Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Archive 16

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Comment for next FAC

A few main issues with this article that are keeping it from FA status:

The division of the history between the first and last sections; needs to be integrated, ruthlessly subdivided and organized, and ultimately farmed out. This needs to pack the highlights of 2000 years of history into about one screen shot. This "mission" part of the section needs to be rethought.
Insufficient recognition of the historical and geographic contingency of the remaining sections. The church didn't always believe the same things and those beliefs are not held homogeously, etc. As a major subpoint of this: there needs to be some reference to the diversity of the RCC throughout the world, maybe a map that shows the number of catholics by country in a section that links to a subarticle "RCC around the world" (I think thats the wiki-convention).
Too few daughter/sub-articles. For a topic this big, probably every section or subsection should have at least one sub-article. That's just the only way the article is going to be able to present all the additional information it needs to without becoming too long. People are going to use this article to locate much smaller topics that fall within the subheading of the RCC; the easier this article makes that for them, the better it will be. To do this I would recomend looking through RCC categories and making sure all key articles are linked somewhere in the text of this article, and probably spinning off of the content currently in this article.
Assessment of the impact of the church from the perspective of a non-believer. Think: art, economics, law, politics, etc.

Just my two cents. Great work so far. The way that articles like this (for mammoth topics) become featured has as much to do with the content that they organize and link to as the content they contain. Savidan 05:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Interesting points.

The History section is a HUGE compromise. It has to contain many of the topics that various editors insist should be covered in this article, and therefore to achieve balance and due weight, must deal in equal detail with equally important, but perhaps less well-known or controversial historical matters occurring at the same time. The problem with cutting it is WHAT to cut without raisng controversy or unbalance the article. That's why we've settled on the current length. The problem with moving this material to sub-articles is that articles dealing with various periods of the history of the Church don't really exist, and again would raise the question of what would stay in the main article.
Referencing to the Regional Church is a good idea. Though basic beliefs are uniform throughout the Church, with the exception of syncretic offshoots, which aren't part of the church anyway.
Daughter articles. yes. Where they exist and are GOOD.
Impact on the non-believer. Another good idea. Xandar (talk) 16:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes interesting points but I dont agree with most of the suggestions. We do not have a map of the RCC throughout the world. We used to have one but it was eliminated for some violation of Wikipedia policy so we replaced it. It would be nice to have it back. The History section is the result of much labor and compromise between many editors and reviewers. I do not favor any elimination of this or farming of this section since it also serves a dual purpose of containing all criticism of the Church in a manner that is recommended by Jimbo Wales. Assessment of the impact of the church on the non-believer can be a separate article that is referenced in the See-Also section. I do not favor inclusion of this in the main article as it could be quite a large section that attracts much criticism and opposing viewpoints and will not facilitate the article becoming FA but actually prevent such a goal. Any commentary on the evolution of church beliefs is already addressed in the first paragraph of Beliefs section. Any commentary on how many Catholics believe what is really going to be speculation and something that would not add to the encyclopedic nature of the article. We do have a statement in Demographics saying it is unknown what percentage of Catholics are practicing or in agreement with Church beliefs. This sentence goes on to say that the church is growing especially in Asia and Africa.NancyHeise (talk) 20:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The impact on the nonbeliever stuff should be included in this article (at least mentioned) in the history section. This includes the church's impact on art and architecture (which was finally added), but there is more that could be included (such as the church's huge impact on European politics). This stuff is likely more important than a whole paragraph on the English reformation and arguments about whose persecutions were worst. Please note also that Savidan is just the latest to bring up the fact that the history section is split into two pieces - Origins and Mission and History - and that the split doesn't make sense organizationally (plus it adds length). Karanacs (talk) 21:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The church origins are something more than just history in a history section because it is something that is disputed as evidenced by these talk pages in previous times. Before we came to the present origins section there were two admins on the page saying the church did not even come into being until hundreds of years after the historians were saying it came into existence. We placed the origins and mission into its own section to sufficiently address this criticism. It is also the most logical place for the discussion of church origins which is then logically followed by missions since the two are related. It is more logical to place origins in the same paragraph as the church mission than to remove origins and place into history. While I respect Karanacs opinions, we disagree on this point. NancyHeise (talk) 21:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) :I know you disagree Nancy, but there have been several people now who have come to this page uninvited and made the same suggestion to remove that section (not the information, just the separate section). There is no reason why the information can't be placed in a more approriate section (the history section) rather than stand by itself at the top. The current organization is confusing readers, and I suspect that at least some FAC reviewers will oppose because of it. Karanacs (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

To further address Karanacs comments. The discussion on English reformation reflects the top historians we have used as references. You had asked for the information on persecutions and we ended up with the present situation in response to searching for answers in our sources. I think you were trying to balance the article away from what you thought was a pro-Catholic point of view by having us put more information about Catholics persecuting non-Catholics but what happened was that the actual historical record supported the opposite. Catholics were non-beleivers in the Protestant religion and it is included in this article - politics and all. The entire history section is a commentary on that exact subject - how the church interrelated with politics of various governments throughout history. What other effects on non-believers can we include that is not already included? Muslims and Jews are covered in the inquisitions, Cathars are there too. Arianism is also covered as well as the evangelization to the colonies around the world. This is all about the impact of the Church on non-believers and the stories surrounding those encounters. I do not understand what else we can say about the church's impact on non-believers. NancyHeise (talk) 21:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

My point has been that the article focuses too much on persecutions and too little on the other things the RCC has done that have impacted large chunks of the world (like the calendar). I don't have the time or energy to do the research necessary for this one, but I think there could be more said about how the Church influenced politics and law. This, and the church's effect on art, is touched on a bit throughout the history section but could be fleshed out or worded better to better reflect the impact. I don't think the history section has quite achieved the balance it needs to give a total picture of the church (not NPOV, necessarily, but the proper inclusion/exclusion of material to give a good look at what the church actually accomplished). I'd love to see a lot more eyes looking at this article critically and helping Nancy with research, I just don't know where to find them. Karanacs (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Nancy, I think the impact on non-catholics being talked about is things like contributions to law, art, science and architecture. I think that might be a good (short) section, but it would need quite a bit of research on the refs. etc. As far as the "origins and mission" section goes, it does jar, but the alternatives are not very workable. If we put origins in with History then information on the Church's origin gets buried in the middle of the article, where it will be hard to find, and this is important information that does need to be near the Top. If we move History to the top to merge with Origins, that will make the article far too top-heavy on history, with other important matters that many people will want to access, in the bottom half of the article. I don't really see a way around that problem except to have the two sections. Xandar (talk) 15:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

The Origins section leads into Mission which leads into Beliefs. This is a logical progression of ideas that flow into each other well. I do not agree that this jars at all with anything. History section is appropriately at the end of the article after the "meat" of what the church "is" has been discussed in the preceeding sections. When I looked at the history section again, discussions of persecutions of Catholics are appropriately discussed in the Reformation area where its all about the wars that came about as a result of the Reformation. I do not agree that any changes need to be made to the article in History. It has been extensively reviewed may many top people at Wikipedia ad nauseum. It is referenced to the top sources Wikipedia requires. It contains wikilinks to appropriate daughter articles for the reader seeking more details, including art and architecture and law. If we attempt any fleshing out, we will immediately make the article too long to even be considered for FA. It is maxed right now. NancyHeise (talk) 02:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad my comments have sparked this much discussion. My major point is that a few daughter articles are going to have to be created before this article is going to even be able to be written as a FA. I think that you will find this is the only way to maintain balance/compromise as well as an acceptable length. I also did not mean to imply that it would be easy. Writing a FA about a big topic is much harder than writing one about a small topic. Monarchy of the United Kingdom is the best example that I can come up with for the moment, although this article has the benefit of being contained in a smaller temporal period. Savidan 18:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Having daughter articles is not an FA requirement, even though this article has many. What other daughter articles do you suggest creating? Maybe we'll consider those for the next project. NancyHeise (talk) 00:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

A little compromise on "Roman" Catholic?

I know this isn't anywhere near at the top of the urgency for this article, and I know it's been discussed numerous times, but Megmerrigan's edits have me thinking (un unhealthy habit!). Since the church does officially just call itself "Catholic Church", is there a way we could (1) keep the article title and intro the way it is, but (2) replace most of the other instances of the name "Roman Catholic" with just "Catholic" throughout the article? The way we have it, "Roman Catholic" is mentioned numerous times throughout—not just in the beginning. It feels almost as clunky as repeating the phrase "American Civil War" over and over again in its article, even after it's established that we know which civil war is being referred to. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It is not supposed to be Roman Catholic throughout the article, someone went through and did this without coming to the talk page first. A consensus supports just using "Catholic Church" or "Church" where appropriate throughout the article and I invite anyone to make these changes to help get the article ready for FAC. NancyHeise (talk) 01:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you indicate where this consensus is documented? I haven't been active on this talk page in almost two years but I remember that there was not enough of a consensus to support "Catholic" over "Roman Catholic". --Richard (talk) 02:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please read the past two FAC's and this talk page for all discussion on the topic. Also, please note that in most instances on the page we were asked by a top FAC reviewer to use the word "Church" capitalized when referring to the Roman Catholic Church. We do not spell out the entire name of the church throughout the article. NancyHeise (talk) 20:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Roman Catholic

To address the concerns of User:Megmerrigan:

The contention that 'Roman Catholic' is a pejorative term employed solely by Protestants has been examined here several times, and found to be false - I'll dig out some of the past debates. In fact, the church itself seems to find the term inoffensive, and uses it when it is useful to avoid ambiguity (for example, in ecumenical contexts), or when it is significant to note the church's Roman (that is, in communion with the Bishop of Rome) nature. Some examples:

"Titular Churches of the new Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church", from last November.
The joint international commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
The Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission.
The encyclical Humani Generis, in which section 27 begins "Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing."

