this differs from Protestant Christians but not from Orthodox Christians. All of the above should take about five sentences. Then just link to each of the sacraments as a separate article, as "Eucharist (Catholic)" or "Holy Orders (Catholic)" where each could be described in detail and without confusing Catholic Practice with, say Lutheran or Anglican.

Including a list of all of the non-Roman Western Rites seems trivial -- the rites aren't trivial, but some person just trying to find out basic info about the Catholic Church and so searching for this article will be confused by this information which is really only even known to graduate students in Catholic theology. A mere mention that the vast majority of Catholic parishes and dioceses in the Americas and Western Europe follow the Roman Rite (with link to same), while in Eastern Europe and the Middle and Near East they follow the Eastern Rites (with link), is sufficient. Then, a sentence, "There are also other rites used by a small number of Catholics," with a link at "other" to an appropriate article would be best, I suggest.

In other words, the Catholic Church article should be far shorter, mention each relevant topic, and then have linked articles to explore each issue. The famous "traces" vs. "claims" could be handled by a link: say, "traces its origins" and link it to an article explaining the Catholic explanation of this aspect of Church History, and with a subtopic of "criticisms" that BRIEFLY describes some Protestant alternative views.

How about this idea?Amherst5282 22:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Even better, link simply to 'Eucharist'; then add text to that article, if necessary, explaining the specifically Catholic beliefs on it. What should be avoided, in my opinion, is having duplicated text all over Wikipedia explaining exactly the same things slightly differently. TSP 10:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I fear that a fractured presentation of the (Roman) Catholic Church would be only a caricature of its reality. Lima 12:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that, at the moment, the style in which this article is written makes it almost impossible to genuinely learn anything from for anyone who has any knowledge of non-Catholic Christianity. For me, an Anglican, this page is a vast collection of information, the vast majority of which I know to be general to Christianity. I have to read through the entire thing to find the tiny snippets of information which are actually about the Roman Catholic Church - ostensibly the subject of the article - not about Christianity in general. Even when I do find them, I have no way of knowing whether these are genuine differences from what I am used to or merely different presentations; because Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church are intermingled throughout the article. Large parts of this article are written in a style which assumes that the only thing people will ever be interested about in Christianity is the Roman Catholic Church. Articles should not be written such that they only make sense to people coming from one particular viewpoint; they should be written such that they present the information about the topic they concern, in a way that is accessible to people coming from all perspectives. That means not repeating information which properly belongs to another more general topic. If people do not know about Christianity or about the Roman Catholic Church, they can read Christianity first. If they know about Christianity but not about the Roman Catholic Church, this article is currently almost useless to them. TSP 23:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Presenting the (Roman) Catholic Church or, for that matter, the (Eastern) Orthodox Church as identified only by differences from a common-denominator Christianity (if such can be defined), would, I repeat, be nothing but a caricature, giving prominence to minutiae and omitting essentials. Someone who wants to know what the Catholic Church is about should not have to work through a series of links to articles that give more space to non-Catholic and even non-Christian ideas than to Catholic (e.g. Eucharist), and on the basis of information gleaned in all those articles to construct an accurate(?) picture of the Catholic Church. If it was hard for TSP to find genuine differences between Catholic teaching, as set forth in the article, and "what he was used to", that may indicate that an organic presentation of the Catholic Church serves to clear away the idea some non-Catholics have that the (Roman) Catholic Church is incompatible with Christianity - not that TSP had that idea. This does not mean that the article "assumes that the only thing people will ever be interested about in Christianity is the Roman Catholic Church". It only means that the article is about faithfully presenting the Roman Catholic Church, not about presenting other forms of Christianity. Lima 15:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I certainly do not have that idea; but to me, to feel the need to set out Roman Catholic beliefs from first principles, rather than referring to the fact of it being a Christian church, seems to suggest, rather than do away with, such a concept. Even if this 'organic presentation' did serve that aim, to specifically set out to do so would be to push a point of view.

Surely it is possible to discuss the distinctive beliefs of a group, without marginalising the non-distinctive? It is possible to talk about the teachings of, say, St Augustine without beginning with "he believed in a trinitarian God"; and about the activities of my local church without saying "St Nicholas' Church believes in Jesus Christ as saviour". The fact remains that the vast majority of the text in the Beliefs section is general to all Christianity and is explained better in the Christianity article; which contributes to making this article excessively long, requires that less detail is given on some Catholic subjects than should be, and makes it extremely hard to find any information. Mentioning which concepts are given particular significance in Catholic thought would be fine; but explaining them from first principles is confusing and unnecessary. TSP 15:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I do think that St Augustine's ideas on the Trinity would be an important part of an account of his teachings. I also think that, if St Nicholas' Church were giving an account of its beliefs (not its activities), it would include in the account something about its belief in Jesus Christ as saviour. Lima 11:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it is important that the article carries the complete and structured beliefs of the Catholic Church, not just what some people think are the differences between that and their own "Christian" or other viewpoint. The article needs to be a one-stop resource to tell people succinctly and as a unit, what Catholicism is about and what it teaches, not just a list of "differences" from smaller churches - that as a description of the catholic Church would seriously distort what catholicism is about.

If someone wants to write a differences between churches article, that is another matter. Xandar 14:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not talking about differences between churches; I am talking primarily about that which is common to all Christian churches - Christianity; though also about other topics which have extensive articles yet are also described again in this article. This article currently does not rely significantly on, or substantially reference, Wikipedia's many other articles on the Christian faith and aspects of it (many of which explain better, and more encyclopedically, what this article attempts to explain).

There is an article sitting there at Christianity (it was once a Featured Article, incidentally, though that is not to say that it does not need work), which Wikipedia claims is an NPOV exposition of the beliefs common to Christians. If you believe that all it represents is 'some people['s] ... own "Christian" or other viewpoint' then there are larger problems, and probably your best move would be to go and edit it. If, on the other hand, it is indeed an NPOV exposition of the beliefs common to Christians, then it is wasteful, confusing and silly to include another explanation of the same beliefs here in this article - just as it would be if we explained the whole of Christianity in the Augustine of Hippo article because he was a Christian theologian.

Would it really be beneficial if the description of every individual denomination - and, from what Lima seems to be saying, every individual church congregation and every Christian - included a complete exposition of the whole of Christian belief? Consider the articles of, for example, Augustine of Hippo, or Pope John Paul II; their teachings and beliefs are discussed, without needing to establish in that article the whole of Christian teaching; and it does not seem to me that what results is a 'caricature'.

If this was a Catholic manual, or an introduction to the Church, you might have a point; it might be better to explain the subject all at once. But it simply isn't. It is an encyclopedia, here to report encyclopedic facts. Such facts should be divisible into two categories: those which are already described in another article on the specific topic, and those which are not. It is only necessary, in most cases, to include in this article those in the latter category, while referring to the extensive network of existing articles to convey the facts on the issues they concern. This does not, of course, mean omitting all mention of certain subjects; but it should be sufficient to say, for example, "The Roman Catholic Church is a Trinitarian Christian church", in the knowledge that there are - or should be - articles at the other ends of those links explaining what is meant by that, and the terms do not need to be exposited here.

If, on the other hand, it is not possible to break a body of writing into such identifiable, cited, and verifiable facts - as I would have difficulty doing with the current 'Beliefs' section of this article - it would tend to suggest to me that it is not written sufficiently encyclopedically. TSP 18:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

As I started this section, let me say: the problem is volume. Lima is bent on the overwhelmingly complete all in one place comprehensive discussion of everything Catholic. Well, start with the Summa Theologiae, which explains all this in detail -- that's three full library volumes -- you want to reproduce the text of that? Somebody using an encyclopedia wants a brief, accurate discussion of a thing -- somebody who wants excruciating detail would be looking for a book or books (hence a Bibliography at the end of an encyclopedia article). The Catholic Church has 2,000 years of history -- are we to reproduce the biographies of every individual Pope, every decree of every Council, in the history section? The Eucharist is mentioned, so why not the minutiate of the decrees from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments on the percentage alcohol necessary in mustum to be considered valid matter? The point is that to me -- and I teach these subjects -- the artricle has been a bizarre mishmash of the most broad stuff (redefining all of the terms of basic Christianity, instead of just saying the Catholic Church is a Christian denomination), with the most obscure trivialities (the non-Roman yet still Western, Latin rites used for Mass are, as I pointed out, of interest only to post-graduate students in liturgical history). To use an example brought up by others: an article on Augustine's biography need not mention he believed in the TRinity -- just saying he was a Catholic bishop assumes that this is true; a separate article on his Trinitarian theology need not rehash the development of the Apostle's Creed, but only highlight what Augustine added to pre-existing Christian notions, or challenged in the ideas of those of his day on the subject; an article on the Augustinian Friars may make reference to the fact that they were inspired by St. Augustine's example and adopted his rule of life, without rehashing the place of Plotinus in Augustine's metaphysics of the sacraments. See what I mean? Amherst5282 01:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The major article on the Catholic Church MUST describe in a concise but complete way (as it does now) what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, not send readers to pick scraps from a dozen other articles and then try to piece something sensible together. This is what happens in articles such as Eastern_Orthodox_Church, and is the most sensible way forward for the Roman Catholic Church article. The Augustine example is not sensible in this respect, since no one would expect the article on ST Augustine to provide an outline of the teachings of the Catholic Church. As far as size limitations goes, this is a large topic, and one expects a large article. If anything is to be trimmed, some of the more detailed stuff on rites, nomenclature and heirarchy (as well as the extensive "criticisms" section,) could well be moved to subsidiary, linked articles in a Catholic "Series" as suggested below. Xandar 16:25, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the use of such devices as lets include the text of the Summa isn't helpful. Lima and other editors have done a good job to include the major features of a complex organization, the oldest Christian Church. This is not the complete outline of Catholicism, it is not meant to be. There is a certain epic scope of an article of this type. I think the content on rites and nomenclature works well to express the culture of the Church. It sure is not trivia, as many of them are used currently and are well known practices. Dominick ^(TALK) 19:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the original suggestion here. This article should be cut down. --Hyphen5 13:31, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Roman Catholic series

There should be a whole series for Roman Catholic Church alone. It should be seperate from Christianity. 69.218.181.192 20:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

There is one, and they can be found at Category:Roman Catholic Church. Gentgeen 09:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

There should be a box named Roman Catholic series with various related Roman Catholic topics instead of just as "Christianity" series box. --Caponer 19:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Not a bad idea...see here for examples:

Template:Methodism, Template:Calvinism, Template:Anglicanism, Template:Christian theology.

A Roman Catholic template, like these, could work with Template:Christianity, not instead of. KHM03 19:57, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I feel if the above branches of Christianity have crafted their own organizational templates, that the largest denomination of Christianity (Catholicism) should in deed have one of their own as well. --Caponer 02:42, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Who's gonna make it? (I'm new.) --Hyphen5 12:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Roman Catholic Weekly Collaboration

Would anyone be interested in beginning a Roman Catholic Collaboration of the Week? There exists such a wide array of topics dealing with the Roman Catholic Church that I feel there should be a weekly collaboration dedicated to it. If there is an expressed interest, I would love to assist in starting such a collabortaion. --Caponer 19:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

• I think that would be neat. Count me in, and send me a message on my user page. --Hyphen5 12:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Holocaust and U.S. Slavery

Ok, I'm opening up a can of worms here, because I think this is off-topic for this page, but I was watching Kevin Smith's "Dogma" the other day and there's an exchange between some characters that goes like this:

Rufus: I'm telling you, man, this ceremony is a big mistake. Cardinal Glick: The Catholic Church does not make mistakes. Rufus: Please. What about the Church's silent consent to the slave trade? Bethany: And its platform of noninvolvement during the Holocaust? Cardinal Glick: All right, mistakes were made.

So, what of the "silent consent to the slave trade"? Did the church ever publicly condemn slavery in the U.S? Did any priests own slaves, etc.?

And the issue of the Church's " platform of noninvolvement during the Holocaust"? Is this accurate? How involved was the church in

I'm not saying "Dogma" is a factual move in any way, I'm not even saying that this stuff should be mentioned on the catholic church wikpedia page, but I'm curious if it's accurate to say that the church stayed away from these issues.

In terms of Catholicism Dogma is non-factual. A good source is: Christianity Today on Slavery and Catholicism. It was a common anti-Catholic myth to assert that Catholics condoned slavery. St. Martin Porres, a half-black Lima resident would agree that slavery was not permitted in Catholicism. This in no way white washes any action that some sothern Catholics had in the way of prejudice, but the record is clear, the Church did not officially permit slave holding.

As far as the holocaust, silence was not the way the church saved Jews. Officially a condemnations were issues, but openly opposing the facists or Nazi regeme would mean many more would be killed. The Church operates without blowing a horn every time a person was smuggled out. Many Catholic Priests, among the St. Maximillian Kolbe, and St. Edith Stien were put to death in the same manner as many Jews. A good article with sources can be found at: reprint from Weekly Standard. The Rabbi of Rme declared over and over again Pius XII was a righteous man for his saving of many lives, Jewish and others, secretly by the Church, as many Priests did during the war. As before, this is a common anti-Catholic charge.

It doesn't belong in the article, IMHO, because they are a response to a made up accusation. The article would bloat if we included all the made up charges against Catholcism. Dominick ^(TALK) 17:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Aborted Move to Catholicism

NOTE: The voting is closed. Clearly, this attempted compromise failed. Immediately below is the discussion we had on my unpopular proposal to move Roman Catholic Church to Catholicism. Please scroll down all the way down for the resurrected voting on a proposal to move this article to Catholic Church. I did this in response to requests to return to the "real issue" and stop trying to compromise on a solution that nobody else wants.

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• Support. There have been many, many, many arguments about the title of this article: Roman Catholic Church versus Catholic Church. I detailed my arguments against the "Roman" qualifier above. But it is clear that we will not come to a consensus on those terms. So I have a compromise proposal: what about moving the entire Roman Catholic Church article over to the Catholicism article? We would then move the current Catholicism article to a new page, Catholicity, which is what that article really deals with anyway. And then all requests for "Catholic Church", "Roman Catholic Church", etc., would redirect to Catholicism. If we cannot reach a consensus on the words "Catholic Church", I think "Catholicism" is a good compromise. It does not have the same ecclesiological connotations. The -ism suffix strongly denotes that "Catholicism" is a set of beliefs and thus refers to the (Roman) Catholic religion, not to the dispute over the term "catholic". (We will still have Catholic and Catholicity for that. Besides, this reorganization would more accurately correspond to the popular and even proper ecclesiological uses of the terms. I think one has to admit that our articles on the Church are a bit of a schematic mess because of this controversy.) This move would also make our religion nomenclature more consistent (e.g., Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Lutheranism, etc.). --Hyphen5 15:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, I'm afraid - Catholicism is just as disputed as 'Catholic Church'; and does not even have the merit of being the most commonly-used term. TSP 15:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, ditto Lima 19:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. agree with TSP. Common usage in Britain is Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Church considers itself part of the Catholic Church but does not recognise the Pope as head of the Catholic Church. --Philip Baird Shearer 21:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Moving this to "Catholicism" would be as inherently POV as moving it to "Popery". Smerdis of Tlön 21:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose: the Roman Church is not the only Catholic one. Jonathunder 16:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Pmadrid 20:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Catholicism is much too vague. The title "Roman Catholic Church" is more appropriate for the content of this article. --Caponer 21:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Discussion (Old)

Add any additional comments

There have been many, many, many arguments about the title of this article: Roman Catholic Church versus Catholic Church. I detailed my arguments against the "Roman" qualifier above. But it is clear that we will not come to a consensus on those terms. So I have a compromise proposal: what about moving the entire Roman Catholic Church article over to the Catholicism article? We would then move the current Catholicism article to a new page, Catholicity, which is what that article really deals with anyway. And then all requests for "Catholic Church", "Roman Catholic Church", etc., would redirect to Catholicism. If we cannot reach a consensus on the words "Catholic Church", I think "Catholicism" is a good compromise. It does not have the same ecclesiological connotations. The -ism suffix strongly denotes that "Catholicism" is a set of beliefs and thus refers to the (Roman) Catholic religion, not to the dispute over the term "catholic". (We will still have Catholic and Catholicity for that. Besides, this reorganization would more accurately correspond to the popular and even proper ecclesiological uses of the terms. I think one has to admit that our articles on the Church are a bit of a schematic mess because of this controversy.) This move would also make our religion nomenclature more consistent (e.g., Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Lutheranism, etc.). --Hyphen5 15:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to throw a spanner in the works, but I'm not sure that helps. The term Catholicism clearly indicates that it is talking about a set of beliefs; but its exact meaning and 'ownership' is as disputed as the term 'Catholic Church'. I had to look for quite obscure non-RC organisations to find the Federation of Catholic Priests and the Catholic League; for 'Catholicism' Affirming Catholicism, a large and mainstream Anglican organisation (whose supporters include the Archbishop of Canterbury) immediately comes to mind; as does the generic term Anglo-Catholicism.

