Talk:List of Roman Catholic dioceses (alphabetical)

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[edit] Logic

It might be better to provide some structure to this list. At the moment it contains only about 10% of the current dioceses in the Catholic Church.

While the title of this list is "Roman Catholic dioceses" the individual items on the list are almost always "Bishops of ...". But then the page it links to is about the diocese (which may or may not also contain a list of its past bishops). Why the inconsistancy? User:Dcheney

The inconsistancy arises naturally because a Wiki has no central editor, but many editors who each do part of the work. There are some who work on things like the Lists of office-holders, so then the list of bishops cames first. Others write about the diocese itself first (like my small articles on the dioceses of Thailand), and then the bishops only make up one of several sections of the article. IMHO thats the better way - articles on dioceses, which include the list of bishops in case it is short, or link to that list if it's longer than e.g. 10 names, and only name the most notable ones from history (and the current one) in the diocese article. Maybe we'd need a WikiProject Dioceses to work out something consistent, as well as get more of the diocese covered with articles... I also agree that the alphabetical sorting isn't much helpful - the list at the German Wikipedia is sorted by country and archdiocese, which is much more logical. andy 16:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I've just added a source link that allows a well-structured approach by recent data; however, given the vats number of dioceses, it might be a good idea to consider splitting up at least in sections, perhaps even over several pages. It may be more usefull to have e.g; a separate list of archdioceses, one of sugrahans.. so they can be attached to the correspnding articles. Such lusts are also avialble (and regualarly updated) on the same website.

As for coverage of data to actually refer to, I'm doing my bit, obviously slowly, to ceate sections for data from the Catholic Encyclopaedia (for which a project exists, by the way, but I always work independently), which are great except for the last century, so a later round should updtae, again making good use of GigaCatholic. Fastifex 08:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm skeptical that this page is worth keeping in its present form - at the very least, there should be some sort of hierarchical organization, probably by country. But then we'd be duplicating the work of Catholic-Hierarchy.org. Argyriou 06:54, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