(all links to the Vatican website). Elsewhere, my local diocese, Hexham and Newcastle, heads its website with "Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle". I don't think that the church itself views the term as an offensive one.

The history of the term is a complex one. The Oxford English Dictionary has:

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.

A description which the Catholic Encyclopedia says 'is in substance correct', though argues about some details.

So, what term should be used on Wikipedia? Wikipedia has a number of concerns. One is lack of ambiguity - people should be able to unambiguously find the article they are looking for, and know what it is when they have found it. Catholic Church is undoubtedly the most common name for the church this article concerns; on the other hand, the term is also used by other bodies. Another is neutrality; if there are competing claims on an issue, Wikipedia is bound to report all significant claims, but side with none.

The position that has generally been taken on this page is that using the name "Catholic Church" does not necessarily constitute a claim to solely constitute the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church - if it was, Wikipedia should not use it, as that would be a non-neutral usage. However, the term can be an ambiguous one: many other bodies outside the church to which this article refers use the terms "Catholic" and "Catholic Church" - most obviously in the Nicene Creed, in referring to themselves as part of "one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church", but sometimes more specifically - I think that many in the Roman Catholic Church may be surprised to find out that Affirming Catholicism and the Society of Catholic Priests are in fact Anglican organisations. In articles such as Catholic and Evangelical Catholic, it would be hopelessly confusing to refer to the church headed by the Pope as the "Catholic Church", as well as giving a biased impression by implying the incorrectness of some views (for example, by referring to "people who views themselves as Catholics but are not part of the Catholic Church").

It is the case, though, that "Catholic Church" is the most common name of the body to which this page refers, and also that that term most often (but not always) refers to this body. Wikipedia needs to make it easy for people looking for information on this church to find it, but also for people looking for information on other meanings of the term to find that, without implying that either usage is correct and the others incorrect.

The compromise that Wikipedia has largely come to is that 'Roman Catholic' should be used first, in situations where there might be a chance of ambiguity, but that 'Catholic' can then be used freely as long as ambiguity is not caused. Similarly, this article is located at Roman Catholic Church, as the least ambiguous term, but Catholic Church is a redirect to it with a note at the top of the page taking users to Catholic Church (disambiguation) if this is not what they were looking for.

I hope you'll be able to come here and debate your perspective on the matter; but I hope I've shown that Roman Catholic Church is not an offensive term, and is not viewed by the Church as such; in previous debates, I think there have been about as many Catholic as non-Catholic voices in favour of the current situation. TSP (talk) 17:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Most of the (albeit small) offense goes to non-Latin Rite Catholics. Byzantine Rite Catholics, for example, are in communion with Rome but do not appreciate being called "Roman Catholic". That being said, I'm not suggesting renaming the article. You said: "The compromise that Wikipedia has largely come to is that 'Roman Catholic' should be used first, in situations where there might be a chance of ambiguity, but that 'Catholic' can then be used freely as long as ambiguity is not caused." If you Control-F search this article, "Roman Catholic Church" appears over and over again, even after the introduction. What about shortening these later appearances to "Catholic Church", since the introduction already establishes which church is being talked about? -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
- There used to be a section about the different meanings of "Roman Catholic Church". Byzantine Catholics often use the term to refer to the part of the church which uses the Roman rite. I'm not saying this needs to be in this article, but it could be said somewhere. Gimmetrow 20:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

- - The Terminology section was always a tortuous and confusing section, though, so we're probably best without it.
  - It is certainly true that some people hold "Roman Catholic" to apply only to the Latin Rite; but it should be recognised that this isn't the meaning with which the Church uses it - I'm reasonably confident that when the Joint international commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church convened, including on the Roman Catholic side bishops from Greece, Lebanon and Romania, it didn't mean to speak only for the Latin Rite; and that when Pope Pius XII wrote 'If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church - we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Christ"', he did not mean by using the word 'Roman' that Eastern Catholics were not part of the body of Christ.
  - I don't see any problem with changing 'Roman Catholic Church' to 'Catholic Church' in most of those cases. Speaking for myself, I tend to find uses of derivative terms - "Catholicism", "Catholic" - a little more likely to be ambiguous than those of the full term "Catholic Church" - for example, if someone referred to "the Catholic Church", I'd be pretty sure what they meant; if they said "Catholic faith", I might have to ask - so there might possibly be a case for keeping "Roman" in some of these instances. Probably no big deal, though. It might also be worth keeping 'Roman' in those instances specifically comparing the church to other churches who regard themselves as Catholic - "The beliefs of other Christian denominations differ from those of Roman Catholics in varying degrees", for example, and "In the 11th century, the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church split". I don't feel incredibly strongly about any of these, though. TSP (talk) 21:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
    - The Terminology section would make a reasonable part of a separate article on the name(s) the church goes by. Gimmetrow 21:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

This subject is one that will keep on coming up, because some Catholics DO find the "Roman" Catholic designation offensive. One reason for this is that the term was invented by protestants - in part as a form of denial that the Catholic Church was precisely that. It is also seen as an attempt to make the Church sound foreign and therefore non-British or American. In the UK in the 19th century, for example, the government refused to deal with the Church unless it accepted the title "Roman Catholic" in official agreements. The term Roman Catholic has now become very common in many quarters, and has the advantage of precision. I personally would prefer the name Catholic Church to be used, but I can see the benefit of the compromise where the Roman prefix is used for the article title, with the redirect from Catholic Church, the explanation that Catholic Church is the official name, and the use of Catholic Church in the majority of in-text references. However the argument that "Catholic Church" is used as a name by other churches doesn't stand up. The Orthodox don't use it to designate themselves, nor do Anglicans, Copts or any other group. Xandar (talk) 00:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Not in the same sense - and, you're probably right, not as a name as such; but they (Anglicans, at least) do affirm that there is such a body as the Catholic Church (the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Nicene Creed, or the Holy Catholic Church of the Apostles'), and that they are members of it (for example, in the Chicago quadrilateral, adopted by the ECUSA House of Bishops in 1886 - "That we believe that all who have been duly baptized with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, are members of the Holy Catholic Church"; or in the intercessions in the Church of England's Common Worship - "We pray for the good estate of the catholic Church"); but it's true that this isn't used as an identifying name in the same way.

Ambiguity is more of an issue, as I say, with terms like "Catholic" and "Catholicism" - Anglicans, certainly, affirm that they are Catholic, and use the term freely to describe themselves and their church. There are instances of the full phrase, though - Michael Ramsey, later Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a book called "The Gospel and the Catholic Church", which was primarily about the Anglican, not the Roman Catholic, church.

As has been examined on this page on various occasions, the possibility for ambiguity depends a great deal on context. If someone says, "I am employed by the Catholic Church", there's really only one reasonable interpretation. If they say, "I adhere to the Catholic faith", there are several things they might mean. TSP (talk) 00:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I dont mind the name of the article calling itself Roman Catholic Church but I would insist that the redirect for Catholic Church come to this page since English speaking countries have only one church they identify as the Catholic Church. No Anglican is going to type in Catholic Church when seeking an article on the Anglican church, that is just preposterous. We are trying to help users find what they are looking for and it is not a theological statement on the part of Wikipedia to reasonably try to assist in that effort. NancyHeise (talk) 01:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on above comments, I've replaced most instances of "Roman Catholic" with "Catholic" in the article. Exceptions: (1) "In the 11th century, the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church split, largely over disagreements regarding Papal primacy" - I changed Roman Catholic to "Western" here for parallelism with "Eastern". My only concern is that it might not be established that Western and Catholic are the same, so see what you think. (2) "Elsewhere, Christianity was introduced to Japan by Francis Xavier, and by the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism." - I kept this as it was, since discussion here shows that at least some people feel "Catholicism" is more obscure a term. Again, see if I misstepped anywhere. -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for making the changes. Regarding the "Western" reference, we had that before and I thought it was OK because it had "(Roman Catholic)" right after the word "Western". I'm not sure why it got changed but I think we should put back the (Roman Catholic) if we are going to say "Western" so people who dont know much about the Church arent confused. NancyHeise (talk) 21:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

As a member of the Latin rite and Eastern rite of the Catholic Church, Roman is not insulting, I don't know what fool came up with the idea but it is with the word "Latin" one of the ways to distinguish between different Churches in communion, for example its wrong to call someone a Roman Catholic if they follow the Eastern Syriac rite and ambiguous to call them Catholic, thats why we have words like "Roman" and "Chaldean" and "Byzantine" etc. Just my two cents, I know this has probably been repeated up there somewhere Tourskin (talk) 05:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