The comparison with Judaism, Lutheranism, etc. has some validity; but all of those refer to a system of beliefs, as distinct from any particular organisation (the bodies within them then have their own 'non-ism' pages, e.g. Lutheran Church - Canada). One is Lutheran because one holds a particular set of beliefs, not because one is a member of any organisation. Given that this article primarily concerns the single organisation headed by the Pope, rather than an abstract set of beliefs, the majority of its content does not seem to fit at Catholicism. Arguably, both articles should exist, as I proposed elsewhere - Catholicism for the beliefs of that strand of Christianity whose beliefs include that the universal church has one leader on earth and that leader is the Pope of Rome; then a page/pages like Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, or something, EITHER for the Church considered as a whole; OR for each of the 'Particular Churches' considered individually. (That still leaves the problem of where to put the page explaining the various different meanings applied to terms like 'Catholic', which is currently at 'Catholicism'.) I have had great difficulty pinning anyone down on whether the various Particular Churches should be considered one organisation, or several. My feeling, for what it's worth, is that organisationally it is several organisations; but the theological position that there is One Church is getting in the way of assessing this. TSP 15:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

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Hmm. If you want to go back to the Catholic Church debate, that's fine by me -- but it seems never-ending. In any event, I think the status quo is unacceptable. "Roman Catholic Church" suggests a POV, and is simply inaccurate.

I don't see why it does, or is. 'Roman Catholic' has always been a compromise term, referring to those Christians who call themselves Catholic, who are in communion with the Pope of Rome. It has been asserted several times that 'Roman Catholic' means only the Latin Rite; but this does not seem to be how the Church itself uses the term. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Roman Catholic is a compromise term??? A compromise between what other options? And who made that decision?

"The use of this composite term in place of the simple Roman, Romanist, or Romish; which had acquired an invidious sense, appears to have arisen in the early years of the seventeenth century. For conciliatory reasons it was employed in the negotiations connected with the Spanish Match (1618-1624) and appears in formal documents relating to this printed by Rushworth (I, 85-89). After that date it was generally adopted as a non-controversial term and has long been the recognized legal and official designation, though in ordinary use Catholic alone is very frequently employed." - Oxford English Dictionary

This is really absurd. No other religious group has this problem with Wikipedia. Is any other religious group disrespected like this? Why are non-Catholic editors determining what the Catholic Church should be called in this encyclopedia? Isn't the fact that Catholics are continually objecting to the "Roman" qualifier at least a hint that you could be doing something wrong here? The Catholic Church, as an institution, has been around since ancient times. The Protestant groups that attempt to hijack the word "Catholic" should have no bearing whatsoever on our calling the Church what she has always called herself: the Catholic Church.

I recognise that the term is not the church's preferred name; the church's preferred name makes a claim - to be the Universal Church - which is is not necessarily reasonable for an encyclopedia to follow. Some Catholics have been objecting to the label; however, others have been supporting it; and, as has been covered on this talk page a number of times, the Church itself employs it. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

When Catholics discuss particular Churches being "in communion with Rome", we say: "in communion with Rome". We don't say, "Roman". It's incorrect, because it would be referring to the Roman Rite. Please produce one official Catholic source that refers to the Church universal as the "Roman" Catholic Church. You claimed those sources existed; I would love to see them. --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

An awful lot of such sources have been cited in different parts of the discussion on this page. The Roman Catholic Church refers to itself as such in its dealings with the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Methodist Church, the Orthodox Church, the Syrian Church and the World Council of Churches, as well as in such documents as jointly-published notes on bible translations. I can't see anything in any of these suggesting that the Church only seeks to speak of the Latin Rite in these negotiations; indeed, the membership list of at least the dialogue with the Orthodox Churches suggests that Eastern Catholics were among the "Roman Catholic" delegates. Similarly, the proceedings of the first Vatican Council speak of the "holy, catholic, apostolic and Roman church"; and I believe that the decisions of that Council apply to Eastern Catholic Churches as well, do they not? TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

In the meantime, let me respond to your (TSP's) points because I still support "Catholicism" as a compromise. I think you are really grasping at straws in order to show that "Catholicism" doesn't really refer to the Catholic Church of which the Pope is sovereign. You admit that the organizations claiming "Catholicism" in their name are "obscure", but inexplicably you still use them as reasons for not compromising.

No, Affirming Catholicism is certainly not obscure; it is a large Anglican group which includes among its supporters the Archbishop of Canterbury (I'm not sure if he is a member, but he has certainly taken services for them). It was the Anglican groups who call themselves simply "Catholic" which I admitted were obscure - in England, "Catholic" is nearly always qualified; by "Roman" if referring to Catholic groups in communion with the Pope, or by "Anglo-" if referring to Catholic groups in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

So you are saying that the term "Catholicism" is ambiguous enough that when people type it into the search box, they won't almost always be looking for information on the Catholic Church? Would you be confused if I referred to a school as "a Catholic school"? Would you even doubt for a moment that such a school would be in communion with the Pope of Rome? This equivocation about the term Catholic is so unconvincing.

I thought we were talking about the term 'Catholicism'? TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

And why do people keep bringing up how Britons refer to Catholics? Are the British all authorities on Catholic ecclesiology? --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Because this is an international encyclopedia. Various other editors seem to be speaking primarily from an American point of view; and in the US, it may be true that 'Catholic' always refers to the Church this article is about; but if in other places this is not the case, it remains an ambiguous term. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

So I suppose if tomorrow I start a sect called "The Lutheran Federation", which may have nothing to do with Luther or Lutheranism, then Wikipedia can't have an article called Lutheranism? That is absurd.

If you google for 'Catholicism', the front page has, apart from two Wikipedia hits, five Roman Catholic-related hits (including one group whose founder was excommunicated); and two Anglican hits. That doesn't sound like an unambiguous term to me. As I say, my primary point is that 'Catholicism' is in no way better than 'Catholic Church'; so this "compromise" doesn't help. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Once again, if you'd rather rename this article to "Catholic Church", I'm all for that. If you Google for "Catholicism", the non-Catholic (i.e., non-Papist) sources you get are an anti-Catholic website by Jack Chick, a site attempting to prove Catholicism is unbiblical, and two Anglican hits that link to the same organization that you mention, and Wikipedia's own discussion of catholicity under the incorrect title, Catholicism. Certainly the two anti-Catholic websites implicitly recognize the Catholic Church that they're bashing. The rest are bona fide Papist resources. So the only confusion about Catholicism comes from this one Anglican organization, and Wikipedia itself. In fact, if you click on the "Google Directory" -- the tenth hit -- it is a very unconfusing list of resources on -- and I quote -- "Catholicism". Alas, there's nothing about any groups that are not in communion with the Pope. This reflects the common sense understanding (Catholicism = Papism) that I am urging here. --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

But nevertheless, two Google front-page hits for the meaning you seem to be asserting no-one seriously holds "Catholicism" to mean. I really don't think a term can be considered unambiguous when there are Google front-page hits for an entirely different and contradictory meaning of the word. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

And the fact that Affirming Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism have their own pages (and don't simply identify as "Catholics" as, you know, Catholics do) undercuts your argument even further.

I don't understand your point here... if you mean Wikipedia pages, the Roman Catholic Church also has its own pages and is not simply at 'Catholic'. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

My point was that those who ascribe to Affirming Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism don't call themselves "Catholics". They modify that word, don't they? Because they know that it refers to those in communion with the Pope!

Affiriming Catholicism's aims state:

• The Anglican Communion is holy, Catholic and apostolic
• 'The riches of the Catholic Tradition are needed throughout the Church to further the Christian mission
• Full inclusion of lay and ordained people in Church government, and of both men and women in the threefold ministry, reinforces the Catholic integrity of our vision

... so, no, Affirming Catholicism, and other Anglican and Protestant groups, do use the term "Catholic" unmodified to refer to itself. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the editors of those Wikipedia articles are not trying to merge those with Catholicism or Roman Catholic Church, so there is hardly the confusion that you claim about the term "Catholicism". --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Partly that is because those groups do not lay exclusive claim to the word "Catholic"; they believe that they and the Roman Catholic Church are Catholic. However, Wikipedia's concensus has so far put neither their article nor this article at "Catholic Church"; though the search term is made to redirect there on the 'principle of least astonishment'. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

You go on to suggest that there is a conceptual difference between "Catholicism" as a set of beliefs and "the Catholic Church" as an organization. This is true, I suppose, but I'd be willing to switch all the problems we have now for that (minor) one. But if that's not an option I am amenable your idea about having both types of articles. That would also carve up our hugely long article into more digestible, easier to navigate, pieces.

It is a problem that we have a discussion of catholicity at both Catholic and Catholicism (and to some extent in Roman Catholic Church as well), but none at Catholicity. How utterly illogical. "Catholic" should be a disambiguation page for the whole shebang. "Catholicity" should be the only discussion of the word "catholic". "Catholicism" should be either an article on the whole Catholic faith--institution and beliefs--or it should be limited to beliefs as you suggest. If it is limited to beliefs, then I think we should not have a page about "the Catholic Church" as an institution at large, but only various articles on each particular Church in union with the Pontiff. As I understand it theologically, that is the reality of the situation: the Church is constituted of many Churches, and she is One because all her particular Churches are in communion with the Roman Pontiff (the Vicar of Christ) and, through him, with each other. But that can be dealt with in the Catholicism (beliefs) page in that case. I suppose, then, that the Catholic Church page would either redirect to Catholicism, or to the "Catholic (disambiguation)" page that I suggested.

Are we interested in doing this? Why no response? Are we simply going to debate forever, once again, about this point?

I broadly agree on the 'splitting into two' idea; so I simply left it in case anyone else wanted to comment further. I covered my issues with "Catholicity" lower down. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

We Catholics keep insisting that the status quo of this article is unacceptable because it is both insensitive and factually inaccurate. Why doesn't anyone seem to care about that? Non-Catholics keep telling us that we don't know what we're talking about. Excuse me? --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that any decision we make needs to be based on published and verifiable sources. All the ones I'm seeing still seem to suggest that 'Roman Catholic Church' is a term found acceptable by, and used by, the Church to whom this article refers. 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

You say that "Catholicism" isn't commonly used. You say you get 7 million hits for "Catholicism" on Google; I get 17.6 million. That is hardly uncommon. I am Catholic; I use "Catholicism" all the time. I know it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but any of these ideas is far better than the status quo.

Oh, I don't say that it isn't a commonly-used term; I just can't see any metric on which it wins over 'Catholic Church'. It's less common and equally ambiguous. (Google's numbers do indeed seem to regularly change; I now get 13.9m for 'Catholicism'; but 27m for 'Roman Catholic Church', and 68.3m for 'Catholic Church'.) I'm afraid that I don't see Wikipedia's Naming Conventions as allowing for compromise (that is to say, a solution which no-one believes to be the best one, but which is adopted for being halfway between the two preferred options) - we need to go for the solution mandated by the Naming Conventions. I'm not sure what that is, but I'm fairly confident that it's either Catholic Church or Roman Catholic Church, not Catholicism. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but why? You just finished arguing that "Catholicism" suffers from the same problems as "Catholic Church", but now you're saying it's worse. And you said that Roman Catholic Church itself is a compromise, but now you say that compromises are against the rules? --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

True, I did just notice I'd done that :-) The principal Wikipedia Naming Convention is this: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." 'Catholic Church' has the issue of ambiguity; but the benefit that it is the most common term. 'Catholicism' suffers from the same problem as 'Catholic Church' - that it is ambiguous; but WITHOUT the merit of being the most common term. Meanwhile, 'Roman Catholic Church' is a less common term (though still more common than Catholicism), while possibly winning on the ambiguity stakes (though this is being disputed). It seems to me that we should either go for the most common term - 'Catholic Church' - or for the most common term that is not disputed - which seems to me to be 'Roman Catholic Church', but clearly there is a debate over this.

My point about compromise is that the article should not be placed at somewhere which no-one believes to be the right place; and I think to place it at Catholicism would be to do this. I believe (marginally) that it should be at Roman Catholic Church; you believe it should be at Catholic Church; putting it at Catholicism seems to benefit no-one. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Please at least support my Requested Move of Catholicism to Catholicity. I just want to clean up this mess in a timely manner, even if by baby steps. --Hyphen5 19:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but to me - and to dictionary.com - the two words aren't synonymous. 'Catholicity' usually means 'universiality' in a secular context; 'catholicism' in a theological context. It is the theological context which is being used here. Again, I don't think it's helpful to look for a compromise; we need to go for the correct name under the Naming Conventions, not the one that the fewest people are unhappy about. TSP 00:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

From the American Heritage Dictionary, as quoted by dictionary.com:

catholicity n.

1. The condition or quality of being catholic; breadth or inclusiveness.

2. General application or acceptance; universality.

3. Catholicity Roman Catholicism.

Again, from the American Heritage Dictionary, as quoted by dictionary.com:

Catholicism n.

The faith, doctrine, system, and practice of a Catholic church, especially the Roman Catholic Church.

With all due respect, in many of these cases, you've simply gotten your facts wrong. As you can see, "catholicity" can refer to universality, whereas "Catholicism" refers to a system of beliefs. Thus, the current content of Catholicism is misplaced, and it is this article, Roman Catholic Church, that belongs there. --Hyphen5 04:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is; Catholicism does indeed refer to a system of beliefs; and the current Catholicism article is about systems of beliefs - but not only about those of the Church this article is about. As the American Heritage Dictionary says, Catholicism refers to "The faith, doctrine, system, and practice of a Catholic church" - but not necessarily the Roman Catholic Church. Whereas 'Catholicity' generally refers simply to breadth or inclusiveness; which is not what the article currently at Catholicism is about. TSP 13:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

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I agree with TSP. Common usage in Britain is Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Church considers itself part of the Catholic Church but does not recognise the Pope as head of the Catholic Church. --Philip Baird Shearer 21:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but that's exactly why we should change "Roman Catholic Church" to Catholicism rather than to "Catholic Church". Does the Anglican Communion consider itself part of Catholicism? I think not. --Hyphen5 21:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Please keep "any additional comments" to the discussion section and do not clutter up the first part of the requested move as it makes the job of the administrator who will decide if the move should take place more difficult.

One is the organisation underpinned by a set of beliefs, the other is a set of beliefs underpinned by the organisation. However they are not one and the same thing, because one can believe that a Catholic Church is desirable without accepting the Roman Catholic Church as an embodiment of that Church. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

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Moving this to "Catholicism" would be as inherently POV as moving it to "Popery". Smerdis of Tlön 21:53, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? It's POV to say that "Catholicism" refers to the Catholic Church? Do you live on planet Earth? Did you read anything I said? Catholicism is a religion, catholicity is universality. Geez. --Hyphen5 23:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Not quite unversally, you will not find anyting starting with "Cath" on the Shankill Road unless the word proceeding it is "expletive deleted". -- --Philip Baird Shearer

Social teaching

What is the feeling in the room about merging Catholic social teaching into our small section on social teaching? On the one hand, the Catholic social teaching article is inaccurate and unsourced, and it could use the attention that it would get here. It also seems to be a more proper home for social teaching to be treated. On the other hand, if we aren't going to treat other aspects of the Church's moral theology, maybe we shouldn't comment on social teaching at all. --Hyphen5 13:52, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Not the leader of all Christians

As I'm sure it has been previously discussed, in my opinion, the pope is NOT the leader of all Christians, as stated in the caption of one of the pictures in this article. There are 590 millions out of 2.1 billion Christians out there who refute the pope's authority, including Protestants, Anglicans, Baptists, Pentacostals, Methodists, etc. 28% of Christians out there do not believe that the pope is the head of the church. Aside from my anti-Catholic view points, as an educated, Protestant Christian I find it inappropriate that the article mentions that he is "the Vicar of Christ and therefore leader of all Christians." A more appropriate statement would be that he is "the Vicar of Christ and self-appointed leader of all Christians." I find that comment, concerning his leadership of all Christendom, facetious and inaccurate, as he is not my leader, and he is not the leader of the 590 million Christians who refute the authority of the Pope. (Notorious4life 01:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC))

The article merely says, "Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessors, is considered by Catholics as the Vicar of Christ and therefore leader of all Christians" (my emphasis). It is an objective fact that the Pope is considered by members of his church to be the leader of all Christians (Catholic dogma would state that, even if other Christians do not consider themselves to be under his authority, he is, as the successor of Peter, has been placed by God in leadership over all Christians). It is outside the scope of this article to assess whether the claim is true; the article merely asserts that the claim is made. Self-appointed would be a POV term, and is in any case inaccurate - he was appointed to the post held by Roman Catholics to carry with it the leadership of the Christian church by the College of Cardinals, not by himself. TSP 01:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second. What about Jesus? You mean that Catholics consider the Pope to be the leader of all Christians, not Christ himself? Now I'm confused. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 02:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

No; as the caption says, the Pope is considered to be the Vicar - that is, representative - of Christ; and therefore his position as the visible leader of all Christians comes from Christ. We had a lengthy debate on the best way to express this in the introductory paragraph. TSP 12:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

There's no need to be confused over a matter as simple as exploiting the abundant fallacies and errors of the papacy, but I find it demeaning and further reasoning for anti-Catholic sentiments that they consider him above the leadership of Christ himself. Rather than being called the leader of all Christian, he should rightfully be called the anti-Christ and a prophet of Satan, as depicted in Revelation. Even though Catholics believe he is the head of the church and all Christians, other, non-Catholic Christians, find that description of the pope to be offensive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Notorious4life (talk • contribs) 03:21, 20 March 2006

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the description is used; and that is all that it is within this article's scope to describe. TSP 12:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it should read "Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessors, is considered by Roman Catholics as the Vicar of Christ and therefore leader of all Christians" as not all catholics are Roman Catholics. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps; though the current Terminology section states that, strictly for the purposes of this article, the two terms are used interchangeably. TSP 12:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I know it's picky, it is just that picture and box appears in "Overview" before "Terminology" where the definition is given. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

*shrugs* Fair enough - I've changed it. I can't imagine this being a big issue, given that 'Roman Catholic' is the term used throughout most of the article. If we move this article to 'Catholic Church' (which may be justified, as Wikipedia's naming conventions more or less mandate only considering what term is commonly used, subject to "a reasonable minimum of ambiguity"), we'll need to put something at the top explaining in exactly what sense the term is used, and where to look for articles on the other meaning of the term. TSP 17:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Not all Christians who believe he is the leader of all Christians are Roman Catholics, either. There are Maronite Catholics, Ukrainian Orthodox Catholics, and some 20 other churches that all accept the Pope's authority besides Roman Catholics.

