Category talk:Roman Catholic politicians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Category:Roman Catholic politicians page.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming

This category was nominated for deletion, renaming or merging with another category on 2006 June 4. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Irish Presidents 2 Function of this Category 3 Vince Foster 4 Clarification 5 wrong name 6 Hope you don't mind 7 Name change

[edit] Irish Presidents

All the presidents of Ireland have been Catholic. once a catholic...—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.46.22.195 (talk • contribs).

Not true. The 1st President (Douglas Hyde) and the 4th President (Erskine Childers) were both members of the Church of Ireland. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Function of this Category

This page lists politicians who have been born or raised as Roman Catholics, they are not necessarily still Roman Catholics or any other sort of Christian.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.133.69.244 (talk • contribs).

Perhaps there needs to be a subcategory of Roman Catholic politicians who did not profess the faith or repudiated the Catholic Church. patsw 16:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

If you want fights on your hands who or who not to include :-( - Subcats by regions would come to my mind. Or just delete the whole thing. Agathoclea 16:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I regard the repudiation of the Catholic Church as significant to a biographical entry in the Wikipedia. If the repudiation in a particular case is disputed, it would be handled as any other editing dispute. patsw 17:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

But to include or not to include is a black-and-white thing while the individual article can go into details. BTW have a look at the category page for the edit I made just before you found this talkpage. I have tried to take out any opportunity to make this list a means to push any particular POV. These people are included for their however fleeting connection and maybe the way it affected their further life, but their actions cannot be seen as catholic just by being on this list. Agathoclea 17:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You are right to agree that "actions cannot be seen as catholic just by being on this list". My mother is on this list and would probably regard herself now as being more of a Humanist. I'm interested why this category arose though and perhaps it would clearer if it was revised as being active Roman Catholic politicians. Zigzague 12:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)Zigzague

[edit] Vince Foster

Vince Foster was neither Catholic nor a politician. This page is wrong.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.14.101.189 (talk • contribs).

Deleted from category, see diff. AvB ÷ talk 13:03, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification

I have made the clarification on the main Category page, due to the large discussion if Hitler should be included or not which lead to a large theological discussion if he was kind-of automatically excummunicated or if the church was responsible for the holocaust. Agathoclea 16:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Great edit. AvB ÷ talk 17:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted the edit because there's no consensus what this list is for. patsw 18:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, you are the only one disputing the edit. There are two editors supporting it. You do not discuss the merits of the edit, the other two editors do. Please do not revert without discussion. You may want to initiate a survey to attract more editors to discuss this. AvB ÷ talk 18:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

patsw, I just discovered the short discussion between you and Agathoclea above the Vince Foster section. Apologies, you did discuss this. I still support Agathoclea on this one though. I would also support deletion of the category should someone list it for deletion. AvB ÷ talk 23:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wrong name

The title "Roman Catholic politicians" does not properly reflect the given description:

This page lists politicians who have been born or raised or later converted as Roman Catholics, they are not necessarily still Roman Catholics or any other sort of Christian, nor can their actions be considered as condoned by the Catholic church.

This kind of a title implies rather clearly that they are politicians and that they are associated with the Catholic church, yet according to the description one can include people who are politicians and who are not generally associated with the Catholic church. In the context of politics and politicians, this kind of use of the adjective is completely devoid of good sense. --Joy [shallot] 23:06, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Other "politicians by religion" subcats do not have this distinction, so it's completely out of place. What, are we supposed to have a Category:practicing Roman Catholic politicians to go alongside this one? Again, no others follow that naming. My opinion is that these (pol by rel) categories are for those who at least claim nominal attachment to their denomination. If they've actively repudiated the faith or no longer demonstrate even passive attachment to it, then don't include them at all - the fact that they were raised in a religious household is simply a biographical footnote then. Also, this should be a subcat of Category:Christian politicians when the description is removed. I tried to change that and got reverted, most likely (the reverter didn't comment) because of this oddball distinction. — ChristTrekker 18:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I noticed the deletion discussion now. This comment from User:Valiantis is quite right:

[this category] should only be populated by people notable for their Catholicism, not people who happen to be Catholic.

We could subcategorize the latter into... Category:Politicians who happen to be Roman Catholic? Category:Politicians who are Roman Catholic by faith? --Joy [shallot] 23:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Valiantis' comment implies a view that religion is an inherited trait. "Born into a Catholic family, you're stamped Catholic for life!" I disagree with that. I think this view is fairly prevalent among Catholics, and that's part of the problem the description/distinction of this category is causing. These "pol by rel" categories should not include "former"/"lapsed" members. Either the person identifies with the religion, or he doesn't. If he used to but doesn't now, that's merely a biographical note. I'm not even really sure what "notable for their Catholicism" means - a parish board member or Sunday school teacher qualifies but the typical pew-sitter does not, or what? — ChristTrekker 18:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

On a related note... The only case I know of where it's common to associate a "religion" with someone, whether they identify or not, is Judaism. If you're "born Jewish" when you're a Jew. It's commonly accepted that one can be an atheist Jew, and there are even Hindu Jews. It may possibly be more accurate to say "if you're born Hebrew then you're Hebrew" because that implies a people-group not a religion, but the two were basically conflated long ago, when virtually every Hebrew was Jewish and vice versa. — ChristTrekker 18:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

CT, it is you who is doing the conflating here. Jew has two meanings: adherent of rabbincal Judaism (and its offsprings) and someone born of a Jewish mother. Hebrew is not an accurate term for either. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 18:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Well whatever...I don't want to get hung up on semantics right now. (But that is exactly what I mean - the two meanings were conflated into one term.) The point I was trying to make is that it's very confusing to have a term for adherents of a religion that does not always mean that. Is "Roman Catholic" (as used for purposes of Category:Roman Catholic politicians) a follower of Roman Catholicism, or not? Do we need cats for RC-in-this-sense vs RC-in-the-other-sense? Maybe using "Hebrew" isn't strictly accurate in the modern sense (except as the name of a language), but I believe it is used to denote a people-group as opposed to religious adherents. A term that made the distinction clear (which "Jew" does not) would be helpful. As I was trying to say, Judaism is the only religion (that I know of) whose adjective form ("Jewish") can apply to people who do not follow that religion - as you said, it has two meanings. Some RCs evidently have this same concept of "Roman Catholic" but I don't think that's a majority view. Most people looking at Category:Roman Catholic politicians would expect it to be of politicians who currently subscribe to RC beliefs or affirm RC membership. — ChristTrekker 20:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand. The thing is that the meanings originally were one. (Hindu is a similar case, as it is etymologically the same as Indian).

As far as Catholic goes, this is NOT an ethnicity. You are not Catholic simply because you were born into a Catholic family. Str1977 ^{(smile back)} 22:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hope you don't mind

I altered the opener as there seems to be legitimate objection to the old one. Also I've been adding Catholics who were members of Catholic political parties. I was surprised so many were not here as that seemed a natural to be here.--T. Anthony 14:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name change

...to Catholic politicans since you seem to want to include Eastern-Rite Catholics. Or move them to their own cat. Kevlar67 01:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)