-This seems to be a contentious point for some reason, and I assume that this has been hashed out over months. That being said, the wording that exists now remains flat-out incorrect and misleading. It is the Catholic Church which is composed of 23 "particular churches" of which only one is the Roman/Latin rite. The current naming states that the Roman/Latin rite contains the 22 eastern rites--which is incorrect. When I came here, I expected this article to deal exclusively with the Roman/Latin rite based on the title--it does not. This is a subtlety which may seem trivial to the uninformed, but it stands out like a sore thumb to experts within the topic. The whole point of an encyclopedia article is for those with extensive knowledge of a subject to write a summary of it so that the uninformed may learn/research correct information about it. The title and article name should be changed to "Catholic Church" and the phrase "Roman Catholic Church" should redirect here. Lwnf360 (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with renaming the article Catholic Church (which I would probably prefer), is that it then produces enormous controversy with members of dozens of other churches saying "This is unfair and POV. We're catholic too." There is a push-pull either way on this issue. Whatever is done with it someone will be very unhappy. We've attempted a compromise, using the "popular" name first, and then the official. Xandar (talk) 21:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Lwnf360's point is really on target. Wikipedia is going to look really stupid having an article that is incorrect in its title. I dont want the page to be a laughingstock after all this work just because we got the title wrong. I suggest that we submit for FAC and bring the point up to the FAC team. Most editors are OK with either name knowing that the redirects will bring people to the right page anyway but the FAC people may prefer to have the name be Catholic instead of Roman Catholic if that is technically more correct. Since it is an issue that can be misunderstood as a POV issue, why dont we let the consensus of FAC reviewers decide? NancyHeise (talk) 00:22, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The point has been brought up before, but the status quo (article at RCC, redirect from CC, both names used in lead) is the "consensus" in that most people half-agree with it. The last time someone tried to change it there was 170k of discussion over two months, and no change. Words before "Catholic Church" refer to a rite in most cases: Syriac Catholic Church, Greek Catholic Church. But "Roman Catholic Church" also gets used to describe the whole church too. We have, over the years, generated a lot of content about the phrase "Roman Catholic Church" and I think a reasonable article could be made on the phrase alone and linked from here. Gimmetrow 00:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with LwnF360 - the "official" name of the subject institution is "Catholic Church" and therefore, it would be incorrect to use the "popular" name as the article's heading. I have been following this "naming controversy" for over a year now, and have literally wracked my brain trying to come up with a single example of any other institution or organization that has its popular name heading its article in ANY encyclopedia. Can anyone come up with another example? I most especially believe that basically denying an organization or institution its "official" name in the article heading in order to appease people who want to call their organization by that same name is absolutely the worst reason one can list for doing so. If 500 little "Microsoft" companies spring up around the world, headed by 500 completely different CEO's, I think that Bill Gates would have a problem (justifiably), if Wikipedia listed the name of his Microsoft under a different name first. Then, he would probably sue them for improper use of his company's name. The Catholic Church, of course, isn't going to sue anyone for using the name "Catholic Church," or calling themselves "Catholic," but that is no reason to list an "unofficial" or "popular" name in the article heading. The purpose of an encyclopedia article is to give the FACTS about the subject - beginning with the subject's CORRECT name in the article heading. 69.221.168.99 (talk) 05:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

We have a very notable, very reliable (one of the highest held dictionaries), the OED, stating 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. Therefore, we have a verifiable source that says that "Roman Catholic" is the official designation. On the other hand, the citation of teh Catechism of the Catholic Church does not say anything about an "official title". I guess a little bit of original research is being used. Since the title of the document is "Catechism of the Catholic Church" instead of "Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church", we can infer that the latter is more official. However, I personally cannot verify from the cited document that "Catholic Church" is the official title, while I can verify that "Roman Catholic" IS from the OED citation. And even if we do allow a bit of original research in the Catechism citation, this turns into a NPOV issue. Since we have two conflicting sources, NPOV says that we cannot take sides, and that instead we present both POVs. There is no reason, what so ever, to ignore the claims of the OED, because it is one of the most definitive and respected reference sources when it comes to the English language. Accordingly, as of now, it is a clear violation of NPOV to state that "Catholic Church" is the "official title", so again, I am reverting back to the longstanding phrasing, and reworking the phrasing. Please do not re-insert NPOV violations and original research into the article (especially during FAC).-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I can't say I agree with your edit. The OED and other sources are recognized when we place "Roman Catholic" in such high prominence. On the other hand, all we need is verification that the catechism is an official Church document, or that most/all the official Church documents use "Catholic Church". Then it's not original research to say that the name all official documents use is the official name. "Often referred to as" sounds almost dismissive; when it is the name the Church uses in all official regards. -BaronGrackle (talk) 14:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I made an edit changing "often referred to as" to "self-identified as". Thoughts? Concerns? -BaronGrackle (talk) 16:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem I have with using the OED in this case is that it is, like the term "Roman Catholic Church," principally confined to the English language. The term "Roman Catholic CHurch" is seen virtually nowhere else in the world except English speaking countries. Another problem I have is that regardless of what the OED states, the term "Roman Catholic" exists nowhere in any official document of the Catholic Church - encyclicals, council documents, catechisms, etc. Why give an entity a name other than the one it uses itself? Polycarp7 (talk) 21:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually the first point is completely untrue - look at the titles of the French, German, Polish, Sicilian, Catalan, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Czech etc etc articles. Johnbod (talk) 03:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I also can't see how calling this entity by a name OTHER THAN Polycarp7 (talk) 21:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC) the name it uses for itself, in ALL of its official documents, is "NPOV." In fact, it seems much more POV to me to insist upon using a name other than that which the entity itself uses. Did we consult the OED to determine the name of any other institution, and use the OED's terminology rather than the one in official usage by that entity? The fact that there exist groups and individuals who want to use the name "Catholic" to refer to their own churches is not a problem that Wikipedia can solve, NOR is it Wikipedia's responsibility to solve this. It is Wikipedia's responsibility simply to give the CORRECT name of the entity in its article heading - otherwise, it is misleading. Polycarp7 (talk) 21:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there some sort of compromise we could reach that wouldn't directly say "officially"? Something like "The Roman Catholic Church or simply the Catholic Church"? The problem is, wikipedia has two very important principles in play here: neutral point of view and verifiability. We have a verifiable source that says "Roman Catholic" is the legal and official designation. There is no reason to ignore that. None. I always have to assume that the scholars at Oxford know more than some redlinked, anonymous person on the internet. And that is the way it should be. Everyone knows that anyone can edit wikipedia. For there to be any trust and validity to wikipedia, everything has to be verifiable. We have to rely on sources more than the opinions of anonymous people on the internet. ALWAYS. By saying that one title is official, without a source explicitly saying that, in light of another source that gives another title, you are spitting on the credibility of wikipedia. Just because you believe that one title is used more in Church documents does not mean that we can cite your personal opinion as a reliable source here on wikipedia. I apologize for my tone, but this is something that seems so very obvious to me, that I cannot comprehend the resistance. Some person on the internet knows more than the scholars at Oxford? And you wonder why people question wikipedia's reliability. -Andrew c ^[talk] 23:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

(part copied from FAC) Andrew, if you read the OED entry (text unchanged since the first edition of 1914), it is pretty clear it is referring to the "legal and official name" as used by the British authorities. In any case, like any institution, the Catholic Church has the right to decide its own name, regardless of what the OED has to say on the matter. The home page of the Catholic Church in England and Wales leaves little doubt in the matter: [1]. Johnbod (talk) 00:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you making an argument that the webpage can be used as a reliable source to verify the claim regarding "official"? I hate to pick nits, but we don't have any source that states "The official name is X" (well we do have a source that states that, but it doesn't adhere to your POV". We can gather that Catholic Church is frequently used (and it could be even the majority used term in internal documents), but without a better citation, this "official" claim simply isn't verifiable. You all should know better. Let's work on a wording that we can all agree upon, or let's find a source. -Andrew c ^[talk] 03:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought this used to say "commonly known as" or something like that. Is that a problem? Gimmetrow 03:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I think the website can and should be used as an RS here. Why not? Never mind "majority", find one official Church publication that says differently. This isn't difficult; the church must have an official name, and like any institution has the right to decide this for itself. When exactly did "Roman Catholic Church" become the official name, according to you? Johnbod (talk) 03:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that we say "The Roman Catholic Church is the official name" in the article. The burden of proof is not on me. The burden of proof is one those wanting to make a claim regarding "official". I agree with Gimmetrow "commonly known as" is fine with me. -Andrew c ^[talk] 04:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That is not accurate, and classic weasel words. There must be an official name. What do you think it is? Johnbod (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Let's just call the article "Recusants", since we're apparently re-fighting the reformation here. Gimmetrow 04:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I have added a new reference to support "officially known as the Catholic Church". We have the self published source and now a third party reliable source. There should be no more argument over this issue. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 04:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"The burden of proof is one those wanting to make a claim regarding "official". " With all due respect, Andrew, it DOES seem as though you are arguing that since the OED states the "legal and official designation" of the entity under discussion is RCC, then the article heading should be "Roman Catholic Church." Johnbod replied, and this is clear from the context, that the OED is referring to the use BY BRITISH AUTHORITIES. The Catholic Encyclopedia fleshes out the OED's use of the term as stemming from the persecution of the Catholic Church in England and America during the 16th and 17th Centuries, and insists that the Church's name is "Catholic Church," and NOT "Roman Catholic Church." FOr my part, I think the burden of proof is on you to explain why article heading is not "Catholic CHurch, popularly known as "Roman Catholic CHurch," instead of the other way around. Is the OED somehow a more authoritative source for the name of this world-wide institution than the Catholic Encyclopedia? Polycarp7 (talk) 05:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Or, for that matter, why is the OED a more authoritative source than virtually ALL of the official documents of the Catholic Church? If the Church refers to itself as "Catholic Church" in 99.99% of it's official documents, (which are EASILY accessed on the Internet - more easily accessed than the OED), then why is the name "Catholic Church" not the heading of the article?Polycarp7 (talk) 05:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

We dont need to argue this anymore, we have referenced "officially known as the Catholic Church" to two sources, one self published and the other to a third party reliable source. There should be no more discussion on this. 70.149.86.73 (talk) 05:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me, but I was not discussing "commonly known as," or "officially known as." I was asking why, especially now, since you concede that the entity is "officially known as" the "Catholic Church," the article is not entitled "Catholic CHurch"?