Please can we have this debate in one place at a time? As the article clearly states, 'Roman Catholic' is used here to mean the entire church in communion with Rome, which I believe is the sense in which the church itself uses it. It you have evidence of the term being used to mean something else, please provide it; preferably in one of the several places elsewhere in this page where I have asked for it. TSP 17:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was don't move. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 20:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

REQUESTED MOVE to Catholic Church

• Talk:Roman Catholic Church — Roman Catholic Church → Catholic Church – "Roman" qualifier is inaccurate, inconsistent with our other practices, suggests a POV, and defies naming conventions and common sense. --Hyphen5 00:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

For an alternative rationale, see the 'Alternate Resolution' section below

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support. Please see my extensive rationale in the discussion section. And please don't vote until you've read my reasoning. I don't want to spend all my time repeating points I've already made and I don't want to debate forever. Voting your instinct rather than considering my case is just going to perpetuate useless debate. --Hyphen5 00:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, universially recognized as the Roman Catholic Church and also self refered to as that name by the church itself. Catholic Church is too broad and can refer to ANY Christian church in harmony with the Roman Catholic Church.JohnnyBGood 00:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support, cautiously. 'Catholic Church' is simply the most common name employed, which the Naming Conventions seem to indicate should be our primary guide, and which therefore overrides other objections. Other possible meanings can be dealt with by a prominent disambiguation statement at the top. TSP 13:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. In the abstract, I would fully agree; but not in the concrete circumstances of a Wikipedia article about what most non-(Roman) Catholics, when speaking formally (which is what counts), call the Roman Catholic Church, a name accepted by the Church itself, even if it is not its preferred name; an article moreover that, if headed "Catholic Church", is almost certain, in spite of the proposed disambiguation statement, to attract repeated modifications by those who understand "Catholic Church" differently. (A propos of "We Roman Catholics piss off our Eastern brethren", there is no instance of the Church itself, at the highest level, ever, even once, using "Roman Catholic" to mean "Latin Catholic"; it applies the term only to the diocese of Rome or to the whole Church subject to the Pope.) Lima 15:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Catholic Church" has multiple meanings which would need to be addressed in the article; "Roman Catholic Church" pretty much only refers to the specific denomination headed by the Pope, which I think is the intent of the article. KHM03 ^(talk) 15:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. We believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, too, and we're not Roman Catholics. Just zis Guy you know? 15:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Millions of Protestants recite the creed that states belief in the "Catholic" church. But this does not refer to the Roman Catholic church, and movement of this page to Catholic Church would muddy the waters. That's not to say anything against the Roman Catholic Church; it's just to be clear on what is meant. BTW Catholic Church should be a disambig page, not a redirect. Pollinator 15:34, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose.For the oppose reasons given above. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, see below TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:02, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support The Catholic Church called itself "The Catholic Church" and so should Wikipedia. --WikiCats 15:02, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. There should be a separate article upon the religious denomination or group of denominations whose head(s) are the Pope. Roman Catholic achieves this without assuming the POV assumption that the universal Church ought to recognize the Pope as its head. Smerdis of Tlön 17:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose For all reasons above. 'Catholic Church' has many meanings apart from the group this article is about. DJ Clayworth 17:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose as per reasons above. --Mal 14:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, while I personally believe that the church described in this article is the Catholic Church along with the other persons in communion with the Pope, the rest of Christianity disputes that, and I respect that dispute. Wikipedia should as well. Renaming this article "Catholic Church" would cause the article to lose its neutral point of view.Pmadrid 16:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per discussion. The Anglican Communion is also a branch of the "Catholic and Apostolic Church" without recognizing the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. Septentrionalis 17:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose This is a call for a vote, and this is my vote. Reasons for my vote are not required. Jim Ellis 18:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose As per JohnnyBGood et al.; apparently this nomination is part of a campaign to move and, arguably, obfuscate and insinuate a particular viewpoint regarding Catholic-related articles/topics; see proposed move of Catholicism to Catholicity ... which has garnered unanimous opposition so far. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 22:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose — All that was accomplished in King Henry VII's declaration of supremacy was that the Pope no longer held authority in the realm of England. The continuity of the Church through the apostolic succession of bishops, among other things, is what makes the Anglican Communion Catholic with a large C. The arrogation of the term to one communion of the Catholic Church (e.g., the Roman one) is an affront to ther Catholics. See my discussion below. Fishhead64 03:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support, per WP:NC(CN). Afaik all other possible ambiguities (like other churches, that usually name themselves differently, but that have some claim on the "Catholic" and/or "catholic" epithets) can be sorted out by usual wikipedia disambiguation techniques, i.e., in this case, probably a disambiguation page, mentioned on top of the article. In fact, this should mean that the present sentence:

  "Catholic Church" redirects here. For other uses of the term, see Catholicism.

  can be shortened to:

  For other uses, see Catholicism.

  or:

  For other uses, see Catholic Church (disambiguation).

  --Francis Schonken 16:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose I read all the arguments and guidelines as requested by Hyphen 5, and he makes some excellent points. There is no perfect solution, because this is not only an issue of nomenclature, but also a deeply-felt and complex theological issue. On the whole, I think "Roman Catholic Church" is more precise and somewhat more neutral. Masonbarge 17:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose Other churches consider themselves catholic, so removing "Roman" would be inherently POV.--Aldux 20:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support - It is the technically correct solution to a technical issue and I do not believe emotions or feelings on the subject should be the deciding factor although considerations thereof might be understandable given the historical and cultural context of the matter. I believe that correct and comprehensive utility of disambiguation would avoid any conceivable confusion and it as such would be an improvement to the project in general. Celcius 05:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support but only if implemented with Francis Schonken's disambiguation suggestion. That seems the best way to balance the claims of Protestants and Eastern Rite Catholics. Durova 14:11, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
• Support. They are just the same... The Catholic Church was renamed Roman Catholic Church by her detractors because of several times that the church had been persecuted during the times. Emphasizing Roman because the leadership of the Church (since Peter) is located in Rome. Then, the Catholics later on accepted this label (no choice, because they were labeled it). On the other side of the coin, how about other Catholic Churchers that are not Roman Catholic bacause they have different rites other than the Latin rite although they maintain communion with the Supreme Pontiff? Another thing to ponder on...

Discussion

Add any additional comments

There are two things the Church has always called itself: the "Christian" Church and the "Catholic" Church. I can understand why naming this article after the former would be problematic. But I truly do not understand the objections to naming this article "the Catholic Church". I have four arguments. Our policy on this article is...

1. Inconsistent - Imagine a political party that was named "The Best Party". Other parties, not similarly named, also claim to be "the best party". But there is only one that claims the name "The Best Party". Would we redirect to some other page besides The Best Party? That is analogous to what we are doing in the case of this article; the main article should be moved to Catholic Church.

In fact, you don't have to imagine much. We have an article called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to our article, Latter Day Saint, "Latter Day Saints consider themselves to be 'saints' in the earliest Christian sense of the word, meaning members of the original church that they believe Jesus organized before his death in the First Century, AD." In fact, as a Catholic, I believe that that description fits the Catholic Church and emphatically not the LDS Church! Should we redirect Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Mormonism, or Joseph Smith's LDS Church on the basis of my objection to the LDS Church's name? I suppose we should if we also redirect Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church and make all this fuss about catholicity, and implicitly question the Church's claim to catholicity, in Catholicism and Catholic when you know those terms are generally and conversationally applied to that Church of which the Pope is head.

Also see Robertsrussell's point on this double standard above; he mentions the Orthodox Churches, the Church of Christ, and other religious groups with "ambiguous" names. In all those cases, we deferred to the groups' claimed names. So should we do here.

Our policy here simply doesn't make sense. We should not keep the main article at Roman Catholic Church simply because that is not its name.

Besides pointing out this inconsistency, I have three other points. To maintain the status quo is...

2. Inaccurate - It is simply not accurate to call the whole Catholic Church "Roman". There are over 20 various Catholic Churches in union with the Pope. "Roman" is only one of them. Those familiar with this argument are familiar with all the various Catholic Rites. One of those is the Roman Rite; that is what you actually refer to when you say, Roman Catholic Church. But that is not what this article is about.

3. Unrealistic and POV - If we're going to redirect from Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church, it seems to me that we all already recognize that the Catholic Church calls herself--and is known as--the Catholic Church. To redirect from Catholic to Roman Catholic (as we do) seems to suggest a POV--it would be like redirecting Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Alleged Church of Latter-day Saints or Joseph Smith's Church. On the other hand, to title this article the Catholic Church simply reflects the reality of how people talk, and what the Church (and its 1 billion members) calls itself. When somebody types "Catholic Church" into Wikipedia, we all know which one they're looking for. That's why we've redirected it. If you equivocate worry about calling the Church the "Catholic Church", then you've already ceded that battle by redirecting from Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church. All the redirection accomplishes is to diminish the quality of our article.

4. Insensitive - To continue to insist on modifying "Catholic" with "Roman" is needlessly insensitive to a real ecclesiological unity between Eastern Churches (of which there are over 20) and the Roman Church. We Roman Catholics piss off our Eastern brethren enough as it is, by ignoring them and, when we learn about them, hesitating about whether they are really Catholic. They are, and they deserve not to be implicitly excluded from this article. There are good faith concerns of both Eastern and Roman Catholics about the title of this article.

These three points, taken together with the first objection about inconsistency, seem to me to constitute good reasons to rename and move Roman Catholic Church to Catholic Church. --Hyphen5 00:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Very simply, read the Naming Conventions. I think you may very well find they support your suggestion; but you must justify your move suggestion in terms of Wikipedia's conventions, not for any other reason. Your third and probably first points are matters explicitly barred from consideration in article naming. TSP 01:04, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

TSP, I have read the naming conventions. They say nothing that is germane to this controversy. Absent relevant guidance (and the naming conventions themselves acknowledge they are only guidelines, not rules), I have put together a four-point case, IMHO, based on common sense. Please direct me to the ones you think are relevant, because I must have totally missed them. --Hyphen5 01:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Have done so over on your talk page. It should be noted that, while the naming conflict page is only a guideline, the Naming Conventions themselves are Wikipedia Policy, and therefore must be followed. TSP 01:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. You will note that the naming conventions page itself says: "It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules written in stone." But let me make my case from the conventions anyway. On my talk page, you point to the common names, precision, and naming conflict conventions.

Common names says: "When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?" Clearly, under this criteria, Catholic, Catholicism and Catholic Church should all redirect to the same article. It's not like the average person who types "Catholic Church" is a spiritual seeker looking for The One Truly Small-c "catholic" Church. It also says: "In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading, then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative." My contenion is that Roman Catholic Church is misleading because it is inaccurate. A reasonable alternative would be Catholic Church. Now, you will of course retort that Catholic Church is misleading. So I have remained open to the possibility of a disambig page at Catholic Church, and even at Catholic. However, to put the main article for papism at Roman Catholic Church is inaccurate and misleading. It further says: "Also, some terms are in common usage but are commonly regarded as offensive to large groups of people (Mormon Church, for example). In those cases use widely known alternatives ([Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]])." I don't know if I'd go so far as to say "offensive", but equating "Roman Catholic Church" with "Catholic Church" is surely insensitive to Catholics who understand otherwise, and particularly to Eastern Rite Catholics.

Precision says: "Please, do not write or put an article on a page with an ambiguously-named title as though that title had no other meanings!" That might be true of Catholic Church, but it surely is also true for Roman Catholic Church. I have been open to a disambig page, as I said.

Naming conflicts says: "Wikipedians should not seek to determine who is 'right' or 'wrong', nor to attempt to impose a particular name for POV reasons. They should instead follow the procedure below to determine common usage on an objective basis." Good. It has always seemed to me that Roman Catholic Church was imposed for POV reasons. It also provides a table for determining common usage objectively:

Criterion	Option 1	Option 2
1. Most commonly used name in English	?	?
2. Current undisputed official name of entity	?	?
3. Current self-identifying name of entity	?	?
1 point = yes, 0 points = no. Add totals to get final scores.

Let's apply these questions to Catholic Church. Q1=yes (40m hits on the Google test, putting "Catholic Church" in quotes), Q2=no, it clearly is disputed by you and others (on the other hand it does say that you have to dispute that "Catholic Church" is its official name -- in other words you have to dispute that the Catholic Church claims that name), Q3=yes. Now for Roman Catholic Church. Q1=no (10m hits, in quotes), Q2=no, it clearly is disputed by me and others, Q3=no, for reasons I've explained. Now for Catholicism: Q1=no (17m hits), Q2=I had thought so, Q3=yes. Catholic Church, with two points, is the clearest winner out of these.

Naming conflicts also says: "Bear in mind that Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. We cannot declare what a name should be, only what it is." It has been my impression that Roman Catholic Church has been imposed because some think that the Church should not be known as its most common name: the Catholic Church. As naming conflicts notes, merits of the question aside, that doesn't change the fact that Catholic Church is the most common name.

One more thing on the Google test. You will note that every hit on the front page of Google is a resource by or about the Catholic Church of which the pope is head. In that sense, it is even less ambiguous than Catholicism.