There is already a List of Roman Catholic archdioceses, which works well for the global overview. As a test I have started a List of Roman Catholic dioceses of Asia on my userpage, as I think a global list of all diocese will get way to long, thus sorting by continent would be smarter. The dioceses of a single country however fit well into the country articles of Roman Catholicism by country, some of which already have it, others not. andy 11:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, many of the links were to bishops, and strangely, most of those were red links. So I've just gone through and updated many of them to "diocese", which has turned some of them to blue links. Unfortunately, there is no consistancy of naming articles "Diocese of Xxxxxx", "Roman Catholic Diocese of Xxxxxx" and "Bishopric of Xxxxxx". — Reinyday, 03:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Consistency is indeed a big problem here. I've just spent an hour or so fixing links to Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne and Catholic Bishops and Archbishops of Melbourne so that they all point to Archdiocese of Melbourne (and making the others redirects), and would have liked to do the same for the Sydney archdiocese (for which there is currently only an article titled Catholic Bishops and Archbishops of Sydney), when I realised that perhaps titles like Archdiocese of Melbourne would be ambiguous (as there is an Anglican Archdiocese there too), and appending Catholic or Roman Catholic to the front would be better.
So, I would like to propose a de facto naming standard that all articles on Catholic dioceses and archdioceses be (re-)named as either Catholic Diocese/Archdiocese of Xxxxx or Roman Catholic Diocese/Archdiocese of Xxxxx, and that names of the type Bishopric of Xxxxx or simply Diocese/Archdiocese of Xxxxxx are deprecated. (I realise for many cases this would represent "over-disambiguation", as a diocese of that name may only exist in the Catholic Church, but I'm willing to sacrifice my natural distaste for that option if it serves a useful purpose, such as introducing a measure of consistency and predictability to the names of articles.) I would further propose that unless an article entitled Bishop of Xxxxx or the like (where Xxxxx is actually a functioning diocese - it's probable that titular bishops should be treated differently) has specific and detailed info that is inappropriate (or too lengthy) for inclusion in the diocese's article, it should be folded into the latter article, or renamed (with proper rewording of the text) to it. I'll go over to the Catholicism Wikiproject page to bring this up there too (although I'm fearful the whole "Catholic" versus "Roman Catholic" can of worms might be dragged into this). Thylacoleo 05:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Another issue to consider is places like Toronto, Canada. There are currently both the Archdiocese of Toronto (Latin Rite) and the Diocese of Toronto (Ukrainian Rite). To further add confusion, the Latin Rite Archdiocese was a Latin Rite Diocese from 1841 to 1870.--Dcheney 05:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I can see how that would be a problem. Indeed, after spending some time looking at how this is handled in various places, I'm beginning to think a careful country-by-country approach would be best. For instance, there are undoubtedly many mostly Catholic countries in the world (for instance Italy or in Latin America) where adding the qualifier "Catholic" to all the articles on dioceses would be overkill, as there are no other dioceses of other religions which might compete for the namespace. For other countries with a large Protestant community (those in northern Europe, English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia and so on), however, there is likely to be at least one church (for English-speaking countries this would be the local member of the Anglican Communion) which also uses a diocesan structure, and so there will be conflicts where both have identical or similar names. Here's a rundown of some of the specific scenarios that occur in Australia, with my intuitive responses to how they could be properly handled:
  • Case 1: both a Catholic and an Anglican (for instance) diocese share identical "short form" names; eg. the (Catholic) Diocese of Ballarat and the (Anglican) Diocese of Ballarat in Victoria.
My solution: disambiguate each using an appropriate qualifier, such that the main articles are at "Catholic Diocese of Ballarat" and "Anglican Diocese of Ballarat" respectively. I believe each should also have a see also blurb at the top which says something like "for the {Anglican/Catholic} diocese of the same name, see {Anglican/Catholic} Diocese of Ballarat". Finally, the page "Diocese of Ballarat" would be a disambiguation page linking to the two main articles.
  • Case 2: the Catholic and Anglican dioceses have the same location name, but are at different hierarchical levels (one is an archdiocese, the other is a diocese), so their "short form" names are not identical but would still be easily confused by a lay person; eg. the (Catholic) Archdiocese of Melbourne and the (Anglican) Diocese of Melbourne (which oddly enough is headed by an archbishop - I'm not quite sure how it works out that way).
My solution: disambiguate each with an appropriate qualifier such that the main articles are at "Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne" and "Anglican Diocese of Melbourne". Each would have a see also blurb at the top pointing to the other of the type "for the {Anglican diocese/Catholic archdiocese} of the same name, see {Anglican Diocese/Catholic Archdiocese} of Melbourne". The page name "Archdiocese of Melbourne" could then redirect to "Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne", and "Diocese of Melbourne" to "Anglican Diocese of Melbourne" (seeing as the user who was expecting the other religion can easily get to it with the see also blurb at the top). There remains a similar historical dilemma with this solution of the type mentioned by Dcheney above: prior to it becoming an archdiocese in 1886, the Catholic see was actually the "Diocese of Melbourne". This could be partially dealt with by creating a page at "Catholic Diocese of Melbourne" redirecting to "Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne" (presuming that the latter article talks about the diocese both before and after its elevation to archiepiscopal status - I can't imagine there are many cases where we would want two separate articles), but I'm afraid people typing in "Diocese of Melbourne" and wanting to see an account of the Catholic diocese prior to its elevation will still first see the article on the Anglican diocese and have to click through to the one on the Catholic archdiocese. Not a perfect situation, I'll admit, but considering it's a matter of deprecating now-defunct nomenclature in favour of a term currently in use, I think it's adequate.