LOL, the OED states "...it was generally adopted as a non-controversial term..." - after over 2 years of "non-controversy" over the names RCC vs CC here on Wikipedia, it would seem the OED is innacurate!!Polycarp7 (talk) 05:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

My main concern is that readers wanting to find info about the Catholic Church will find it and that the info will be correct. If the name of the article is a popular name for the church but then specifies within the article that the official name is "Catholic Church", then it is OK with me. I dont think we should hold up the FAC because of an issue that has already been hashed out before and consensus was reached to address it in the present manner. For that reason, I would like to leave the article as is and not change it because then we not only wont have an FA, we will have the same old argument over again that we already reached consensus on before. I would like to move forward, not back. NancyHeise (talk) 05:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC) NancyHeise (talk) 05:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Nancy, you've done a massive and excellent amount of work on this article, and I can't hold a candle to you in that respect, but I have to respectfully disagree with your point. That consensus was reached prior to this latest agreement that the "official" name for this entity is "Catholic Church." In light of this, I think the name should reflect this - "Catholic Church, sometimes knows as Roman Catholic Church," rather than the way it is now. This is simply stating an objective fact - the name of the entity should head the article. Any insistence that RCC should be the heading is, in my opinion, POV. Polycarp7 (talk) 05:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

POV cuts both ways. At some point stability needs consideration. The fact is that having the article at "Catholic Church" would be unstable. The Church does use "Roman Catholic Church" on some occasions, usually when interacting with non-Catholic churches, such as TSP's third link. (TSP's first link is not really on point because cardinals are the court of the Roman patriarch, and presumably Humani Generis has "ecclesia catholica romana"). Gimmetrow 07:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Church uses Roman Catholic Church to talk about the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. When being inclusive of the whole church, including the Eastern Rites, The Church doesn't use the Roman Catholic Church, because that would be inaccurate. 157.242.211.58 (talk) 21:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I apologize, but I've been sick the last few days, and I don't want to argue further with people who ignore basic wikipedia policies in light of their own personal beliefs. I appreciate Nancy finding a source and I appreciate Gimmetrow trying to remain a neutral party and offer compromises. The source Nancy found concerns me because it doesn't use the word "official" and it clearly isn't an official church document, but I'll let my concerns go because I am not going to argue this further (I'm convinced personally that CC is more commonly used than RCC internally for the church, but WP:V is still bugging me. let's just hope no one else is such a stickler for accuracy as me). I'll ask a rhetorical question, but I do not intent to follow up. What is the official language of the RCC?-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Latin obviously - is that a serious question? Johnbod (talk) 01:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Gimmetrow and Nancy are both right - the modifier "Roman" will have to be applied to the name of the Catholic Church in the article's heading. This is PRECISELY because, as Andrew c states, "basic Wikipedia policies" are being ignored - there will always be those who refuse to "allow" the Catholic Church to call herself by the name she gives herself, which is the direct cause of the instability to the article. I have not found a policy listing on Wikipedia stating that titles of articles must be in the "least unstable" form, yet despite "basic Wikipedia policy," that is the form the title of this article will take. With regard to "Humani Generis," the sentence which TSP quoted refers readers to section 12 of the encyclical "MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI," which is quoting directly a Vatican Council I document, Session 3, Ch 1 of the "Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith." That quote states: "The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God." I believe it has already been discussed, ad nauseaum, why the Catholic Church sometimes uses "Roman" - and in this particular case, its use, under a heading of "Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith" can is obviously NOT a reference to the Church's name. Polycarp7 (talk) 17:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This has come up on other pages as well. Check out CC vs RCC debate from a while back. It seems to me that he argues from WP policies. I also happen to agree with him. The.helping.people.tick (talk) 02:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, too. The CC vs RCC debate used WP policies, not POV - I agree with him, too. I am convinced that it is not because of WP policy that the name of the article is RCC instead of CC. Polycarp7 (talk) 03:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC) Anyone coming across the article as it is now, "Roman Catholic Church, officially known as Catholic CHurch," HAS to ask themselves: "Well, why doesn't it just say Catholic Church?" That's like heading an article "America, officially known as The Unites States of America." Polycarp7 (talk) 03:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I am happy with the article title, and the opening reflecting that. It is I think the most commonly used term in English, or whatever the magic words are. Johnbod (talk) 01:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is a clash of principals here. Certainly an organization should be allowed to name itself, but as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia needs to be sure it is providing the most complete and unbiased information. Many people see the Roman Catholic Church as the proper name and descriptor for that branch of Christianity headquartered at the Vatican and lead currently by Benedict XVI. However, the church itself doesn’t use that descriptor. Notice that the most current catechism for that church is not the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church but rather the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Code of Canon Law also lists the church as simply the Catholic Church. This rises from the fact that the Catholic Church is in fact made up of several rites, each of which calls itself Catholic (Byzantine Catholic, Melkite Catholic etc.) All of these rites subsist within the larger term Catholic Church. To call it the Roman Catholic Church is to marginalize these important Churches. This is, IMHO, why the Catholic Church hardly ever uses the descriptor “Roman” when referring to itself. That said, there are groups who wish to lay claim to the title “Catholic” who don’t care what the Bishop of Rome thinks about anything. Rather they have a right to the title or not is not, again IMHO, Wikipedia’s place to determine. That they call themselves Catholic should be enough for them to be listed here as such. However, I don’t think anyone could deny that when the vast majority of people search for “Catholic Church” on Wikipedia or anywhere else, they are looking for the afore mentioned Vatican City based church and not say, the Palmyra Catholic Church. I think the title of the article should list this Church by its official name “The Catholic Church” with a disambiguation page to refer readers to other Catholic Churches. Further, searches for “Roman Catholic Church” should be redirected here.--Kjrjr (talk) 22:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree with your proposal Kjrjr. If this church is officially known as the Catholic Church then the push to push to keep it at Roman Catholic Church is lost. --WikiCats (talk) 22:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I have found a few additional examples where a group or entity is known by one name by most people but in fact has a different official name. In each case the official name is the title name used in the Wikipedia article.Quakers redirects to Religious Society of Friends, Mormon Church redirects to Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Jesuits redirects to Society of Jesus and to point out a couple of secular examples Ole Miss redirects to University of Mississippi and Oscars redirects to Academy Awards. In each case the first name is a more common name which redirects to an official one. Just thought this was interesting.--Kjrjr (talk) 03:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What this article has that none of those do is other claimants to the name (apart from the Mormon example, in which Mormon Church could refer to multiple entities, while Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could only refer to one). I don't primarily mean tiny bodies like the Palmarians, more the abstract concept of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which (more or less) all Christians consider themselves to belong to, and around half do not consider the Roman Catholic Church to solely represent. Compare Budweiser - surely the makers of the world's biggest-selling beer should be able to decide what it's name is? But nevertheless, the world's biggest-selling beer is relegated to Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch), even though this form of the name is never used by the company itself, because there is another body (Budějovický Budvar) which disputes Anheuser-Busch's use of the term 'Budweiser'.

Wikipedia's naming conventions don't actually say to give priority to the official name, or to allow bodies to name themselves. The summary is "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number 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' is probably the most recognisable term (though this varies between, for example, Britain and the US); but the argument has generally been that 'Roman Catholic Church' provides a lower ambiguity. TSP (talk) 10:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I would challlenge that "Roman Catholic" provides lower ambiguity infact, I would say a majority of English speakers would use the term Catholic Church to refer to the subject at hand much more often than say the Anglican Communion or the Old Catholic Church. I googled Catholic Church (One of the things wikipedia says to do in such a case) and had to go through several pages before I came up with a hit that didn't refer the the church in question. When there was a site referencing another organization, it always used a modifier to the word Catholic: Anglo-Catholic, Old Catholic, Reformed Catholic etc. I also noticed that most of the sites which used Roman Catholic were not directly affiliated and often were critical. (please note I don't wish to reignite the "Roman Catholic" is pejorative argument here. I don't think most people see it as such) If the strongest argument those opposed to using the church's self identified name is that it is ambiguous, I think that the change should be made back to Catholic Church soon. Even now typing Catholic Church into Wikipedia directs one directly to this article with a disambiguation page option if this is not what one wants. Already it seems this community has decided that "Catholic Church" most readily refers to the Vatican based church over other claimants. Ambiguity doesn't seem to be a problem so why not use the organizations self identified, widely used name as the primary title of the article?--Kjrjr (talk) 15:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia current assertion that the Church is officially known as the Catholic Church is insufficiently supported and is too vague:

I continue to have concerns about the assertion in the opening sentence that the Church is "officially known as the Catholic Church". The scholarly evidence for this seems little and contradictory. As Nancy H will confirm, she and I have corresponded at length on this matter. I think Nancy will agree that it is fair to say that she and I have now reached deadlock.