Finally, I will note that I am most interested in people's reaction to the LDS and "Best Party" examples I gave in my case above. --Hyphen5 04:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

All of which completely ignores the reasons given by those who disagree with you. Just zis Guy you know? 09:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Give me a break, Guy. The only way you can say that I don't address the argument, "But other Churches claim to be Catholic, too!" is if you didn't actually read what I said. Once again, read what I said, and prove me wrong. If you can't, then don't vote "no". --Hyphen5 22:57, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

If one uses Google and searches on government sites in the Irish Republic and the UK:

• 106 English pages from gov.ie for -Roman-Catholic-Church Catholic-Church
• 36 English pages from gov.ie for Roman-Catholic-Church
  • 33%
• 44,700 English pages from gov.uk for -Roman-Catholic-Church Catholic-Church
• 71,200 English pages from gov.uk for Roman-Catholic-Church
  • 150%

Almost the exactly a revers ratio. So no surprises there! --Philip Baird Shearer 10:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Universially recognized as the Roman Catholic Church and also self refered to as that name by the church itself. Catholic Church is too broad and can refer to ANY Christian church in harmony with the Roman Catholic Church.JohnnyBGood 00:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Johnny, you say: "Catholic Church is too broad and can refer to ANY Christian church in harmony with the Roman Catholic Church" (emphasis added). THAT IS EXACTLY MY POINT! This article purports to be a discussion about that Church of which the Pope is head. Therefore, its title must reflect all of the particular Churches within that larger Church, not just one of them. --Hyphen5 01:13, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

If that is what you believe the Catholic Church article should be a disambig page linking to Roman Catholic Church and any churches in harmony with the Roman Catholic Church. However being in harmony does not mean that they're all part of the same church as you seem to suggest. The pope is only head of the Roman Catholic Church, not all churches in harmony with Rome. JohnnyBGood 01:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't suppose I would mind a disambig page with links to all the particular uniate Churches. But what you say about the Pope being only the head of the Roman Catholic Church is just plain false. One of his roles is head of the Roman Church, that is for sure, and in that role he is equal to various Eastern patriarchs. But he is the successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Christ on earth. As such, he has authority over the entire Church united in his office. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, particularly paragraphs 882-886 and 814. --Hyphen5 01:24, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

True, he does have authority over the entire united church on earth... but that only refers to those churches that recognize his authority. And the few Christian churches that do are not necessarily led by him outright.JohnnyBGood 01:36, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Right, but they aren't big-c "Catholic" in the sense of "what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize" by that term. I refer you to the naming conventions. If need be, we can disambiguate. I really think we can come to some agreement here, so I would respectfully ask you to qualify your "oppose" vote in the meantime. --Hyphen5 03:14, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

True, they aren't. But the Big C Catholic churches you refer to are still not the same church as the Catholic Church based in Rome (aka the Roman Catholic Church).JohnnyBGood 19:20, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? --Hyphen5 22:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I would simply point out that by the definition of the Roman Catholic Church, to be Catholic is to recognise the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. But in other Catholic communions, such as the Anglican, the Maronite, or the Nestorian, the apostolic succession of bishops is the only necessary episcopal mark of Catholicity. All episcopacies, by this definition, are local. Fishhead64 06:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

---

In the abstract, I would fully agree; but not in the concrete circumstances of a Wikipedia article about what most non-(Roman) Catholics, when speaking formally (which is what counts), call the Roman Catholic Church, a name accepted by the Church itself, even if it is not its preferred name; an article moreover that, if headed "Catholic Church", is almost certain, in spite of the proposed disambiguation statement, to attract repeated modifications by those who understand "Catholic Church" differently. (A propos of "We Roman Catholics piss off our Eastern brethren", there is no instance of the Church itself, at the highest level, ever, even once, using "Roman Catholic" to mean "Latin Catholic"; it applies the term only to the diocese of Rome or to the whole Church subject to the Pope.) Lima 15:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Lima, you will find this article instructive. --Hyphen5 23:39, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

We've had that article cited before. It's of limited usefulness, though, for two main reasons.

First, it's the opinion of one Catholic - it isn't an official church document or one written by a church official, nor an impartial assessment by a neutral organisation - and it aims to influence the practice of those within the church; it doesn't particularly aim to describe the use of the church, and is provably wrong on a number of the facts it claims (for example 'The term Roman Catholic is not used by the Church herself' - in fact it is, as I have cited, and was for some time before the article was written).

Secondly, the reasons it sets out for why 'Catholic Church' should be used are exactly the reasons that many editors have concerns about its usefulness. Essentially the article sets out that the term "Catholic Church" should be used to refer to the curch in communion with the Pope, because to do so affirms that this is indeed the one true church of Christ; whereas to use another term might allow for other possibilities. This is precisely why many editors are concerned about using the term. In fact, in a number of the instances where it mentions the church has used 'Catholic Church' in preference to another term, it says that this was done deliberately in order to push a particular viewpoint. This, if anything, weakens the claim to the name.

I don't think any of these objections are fatal, and I still think the move is justified, purely because Catholic Church is the most common term. But I don't think this document particularly helps the case. TSP 00:12, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

TSP, you are surely feisty, even in your support of my position. In part the article to which I linked does attempt to influence the semantics of Catholics. But you cannot say that it is not also descriptive in nature. It spends a long time tracing the history of the name "Catholic Church". The respected Catholic Encyclopedia makes many of the same points.

Some of them; and to some extent respected :-) Wikipedia has a special page encouraging caution when using material from the Catholic Encyclopedia; but yes, it is certainly more respected than the other source. The Catholic Encyclopedia does admit the essential truth of the OED description I have cited elsewhere: that 'Roman Catholic' was coined as a term which was neither the preferred term of the Roman Catholics - "Catholic" - nor the preferred term of the Protestants - "Roman"; and that it was soon adopted as a non-controversial term. I note that the Catholic Encyclopedia claims that the term was coined slightly earlier purely by Protestants; I don't know if there is any competing Protestant volume claiming otherwise (though I do know that the same definition is still in the OED, so it seems that the OED's editors were not to any great extent convinced by the Catholic Encyclopedia's claims that the description should be otherwise).

I am reluctant to discount the histories they cite simply because they are Catholics describing them. I don't think you would deny that, before the Reformation -- or at least before the Great Schism -- "Catholic Church" was an uncontested term.

I have insufficient data on the preferred uses of the Nestorians and the Oriental Orthodox; though, of course, all of them use the Nicene Creed. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

This article is not about, and should not be about, those Churches that ascribe to the Nicene Creed. That is over at Catholic, and Catholicism, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Talk about overkill. Anyway, the most common usage of this term, "Catholic Church", refers to that Church of which the Pope is head. As I understand it, you do not dispute that. Therefore, talk of other Churches that ascribe to the Nicene Creed is irrelevant. --Hyphen5 07:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The drive to change the Church's name to "Roman Catholic Church" is a historically verifiable phenomenon -- and it was launched by Protestants. It has been relatively successful in the English language, but certainly not in the Romance languages.

Again, 'to some extent'. The drive launched by Protestants seems to have been to refer to the 'Roman Church', as opposed to the 'Catholic Church' (that is, the universal church). 'Roman Catholic' was then coined, by one side or the other - perhaps by the Protestant side - and adopted as non-controversial. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

It is hardly non-controversial, as the article I orginally linked to would suggest. --Hyphen5 07:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the article I linked is defensible in saying that the Church itself does not use the term "Roman Catholic". You must understand that there is a huge difference, between communiqués and announcements from Church organizations and/or officals, on the one hand, and official Church teaching documents, like encyclicals, pastoral letters, apostolic exhortations, apostolic constitutions, and doctrinal notes from various Vatican Congregations, on the other. (For example, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, uses the phrase "Catholic Church".) A situation involving ecumenical dialogue and all the accompanying diplomacy is hardly an authoritative resource for resolving this issue.

But it does seem to be an authoritative source from which to establish that (a) the Church does not feel "Roman Catholic Church" to be an offensive term, and is happy to employ it; and (b) when it does employ it, it uses it to mean the whole Church in communion with the Pope, not the Latin Rite alone or the Diocese of Rome alone. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate the documents you cited establish that the Church is "happy" about employing the term "Roman Catholic". As I said, it looks to me like a concession in the interest of ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps you are right to say that the sources establish that the Church is not so opposed to using the term "Roman Catholic" that it will not employ it in the interest of ecumenical dialogue. But that is a very limited claim, and of little relevance to us here. Talk to an Eastern Catholic; he will nearly always object to the term "Roman Catholic" unless in reference to (1) Catholics in Rome, or (2) Latin Rite Catholics. Like I pointed out, you would be hard pressed to find an occurrence of the term "Roman Catholic Church" in any of the Church's dogmatic or doctrinal documents. It simply does not understand itself that way. Again, combined with the most-common-usage argument and the points I made from the naming conventions, there is a solid case to move this article to Catholic Church. --Hyphen5 07:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

In that situation, I, too, would not distract from the real theological issues by quibbling with the Church's proper name. But in an encyclopedia, the objectives are obviously different.

To some degree. An encyclopedia aims to be an impartial record, which reports on all sides while favouring none. This is, in some ways, more similar to the environment of an ecumenical debate than it is to the environment of a unilateral declaration of the Church. If a body's name is accepted by that body to be so controversial that it cannot use it in communications with other bodies, that might be a good reason for an encyclopedia - which must seek to be acceptable to those other bodies as much as to the body referred to - to seek another name, if a less controversial one can be found.

I am not suggesting (though Lima, who has separate concerns, is) that the 'Catholic Church' is not the official, or preferred, name of the Church in question. What I am principally trying to establish is that, if that name is found to be too ambiguous, challenged, or controversial to use, Roman Catholic Church may be a less ambiguous, challenged or controversial choice. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

In fact, those subjective factors are not to be considered. It is not our place to seek the least common denominator. The following quote is from Wikipedia:Naming conflict:

Subjective criteria (such as "moral rights" to a name) should not be used to determine usage. These include:

• Does the subject have a moral right to use the name?
• Does the subject have a legal right to use the name?
• Does the name infringe on someone else's legal or moral rights?
• Is the use of the name politically unacceptable?

It then goes on to say that we might find it useful to use a table (that I reproduced above) to balance objective criteria, which consist of: "Most commonly used name in English", "Current undisputed official name of entity", and "Current self-identifying name of entity". The name that gets the most points wins. "Catholic Church" satisfies two of these three. Anything else only satisfies one. --Hyphen5 07:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The Councils of the Church that my article cites, in contrast, do authoritatively define what the Church believes. Those do not use the term "Roman Catholic". (Actually, in the one communiqué you cite from the World Council of Churches dialogue, both "Roman Catholic Church" and "Catholic Church" appear in the text. It is very possible, especially in the case of dialogue with the Western Christians, that the representatives from the Church were, in fact, members of the Roman Rite. This would certainly make the most sense, because that is the Rite from which Western Protestants departed and with which they have the most in common.)

True, but several of the communiques I linked to were not of this nature. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I realize that the article I linked is partly polemical in nature. But I was linking to it mostly for the first few paragraphs about the Church's self-reference. --Hyphen5 04:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as it is not from a particularly recognised impartial or official source, nor does it provide any citation of its claims; and as at least one of its claims can be shown to be wrong; it isn't that useful for that purpose either. TSP 23:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

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We believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, too, and we're not Roman Catholics. Just zis Guy you know? 15:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

That's what I mean..."Catholic Church" has many meanings, both theological and temporal. "Roman Catholic" refers to this one denomination, and I think that's what most folks are looking for in this move. KHM03 (talk) 15:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Did you guys even read my reasoning? There may be people who also believe in "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church", but that's not what the majority of English speakers understand when they hear or say "Catholic Church". I'm relying on the naming conventions here. There's plenty of discussion of other Christians who believe in a "catholic Church" at the articles Catholicism and Catholic. No other religious group has been treated like this on Wikipedia. See Robertsrussell's point on this double standard above. The Catholic Church gets to have its main article on the Catholic Church space simply because that is what it calls itself. It has nothing to do with whether it really is the The One True Church or not. Furthermore, how come we don't raise the same objections to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? See my comments in the discussion section. Until you consider the actual issues, your votes shouldn't be taken seriously. --Hyphen5 23:32, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. What we should have at Catholic Church is a definition of what constitutes a "Catholic" church as used in the Creed of both the protestant and RC churches (I do not know that we have this article). Just zis Guy you know? 09:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I assume you'd support that idea for Orthodox Church and Church of Christ as well? To redirect to all the churches that claim to be orthodox and "of Christ"? Look, I've never had a problem with discussion of small-c "catholic" at Catholic (even though we are normally supposed to redirect adjectives to nouns) or at Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. All I'm asking for is for Catholic Church to be extended the same courtesies as the rest of the Churches that claim possibly ambiguous names. According to the Google test (40m hits for "Catholic Church", only 10m for "Roman Catholic Church") and WP:Naming conventions (common names) (which states: "When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?"), we should err on the side of "Catholic Church". --Hyphen5 22:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

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Millions of Protestants recite the creed that states belief in the "Catholic" church. But this does not refer to the Roman Catholic church, and movement of this page to Catholic Church would muddy the waters. That's not to say anything against the Roman Catholic Church; it's just to be clear on what is meant. BTW Catholic Church should be a disambig page, not a redirect. Pollinator 15:34, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. If voters don't start responding to my actual case (laid out above), and explain to me why Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Eastern Orthodox Church, Church of Christ, and similar articles, should be titled by their claimed names--even though they can be ambiguous--but the Catholic Church should not be extended the same treatment, then I will begin proposing moves for those articles, as well. Merely for the sake of consistently applying this new de facto policy we are inventing for this article. Also see Robertsrussell's point on this double standard above. --Hyphen5 08:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

You asked for my vote/opinion, Hyphen5, and I gave it. My chain of reasoning is seemingly quite different from yours, but I think you are creating a tempest-in-a-teapot. If you want to go to create a ruckus among the Mormons and others, it's your problem. I don't think that relates to this issue. I am a Protestant who feels very much Catholic, who attends mass in a Roman Catholic Church from time to time, who loves the Roman Catholic church, but disagrees with it on some points. There are many more like myself. I want very much to keep the clarity of having this page listed as Roman Catholic. "Catholic" is a broad term for the Christian Church. "Roman Catholic" is an organization. Making them synonomous is POV. Your coming to my talk page to rake me over the coals, and your call for mediation, does not and will not change my opinion. I'm not going to fight about it, I just want it stated for the record (just as you asked us to do). Pollinator 04:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Alas, you did not read my reasoning below and above. Again, I will quote myself:

1. There are analogous situations here with our articles on Orthodox Church (every Christian should claim to be "orthodox"!), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (every Christian should claim to be a Latter Day Saint), and especially with Church of Christ (every Christian church should claim to be a "Church of Christ"!).
2. In each of those situations, editors deferred to the claimed name and/or popularly recognizable name of each church, per the guidelines in the naming conventions. They gave other organizations claiming the similar names or modified names different articles (see, for example, Church of Christ (Mormonism) or United Church of Christ.
3. Therefore, it is indicative of a POV -- a violation of WP:NPOV to treat this article differently when there are precedents for this kind of dispute.

Now, I'm pointing to situations where the exact same supposed "ambiguity" problems exist, and what was done on those pages is the exact opposite of the position of the "no" voters here. I call that a double standard. We already have an abundance of articles meticulously detailing every sense of the word, "Catholic". See Roman Catholic Church#Terminology, Catholicism, Catholic, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. This article should be at Catholic Church simply because that is what is most commonly known by -- and that is what the average person means when he hears or says "Catholic Church". This is what the naming conventions say to do, and that's what we've done for other articles. --Hyphen5 05:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Simple: There is more than one church which states that it believes in "one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church". How many competing claims are there to those other names? Just zis Guy you know? 09:44, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Guy, we already have an article explaining that at One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Type "Catholic Church" into Google and you will find that it is overwhelmingly understood to refer to that Church of which the Pope is head. The possible ambiguity that you are fussing over could also be fussed over the terms Orthodox Church, Church of Christ, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Shall we disambiguate those, too? --Hyphen5 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. If voters don't start responding to my actual case (laid out above),...then I will begin proposing moves for those articles, as well. Hyphen5 please read Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Calling for a vote is hardly disruption. Maybe you won't like it, but it's entirely within the rules. What is not within the rules is creating a double standard that goes against the widely accepted naming conventions when we don't like the application. --Hyphen5 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I will respond to Hyphen5's summary of his argument in his above complaint here, with a fuller response as time and edit conflicts allow. Hyphen5, you make a false statement above. To wit: that Eastern Orthodox Church is titled by its claimed name. It isn't. It's claimed name is "the Catholic Church". It's others that have decided it's to be called the "Greek/Russian/Eastern Orthodox Church", not only implicitly denying its catholicity but trying to shoehorn it into a nationalist/foreign box. We have only adopted this name so that we have some name by which to call ourselves that's commonly understood. Sorry, but Rome does not get to take our name exclusively for itself no matter how much it thinks it deserves it. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, Csnerica, what, then, do you propose calling us? We call ourselves "Catholics" when asked our religion. Type "Catholic Church" into Google and you get tens of millions of hits about that Church of which the Pope is head. This is about abiding by the naming conventions. Do you identify yourself as a "Catholic" when somebody asks what religion you are? Or do you identify as "Russian Orthodox" or whatever the case may be? --Hyphen5 22:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose "Roman Catholic Church", just as the article is now titled.

That's quite a compromise. --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You didn't ask for a compromise. You asked for a proposal. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

And no, I don't call myself "Catholic" if asked, because no one would understand what I was talking about. However, if someone asks me if I belong to the "Catholic Church", I say yes -- although I have to explain myself.