  • Case 3: The "short form" name used in the two churches does not conflict at all; eg. the (Catholic) Diocese of Sale and the (Anglican) Diocese of Gippsland, which both cover roughly the same area.
My solution: This is where things start to cross the line when it comes to the established Wikipedia principle of "only disambiguate article titles where necessary". There are no other claimants to the title in either case so they could both occupy pages at their "short form" names without any conflict. Except that this introduces an inconsistency with how other dioceses in the country that must be disambiguated are named. This is important in the case of English-speaking countries like Australia, where it would be disingenuous to refer to simply the "Diocese of Gippsland" and expect a lay (hmm, perhaps "non-religious" might be better?) person to know that the diocese of that name happens to be Anglican and not Catholic. It is here that a carefully considered country-by-country approach kicks in. This would take into account the salience of competing diocesan structures in the country (in Australia, both the Catholic and Anglican structures are of roughly equivalent salience), as well as the way the dioceses refer to themselves (for instance in the official website is the main title the "short form" or is it qualified in some way? - in the case of Australia, it is overwhelmingly (19 out of 23 for the Anglican dioceses and 18 out of 22 for the Catholic ones) the latter). On the basis of this, one could establish a rationale for naming all dioceses with the same form (i.e. with a qualifier, regardless of whether there is a direct naming conflict). Applying this approach to the example given, we would have articles located at "Catholic Diocese of Sale" and "Anglican Diocese of Gippsland", with "Diocese of Sale" and "Diocese of Gippsland" both redirects. Whether, in the case of close parallels in the area of such differently named dioceses, it would also be worthwhile adding see also blurbs at the top of the type "for the {Anglican/Catholic} diocese covering a similar area, see {Anglican/Catholic} Diocese of {Gippsland/Sale}", I'm not sure (although it would add some value to the project to do so).
That pretty much exhausts the conflicts that occur in Australia as far as I'm aware (and thanks for your patience in reading through the above to get to this point!), so it's just left to see if such an approach might be extended to the problem that Dcheney mentions for Toronto. Let's assume (to muddy the waters slightly) that in addition to the (Catholic) Archdiocese of Toronto and the (Ukrainian Catholic) Diocese of Toronto, there is also an Anglican (Episcopalian? I'm not sure what the terminology is in Canada) Diocese of Toronto. I would put the main articles at "Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto", "Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Toronto" and "Anglican Diocese of Toronto". Each article would have a see also blurb at the top pointing to the other two (this might get to be a problem if there were a lot more competing dioceses, but with just two the blurb shouldn't be too big). "Archdiocese of Toronto" would be a redirect to the first of these, while "Diocese of Toronto" would be a disambiguation page that would point to all three (including specifically mentioning that the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto was known as the Diocese of Toronto back in the 19th century). The page "Catholic Diocese of Toronto" could either be a simple redirect to "Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto" or a disambiguation page pointing to both the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto and the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Toronto. (Note: it wouldn't be a redirect to Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Toronto, as you can't leave off the "Ukrainian" in this name without significantly changing the interpretation.)
Which brings us to an issue I have studiously ignored thus far: that of the terms "Roman Catholic" and "Catholic" used as the qualifying term for those dioceses belonging to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church (practitioners of which rite being commonly referred to as "Roman Catholics" in contradistinction to, well, "Ukrainian Catholics", among others, who belong to a different rite of the Catholic Church). The need to distinguish between "Roman Catholic" and "Ukrainian (or other) Catholic" dioceses doesn't exist in Australia as we don't have any of the latter (they're called Eparchies here), but it may do so elsewhere, as in Toronto. Here I would appeal to most common usage and/or self-identification as useful guides - does the Archdiocese of Toronto itself see the need to use "Roman Catholic" rather than just "Catholic" in its name? Personally I would prefer the simpler "Catholic", not just because it's simpler, but also because it is to a certain extent unambiguous - if the diocese in question was Ukrainian Catholic I can't see that they would drop the Ukrainian from the name (without also dropping the Catholic, and thus simply calling themselves the "Diocese of Toronto", having already mentioned earlier that they are Ukrainian Catholic), and thus "Catholic Diocese of Toronto" wouldn't be reasonably thought of as referring to it. And here ends the spiel - please let me know if any of this makes sense. Thylacoleo 09:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Catholic Dioceses