The problem lies not with the name per se, but with the claimed use of the adverb officially and with the use of the passive voice, which of course fails to specify the subject. The immediate response to such an uncompromising and unqualified claim made in the passive voice must be: officially known by whom, where and when - and who says so? Specifically, is the claim being made here that the Church officially calls herself the Catholic Church? Or is the claim here that other, unspecified bodies officially refer to the Church as the Catholic Church - if so, which bodies? The Wikipedia entry currently fails to make this clear.

Few, if any I think, would dispute that, in the English language, Catholic Church has been in widespread use for some time, both informally outside the Church and formally within the Church herself to refer to the Church. However, I can find no official publication on the Church's official website at www.vatican.va that states that the official name of the Church is the Catholic Church, or indeed, interestingly, that it has ever been.

Certainly, Catholic Church appears often on the Church's official website; but so does Universal Church, particularly in pages first written in more recent times; with a lower case ‘U’, universal Church is also used extensively; Latin Church and Holy Catholic Church are used at times; the most magnificent and, arguably, compelling name used is Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church. The name used most often is simply The Church, often with a qualifier such as "whole" or "entire". On the pages written in Latin (the traditional language of the Church, and still with Italian the official language of the Vatican State) Ecclesia Catholica and Ecclesia Universalis may be found. (I can provide a detailed list of links to all these pages at www.vatican.va if anyone wants to see them here.) To argue that all these terms are equivalent or insist that Universal means the same as Catholic misses the point, which is that it seems quite evident that the Church herself is happy to use a number of different appellations to refer to herself at different times and in different contexts and is unconcerned about her "official" name.

Of course, this is just my interpretation of the Church's publications on this matter. However, to comply with Wikipedia policy, an authoritative third party source is needed to support the current assertion that the Church is “officially known as the Catholic Church”.

Of the two sources cited, the first is not sufficiently authoritative for a major Wikipedia entry of this nature. The first source cited, an article entitled “How did the Catholic Church get her name” is a 1996 article by Kenneth D. Whitehead, first published by Our Sunday Visitor Inc in The Catholic Answer, republished online by the Global Catholic Network. Whitehead cites no sources in his article to support his assertions. His argument for the official name of the Church seems to rest largely on Whitehead’s interpretation of the outcome of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and the fact that the name of the Church’s catechism is of course the Catholic Catechism.

The second source cited is the page in English at www.vatican.va about the Catechism. Obviously, this refers to the Catholic Catechism: however, the assertion made in Wikipedia doesn’t follow from the indisputable fact that the Catechism is famously (and officially, indeed) known as the "Catholic Catechism".

Finally, as I pointed out at some length in my correspondence with Nancy, I can find no English speaking jurisdiction that uses the name “Catholic Church” officially to refer to the Church. For instance, the USA Supreme Court in its decision of Cummings v. Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 277 (1867), in its opening paragraphs twice refers to the Reverend Mr. Cummings, as "a priest of the Roman Catholic Church". Various of the Commonwealth of Australia's Acts of Parliament specifically use the name "The Roman Catholic Church".

The only English speaking jurisdiction I can find that has ever used anything other than “Roman Catholic Church” in recent times to refer to the Church was the Republic of Ireland whose Constitution until 1972 referred to the Church as, rather splendidly I would again maintain, The Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church.

My suggestion is that until an authoritative source can be found to support the assertion that the Church is "officially known as the Catholic Church", the assertion be modified to read: “widely known as the Catholic Church”. Colenso (talk) 15:01, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that "widely known" doesn't say all that is there. A closer phrase would be "referred to as the Catholic Church in most Vatican official documents, and widely known by that name". That is heavily supported. The current phrase "officially known as" is, I feel, synonymous enough to this phrase to still apply. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

G'day Baron. I take it then we agree that as a minimum, the article may state without fear of controversy that the name is widely used? If so, then I maintain that a question mark remains over the use of the adjective official (or the adverb officially) together with the ambiguity created by the use of the passive voice. The designation of official ought not be used lightly nor without full and proper justification (the Church certainly does not do so!): example, what is the official name of the country recently ravaged by a cyclone - Myanmar or Burma? According to the generals the answer is Myanmar; according to the Secretary General of the UN the answer is Burma.

I think some contributors are missing three important points here: firstly, it's evident the Church has no single official name for herself (according to my recent statistical analysis of the Vatican website, the name she most often uses, in English (note not Italian nor Latin, the two official languages of the Church), is not the Catholic Church but simply the Church). Secondly, parliaments and the highest courts in the English speaking world (with the possible continuing example of the Republic of Ireland) do not generally call her the Catholic Church: they refer to her officially as the Roman Catholic Church - in their official documents at least. Thirdly, surely someone can come up with better support for the claim about her official name than Whitehead's equivalent of one of Roosevelt's fire-side talks aimed at the true believers? This is akin to citing an article in the Watch Tower in a debate about the literal truth of Genesis! Colenso (talk) 18:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, Colenso. It is simply hilarious that you bring up the topic of Burma/Myanmar, for, if you look at either my contributions or the Talk:Burma/Myanmar subpage, you'll find that I'm one of the most vocal whiners involved in that argument (side note: both the country's government AND the Secretary General of the United Nations state that the official name is "Myanmar"; come to the page for more fun!) On this topic, though, I'd agree the passive voice can make it vague. The problem with "widely known as" or "often called", though, is that it makes Catholic Church sound like a mere colloquialism. I suggested "self-identified" earlier, but it wasn't that popular... probably because it doesn't present the fact that many others identify it by that name as well. What if we eliminate the passive voice? Even if the Church (there it is again, as per your point) doesn't say "the official name is the Catholic Church" in any document, it still refers to itself as "the Catholic Church" in most of its official documents. One way or another, there is something official about that. Does that make any sense? -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:23, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Really, Baron, you're a whiner about Burma/Myanmar are you? Me too!! I wonder if we take the same or opposite sides - I'll have to take a look... For what it's worth, I happen to agree with your suggestion about "self-identified" : I think that's a step on the right track because at least it has the courage to specify WHO calls or names or refers to the Church with such and such a name. I take your point here, but rather than official, which I think should be kept for statements like "The official name of Russia is the Russian Federation" (even though of course, the Russian constitution very early on its text announces that it intends to use "Russia" as a synonym throughout), how about proper, formal, conventional, well-established, preferred or some other adjective?. You get the picture - something that implies more than a mere colloquialism but is a step short of the full blown official.

However, I still think we need to break down the name issue further into, one, the name that the Church usually takes or prefers to take for herself or usually refers to herself. Two, the name that English speaking legal jurisdictions formally use when referring to the Church; three, the most important issue of trying very hard to meet Wikipedia's standards on POV and so cite only the best quality, third party, peer reviewed sources published in reputable academic journals or books for this Wikipedia entry. What do you think of my three separate subcategories, in principle? Colenso (talk) 19:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The joint international commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
The Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission.
The encyclical Humani Generis, in which section 27 begins "Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing."

The history of the term is a complex one. The Oxford English Dictionary has:

A description which the Catholic Encyclopedia says 'is in substance correct', though argues about some details.

Most of the (albeit small) offense goes to non-Latin Rite Catholics. Byzantine Rite Catholics, for example, are in communion with Rome but do not appreciate being called "Roman Catholic". That being said, I'm not suggesting renaming the article. You said: "The compromise that Wikipedia has largely come to is that 'Roman Catholic' should be used first, in situations where there might be a chance of ambiguity, but that 'Catholic' can then be used freely as long as ambiguity is not caused." If you Control-F search this article, "Roman Catholic Church" appears over and over again, even after the introduction. What about shortening these later appearances to "Catholic Church", since the introduction already establishes which church is being talked about? -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
- There used to be a section about the different meanings of "Roman Catholic Church". Byzantine Catholics often use the term to refer to the part of the church which uses the Roman rite. I'm not saying this needs to be in this article, but it could be said somewhere. Gimmetrow 20:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