Exactly. My case is based on two main points: (1) the Catholic Church claims the title "Catholic Church" as its primary name (Holy Catholic Church, to be precise); (2) the most common usage of the term "Catholic Church" refers to that Church of which the Pope is head. So since the Catholic Church says that "Catholic Church" is its name, and that term is popularly understood to refer to the same, that's why we should title this article, "Catholic Church". You cannot claim the same thing about the Orthodox Churches -- that is, that "Catholic Church" is popularly understood to refer to them. It's not. --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I dispute that the most common use of "Catholic Church" is to refer to the organization in question. Personally, I use "Catholic" most often when saying the Nicene Creed, and most certainly do not mean the Papal church when I do so. The same will be true for the vast majority of Orthodox Christians. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You may use "Catholic" that way every Sunday, but we already have an article for that. Two actually: Catholic, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I stand by my claim that "Catholic Church" is almost always used to refer to that Church of which the Pope is head. --Hyphen5 13:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

By the way, you have seriously misused Google here with your "40m" hits. A search string in quotes does *not* look for that exact string, but only the search terms in that particular order separated by any number of words. Therefore, tThe 40m hits from "Catholic Church" counts not only every single hit from "Roman Catholic Church", but every instance of the phrase "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" (to pick a common one). It also ignores plurals, so it would also score a hit on a hypothetical fundamentalist discussion board with the hypothetical quote, "Those lousy Catholics! Why don't they go join a real church?" Not to mention every single occurance of "Catholic Church" that is not discussing the institution headed by the Pope of Rome. You're simply assuming that every single hit is about what you want it to be about; it's a fair bet you haven't taken a meaningful sample. This is a useless stat. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Of the first 100 hits for "Catholic Church", 86 refer to that Church of which the Pope is head. Is that ambiguous? --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

If you're counting hits, yes. And what about the other 40m? (100 is not statistically significant in a sample size that large.) TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

At this point you're not actually arguing against my claim; you're just dismissing it. How many Google hits did you want me to read through? 1,000,000? --Hyphen5 13:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You're the one making the claim that all 40m hits support your point; the burden of proof is on you. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Replying to Hyphen5's numbered points above:

1. Your analogy does not hold. The problem isn't that other churches claim the description "catholic", it's that they also claim the name "Catholic".

Really? Please use the Google test to find out how overwhelmingly the name "Catholic" refers to that Church of which the Pope is head. --Hyphen5 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I address your misuse of Google in this regard belowabove. But many of these links prove nothing except that many Roman Catholic parishes call themselves "St. Thusandso Catholic Church". That Roman Catholics call themselves Catholic is not in disupte. But how about the Liberal Catholics, which shows up not too far down the search? TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

See my comment above. We already have an article for Liberal Catholic Church. That is the name they claim. You'll notice that everybody claiming to be "the Catholic Church" has to modify that title somehow to come up with their official title. That's because everyone understands the term "the Catholic Church" to refer to the Church of which the Pope is head. About the parishes, are you confused about whose parishes they are? If so, the term "Catholic Church" is ambiguous. If you automatically understand them to be parishes in union with the Pope, then the term "Catholic Church" is not ambiguous in popular usage. I am in favor of moving this article to Catholic Church to reflect that reality. We can have a disambiguation link at the top, pointing people to one of our many other articles on this controversy. What is wrong with that? --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The point, which you appear determined not to take, is that the hit on the Google search for "Liberal Catholic Church" is one of your 40m hits on "Catholic Church". It's obviously not valid to count all 40m as if they all indicated a site for an institution subject to the Pope of Rome. So please stop claiming the 40m. It's invalid. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I understand that. Excluding the hits for "Liberal Catholic Church", how many do you suppose refer to the papal Church? Well, I did a search for "Catholic Church" -Liberal, which means that it's taking out every instance of the word liberal -- even those that don't refer to the Liberal Catholic Church, but rather to the political term liberal. Now I get 34.6 million hits. Which is more than the 10.4m for "Roman Catholic Church" (even without controlling for the word "liberal"). It is you who appear determined not to take this point. --Hyphen5 13:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea. Neither do you, really, since it's not at all clear that you've eliminated all other contexts where "Catholic Church" might occur other. Again, you're the one making a positive claim. The burden of proof is on you. "Roman Catholic Church" -- yes, a search on that is unambiguous. And that speaks very well to the title of this article, since the inherent ambiguity of "Catholic Church" is one of the more cogent objections. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You're grasping at straws here. I've shown, by objective criteria, that "Catholic Church" is the more common name, and that it more often refers to the papal Church than anything else. You have not rebutted that claim; you've only whined about it. --Hyphen5 00:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

2. You're interpreting "Roman" here to signify "Latin rite". It doesn't. It signifies communion with and concomitant subjection to the authority of the Pope of Rome. This isn't really proper, since many peoples of the East have considered themselves Roman for time out of mind, ever since they became Roman citizens. Even the Muslim conquerors referred to their "Eastern Orthodox" Christian subjects as "Roman". It has a far broader application than merely Latin-rite churches pretty much any way you look at it.

I'm telling you that "Roman Catholic Church" refers to the Latin Rite in Catholic usage. It may very well be that non-Catholics use it otherwise. But it is simply incorrect. And this is an encyclopedia. Also, compare the terms "Roman Catholic Church" and "Catholic Church" in Google to see which one is commonly used. --Hyphen5 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, which is it? Either you accept what those outside the RC church call it or you don't? It looks to me like you're trying to have it both ways. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? I just said that referring to the Catholic Church as "the Roman Catholic Church" is incorrect. You may do it, but it is wrong. That's why we should shift this article to Catholic Church. How am I trying to have it both ways? --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

On the one hand, you want the article called "Catholic Church", right or wrong, because that's what "everyone" calls it even though it's technically incorrect -- but "Roman Catholic Church" as referring to the entire communion subject to the Pope of Rome is technically incorrect according to you, even though that's also common usage, so you don't want it used in that sense. Either appeal to common usage or don't. You don't get to plead for it when it favors you, and then reject it when it doesn't. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey, first of all, why don't you brush up on your wikiquette? Second, when did I ever concede that "Catholic Church" is "technically incorrect"? I didn't, because it's not. My whole case is that it unambiguously refers to the papal Church. (And insofar as it can be considered "ambiguous", it is negligibly so, as in the cases of Orthodox Church, Church of Christ, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) --Hyphen5 13:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

If this is the case, please, as Lima and I have asked several times, produce some evidence of it. I replied to you on the 20th of March with a large number of instances in which the Church used "Roman Catholic Church", in all of which it seemed to refer to the entire Church. Can you provide any evidence other than your personal opinion that the Church's use is otherwise?

I am indeed on the same side as you in this; but I still have to ask for supporting evidence when you repeatedly assert things which all the provided evidence is against. TSP 23:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

TSP, we've had this discussion already. I took issue with your supposed "evidence" as being irrelevant. You cited documents from ecumenical dialogues. It may very well be that, because of ecumenical sensitivities, Vatican officials employed a modifier that was incorrect. You don't help ecumenism by fretting about That doesn't change the fact that it's incorrect. I pointed to Lumen Gentium and other dogmatic statements as examples of where the Church calls herself "the Catholic Church". You can also find the unmodified "Catholic Church" used to describe the Church in Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. "Roman Catholic" is nowhere to be found. There are countless examples like this, and they are all much weightier in terms of the Church's self-understanding than a communique from an ecumenical dialogue. Taken together with the naming conventions I cited and the fact that "Catholic Church" is overwhelmingly employed to mean that Church of which the Pope is head, there is a solid case to move this article. Do not say that I have not provided evidence to back up my position, because I have. --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

3. As I said above, the churches in communion with the Pope of Rome are not the only ones that call themselves "the Catholic Church". The so-called "Eastern Orthodox" do as well. I don't approve of the redirect myself. I don't see it as part of Wikipedia's mission to promote common misunderstandings.

The "Eastern Orthodox" do not identify themselves as "Catholics" in popular usage. Under this logic, we'd have to disambiguate Church of Christ in order to acknowledge that the Catholic Church calls itself that, too. But that is silly, because nobody talks like that. If you're from the Church of Christ, you say you're a member of the Church of Christ. If you're Eastern Orthodox, you say I'm Eastern (or Russian, or Greek, etc.) Orthodox. If you're Catholic, you say: I'm Catholic. This is the most common usage of the term "Catholic Church", and it is the one we should defer to in titling this article -- just as we did with the others.

The point is that "Eastern Orthodox" was not a label that was self-applied; others applied it to us. You're trying to say that everyone should be called strictly by what they'd like to be called. We'd like to be called "Catholic". (Historically, the name of the "American Metropolia" -- mostly Carpatho-Russian -- was the "Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church".) That we cannot and still be understood is neither here nor there wrt your argument. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? Read the naming conventions, particularly Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision), and Wikipedia:Naming conflict. When writing an encyclopedia article about an organization, you usually title the article after that organization's claimed name. Is that such a radical idea? When you have several topics claiming the same article name, the conventions say explicitly to follow the most common usage of the term. In this case, the most common usage of "Catholic Church" is that which refers to the Church of which the Pope is head. See my detailed application of the naming conventions right below my original argument. Your Church may not call itself the "Orthodox Church", but the most common usage of this term refers to, among others, your Church. Therefore, the article Orthodox Church rightly concerns, among others, your Church. All I'm asking is to apply the same logic to Catholic Church. Except the case is even stronger because not only is it the most common usage of term, but it does call itself "the Catholic Church". --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Note that Orthodox Church actually disambiguates to Eastern Orthodox Church. Neither one is a "claimed name", it's a convenient label. In particular, since we claim to be the Catholic Church, we technically reject "Eastern" since it appears to limit us geographically; and "Orthodox" is properly a description of the faith, not the Church. I have already given you a recent example of an "Orthodox" Church that attempted to call itself Catholic; this didn't work out in part because in order to distinguish it from the Papal church a rather unwieldy set of qualifiers was needed. What you're essentially saying here is that the Papal church gets its claimed name, (despite the majority usage here and preferred usage elsewhere) but the "Orthodox" doesn't (because of popular usage here and elsewhere). Again, you can't plead things one when when it suits you and another when it doesn't. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

No. You have a habit of ascribing to me positions that I have not taken. Again, I have been arguing that "Catholic Church" is the popular usage of the term. Remember how I employed the Google test? I am saying that the Catholic Church gets its officially claimed name because of popular usage, and the Eastern Orthodox Churches don't because of popular usage. This is all in the naming conventions, which it doesn't appear that anyone has read. Even so, I detailed my application of the naming conventions above, but it doesn't appear that anyone has read that, either. --Hyphen5 14:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

4. "Insensitive"? If anything, the proposed move is insensitive to what other churches say about themselves who are not in communion with the Pope of Rome. And as I said, "Roman" here does not mean Latin-rite. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:17, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Good. So you will support moving Orthodox Church, Church of Christ, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because those names are insensitive to Churches that understand themselves in those ways? Maybe "Roman" here is not intendned to mean Latin Rite. I understand that. But objectively speaking the "Roman" modifier does mean Latin Rite. --Hyphen5 22:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this assertion. I know of no one who uses "Roman Catholic" who understands it to mean "Latin rite". TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, now you do. I have met plenty. --Hyphen5 07:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The point, which you again seem reluctant to take, is that "Roman" as "Latin rite" does not carry the objective meaning you claim for it. As should be obvious at this point TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Is that supposed to be obvious to me because you have never met anyone who uses it that way? Talk to an Eastern Rite Catholic; they take umbrage at being lumped in with us "Roman Catholics". They are in communion with the Pope, but they are not "Roman" Catholics. --Hyphen5 14:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You're claiming an "objective" meaning for a term. Sorry, but even other Roman Catholics -- well-educated Roman Catholics at that -- do not agree with you here. "Objective" suggests the term has a clear, non-contriversial, unambiguous meaning. If you can't concede at this point that this is obviously not the case, then I have nothing further to say to you. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess we'll have to stop talking then. You can't just assert that "Catholic Church" has no objective meaning; you have to demonstrate it. You have not. I have tried to use objective criteria for my claims, according to the naming conventions, but me and TSP seem to be the only one concerned about the naming conventions. --Hyphen5 00:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hyphen5 -- You stated on my talk page..."If voters don't start responding to my actual case (laid out in the discussion section), and explain to me why Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Eastern Orthodox Church, Church of Christ, and similar articles, should be titled by their claimed names--even though they can be ambiguous--but the Catholic Church should not be extended the same treatment, then I will begin proposing moves for those articles, as well." Please review WP:POINT. You called for a vote; any editor can vote any way they choose for any reason they choose, regardless of how you feel. I will make some administrators aware of your plan to disrupt Wikipedia to prove your point (please review the policy). KHM03 (talk) 11:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

KHM03, I'm glad you're calling this matter to the attention of administrators. This is an example of a huge double standard on the part of you and other "no" voters. I will not speculate about your motives. But you didn't even read, or respond to, my rationale. What, then, is the point of voting? Regarding WP:POINT, calling for votes is hardly a disruption of Wikipedia. It is a demand for consistency. --Hyphen5 21:49, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

On my Talk page, Hyphen5 has asked me to revisit this page and read his arguments. Let me assure him that I have done so several times and have now done so again. Since I do not have the time to try to study the Wikipedia rules cited, some of the arguments about those rules are too abstruse for my understanding, and it is wisest for me to leave examination of them to those who are more capable.

It is difficult to think of a more authoritative or pressing situation than ecumenical dialogue for the Church we are discussing to state an official name for itself. (Nobody has produced a scrap of evidence that the Church has ever adopted a single name as the official name for itself; and it has in fact referred to itself, quite frequently, by perhaps dozens of names.) As names that refer to it, the Church has accepted in such ecumenical dialogue both "the Catholic Church" and "the Roman Catholic Church". It refers to itself much more frequently as "the Catholic Church", rather than "the Roman Catholic Church". It yet more frequently refers to itself simply as "the Church", though never, I feel sure, in ecumenical dialogue. Nobody suggests we move this article to "The Church".

Someone who forgot to sign recently inserted in the "Older discussion on terminology" section above (by mistake?) a complaint about "deterioration of scholarly precision"; but immediately went on to make the false unsourced statement: "The term 'Roman Catholic Church" to mean the Latin/Roman Rite clearly predates its use meaning 'those in communion with the Bishop of Rome.'" (By the way, the Roman Rite is a liturgical rite; the Latin Rite is an autonomous particular Church.) The EWTN site that Hyphen5 directed me to does not equate "Roman Catholic Church" with "Latin Rite". Some Eastern Catholic websites do, but, as I said, there is not even one instance of the Church, at the highest level, ever using it in this sense. In all documents of this level "the Roman Catholic Church" means what in other documents is called "the Catholic Church" or simply "the Church".

Lima 12:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to address the issue of Wikipedia policy here. We seem to have two policies in conflict: Wikipedia:Naming conventions and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Those who have proposed the change of name base their argument on the former, citing that "Catholic Church" is both the more widely used name for the organization than the article title and that the organization refers to itself using the proposed name. Those who wish to keep the name Roman Catholic Church base their argument on the latter, citing that the proposed title implies a point of view (the body of Christians led by the Pope is univerally authoritative) which within Christianity is heavily disputed.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the facts presented by both sides (as painted here) are true. The issue then becomes one regarding which policy is more authoritative than the other. Wikipedia is an organization founded on the principle that its content should be presented using a neutral point of view. Such a policy has been deemed by the very founder as "not negotiable". It is clear, at least from the intention of the founder, that the neutral point of view policy, when conflicting with another policy, should prevail.

The question then that must be determined now is, not "which name is the better name?" or even "which name is the more accurate name?" That can be determined later. Instead, the first criterion that needs to be met when deciding whether to move this page is "does the proposed name espouse a non-neutral point of view?" If that question is answered affirmatively, then the page cannot be moved. If that question is answered negatively, then the determination proceeds to other policies, such as the naming conventions. While I have already expressed my view at the vote section, my point here is to demonstrate that neutral point of view is a necessary criterion for establishing a new page name. I think that, given the evidence, one can decide either way whether "Catholic Church" is NPOV or not, but if that decision is in the negative, then the page name cannot be changed to it. Pmadrid 18:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for actually addressing my points. Please see my response below in the "Alternate Solution" section. --Hyphen5 00:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

---

First, the naming conventions. To quote: Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. To suggest that "Roman Catholic Church" is unreasonably ambiguous cannot be seriously maintained. In this case, the additional, minimal ambiguity is justified on theological grounds. The Roman Communion is but one of the Catholic Church's several communions. I will speak here of Anglicanism, since, as an Anglican priest, that is my area of speciality.

• The effect of the 1534 Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII was simply to declare that the English monarch is "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Ecclesia Anglicana," and that the Bishop of Rome had no "greater jurisdiction in England than any other foreign bishop." By this Act, the crown explicitly sought to return the historical English Catholic Church to its ancient position in which it was "sufficient and meet of itself, without the intermeddling of any exterior person." That Henry, his successors, and his bishops viewed the Church of England as Catholic is further affirmed by Articles XIX and XXXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
• Lest one think that this rhetoric counts for nought, the Anglican Communion has taken pains to affirm by word and action its Catholicity by maintaining the four marks of the Catholic Church. First, the unbroken continuity of apostolic succession through an historic episcopate. Second, the maintenance of the Holy Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation. Third, the belief in the historic creeds as a sufficient statement of faith. And fourth, the belief in the efficacy of the historic sacraments.
• Finally, the belief in the Catholicity of the Anglican Communion is woven into the prayer books of the Church itself. I quote from the Canadian one (the Solemn Declaration of the Bishops of Canada): "We declare this Church to be...an integral portion of the One Body of Christ composed of Churches which, united under the One, Divine Head and in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."