The lists should read:

Denmark

Diocese of Copenhagen

Great Britain

Archdiocese of Westminster Diocese of East Anglia etc etc

France

etc


The bishop relates to a person not a territorial jurisdiction

[edit] Proposal for generalised guideline on naming dioceses

As those who have read the above comments will know, there is currently a confusing array of different ways articles relating to dioceses of both the Catholic Church and other Churches are named on Wikipedia. In an effort to introduce some clear guidelines to reduce the confusion, I would like to propose the following:

[edit] Draft Guideline for naming articles related to dioceses

1. Background: Currently on Wikipedia, articles related to dioceses and bishops are named in a variety of fashions, including "Diocese of Xxx", "Catholic/Anglican Diocese of Xxx", "Roman Catholic Diocese of Xxx", "Bishopric of Xxx", "Bishop of Xxx", Catholic Bishop of Xxx", "List of Bishops of Xxx, List of Roman Catholic Bishops of Xxx", and so on, causing confusion and uncertainty for editors when trying to link.
2. Rationale: To try to promote greater consistency in the naming of articles related to dioceses, and to make finding and linking to such articles easier.
3. Scope: While this guideline was conceived specifically in response to inconsistencies in the naming of (Roman) Catholic dioceses, its recommendations pertain also to the naming of articles related to dioceses of other Churches.
4. Terminology: The following terms will be used in the guidelines:
  • "short form name": the bare name of a diocese - "Diocese of Xxx".
  • "long form name": a name including a single adjective modifier designating the Church of the diocese - "Catholic Diocese of Xxx", "Anglican Diocese of Xxx".
  • "extra long form name": a name with more than one modifying adjective - "Roman Catholic Diocese of Xxx".
5. Summary of guidelines:
  • Consistency - Consistency in the naming of articles related to dioceses should be achieved on a country-by-country rather than global basis. (Due to historical complications, dioceses in the UK and Ireland are currently excluded from the rest of these guidelines.)
  • Simplicity - The choice for each country should be the simplest form name necessary to avoid naming conflicts with similarly named dioceses of another Church in that country (where simplest is here defined as shortest).
  • No unnecessary changes - If consistency or near-consistency in article naming has already been achieved in a particular country, that consistency should be preserved rather than applying the above guideline.
  • No anachronistic names - Article names of the type "Bishopric of Xxx" should be avoided in favour of "Diocese of Xxx".
  • Favour dioceses over bishops - Articles of the type "Bishop of Xxx" or "List of Bishops of Xxx" should be either moved to or merged into articles of the type "Diocese of Xxx", unless there is a clear rationale to maintain a separate article at that name as well as an article at the name "Diocese of Xxx".
  • Redirects - For countries using the short form name consistently, redirects should be created at the long form names and extra long form names (where applicable). For countries using the long form name consistently, redirects should be created at the extra long form name (where applicable). For countries using the extra long form name consistently, redirects should be created at the long form name. Redirects should be created at all shorter form names unless they would be ambiguous, in which case see below.
  • Disambiguation - In those cases where more than one diocese has an identical short form name, the short form name should be a disambiguation page pointing to both articles at the longer form names; a disambiguation link (i.e. a "see also" link at the top of the article) pointing to the other diocese should be included in each article. In those cases where an Archdiocese and Diocese share a short form name (except for the designation "Archdiocese" or "Diocese"), no disambiguation page is required, however a disambiguation link pointing to the other entity should be included in each article. In those cases where the short form name is shared by a currently existing diocese and a defunct diocese, a redirect will be created pointing to the currently existing diocese; the latter will have a disambiguation link to the article on the defunct diocese, or to its successor if it was raised to an archdiocese. It is left to the discretion of editors whether to include a disambiguation link in articles on dioceses with different short form names but substantially overlapping territory.


[edit] Comments

I intend to add soon more concrete examples of how this set of guidelines might apply in specific instances, and propose a specific guideline for Australia. Thylacoleo 05:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I second all the above suggestions, it seems like you wrote exactly what I had in mind all the time. In which cases a separate "List of bishops" article is better than the list in the diocese article is of course a matter of personal taste. E.g. the Bishopric of Aachen could IMHO stay as a separate article (but moved to List of Bishops of Aachen), as the list is rather long with all the details in the "notes" column, as well as the auxiliary bishops. But normally a list of 10 bishops would fit easily into the diocese article. Just a minor question: what to do with the prefectures/vicariates - should the be named "Apostolic Vicariate of..", or "Vicariate Apostolic of ..." or just "Vicariate of ...". For those in Cambodia I chose the first, for Laos the second - seems like I wasn't inconsistant with myself. andy 11:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I've just had a quick look through the articles related to the Catholic diocesan structure in Germany - it is just such a mess that calls for something like these guidelines to sort out. In this particular example the guidelines would call for the main article at Diocese of Aachen (or maybe Catholic Diocese of Aachen? - I don't know if other Churches have diocesan structures in Germany that might cause a naming conflict; certainly not at "Bishopric of...", though), and there would only be a need for an article named List of Bishops of Aachen if such a list was considered too excessive for the article on the diocese itself. A case for a separate "List of Bishops..." article could easily be made for the many European dioceses which have origins stretching back centuries, especially as in the past such dioceses often held considerable temporal power, and so a list of their "rulers" would usefully parallel articles called "Lists of Grand Dukes of..." and so on.
The issue of similar entities with names other than "diocese" or "archdiocese" (such as eparchies, prefectures, vicariates apostolic or military ordinariates) is an important one. I've avoided addressing it directly here because I have limited familiarity with the nomenclature in these cases, but I don't think it would be in principle difficult to extend these guidelines to cover them as well. Thylacoleo 03:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The above proposal sounds quite workable although I also agree with the above suggestion that for older dioceses a separate "List of Bishops..." may be appropriate as the list can be rather substantial in length.--Dcheney 02:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