- - The Terminology section was always a tortuous and confusing section, though, so we're probably best without it.
  - It is certainly true that some people hold "Roman Catholic" to apply only to the Latin Rite; but it should be recognised that this isn't the meaning with which the Church uses it - I'm reasonably confident that when the Joint international commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church convened, including on the Roman Catholic side bishops from Greece, Lebanon and Romania, it didn't mean to speak only for the Latin Rite; and that when Pope Pius XII wrote 'If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ - which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church - we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Christ"', he did not mean by using the word 'Roman' that Eastern Catholics were not part of the body of Christ.
  - I don't see any problem with changing 'Roman Catholic Church' to 'Catholic Church' in most of those cases. Speaking for myself, I tend to find uses of derivative terms - "Catholicism", "Catholic" - a little more likely to be ambiguous than those of the full term "Catholic Church" - for example, if someone referred to "the Catholic Church", I'd be pretty sure what they meant; if they said "Catholic faith", I might have to ask - so there might possibly be a case for keeping "Roman" in some of these instances. Probably no big deal, though. It might also be worth keeping 'Roman' in those instances specifically comparing the church to other churches who regard themselves as Catholic - "The beliefs of other Christian denominations differ from those of Roman Catholics in varying degrees", for example, and "In the 11th century, the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church split". I don't feel incredibly strongly about any of these, though. TSP (talk) 21:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
    - The Terminology section would make a reasonable part of a separate article on the name(s) the church goes by. Gimmetrow 21:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on above comments, I've replaced most instances of "Roman Catholic" with "Catholic" in the article. Exceptions: (1) "In the 11th century, the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church split, largely over disagreements regarding Papal primacy" - I changed Roman Catholic to "Western" here for parallelism with "Eastern". My only concern is that it might not be established that Western and Catholic are the same, so see what you think. (2) "Elsewhere, Christianity was introduced to Japan by Francis Xavier, and by the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism." - I kept this as it was, since discussion here shows that at least some people feel "Catholicism" is more obscure a term. Again, see if I misstepped anywhere. -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I can't say I agree with your edit. The OED and other sources are recognized when we place "Roman Catholic" in such high prominence. On the other hand, all we need is verification that the catechism is an official Church document, or that most/all the official Church documents use "Catholic Church". Then it's not original research to say that the name all official documents use is the official name. "Often referred to as" sounds almost dismissive; when it is the name the Church uses in all official regards. -BaronGrackle (talk) 14:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I made an edit changing "often referred to as" to "self-identified as". Thoughts? Concerns? -BaronGrackle (talk) 16:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought this used to say "commonly known as" or something like that. Is that a problem? Gimmetrow 03:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I think the website can and should be used as an RS here. Why not? Never mind "majority", find one official Church publication that says differently. This isn't difficult; the church must have an official name, and like any institution has the right to decide this for itself. When exactly did "Roman Catholic Church" become the official name, according to you? Johnbod (talk) 03:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That is not accurate, and classic weasel words. There must be an official name. What do you think it is? Johnbod (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Let's just call the article "Recusants", since we're apparently re-fighting the reformation here. Gimmetrow 04:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Latin obviously - is that a serious question? Johnbod (talk) 01:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia current assertion that the Church is officially known as the Catholic Church is insufficiently supported and is too vague:

However, I still think we need to break down the name issue further into, one, the name that the Church usually takes or prefers to take for herself or usually refers to herself. Two, the name that English speaking legal jurisdictions formally use when referring to the Church; three, the most important issue of trying very hard to meet Wikipedia's highest level of quality and cite only the highest quality, third party, peer reviewed sources published in reputable academic journals or books for this Wikipedia entry. What do you think of my three separate subcategories, in principle? Colenso (talk) 19:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)Colenso (talk) 19:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I am at a loss to determine what would be neccesary for you to accept that this church officially refers to itself as the "Catholic Church" rather than the "Roman Catholic Church" short of a exact statement from Benedict XVI that it is so. A trip to Vatican.va [3], the church's official website will give you access to two foundational documents: The Catechism of the Catholic Church and The Code of Canon Law. These documents represent a deposit of what this church believes and how it governs itself. They are normative and as official as any document can get. What's more, they are available in several languages and in every case the church references itself only as "The Catholic Church" regardless of what language is used. That the descriptor Roman is used by some Governments does not change the fact that the church in question does not use it. Catholic Church is not ambiguous it is the name that most people recognize as the subject of this article.--Kjrjr (talk) 18:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I assume your comment is directed at me Kjrjr. Well, first off, if you look carefully at my comments so far you will see that I have never asserted that there is anything ambiguous about the phrase Catholic Church. Secondly, you will see that I do however state that the assertion officially known as the Catholic Church is ambiguous because, by using the passive voice, the statement fails to make it clear who "officially knows the Church as the Catholic Church". Thirdly, you will see from my earlier comments that I have spent some time at www.vatican.va in order to try and find a better source than Whitehead. As I have already indicated, I have analysed the website extensively using the Vatican site's own search engine for concordances, words and terms. I particularly concentrated on the Canons. It's simply not true that the Church refers to herself only as the Catholic Church in the Canons. Only one example of many is needed here to contradict this general assertion: Canon 349. I suggest you go look for yourself.Colenso (talk) 19:56, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Though I personally prefer the current title; when the title is stated I know immediately which church is being discussed; however, when Catholic Church is used it gives me pause and I first seek to understand who is speaking and what is their context. However, I believe the overriding title should be what the Catholic Church calls herself; what is the preferred terminology. Others who are not Catholic and our preferences, understanding or lack-thereof is secondary.

We become better informed when we allow others to simply first express themselves and their beliefs rather than attempting to interpret them or their name for them. The church does have many names, but let the church tell us what she wishes to be called most often to communicate her identity to the world. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 21:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

First of all Colenso, I have not looked extensively at all of your comments because mine was not aimed only at you. Second of all any institution that has been around for a couple of millenium is going to gather a few names from within and without. The Catholic Church does have other adjectives which it uses for itself but none that it uses so often and so directly as the afore mentioned "Catholic Church". In the two documents I mention in my previous post, this is the title it uses for itself. You won't have to use a search engine to find the reference, Its the title of one and in the introduction of the other. I would suggest that the Catechism and the Code are particularly powerful arguments since they represent the church's attempt to define what it belives and how it governs itself. There are other adjectives to describe the institution but when the church references itself generically it doesn't call itself the "Roman Catholic Church" it uses "Catholic Church".--Kjrjr (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Something that seems to be overlooked is the fact that the 'Roman Catholic Church' is simply a subsection of the Catholic Church, which includes the Roman Catholic Church, but also 22 Eastern Catholic Churches who are not Roman Catholics. A Maronite Catholic, for example, is part of the Catholic Church, but is not part of the Roman Catholic Church. In order for the Roman Catholic Church page to be accurate, it needs to be talking only about the Latin rite, which this page is obviously not. Redirecting Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church is incorrect, and kind of like redirecting 'tissue' to 'Kleenex' just because that's what most people know it as. Ctn1981 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 06:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

That argument only holds true when the Church is discussing an internal issue, it is not true when people at large are discussing the Church. Wikipedia policy states that we can use the popularly known name as the page name with the official name clearly stated afterward. The reason, I am guessing, is that we are trying to help a reader find the page he is looking for. I like Wikipedia's policy on this because I think it is just common sense. I dont have any problem with the page being named "Roman Catholic Church" with the redirect from Catholic Church going here as well as the official title stated soon afterward. That is a very appropriate way to handle this. As far as your argument that Catholic Church is not the official name - you would have to have consensus before you could change that, we already have obtained consensus to keep present wording and we are backed up by ref's. I noted that you did not think our refs were good enough. Being published in two highly respected Catholic newspapers is a very good ref per WP:RS and the related guidelines that give us examples of good reliable sources. NancyHeise (talk) 00:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

FA holdup

I have not submitted this for FAC even though it is really very stable now because I am researching the priest education requirements. I have to get a book from US Conference of Catholic Bishops called Program of Priestly Formation 5th edition and check the references used for this important book. That will tell me where to find worldwide requirements for priestly formation per the academic dean at our local seminary. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 17:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems fairly stable atm, apart from regular vandalism. I like the idea of adding a short section of the Church's effect on Society, but the problem is gathering appropriate references for the text, it being such a wide topic, and the fact that the section is likely to grow and become controversial. A separate article on that topic that could be linked here might be a solution. What do people think? Xandar (talk) 23:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I see there is now an article that tackles this... Role of Catholic Church in Civilization Xandar (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that it is appropriate to have role of church in civilization in its own article that we wikilink in the main article. I'm sorry it is taking so long to get the info for the priest requirements, USCCB is sending it to me regular mail, I still dont have it yet but will address this section as soon as I do. NancyHeise (talk) 00:06, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Time to archive?

This talk page has grown enormously long, far longer than the last talk page when it was archived. I think it's probably time for another archive to be done. Xandar (talk) 21:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Im OK with archiving, I just dont know how to do it. I just added the new info for priest formation. Please tell me what you think. It contains some important wikilinks. Maybe we should add a wikiling for another bishop conference in addition to the USCCB? Take a look and let me know if you think it is better than before. I would like to read the whole article over again and put it up for FAC right away. NancyHeise (talk) 00:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm slightly concerned for accuracy. I'm not sure that a college degree is required in most of the world. It isn't in the UK or Ireland, but seminary is closer to six years, except for older candidates. Also, do we need four Vatican documents named? We could lose the non-wikilinked one certainly. And shouldn't it be bishops' conference rather than bishop's conference? (Sorry if this sounds too critical.) I don't think we need to link more bishops' conferences on the page. The best thing would be to have one link to a page that lists them all - if there is one. Xandar (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Final read through before FAC submission

In a previous FA that I worked on, I was told to only wikilink the first mention of something. That article, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami is much smaller than this article. In the interest of making this article more reader friendly, I am wondering if it is better to allow a couple of wikilinks for the same item. Specifically, in reading the Beliefs section, the sacraments are wikilinked at the top but are not wikilinked in the sections that actually discuss each individual sacrament. If someone comes to the page skipping the intros and just looks at the table of contents then going to the individual section that discusses a particular sacrament, they will not know it has its own wikipage. Does anyone have a problem with me wikilinking the sacraments again in the sections that deal specifically with that sacrament? NancyHeise (talk) 12:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I think a few additional links are justified in a long article. Xandar (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

serial comma

The use of serial commas is not consistent in this article. Also, death on the cross, Holy Matrimony and Templars all need to be disambiguated. Finally, in "What Catholics really believe, setting the record straight: 52 common misconceptions about the Catholic faith" the use of capitalization is wrong. Randomblue (talk) 22:43, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Randomblu. NancyHeise (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