In conclusion, renaming this article the "Catholic Church" is both unnecessary, misleading, and frankly negates the legitimate status of other communions of the Catholic Church. Fishhead64 03:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Oppose As per JohnnyBGood et al.; apparently this nomination is part of a campaign to move and, arguably, obfuscate and insinuate a particular viewpoint regarding Catholic-related articles/topics; see proposed move of Catholicism to Catholicity ... which has garnered unanimous opposition so far. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 22:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

"Part of a campaign to move"! (Gasp! Not that!) Look, I make no secrets about the fact that I think that "Catholicism" and "Catholic Church" refer principally to that Church of which the Pope is head. I think it is you who are imposing a POV, especially because we've dealt with this problem before and you're creating a double standard for the Catholic Church. If my goal were to obfuscate and impose POV, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble of writing so much in support of my case and asking for a vote. And trying to seek a compromise through mediation. I would have just moved the articles, which I obviously didn't. This is truly unbelievable. I have made a detailed case from the naming conventions, and people simply ignore it, and claim I'm trying to impose a POV. See my comments to Pmadrid below. --Hyphen5 00:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that. How am I imposing a point-of-view or creating a double standard? My opposition, predicated on common usage and not solitary, is clear – you have proposed disagreeable moves and invoked an (inappropriate, premature) mediation to advance your point. We aren't ignoring your case: it has been accorded all the attention it deserves ... and it simply isn't compelling. A more productive exercise would be to employ similar zeal and incorporate various viewpoints in the relevant articles instead of proposing questionable moves (which would have been reversed if done arbitrarily) that would obscure the topics at hand. And beyond this I will not comment, nor am I required to, further. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 00:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I explained how you are creating a double standard. I will quote myself:

1. There are analogous situations here with our articles on Orthodox Church (every Christian should claim to be "orthodox"!), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (every Christian should claim to be a Latter Day Saint), and especially with Church of Christ (every Christian church should claim to be a "Church of Christ"!).
2. In each of those situations, editors deferred to the claimed name and/or popularly recognizable name of each church, per the guidelines in the naming conventions. They gave other organizations claiming the similar names or modified names different articles (see, for example, Church of Christ (Mormonism) or United Church of Christ.
3. Therefore, it is indicative of a POV -- a violation of WP:NPOV to treat this article differently when there are precedents for this kind of dispute.

Now, I'm pointing to situations where the exact same supposed "ambiguity" problems exist, and what was done on those pages is the exact opposite of the position of the "no" voters here. I call that a double standard. What do you mean, I "should employ similar zeal and incorporate various viewpoints in the relevant articles"? We have already cluttered Wikipedia, and the Catholic Church's articles, with enough discussions obsessing over small-c "catholicity" at Roman Catholic Church#Terminology, Catholicism, Catholic, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. --Hyphen5 03:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

---

All that was accomplished in King Henry VII's declaration of supremacy was that the Pope no longer held authority in the realm of England. The continuity of the Church through the apostolic succession of bishops, among other things, is what makes the Anglican Communion Catholic with a large C. The arrogation of the term to one communion of the Catholic Church (e.g., the Roman one) is an affront to ther Catholics. See my discussion above. Fishhead64 03:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Fishhead, follow the naming conventions. In choosing a name for an article, we are to consider strictly the objective criteria of common usage, and not the subjective claims of "moral rights" to a certain name. We had no problem doing this for Church of Christ, which is ambiguous, and I don't understand why we shouldn't do it for Catholic Church, which is less ambiguous. --Hyphen5 03:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hyphen5, see my contribution to the discussion above. It outlines why I believe that retaining this page with its present title is entirely in line with the naming conventions, which I won't rehearse here as well.. With regard to your specific example, however, Catholic Church is a technical, theological term - that's precisely why applying it to one Catholic communion is a problem. Church of Christ is uncontroversial because it is not a theologically descriptive term. There are elements - or "marks" - which make a communion Catholic, and hence equally legitimate claimants to the title Catholic Church. Do you seriously think that Roman Catholic Church is unreasonably ambiguous? Fishhead64 06:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Support, per WP:NC(CN). Afaik all other possible ambiguities (like other churches, that usually name themselves differently, but that have some claim on the "Catholic" and/or "catholic" epithets) can be sorted out by usual wikipedia disambiguation techniques ...Francis Schonken 16:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Glad to see you are coming round to my way of thinking on William of Orange, I will expect you to vote for William of Orange redirecting to King Billy next time I put it in for a WP:RM ;-) . However in this case I would point out to you that WP:NC(CN) also says " In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading, then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative. " --Philip Baird Shearer 17:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Mediation

• Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Rejected 3#Roman Catholic Church
• Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-03-23_Roman Catholic Church

This requested move was made on WP:RM where there is an agreed process with a set of guidelines on how to conduct a move survey. There is also a tradition with WP:MR moves, that if a move is made or is not made that no further request to move it back or move it to the same place is made more than once ever six months. I have received Hyphen5 request for mediation. There was no consensus for a move "Roman Catholic Church" to "Catholicism" (see Talk:Roman Catholic Church#Aborted Move to Catholicism where -Hyphen5 made the proposal on the 19 March and was in a minority of 1 for and 7 against, (which is a percentage of of 12.5% for the move)). Having not obtained a consensus for that move, -Hyphen5 "aborted" that request and made a second request on 21 March 2006 to move the page "Roman Catholic Church" to "Catholic Church" See Talk:Roman Catholic Church#REQUESTED MOVE to Catholic Church where currently the opinions expressed are 3 in support and 9 against (which is a percentage of 25% for the move). It is generally accepted that percentage of 60% or more in favour of a move is needed for a move to be made under WP:RM. As this is a properly run WP:RM process, I see no reason for this to go forward to mediation, because otherwise it opens the door for everyone who feels passionately about a WP:RM issue to go to mediation if the consensus is against them. However I will not express a negative position to the WP:RFM#Roman Catholic Church(Now in Rejected 3) "Parties' agreement to mediate" unless others who are involved in this mediation agree with me and indicate here that they too do not think that a properly conducted WP:RM should go to mediation. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

This mirrors my thoughts with fair accuracy. I also resent being dragged into an RFM when I came to this discussion relatively late, and plunged in mainly as a response to Hyphen5's threatened disruption of other article's discussion pages if his specific arguments were not engaged. ([3], amplified [4], and expressed on User Talk pages such as [5].) TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

For the record, the proposed move from from Roman Catholic Church to Catholicism was a compromise offer. Go back and read it [6]. You know, I thought that's what we were supposed to do on discussion pages, try to hammer out a consensus. And that's why I've requested mediation. There are always going to be requests from somebody or another to change the title of this article. There will always be a controversy about this article's title. That's because there's a problem with it. I would hope that mediation would help us resolve it once and for all. Lastly, I note that threatening to call for votes is hardly disruptive. --Hyphen5 13:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

We are hammering out a consensus. It's not going your way, so you're escalating. And useless motions for page moves in order to make a point are disruptive, since it diverts attention from the proper purpose of the talk page, which is to disucss article content, and also diverts the energy of the editors who are involved, who might otherwise be adding useful content. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

There is a wikipedia:consensus which is not to move the page to "Catholic Church". So why did you put it in for mediation? Futher the five days allocatd by WP:RM to try to reach a consensus is not yet up, and you have gone to mediation, I think that is disruptive. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Philip, review WP:POINT when you can...that's what's going on here. KHM03 (talk) 15:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you know what mediation is? It's just a forum to discuss the issues calmly and seek a compromise. It's not a bad thing. We even had to get your permission before mediation was able to happen. That's hardly disruptive. Hardly. I requested mediation because I am confident that I have made my case on the basis on Wikipedia policy and precedent, whereas the rest of you are simply ignoring that stuff, and creating a de facto double standard. --Hyphen5 00:53, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-03-23 Roman Catholic Church. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to issue one mediation request might be justified, to issue two different types is disruptive. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:39, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Philip, you know very well that the Mediation Cabal is totally voluntary and informal. To say that my requesting mediation -- which is, after all, COOPERATIVE -- is somehow disruptive is truly beyond belief. You clearly have an axe to grind here, and you're trying to shut down debate, and I resent that. --Hyphen5 00:55, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

A Simple Resolution to this Issue

It seems to me that we have in our capability a simple resolution to the article naming problem. The article currently covers (according to its own into) all of the 24 churches in communion with Rome - by far the largest (as the article points out) the Latin Church - which is what most people think of as the Roman Catholic Church. However in actual fact there seems to be very little mention of the non-Latin churches. It would be a very simple matter to remove what mention there is of the other Catholic churches and create a separate article for each one. The article would then genuinely be only about the Roman Catholic Church. We would then create a short article Catholic Church which listed all the churches that use Catholic in their title and also made mention of the wider use of Catholic Church by Anglicans etc. What do people think? DJ Clayworth 14:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That is fine by me; I just wonder if it might not be too confusing to have (or to write) 24 different articles when the beliefs of each Church are the same (only the disciplines and traditions are different). What do you think? --Hyphen5 14:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

While the article makes little explicit reference to the various Eastern Catholic churches, a lot of what is said about beliefs and suchlike is general to all the churches in communion with the Pope. There should be an article on the Latin Rite church - it's absurd that there isn't one, given that there is one for each of the other sui juris churches - but I think that most of this content belongs to the church in communion with the Pope as a whole; rather than to any one particular church.

Also, that would be to assume that Roman Catholic means Latin Catholic; which is by no means undisputed. (Though there could be no article at all at Roman Catholic Church, and only a disambiguation between the Latin Rite page and the general Catholic Communion page). TSP 14:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

If the proposal amounts to turning the current redirect page Catholic Church into a dab page where all the churches that claim catholicity (whether subject to the Pope of Rome or not) are listed, then I agree. I wouldn't even have a problem with listing Roman Catholic Church first, were someone to insist on it. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I would not be in favor of that, any more than I would be in favor of making Orthodox Church and Church of Christ free-for-alls for any religion, regardless of name, to claim that they, too, are orthodox and "of Christ". I think DJ Clayworth is saying that there should be a disambiguation page for all the churches with the words "Catholic Church" in their official name. Not all the ones that claim catholicity. (By the way, notice the use of the word "catholicity" in TCC's comment. I am getting berated for requesting to move Catholicism to Catholicity, but "catholicity" is indeed a legitimate, common, and proper term for this concept!!) --Hyphen5 00:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

How about creating Catholic Church as a disambiguation page? This could include a brief, one sentence description of why the term is ambiguous. Fishhead64 03:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Am I correct in concluding that a consensus has emerged that this article not be renamed, and that a separate Catholic Church article be created? I support something that is descriptive and disambiguating, and I'd be happy to take a shot at creating it, if that is the consensus. Fishhead64 15:35, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

A consensus has emerged that this article should not be renamed. But there is no consensus about a separate article. There has been no survey on that topic. I, for one, strongly object to that. --Hyphen5 00:51, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

An Alternate Resolution

A lot of the problems we seem to be having above are about the reasons for the move - many of which I would also dispute - not necessarily the move itself. My case for the move would be as follows:

• Wikipedia's principal Naming Policy is "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature."
• Wikipedia's guidelines in the case of naming conflicts urge us not to worry about issues like moral rights to a name, and only to concern ourselves with common usage.
• "Catholic Church" is, very simply, the most common name applied to this organisation; and this organisation is the thing most commonly referred to by the term "Catholic Church". This requires no judgement at all on whether it, or any other body, has any right to the name.
• Therefore the article should be moved, and a prominent disambiguation notice placed at the top for the other uses of the term 'Catholic Church', which are, whatever the moral arguments may be, less common.

I believe that the debates we are having above are exactly why the Naming Conventions urge us not to consider any issues like rights to a name, or technical correctness, and only to go on common usage.

Would any of the people objecting to the move feel more comfortable if the above were the only rationale? TSP 14:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Which popular game is known as football? --Philip Baird Shearer 17:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

In one country, one game; in another country, a different game. And yes, "Roman Catholic" is a more common term in the UK than in the US. But even looking on UK web pages alone, Google still finds "Catholic Church" without "Roman" 1.5 times more often than "Roman Catholic Church", and the vast majority of such hits seem to be for the church this page concerns. TSP 17:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Also yet another game in New Zealand and 3 different games in three different areas of Australia. Not sure about Ireland. The point being that Wikipedia does not always go with a simple Google search and "Ah that is the most common name on the web therefore we must use it". --Philip Baird Shearer 18:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually I would dispute your claim that "Catholic Church" is the most common term for the Church based in Rome. It may be the most common among Catholics (and that is debatable), however out of 6.7 billion people on Earth only 1.1 are Catholics. Among non-Catholics Roman Catholic Church has much greater usage that is also more narrowly aimed at the Church based in Rome. Also major news organizations favor Roman Catholic Church by a very heavy margin.JohnnyBGood 17:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

While the Google test has its limitations, a search for '"Catholic Church" -Roman' (that is, "Catholic Church" but not "Roman Catholic Church") versus a search for "Roman Catholic Church" on all of Google itself (showing use on the web); Google Groups (showing informal use); and Google News (showing use by news organisations) all return at least double the number of hits for the former; and the vast majority of hits for "Catholic Church" are found to be for the church this article is about (including uses by people opposing or simply reporting on the Church, not just by Catholics). This seems to me to be at least an indication, in the absence of any evidence otherwise, that "Catholic Church" is the more common term. TSP 17:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Johnny, you seem to imply that the 5.6 billion non-Catholics all refer to the Church as the "Roman Catholic Church", whereas some of the 1.1 billion Catholics refer to the Church as simply "the Catholic Church". That is a remarkable generalization implicit in your comment. In fact, the English language seems to be one of the few (if not the only one) that makes the "Roman" modification. Of course, this is an English encyclopedia, so we shall have to restrict our generalizations to English-speaking peoples. For that, the Google test is an objective method suggested by this very encyclopedia's guidelines, and it is one I have tried to apply to this discussion. --Hyphen5 17:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Two things, one you are over generalizing my generalization. I never said all catholics call it Catholic Church and vise versa for non-Catholics. However I did say the majority of each do. Also, Google search method would not be useful or objective in this instance. Searching "Catholic Church" will bring up both "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" articles where as it's not true the other way. Also I've done the search you suggest. I'm finding the majority of sites that use "Roman Catholic Church" are third party news and infomational sites, but the ones that use "Catholic Church" are by and large run by Catholics.JohnnyBGood 18:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I've run that same search and discovered something interesting. 10.6 million hits show for the exact phrase, "Roman Catholic Church". 20 million show for "Catholic Church" -Roman. However of those 23 million over half refer to churches that don't fall under the umbrella of the church this article addresses. On the first page alone only 3 of 10 articles refer to the RCC. The rest refer to the Old Catholic Church, African Catholic Church, Liberal Catholic Church, Anglican Catholic Church and other Catholic churches with NO ties to Rome.JohnnyBGood 18:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced by the numbers here. There are 20 million hits, as you say, for "Catholic Church" without "Roman". There are 76 *thousand* hits for "Old Catholic Church"; and about 30 thousand each for "Anglican Catholic Church", "Polish National Catholic Church", and "Liberal Catholic Church". Even if there are a hundred other groups as large as these are calling themselves the something-"Catholic Church" in some way, that would still leave 17 million hits for the Church in communion with the Pope. While there are several groups represented on the front page (probably because the most prominent Roman Catholic sites will use the term 'Roman' somewhere, even if not in their main name, so actually a lot of RC sites referring to the 'Catholic Church' will be excluded), if you pick a few random pages from deeper into the search, you will find that the vast majority of the hits are related to churches in communion with the Pope; rather than the 50% you are suggesting. TSP 20:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Johnny, you are wrong. The non-papist hits that show up are four: "Anglican Catholic Church", "Polish National Catholic Church", "Liberal Catholic Church", and "Old Catholic Church". The rest are papist websites -- even the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which is one of the uniate Churches (in distinction to the Roman Catholic Church) falling within the umbrella of the larger Catholic Church. Look, all of these non-papist Catholic Churches have to qualify their names, otherwise everybody would think that they're papists. See? It strengthens my point that the unqualified use of "Catholic Church" refers nearly always to that Church of which the Pope is head. If somebody wants Wikiwisdom on the Polish National Catholic Church, they're going to type in: "Polish National Catholic Church". They seem to understand this concept over at Church of Christ gets its own name, even though that name is similarly modified by other groups -- see Church of Christ (Mormonism), United Church of Christ, Church of Christ (Temple Lot), and Church of Christ, Scientist, among others. No reasonable person would type in "Catholic Church" expecting to find info on the Polish National Catholic Church. And vice-versa. As the naming convention on common names instructs us, "When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?" --Hyphen5 18:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