What is the consenus on this at present? ant_ie 09:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
There is no real consensus, though in general, new articles should be titled Roman Catholic diocese of City. But there's been no real consensus to change existing ones. There also aren't enough articles on bishops separate from the diocese articles to justify a List of Bishops. Naming issues should probably be taken up at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Catholicism, not here. Argyriou (talk) 15:48, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Count

Okay, I THINK I counted right when I too reached 488 entries here. Is the total number important enough that people should update this count as entries go up? Perhaps a little "Upon adding entries to this list, please update the count" or something? I'm just not bold enough! 81.93.102.185 17:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've modified your text a little, to show the total number of diocese in the Church. I get 2966 from the list at Catholic-Hierarchy.com, so I've said "about 3000". Argyriou (talk) 17:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Prince-Bishopric

I've begun to rename Bishopric of X articles to Diocese of X, and have immediately run into difficulties with the European Prince-Bishoprics. What I suggest to do is dissociate these historical political entities from the present-day dioceses and split the articles. EG: the current article Bishopric of Liège deals mostly with the historical political entity (the Prince-Bishopric Liège)in what is now Belgium. What seems to me to be the best option is rename the article Prince-Bishopric of Liège and put the post-1802 diocese in a separate article Diocese of Liège --Isolani 14:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems eminently sensible to me. In your example, Diocese of Liège should be the link in this list, as it's talking about (mostly) current dioceses. Argyriou (talk) 18:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archdioceses

For a while, the text at the top said that archdioceses were not included on this list. However, there were a number of archdioceses on the list. Since an archdiocese is not the same as an ecclesiastical province, I've decided to include archdioceses here, but to highlight them in bold. I'll be adding in a few more archdioceses, including a few I had removed, over the next few days. User:Argyriou (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the right call. An archdiocese is a type of diocese, and it makes no sense to have a list of dioceses that doesn't include any of the most important dioceses. john k 21:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Well why not have two lists, one with an alphabetical listing of each diocese, and another with a structural listing.

The list would be

Roman Catholic church, Supreme Pontiff of Rome

.A Cardinal A

..I Ecclesial province I under Cardinal A

...a Archdiocese of EP I

....1 diocese of EP I Benkenobi18 22:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

well, for one thing, that type of structure doesn't exist. Each province does not have its own Cardinal, and not all Cardinals are Metropolitans of a province. The various relationships between the members of the hierarchy can be very complicated, as can be seen at Catholic Church hierarchy. Secondly, not all dioceses are located in provinces. Third, there are thousands of particular Churches, so the proposed structured list would be very long. Finally, such a list already exists, in the form of the Annuario Pontificio. Wikipedia is not the Vatican Printing Office. Gentgeen 22:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

An organizational list would be useful, whether or not Wikipedia is the Vatican Printing Office. Obviously, it's complicated, and Benkenobi's proposed organization is actively wrong - an archbishop normally heads both an archdiocese (which is merely a diocese headed by an archbishop) and a province (which is a group of dioceses). At any rate, it would obviously be very complicated, and so forth, but it would still be a useful list. john k 04:56, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
We do have such articles, divided by country, though there is not yet complete coverage. I suspect it may be useful to combine some countries into regional articles, especially where there are few dioceses and provinces. Argyriou (talk) 16:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the list would be very long, 3000 some odd dioceses. Before that can happen, the continental and national lists would need to be done. I am working on the national lists so that the information can be taken from them rather easily and put together in the long lists as needed. Right now North America is finished, although I still have to work on the eparchies and archeparchies, but I will leave those until later. South America I will finish all the national lists, and then move on from there. One of the benefits is that you can create a large number of stubs to fill the diocese holes, which is my intent. I was filling up stub holes when I realised how much quicker it was to first make a list of all the dioceses in a particular area and go from there. Benkenobi18 04:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other Denominations

I would like some comments on how to include other denominations. For example, some Byzantine, Syro-Malabar, and Marionite diocese are listed. What about Romanian and Armenian (as well as other) dioceses?Npeters22 (talk) 15:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I would include all the diocese of the other Catholic Churches in communion with Rome. I think it would be best to indicate that a diocese is non-Roman by putting the particular church in parentheses after the location. For example, Van Nuys (Byzantine). Argyriou (talk) 21:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)