FA

This article is nominated for Featured status. Peer reviews have been archived and the article has been stable for over a month. Please vote on the leave comments section of the FA tag at the top of this page. Thanks! NancyHeise (talk) 00:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully it makes it this time. But we have to resist the temptation to over-edit during the process. I think only really clear errors should be changed at this stage, or else the article will become a mess again. Xandar (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Church"

This has changed since the last FAC. Now there is mixed usage of capital and lower case. My reading of the MoS seems to clearly suggest than lowercase is the preferred style. See this section. It gives the example of a univeristy, and says using "the University" is incorrect. Anyway, I've given my opinion on how the article should be, but more importantly, I want to suggest that the editors choose one style and stick with it, instead of having some capitalized and some lower case. -Andrew c ^[talk] 02:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This has been discussed (ckeck the archives) before and it is not capitalized. This is sensitive for some people, but the to use church capitalized is more an emotional response because it is not correct usage in. I assume there will be situations where this rule does not apply, but it would be the exception. Cheers. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 05:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I would like to resist this change, not for emotional reasons, but that universities and churches are different in that there is no ideology supposing unity amongst universities like "The University" to refer to all universities like the Christian Church which unites all churches into "The Church". Every Church to some extent claims to be the one true Church, but above all the Roman Catholic one claims to be the One True Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. It is capitalized because it is "The Church". Even though Protestants disagree with this, Catholics believe it is "The Church". Tourskin (talk) 05:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly; that is what I meant by emotional. Those of us who believe it is The Church of Jesus Christ, the One Holy and Apostolic Church do so out of our beliefs and our deep emotional committment. However, understand that there are others who feel just as strongly. To take the position of captilizing church in this article places Wikipedia in an unacceptable position...that of taking a position. That is the meaning of POV or lack of neutrality. A better way to say this is it is not emotional so much as a position of faith. Wikipedia has no faith; it is beyond its ability and purpose. Does that make sense? --Storm Rider ^(talk) 08:31, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems reasonable in this article for Church (with a capital) to be synonomous with the article subject, rather than necessarily typing (Roman) Catholic Church every time, whereas church refers to buildings, and other churches (organisations in general), although eg Orthodox Churches might also be appropriate depending on context. Other words, such as university, don't have quite the same duality of meaning. (And just for the record, I'm an Anglican) David Underdown (talk) 09:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

According to the last FAC and Karanacs, we capitalize Church when it refers to the Roman Catholic Church (because this is the topic of our discussion, not because we are POV), we lower case it when talking about church in general, that is MOS. We went through and corrected this according to Karanacs comments. Please see last FAC and peer review. Thanks. Also, two anons have edited the page since I nominated it for FA. I cant see what their edits were since the page has changed so I dont know if it is vandalism. Looking back, almost all instances of anon edits to the page have been vandalism. I would like to ask if we can semi lock the page until FAC is over. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 11:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

That was not declaration from on high the last time this came up on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is also not in keeping with the Chicago Manual of Style (I wrote personally to them and got the response, because I could not believe what I was hearing on Wikipedia). Karanacs must have gone to school when I did, she has the same understanding that I did; but it is not proper use today. It is small "c". If the MOS is being changed and this is now the proper usage, I suspect that a number of church articles would appreciate knowing this and will immediately change to the capitalization. Where is Karanacs and does she speak MOS? I favor the position, but it was soundly trounced taking it the last time. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 17:16, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not as familiar with the MOS page on this, and I can't keep track of all the MOS changes since they happen so fast. Yes, this is what I learned in school, and I do believe that there should be an obvious differention between the organization and the individual parish (in this case) churches; capitalization makes the most sense for that. Several other people brought this up in the previous FA noms too. If the MOS explicitly forbids it, though, then the article would need to be changed to match that. Where is the MOS page? Karanacs (talk) 18:13, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Dang it Karanacs, I thought you going to be able to bring reason back to this topic! I gest; but it may be worth another letter/email to the Chicago Manual of Style group. Also, a question to the MOS on Wikipedia may also help. My understanding of grammar was that if you are writing about a specific thing that was previously identified you use a capital letter. In contract law we would say a defined term; a contract is any contract, but Contract is a specific contract. I used all of these arguments last time to no avail. Let's get a definitive answer. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 18:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant which particular MOS page was this discussed on previously? A question on the general MOS page might not help as much as one on the page which specifically adresses this topic. Karanacs (talk) 19:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be an habitual question on this particular page. For my own two cents, I was taught (Chicago MoS, via a graduate theology program), that capitalization is used when using the title of the thing in question, ("The Roman Catholic Church teaches ..." or "The Catholic Church teaches ...") and that the lower case is used when later refering to the thing in question by a noun which may also happen to be in the title ("The church teaches ..."). Certainly we can decide on a different standard here on wikipedia ... however that is the usage that is found in most contemporary scholarly writings on the subject. Pastordavid (talk) 19:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not an expert on grammatical issues but I will tell you that we were asked to capitalize Church when referring to Roman Catholic Church and lowercase when speaking of church in general per the last FAC. Looking through my scholarly sources used to create the history section, this is how the issue is treated by these scholars. If I were going to suggest the method that is most reader friendly, I would use this method.NancyHeise (talk) 20:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

(new indent) I don't know who asked/directed you about the capitalization, but I suspect the individual(s) may not be aware of the MOSCAPS and past precedent on this issue. Please understand that I agree with your position, but I fought this same fight and lost on other articles. Pastordavid has stated the case properly and asked a question that heretofore wikipedia has been unwilling to do and that is make an explicit statement that allows for the position you and others have put forward, i.e. agree to a different standard. This is not an insignificant issue and will apply to all other articles, particularly those topics regarding churches; not just the Catholic Church. I strongly urge you to get input from those editors that are viewed as experts on these type of issues.

There is some direction already given under MOS for institutions:

"Proper names of specific institutions (for example, Harvard University, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College, etc.) are proper nouns and require capitalization.

However, the words for types of institutions (university, college, hospital, high school,bank, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name:

Incorrect: The University offers programs in arts and sciences.

Correct: The university offers… or The University of Ottawa offers…"

I think it is clear when referring to the Catholic Church one would use church, rather than Church as the example above makes clear. The polciy may change, but it will be a significant action and it will take time. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 21:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think an important point is being missed here. This is all about comprehension. University does not have two separate meanings. Church does. Either the Church meaning the over all body of the worldwide Catholic Church, or, the church, meaning a particular church building or ebven the church as a whole in a particular place. Either meaning may be applicable in this article. The two usages, with and without the capitalisation, are needed to clarify the article. Xandar 92.40.193.113 (talk) 21:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I agree with the example about universities, and that is a usage that is very common (upper case only when part of a full name). I checked WP:MOSCAPS and under the religion section it says Names of religions, whether as a noun or an adjective, and their followers start with a capital letter. In this case, "Church" is being used as an abbreviation for the full name of the religion, and I think MOSCAPS allows it to be capitalized. Consensus at the last FA nom was also that it should be capitalized when referring to the global organization. I'd almost rather see it changed to "RCC" rather than "church" if the consensus is that it be lower case. Karanacs (talk) 23:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite convinced by that reading. When it says 'names of religions' I believe it means "Christianity", "Catholicism", "the Christian faith", etc. The Roman Catholic Church is an organisation, and I don't think that by being a religious organisation it is exempted from what the MOS says on organisations; which is clear that the capitalisation that applies to the full proper name ("the University of Ottowa", "the Roman Catholic Church") does not apply when only the word for the type of institution is applied to refer to the body ("the university", "the church").

There is room for local consensus on matters like this (though I don't doubt that it will be raised at FAC), but I think that the MOS is reasonably clear on its opinion. There are arguments for capitalising in cases like this; but a universal rule not to capitalise avoids having to decide on what bodies deserve capitalisation and which don't. TSP (talk) 02:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

First of all, let me clear my self of these accusations that I am giving an emotional argument. An emotional argument would be one like "you will all burn in hell for this insult". Notice the emotion in this. Notice also, that I do not say this.

My argument was that the Roman Catholic Church is a collection of many Catholic Churches, including the Eastern Rite, Syrian Western Rite, Oriental Rite, Byzantine rite, just to name a few. Therefore, when talking about it, we must capitalize it since it is a smaller but similar version of "The Curch", in that as the Christian Church warrants capitalization because it consists of all other churches. The Roman Catholic Church is the same one religion but one in that it contains many churches with different rites, making it "The Church" of all smaller Catholic churches in Communion with them.