They would put in Catholic Church! That is why I suggest a disambig page at Catholic Church, pointing to all the Catholic Churches! I said that two days ago now. As for Ukrainian Catholic Church, it may be a papist church, but as you have pointed out they are a different church then the Roman Catholic Church. Yes the follow the pope but they have different rites and practices. As does the Polish National Catholic Church. You also miscounted, the African Catholic Church is also a non-papist site. So 5 of 5 were papist. That comes down to the searches being dead even at around 11 million hits each. So Google is inconclusive in this case.JohnnyBGood 18:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Johnny, please respond to my analogy above about Church of Christ. (Apparently I was adding it as you were responding to my original, um, response.) No, the "Catholic Church in Africa" is a papist website. They have links to the Vatican on their site, and feature pictures of Cardinals. Plus you can't necessarily extrapolate from the first ten hits anyway; take a look at the next page. The Polish National Catholic Church is not in union with the Pope. They do not believe the same things as Catholics do. Ukrainian Catholics, however, do believe the same thing and are united with other Catholics through the Pope. --Hyphen5 18:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

With regard to the Church of Christ, as I said last time you brought it up, it is the OFFICIAL name of a single denomination of Christianity, just as Roman Catholic Church is an OFFICIAL name of a denomination of Christianity. As for the point you bring up about other churches having the responsibility to add a qualifier to their name such as Ukranian Catholic Chruch or Polish National Catholic Church... why then does the roman church not have the same responsibility, because it's the biggest? Because there is no other reason that it too should not have to present a qualifier.JohnnyBGood 18:42, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You are truly unbelievable. You are not listening. "Roman Catholic Church" is NOT the "official" name of a denomination of Christianity. Take a look at Lumen Gentium, which is, after all the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church -- by the Church. And what does she call herself in that document? The unmodified "Catholic Church". The papal Church claims the name "Catholic Church". Period. You are getting confused, because there is a "particular Church" within the Catholic Church called the "Roman Catholic Church", and it is as united with the Pope as the Ukrainian Catholics or the Syrian Catholics or any of the Eastern uniate Churches. But there are non-papist groups that also have the word "Catholic" in their name. Those are the ones that really have no claim to this article, Catholic Church. Just look at the example set by the editors of Church of Christ! --Hyphen5 18:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok two things. One, Roman Catholic Church, not the over arching chruch that is the mother of the Ukranian etc, but the church based in Rome, the largest of the papist churches, IS the focus of this article. Second, the chruch based in Rome has no more claim to title of Catholic Church exclusively then any of the churches that make it up nor the non papist Catholic Churches. To say otherwise violates WP:NPOV. What the church calls itself in the dogmatic law is irrelevant as has been pointed out many other churches also call themselves Catholic Church but are placed at qualified article spaces so they can be differentiated. Again, why should the Roman church be any different?JohnnyBGood 19:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That is not the stated purpose of the article; it is intended to be about the Catholic Church as a whole, that is the entire body of Christians in communion with the Pope. As you can see, it mentions and lists all the sui juris churches. It may have some pro-Latin bias at the moment, principally because there are more editors who know about the Latin rite. If you think this is a problem, why not edit the article to be more balanced with regard to the different sui juris Churches? TSP 20:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Well then it sounds like a new Church as a whole article needs to be created as this article may try and pass itself off as a "mother chruch" article (and with good reason seeing as the Latin rite is the vast majority of papal Catholicism), but it's primarily a Latin Rite page. A new article at Catholic Church with disambiguation to the Roman, Ukranian and other papal churches as well as a section disambiguating the non-papist churches would be the best solution... as I've stated 3 times now.JohnnyBGood 21:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That would be a better situation than we've got now, but that's not how Church of Christ was treated. I don't see why the two should be different. The main article for the Catholic Church could be at Catholic Church, with a prominent disambiguation link, linking to "Catholic Church (disambiguation)", just like they've done with Church of Christ. --Hyphen5 01:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I would be more comfortable with the move if what you describe were the only rationale. However, as per my post above, here's another rationale:

1. Renaming this page to "Catholic Church" conficts with the policy Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.
2. Keeping the page name as "Roman Catholic Church" conflicts with the policy Wikipedia:naming conventions.
3. When two policies are in conflict, one must follow the policy which prevails over the other.
4. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view prevails over Wikipedia:Naming conventions.
5. Therefore, the page should remain "Roman Catholic Church".

This is why I am not comfortable with moving the page. Pmadrid 18:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That and it's ambiguous at best what the "common name" is in this case. It appears to be a 50/50 split on Google when non-papist results for "Catholic Church" are taken into account.JohnnyBGood 18:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Johnny, see my points above. Pmadrid, read this:

1. There are analogous situations here with our articles on Orthodox Church (every Christian should claim to be "orthodox"!), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (every Christian should claim to be a Latter Day Saint), and especially with Church of Christ (every Christian church should claim to be a "Church of Christ"!).
2. In each of those situations, editors deferred to the claimed name and/or popularly recognizable name of each church, per the guidelines in the naming conventions. They gave other organizations claiming the similar names or modified names different articles (see, for example, Church of Christ (Mormonism) or United Church of Christ.
3. Therefore, it is indicative of a POV -- a violation of WP:NPOV to treat this article differently when there are precedents for this kind of dispute.
4. Furthermore, keeping the page name as "Roman Catholic Church" conflicts with the policy Wikipedia:Naming conventions.
5. Therefore, there is no conflict between policies, and there is every reason to move this page to Catholic Church. We already have analogous precedents to follow, for Heaven's sake! --Hyphen5 18:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Hypen you're going back to points we've already addressed. I said Orthodox Church should also be a disambig page. However it isn't and is a redirect right now to "Eastern Orthodox Church". I don't see how you feel this strengthens your claim. If anything it suggests we should make "Catholic Church" a redirect to "Roman Catholic Church" which, surprise it already is.JohnnyBGood 18:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Orthodox Church should not be a disambig page, but why don't you go and propose it, and see how that goes over? Besides, you are obfuscating my arguments. Read my response above. --Hyphen5 18:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Putting this article at Catholic Church might be a violation of NPOV, if the Naming Conventions were that putting an article somewhere meant an acceptance of its claim to that name. That's another reason why the Naming Conventions do not state that; they simply state that we should follow the common English usage. Therefore, if we put this article at Catholic Church, we would not be saying "we believe this to be the organisation which is truly the universal church of Christ, to the exclusion of all others"; we would only be saying "common usage seems to indicate that this is where most readers would expect to find this article"; in which there is no violation of NPOV. TSP 19:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Why this has not been a fair vote

See my explanation here. And you all wonder why I requested mediation. Geez. --Hyphen5 02:04, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Time to drop it, Hyphen, I think! You havent convinced people. For the reason, which you dont seem to have taken on board, that using the terms Orthodox Church, Church of Christ for a particular given denoimination is not offensive to anyone else. Others do of course consider themselves orthodox and of Christ, but they dont mind the churches in question having those labels. But Catholic is different: other groups do actively object to "Catholic=the Vatican". For them to "give" the name Catholic to one particular church (especially that one) is offensive in a way that is simply not the case for the other examples you cite. You can do as many google tests as you like but they wont persuade those of other Christian groups to accept a usage (however common) that has been bugging them for generations! Jameswilson 02:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

James, your comment is precisely indicative of why we didn't have a fair vote. I was basing my case off the objective guidelines provided by Wikipedia, whereas you and other Protestants are arguing for imposing a POV. Thank you for making this so crystal clear. --Hyphen5 10:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The vote was completely fair. No one was/is required to suggest any alternatives, not is any editor required to explain their rationale. The vote was asked for, consensus was reached...it's over. KHM03 (talk) 11:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Overview section?

Why do people keep resurrecting the "Overview" section? I fail to see why it shouldn't be merged with the lead/introductory section, especially given that separating them causes the formatting of the B16 photo to conflict with the table of contents. --Hyphen5 15:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It's really a question of whether we can get our Overview down to three or four medium-length paragraphs, as befits a lead section. I think we probably can. The current division into lead section and 'Overview' doesn't seem ideal - for example, it moves all historical information out of the lead section. I think that the second and third paragraphs could probably be reduced to one sentence each, two at most; with extra data moved to the relevant sections of the article.

The first obvious thing to remove is the lengthy explanation of exactly what document each fact is gleaned from - this could be more sensibly expressed with a proper references section. We need proper referencing in this article - saying "most of this information comes from these books" just isn't enough; every time we assert a fact, we need to say where we gained that information from. See J. R. R. Tolkien for an example of a properly-referenced article. TSP 15:36, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Social Teaching needs attention!

I was the one who originally had the idea of merging Catholic social teaching into this article. I was so appalled at the generalization, unsourced assertions, and generally pedestrian approach to Catholic social teaching in that article. I thought that merging it into Roman Catholic Church would get it more attention, and hopefully more sourcing and critical revision. Well, somebody went ahead and merged it without a vote. Now that it's here, under the Roman Catholic Church#Social teaching heading, can anybody help out? The new "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church" will be a key resource.

Of course, the other consideration is: if we aren't going to treat other areas of moral theology (family, bioethics, life issues, etc.), then why should we even have a section on social and political teachings? --Hyphen5 08:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Hyphen5. The "Social Teaching" section, even now, but especially if it developed further, needs to be an article on its own, with a link to it placed within the "Christian Path" section here. In other words, it should not have been merged. Lima 13:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Lima, this is the first thing we've (sort of) agreed on! Yay! --Hyphen5 13:37, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The formatting of the intro.

The start of this article really needs to be cleaned up and there needs to be some agreement as to how it should look.

The Contents is now too far down the page. Additional heading(s) could be inserted in the first paragraphs to bring Contents up.

Preliminary note on terminology reads more like a disambiguation page than anything else. It should be put on its own page with an explanatory link at the top of the article. --WikiCats 10:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is a very long article. It shouldn't be that big a deal that the contents page is not within the first page frame. I consolidated "Overview" and the introduction because, well, it made no sense, content-wise, to separate them. Is there a policy about how close the contents has to be to the top? With regard to the terminology section, it was even worse before I edited it down. (It had basically replicated the content of Catholicism.) But please don't split it into yet another disambiguation article. We've already got a disambig link at the top, plus Catholicism, plus Catholic, plus One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I think that's enough disambiguation! --Hyphen5 10:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Why has the Terminology section been moved to the top of the page? --WikiCats 13:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I didn't do it, and I don't really think that the firs thing that people should know about Roman Catholic Church is this controversy over what its name is... --Hyphen5 00:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to guide everyone, Wikipedia has special guidelines on Lead Sections (i.e. the part before the contents). They're at Wikipedia:Lead section and at Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles#Lead section. TSP 00:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I've swapped the terminology data back out to a 'terminology' section, and moved the 'overview' section to being the lead section; which is much more in line with what the style guides say the lead section should contain. The lead section is now a little bit long and complex (the guides advise 3-4 paragraphs; we have 5 long paragraphs) - then again, the article is rather longer than the Guides advise as well. TSP 00:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. I thought it was a good idea to split the beliefs (Catholicism) from the institution (Roman Catholic Church), but I guess that proposal is long gone...? --Hyphen5 00:49, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I have reinstated the Overview heading. There are now 3 paragraphs in the lead section. --WikiCats 11:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed move

Folks, Hyphen5 proposed a move and asked for a vote. The consensus was clear...no move. He has now taken the issue elsewhere, trying various other recourses (mediations, RfC). Fine. While in my estimation we are seeing textbook examples of violations of both WP:CON and WP:POINT, that's not my call. The major point is that we have reached consensus for now, and ought to move on. My suggestion is that we permit, of course, Hyphen5 to try and gain another consensus, convincing the other editors involved, but that we move on now to the other issues this and other related articles present. Too much time has been spent already on what is a decided issue. KHM03 (talk) 21:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Still unresolved is the question of changing Catholic Church from a redirect to this article to a new article. If, as the consensus concludes, the term is not exclusively synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church, then the redirect is not tenable. Fishhead64 21:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

In my view, both Catholic Church and Orthodox Church ought to be dab pages, not redirects. In the first instance I think there ought to be a very brief summary of the issue, and then links to the articles on every church that claims catholicity based on the ancient creeds. In the second instance, there are two major communions that are called by the name "Orthodox", and it's really not NPOV to redirect to one of them. (A redirect is appropriate when it's clear what a user is probably searching for, but in this case the various "Orthodox" communions aren't always clearly distinguished by others.) But it might be wiser to let things cool off for a bit before we get seriously into this discussion. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I object to the way some are trying to shut down debate on this topic. I even invited people to mediate a compromise and was attacked for it. If the Arbitration Committee accepted content disputes, I would take this issue to arbitration. I am confident that I have made a compelling case based on the naming conventions and other guidelines, such that a knowledgeable and disinterested third party would err toward moving this article to Catholic Church. I regret that we have spent this whole debate arguing over subjective "moral rights" to a name when the conventions explicitly state that we're supposed to be considering objective criteria. I acknowledge that a consensus -- indeed, a supermajority -- has formed against my position, but it is a consensus that is contrary to both Wikipedia policies and precedents on this very issue. See my explanation for why this has not been a fair vote here.

In the meantime, I encourage editors to do something that consolidates--rather than multiplies--the number of redundant discussions (cf. Catholic, Catholicism, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church) we have concerning this terminology dispute.

In my view our treatment of this article and its topic is extraordinary. If Catholic Church should be a disambig page, then so should Catholicism, Catholic, Church of Christ, Orthodox Church, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I oppose all of these changes, because the naming conventions specifically direct us to go by the most common name for each entity. I resent that this encyclopedia is creating confusion about my Church's identity by redirecting people all over the place, and qualifying not only the Church's name but also its NPOV description in each article. I am blown away that TCC and Fishhead6 want to create even more layers of redirects and disambiguation. That is precisely the wrong direction in which to move. --Hyphen5 00:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to answer this, because, while I largely agree with you, I do see both sides of the argument.

In the 'Best Party' analogy - you don't even have to go to fictious examples, because the Republican Party wouldn't deny that it was a democratic party, nor the Democratic Party that it was a republican one - there are two entirely different uses of the term 'best party' going on: one party calls itself by the name "the Best Party"; while other parties may merely claim that they are the party that is the best; "the Best Party" is in no way an identifying name for them, whereas it is for the Best Party. Within the context of other parties, there is no particular significance in the phrase 'the best party'; were it not for the existence of a party calling itself this, there would be no article at the encyclopedia location "Best Party".

In the case of the Church of Christ vs. the Church of Christ (Mormonism), it's a bit different. Here there are two entirely distinct bodies, which have each independently chosen the same identifying name. As it happens, one of the bodies (the Mormon one) is entirely defunct and has been for decades (and the stub organisation, the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) is very small), so one body gets exclusive control of the name, with a disambiguation for the other. If the two were of comparable size or significance, the main article might just be a disambiguation. However, if NEITHER of these denominations existed, there would probably be no article at all at "Church of Christ".

The situation with "Catholic Church" is different from either of these. Most Christians would agree that there is a Catholic Church - at the very least, in the uncapitalised sense (the 'holy catholic church' of the Apostles' Creed) - very many of them (especially if they are from Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican denominations) would capitalise it. This church is the divinely-established church set up by Christ. Pretty much all Christians would agree that there is such a thing; and if no body existed that made a sole claim to it by using it as its own name, there would probably still be an encyclopedia article at Catholic Church explaining the concept.

In calling itself the Catholic Church, the church headed by the Pope is not just picking some good words, like the Best Party or the Church of Christ - words which other people might use, but in an 'uncapitalised' sense. It is making a claim to be the Catholic Church; a concept which most Christians believe in the existence of, but which they would hold to have different constituents. Most Protestants would hold the Catholic Church to consist of all Christian denominations. Eastern Orthodoxy would consider itself to constitute the Catholic Church. Some High Anglicans would consider the Catholic Church to consist of the sum of the Anglican, Roman and Orthodox 'branches'.

So it's not unreasonable to see this in different light than just that of choosing between two entirely separate uses of a term (as with 'Church of Christ'). In the eyes of many people voting, it is only one term; which the church headed by the Pope is claiming as its own.

If I said I was "American", most people would probably assume I was from the United States of America; and if I stood at a junction equidistant between the embassies of the United States and Argentinia, and asked people to direct me to the "American Embassy", I doubt that one in a hundred would direct me to the Argentinian embassy, or say "both the US and the Argentine embassies are American". If I Google for "America", all of the first 10 hits mean it in the sense of the United States. Nevertheless, our America article does not redirect to the United States of America, even though that seems to be the most common usage. That's because these are not simply two entirely distinct uses of a term; but a term which can be used in a general sense, but which is also used by one specific body to refer to itself. In this context, it is considered to be expressing a Point of View to allow that body's claim to the term; because other people would view this as a claim by a specific body to a term which can also be taken to refer to a broader set of people or bodies.

In this context, we may no longer be merely talking about words; but about a claim to a concept. While the two bodies calling themselves Church of Christ might be annoyed that someone else had happened to choose the same name as them, they would recognise that they are using the same words to refer to two different things. In the case of the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholics and the Protestants are using the term to mean the same thing - the Universal Christian Church - but disagreeing on who constitutes that church. That's why it isn't unreasonable to view the debate about where Catholic Church redirects to in a rather different light to to a debate about where Democratic Party redirects to.

In short, I think there are valid arguments on both sides here; I don't think anyone has any call to be getting annoyed or believing that other people are being deliberately disruptive. People on both sides are voting based on what they sincerely believe to be the best way to proceed. As the arguments fall, I agree with you, Frank; but I don't think that people on either side are being unreasonable by disagreeing. TSP 02:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Tim, you are the most unreliable ally I've ever had! (I'm joking.) I appreciate your addressing my points specifically. You do make good points. I think if we'd been talking this way the whole time there would have been no reason for the debate to have been so hostile or protracted.

I didn't realize there was such a thing as the Best Party; I just made it up. I guess the only thing I have to say in response to your substantive argument is that the (Roman) Catholic Church has always called itself the "Catholic Church" (or, since A.D. 107 at least). Until the rise of Protestant denominations, "Catholic Church" has overwhelmingly, thoughout history, referred to that Church of which the Pope is head. And it still does, but less so in the English language. Now, to the extent that other denominations claim the name "Catholic Church" (and not merely as a descriptive quality as "democratic" would be to "Republican Party"), those denominations also have to compromise that claim somewhat. At least insofar as this encyclopedia is concerned.

They compromise their claim, for example, either by modifying the name (as in Old Catholic Church and Liberal Catholic Church -- in which case, for our purposes, those groups have no claim to the unmodified Catholic Church article), or by not exclusively identifying themselves by that name in common usage. In other words, they more commonly identify themselves, in popular usage, by names other than Catholic Church. This is an all but necessary acknowledgement of the reality I described above: that the term "Catholic Church" is popularly and commonly understood to mean the papal Church, simply because that Church has been around so long and gone by that name for the longest time. Not because it is necessarily the true Catholic Church.

You will recall the table that I reproduced from Wikipedia:Naming conflict; it tells us to evaluate possible names of a subject by applying three objective criteria. (The name that gets the most points wins.) You will note that these three criteria implicitly acknowledge the possibility that entities may indeed claim proper names and titles (not mere descriptions) that we cannot ultimately award them as exclusive titles of articles. "Catholic Church" works, under these criteria, only for the papal Church (with 2 points), and not for any other Church. That is largely because there are criteria for both common usage and whether the official name is undisputed. It seems to me that the Protestant claims to "Catholic Church" necessarily fail both of these criteria. And the "compromise" term "Roman Catholic Church" as applied to the papal Church only earns 1 point. So the most reasonable course of action that follows the naming conventions is (in my opinion) to move Roman Catholic Church to Catholic Church, with a prominent disambiguation link at the top linking to Catholic Church (disambiguation).

I have to nit-pick your treatment of my analogy to Church of Christ, if I may. If you visit Church of Christ (disambiguation), you will see that there are many more possible "Churches of Christ" than you addressed. But I think my point is: all those other ones fail the criteria in the table at Wikipedia:Naming conflict, because of the common usage criterion. To take the strongest parallel, as you may know, the Catholic Church (and others, I'm sure) does claim the proper name "the Church of Christ". Although we Catholics may refer to our Church as "the Church of Christ" in theological and spiritual discussions, that is far from common usage. The average Wikipedian who types "Church of Christ" into a search bar is most likely looking for that "Church of Christ" that originated in the Restorationist movement -- and, alas, that is the article we have. That is the same situation as I am saying we have here at Catholic Church, except that we have not placed our article there.

With regard to your analogy with our America disambiguation page, I think if you apply the same criteria from Wikipedia:Naming conflict that I love so much, it follows that the article on the papal Church belongs at "Catholic Church" (for reasons outlined above) and that America should not redirect to United States of America. Common usage, as you point out, would indicate that we should redirect to USA. However, there are two other criteria besides common usage. And "America" as applied to USA fails them both: whether the title is the "undisputed official name" of the entity (it's not), and whether the title is the "current self-identifying name of the entity" (it's not). "United States of America", however, as applied to that country sandwhiched between Canada and Mexico, satisfies all both of these criteria and the common usage criteria. We don't have a clear-cut title like that in this situation, but "Catholic Church" gets two points whereas everything else gets one. --Hyphen5 16:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know there was a Best Party either - I was surprised when I linked to it and found it wasn't a red link. :-)

The historical question - well, yes and no. It has been claimed elsewhere that the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches described themselves as constituting, or being part of, the 'Catholic Church' - just not in English, because none of them were active in English-speaking areas until relatively recently. Certainly they use the term to describe themselves now. And certainly the See of Utrecht considered itself part of the Catholic Church; even though it had a looser relationship with the Pope (who had given them the authority to select their own bishop) than we would expect a part of the Catholic Church nowadays to have. While the Vatican would claim that it had represented the Catholic Church since the first century, I think that the mechanics of being a part of that Church at various times in history were very different to what we would think of now, in terms of exactly how much influence the Pope had over an individual diocese. The Church in Britain existed essentially out of contact with Rome, appointing its own bishops, from perhaps the second to the seventh centuries; but I think would still have considered itself a part of the Catholic Church; and when the Church from Rome turned up the only question was whose date of Easter to use.

Essentially, though, before the rise of the Protestant denominations, you could more or less accurately use the term 'Catholic Church' - at least in Western countries - to simultaneously mean "all Christian Churches" and "the Church in communion with the Pope" - because there was only one substantial Christian church. When large numbers of other denominations started appearing, the question emerged, "who is the Catholic Church"? The Church headed by the Pope claimed it was; whereas other churches claimed that they were also part of the Catholic Church; the Church of England, particularly, believed that it represented the Catholic Church in England. Note that these groups did not generally claim that the church headed by the Pope was not part of the Catholic Church; but they asserted that it did not alone constitute the Catholic Church. Note also that at least the Anglican and Old Catholic Churches viewed themselves as the continuation of the Catholic Church in their area, not as a new church; so they would not even consider the Church headed by the Pope to have an older claim to the name than them; because, as a divided branch from that church, they would view themselves as just as old as it, and equal sharers in its heritage.

The issues is similar with the question of why none of the other claimants to the term describe themselves in their names as unmodified 'Catholic' - which it is true they do not. That's because they don't understand themselves to constitute the Catholic Church; rather, they believe the Catholic Church to exist in the combination of a number of different Christian denominations (exactly which might vary by church). So they will not declare their archbishop to be the head of the Catholic Church; because they believe the Catholic Church has no one head (except, of course, Jesus). I think it is for this reason, not because they believe that the Papal church is the Catholic Church, that they do not use the name unmodified. Of course, they would not, formally at least, use the name unmodified to refer to the church headed by the Pope either; they would call that the Roman Catholic Church, to reflect their belief that neither they, nor it, constitute the whole Catholic Church.

As to Church of Christ - yes, there are indeed a large number of denominations by that name (not surprisingly). But they are all distinct groups who have merely chosen that as their name; they would view their own use of the phrase as disjunct from the use of all other bodies by that name. An exception is the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), which would view itself as the continuation of the Church of Christ (mormonism); but, because that identification is disputed, it gets its own article at a further disambiguated name. Does the Roman Catholic Church also claim 'Church of Christ' as a name? Perhaps - though the phrasing "Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion" (Domine Iesus) seems to indicate the use of Catholic Church as the name, and Church of Christ as a description. The relative lack of controversiality may stem from the fact that, in using the name Church(es) of Christ, the Churches referred to are not making a claim to be the only Church of Christ; merely to be Churches of Christ. Whereas the Church headed by the Pope is explicit that its use of the name Catholic Church is a claim to solely constitute the Catholic Church.

The America analogy isn't perfect, it's true; because America is not the official name of the United States of America; but still, even if that country chose to declare its official name to be 'America', I don't think we'd put the article there. I can't think of a fully comparable issue in other fields, because most bodies which claim disputed titles are forced by either legal action (in the case of companies - cf. Budweiser) or diplomatic action (in the case of countries - cf. Macedonia) to either change their names, or at least adopt an undisputed name for official purposes (Macedonia was accepted into the UN under the name "Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia" - certainly not its preferred name - while its dispute with Greece was ongoing). Some might say that was what had been done with the title 'Roman Catholic Church' - it is what the Church uses when it communicates in arenas where its claim to its preferred name is disputed, just as the Czech Budweiser brewery calls itself Budweiser Budvar when it trades in places where another use of the name (Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch)) is common.

With regard to the Naming Conflict guidelines - do keep in mind that they are only guidelines. All of Wikipedia's Policies take precedence over them, and no-one is obliged to use them. TSP 17:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, now I come to think about it, Budweiser (the American beer) isn't a bad example. It is vastly the most common meaning of the word - it's the biggest selling beer in the world, let alone the biggest selling beer called "Budweiser". Of the 6 million Google hits for 'Budweiser', it gets probably 95%. It is its self-identifying name. It has no other official name. Do we put this beer at Budweiser? No, we don't - that is a disambiguation page between this beer and another - Budweiser Budvar - leaving the world's biggest selling beer at the awkward, non-self-chosen, Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch). Why don't we follow common usage here? Because the conflict between the two Budweisers is viewed as being a dispute between the two of rights to the name (which means simply 'from Budweis' - where Budvar is brewed and the Anheuser-Busch product is not) rather than simply a popularity contest on which use of the name is more common; so the NPOV policy is considered to require that we award the name to neither contender, merely recording that both claim it. TSP 17:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My apologies, Hyphen5, I thought that creating a new Catholic Church page was actually part and parcel of a compromise solution. I had imagined the article beginning by citing the fact that the term is often used interchangably with "Roman Catholic Church," and then moving on to a definition of what constitutes a Catholic Church according to the various communions that thus identify, as outlined by TSP. As TSP reminds us, even that most powerful of examples, America, has a disambiguation page. Surely something so obviously provocative of strong feeling like Catholic Church deserves the same treatment. I'm afraid I really can't see why you find this compromise suggestion so objectionable. People typing in "Catholic Church" would still be able to find their way quite easily to Roman Catholic Church from a link at the top of the page, and everyone's various sensitivities with regard to the designation would be respected - including your own. Fishhead64 06:39, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your kindness. Well, first of all, my position throughout this whole ordeal has been that Roman Catholic Church is more properly called Catholic Church. (I even think Catholic Church (Roman) would be better than "Roman Catholic Church" from the perspective of accuracy.) So I am hesitant to agree in the first place. But I'm not closed to it. So, in my opinion, any compromise on a disambig page for Catholic Church will also have to take into account what should be done with redundant material at Catholic, Catholicism, Catholicism (disambiguation), and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Once again, people simply looking for information about the (Roman) Catholic religion will inevitably run up against all these confusing disambiguations, and I just don't think there should be a maze to get to the article about the largest single religion on Earth! Nearly every word that someone trying to get info about the papal Church might type into Wikipedia directs him to a page not about that Church but about the symantics of "Catholicism" vs. "Catholic" vs. "Catholic Church". I can't think of any reason for all this equivocating about the word "Catholic" (or "catholic"), unless it's meant to undermine the Church's claim to catholicity. It's certainly not based on the common usage requirements of the naming conventions. In any event, this is all by way of trying to get you to understand where I'm coming from. I am open to a compromise about this, but it has to be part of a larger plan for all these articles--a larger plan that relies on the standards of WP:NC(CN), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision), and Wikipedia:Naming conflict. --Hyphen5 14:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The three pages Catholicism, Catholic, and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are already redundant, and I believe should be consolidated into one article, Catholic Church. Again, I believe that such an article should begin by citing the common interchangability of "Roman Catholic" and "Catholic" (e.g., In common usage, and within the Church itself, Catholic Church is used interchangably with Roman Catholic Church. However...etc." Fishhead64 16:51, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

That is a proposal that I would support. --Hyphen5 17:45, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! Is there a consensus that we get the ball rolling by placing a merge proposal tag on the three articles in question and listing the proposal at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers? Fishhead64 19:33, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Not excellent. Horrible! Does nobody remember how confused things were before the article "Roman Catholic Church" was distinguished from the "Catholicism" article? With that clear distinction, stuff about "Catholic Church" in other interpretations was excluded from the article here, and at the same time the article "Catholicism" was freed from long sections that were a constant tug of war between narrower and broader (vaguer) interpretations. Besides, a merger between "Catholicism" and "Catholic" has been proposed several times, but has never been accepted. How can it be expected that a merger of no less than four articles (have I misunderstood?) will be peacefully accepted? Even if it were accepted, what hope could there ever be of agreement on the content? There could certainly not be within a common article a well-rounded exposition of the (Roman) Catholic Church, and I, for one, think that would be an huge loss. Lima 08:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the problems you suggest are inevitable in such a project if it is sensitively done. I'm willing to give it a shot, and perhaps post a draft in the talk section of Catholic Church for discussion. If people don't like it, then we don't need to proceed. Fishhead64 15:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The proposal as I understand it is to merge three articles - Catholicism, Catholic and One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church - which do indeed seem to largely cover the same ground - and place the merged article at Catholic Church; leaving this article at Roman Catholic Church. There might then be a future split of this article into an article on the Church in communion with the Pope as a whole - possible at Catholicism - and the Latin Rite church that makes up the largest part of it. If this is the proposal, I have no problem with it; though it does seem diametrically opposed to Hyphen5's original suggestion. TSP 15:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

TSP's interpretation does indeed seem to be diametrically opposed to Hyphen5's original suggestion. If TSP's idea were accepted, anyone searching for information on the Catholic Church, as most commonly understood in non-technical circles, would be directed not to this page but to one with all sorts of views on what the "Catholic Church" is. I am not in favour.

As for TSP's idea of two articles, one for Hyphen5's idea of the Catholic Church, i.e. the present article, and another on "the Latin Rite Church" - well, we already have both those articles: "Roman Catholic Church" deals precisely with "the Church in communion with the Pope as a whole" (the Church as a whole, of course, not the Pope as a whole); and "Latin Rite" deals precisely with "the Latin Rite Church". Changing the name of this article to "Catholicism" would make its subject matter far less clear and would invite editing by those with a different idea of Catholicism. So that idea is something I certainly oppose.

Writing something that all Wikipedia editors will judge to be "sensitively done" is, I fear, an impossibility.

Lima 18:06, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Um, not my idea; but what I read User:Fishhead64's words to mean. If they mean something else, perhaps Fishhead64 could explain.

True, Latin Rite does exist, which I had forgotten; but it is very short, and mostly concerns the meaning of the term. Most of the information about the Latin Rite is contained in this article; whereas the Eastern Rite article, as well as the articles on many of the individual Eastern Rite churches, are much longer. Possibly, though, it is hard to separate that which applies to the Latin Rite Church, and that which applies to the Church as a whole, because it is to such a degree the largest part of the Church. TSP 21:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, one's never going to produce a final draft on this topic which will be universally uncontroversial, but hopefully people will remember to assume good faith.

TSP's understanding of my proposal is fundamentally correct. I'm not suggesting a second article. As Lima correctly points out, what it means for a church to be in communion with Rome is already appropriately covered here. I wasn't aware of the Latin Rite and Eastern Rite articles, but I assume in this hypothesized new and expanded Catholic Church article, they could be referenced there, along with other Catholic communions (e.g., Anglicanism, Assyrian Church of the East, etc.). Hopefully, this would invite expansion of the Latin Rite article.

My aim is greater clarity through greater concision in categorisation. My proposal simply aims to unpack the meanings of "Catholic" and catholicism in a single article, so that the waters don't get muddied in this article, and so that there is (as it were) one-stop category shopping for those interested in the broad subject of the Catholic Church. Fishhead64 00:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Coming from a Church of England Protestant background we were taught to consider the "Catholic" church as a different issue to "Roman Catholicism" since we affirmed the Nicene Creed. So the page move would be widely misinterpreted - a dab would be more appropriate. I would also agree with the editors above that merging multiple articles that have been hotly defended in the past is likely to be unsuccessful. Pansy Brandybuck AKA Sophia^TalkTCF

• • Folks, it appears that the voluntary mediation is going forward over at Mediation Cabal. Fishhead64 has offered a compromise. It does not involve moving this article. Anyone interested in having a polite and constructive conversation about a commonsense/overarching structure for our coverage of "Catholic" semantics in general should go check it out, and weigh in. I presume that any consensus achieved over there will be put to a formal vote over here, so this is entirely voluntary. (FYI: Much of the "discussion" and my own "describe the problem" sections consist of old debate that doesn't pertain to the compromise. Go to the "Compromises offered" section.) --Hyphen5 01:00, 28 March 2006 (UTC)