Do not accuse me of being emotional; I have presented a fair and rational argument and the above said is a fact. The Roman Catholic Church does not claim to consist of monotone churches all exactly the same. It consists of many churches with varying rites and liturgies. Tourskin (talk) 23:22, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking at these arguments in addition to the last FAC, it appears to me that there is consensus to capitalize Church when referring to the Roman Catholic Church (which includes all other rites) and lowercasing it when not referring to the subject of the article. If we have consensus, I suggest we leave the article as is and allow all other church articles of other denominations to follow our example. NancyHeise (talk) 00:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

A proposal I am willing to accept, but we'll need seperate discussions or anotehr discussion for all Christian Church articles. I don't think that what gets decided on the article about Roman Catholicism should be used on other Christian Churches. Tourskin (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, but what I meant is that we could set a precedent especially if the article gets featured status. Any other denomination going for FA could use our article as an example, making it easier for them.NancyHeise (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. Tourskin (talk) 01:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

When is the subject of the article not the Roman Catholic church, including all other rites? I am not sure I understand the distinction being drawn. Is there ever a time when the Catholic Church stands alone? From my understanding of Catholicism, I am not sure that time ever exists. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 01:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I am under the impression that all uses of the word "Church" will be capitalized when referring to the RC Church and that it won't be when say for example saying a sentence like "the following churches are in communion with Rome"... Can someone correct me on this if I am wrong, this is what I agreed to. Tourskin (talk) 01:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

(new indent) So you are proposing that when we talk about the Roman Catholic Church on Wikipedia editors will say Church, but when discussing other churches it is only church. And the reason we are doing this is because the Roman Catholic Church is the One and Only True Church and all the others are operating out of "invincible ignorance". I totally reject this position; it is grossly POV and sets a precedence of faith that conflicts with everything I understand we (Wikipedia) are about. This statement is strongly worded, not with the intent to offend, but with the intent to make it clear that it is incorrect. If it is good for the goose, it will be good for the gander. Wikipedia does not take a position on anything, we just report facts. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 01:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In summary, the Roman Catholic Church would be referred to with a capital, and all other churches would not? I'm not sure that would give a neutral impression. You could argue that it is simply because that is the church which this article is about, but I'm not sure it's going to look balanced if we say "the Church" if the context is the Roman Catholic Church, but "the church" if the context is, say, the Church of England or the Greek Orthodox Church.

I think that's the reason for the MOS's declaration that capitals should not be used for words referring to organisations except when they are used as part of a proper name; to avoid all the fussing and potential lack of neutrality in determining when it is appropriate and when it isn't. It's arguable that it could avoid some confusion, by distinguishing between "the Church" (meaning the Roman Catholic Church) and "the church" (meaning St Stephen's Church in London), but this sounds like it's just going to cause more confusion and debates. TSP (talk) 01:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What was agreed to is this: We capitalize Church when referring to the church that is the topic of the Wikipedia page - whatever church that may be - here on the Roman Catholic Church page, we capitalize Church when referring to the Roman Catholic Church, when we are on the Anglican page we capitalize Church when referring to the Anglican Church. On all church pages, we lowercase church when speaking about church in a manner that does not specifically refer to the topic of the page. That is not POV, that is proper MOS, that is how the scholars treat the issue in the history books I have used to create the article. That is how Wikipedia should treat the issue, if it does not, it should correct its policy but from Karanacs comments above, it appears as if that is already the policy. NancyHeise (talk) 02:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do people twist the words of what I say for the worst? People, before we take part in discussion, can we assume good faith for starters?! Does anyone actually know what that means? Storm rider, what value is your friendly message and offer of apology if you are going to attack me like that not much time afterwards? Read my words, don't imagine them. NancyHeise has a better point. My argument is concerning only this article. Storm rider, cease your word twisting ; I never said that all other Churches in other articles be lower cases, I meant to say that all other churches as in like Byantine Catholic Church or Chaldean Catholic Church. when referring to these many smaller churches in a senetence like:

"The Roman Catholic Church is not a homogenous religion, but rather one Church consisting of many other smaller churches".

Now does everyone understand my point? When not referring to the Roman Catholic overall, the word "church" should be small case. When using the word "Church" like a pronoun for the Roman Catholic Church, then we capitalize. My proposals say nothing of other non-Catholic Churches, of which I have a great respect for and of which I am open to any reasonable proposals for those that match this one. Tourskin (talk) 02:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI, Anglican Communion has, by my count, 24 uses of "the Communion" to 3 of "the communion". Church of England is more evenly split, but when "the church" is not followed by "of England", it's 9 "the Church" to 4 "the church" (and one "the church" referring to individual congregations). Gimmetrow 02:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Tourskin, I will say this once and then I am done with. This is not personal. Nothing I have said is personal. I request that you put your personal feelings aside. We are talking about policies and how to apply those policies across Wikipedia. Karanacs position stated above was not the outcome of a rather contentious discussion previously. What is important here is that this article has been tediously worked on and is in the process of gaining FA status and that status should not be derailed for any reason and it should merit the designation.

I still request that an editor recognized as expert in this area contribute to the discussion. I disagree with Karanacs reading of policy only because it was my position in the past and the position was rejected. Further, the current Chicago Manual of Style flatly rejects the position discussed and states exactly the position stated above on from the MOS. I would encourage any of you to email. the Chicago Manual of Style group and ask them and I assume they will tell you the same thing they told me; it is church.

My objective is not so much to take a position, but to make sure the decision taken is unassailable by others and to use this example for all other articles. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 02:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, this has gotten out of hand, and I've decided to change my ambivalent view. We simply cannot capitalize the Church. End of story. What some users are arguing is that we ambiguous grammar rules sympathetic to the subject matter. However, that is clearly something that cannot be universally applied. For what side would we capitalize the Church in the East-West Schism article, or the Protestant Reformation article? Similarly, when we capitalize the Church in reference to the RCC in this article, we are clearly taking sides that the RCC is the Church of Christ instead of the Orthodox or the Protestants or whoever else. Capitalizing Church violates NPOV and the MoS, and the capitalization needs to be reverted back to the state during the last FAC (when Ling.Nut discussed and made those changes in March). Sorry if this is harsh, but this matter needs to be nipped in the bud. If we let a silly stylistic matter prevent this article from being "stable", then shame on us all. There is no need to go on endlessly arguing when a basic Wikipedia policy (NPOV) and the Manual of Style are on one side of the issue (lowercase).-Andrew c ^[talk] 15:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I beleive it was the position of three top Wikipedia experts in the matter that suggested we capitalize Church because that is the proper way to deal with the subject matter of the page per MOS. This is not a POV thing, this is how the scholars treat subject matters in their books and lawyers treat subject matters in contracts, it is not a statement of beleif to capitalize the subject matter you are discussing it is a way to eliminate the need to state the name over and over again throughout the article and help the reader determine when you are speaking about the subject matter of the page or not. The three top Wikipedia experts were SandyGeorgia, Karanacs and Awadewit. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 15:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This - the Tourskin position - is correct. It is nothing to do with POV or claims, just normal English style rules, and should be the same in an article on any church - just like any university or other institution. Johnbod (talk) 15:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If the concensus on this page is that for some reason this article is in a unique position which requires it to go against the MOS, then that's fair enough; but I don't think I can understand the position which advances that this is what the MOS actually says we should do; the MOS, in its Institutions section, seems pretty clear that it recommends the opposite (I see no reason why a church should be treated differently to a university). Nancy, who were these 'top Wikipedia experts' and when did they advance this view? (I'm not sure that I think there is such a thing as a Wikipedia expert). John, there are indeed many schools of grammar which would advance that; but Wikipedia's own MOS (and, apparently, the Chicago Manual of Style) say the opposite, which should generally be followed if there is no pressing reason to believe that this article is an exception to the rule. TSP (talk) 17:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I looked this matter up in Chicago Manual of Style which says this "8.3Names versus generic terms Many proper names combine a given name with a generic (or descriptive) term (Albion College, the Circuit Court of Lake County, President Bush). After the first mention, an official name is often replaced by the generic term alone, which (no longer strictly a proper name) may safely be lowercased." I am not sure if there are any other MOS's used on Wikipedia but I know that there is sometimes a conflict with Chicago manual of style, I think I remember disagreements over these issues before. I am OK with replacing mentions of "Church" with "church" in accordance with Chicago Manual of Style but I want to make sure it's also Wikipedia policy. If anyone would like to help in that area, I would sure appreciate it. thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's own Manual of Style, the one we have to use over all others, is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style lets all take a look and come to a conclusion on this issue. NancyHeise (talk) 18:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This is what Wikipedia Manual of Style says: "Religions, sects and churches and their followers (in noun or adjective form) start with a capital letter. Generally the is not capitalized before such names (the Shī'a, not The Shī'a). (But see also the style guide and naming convention for the Latter Day Saint movement.) " Wikipedia also refers the reader to Oxford Guide to Style. This is not an online source like the Chicago MOS. I am going to go to my local library this evening and see if I can find this book to help us out on this issue. NancyHeise (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I spent some time in the library doing some research on this subject. According to L. Sue Baugh, author of Essentials of English Grammar, p 57, "Rules for capitalization, abbreviations, and numbers can be confusing. Not all grammar books agree on the same style." According to Anne Stilman, author of Grammatically Correct, p 271 "It may sometimes be appropriate to capitalize certain descriptive or identifying names and terms that are normally lowercase. The decision to capitalize may be made on the basis of convention, policy, expectations of readers or any other reason that is specific to your circumstances." According to Jim Corder of Texas Christian University and John Ruskiewicz of Univerisity of Texas at Austin authors of Handbook of Current English 8th edition, p 276 "Some words can be spelled either with or without capitals. These forms must be distinguished because they often have different meanings: Several examples ensue among which is "Orthodox beliefs (of the Greek Orthodox Church) vs orthodox beliefs (conventional) and Catholic sympathies (of or with the Catholic Church) vs catholic sympathies (broad; universal)." After reading these rules, I have to wonder why, if the scholarly sources I have used to create the history section of this article do not lowercase church when referring to the Catholic Church but actually use "Church" throughout these peer reviewed books that are published by university presses, then why are we going to actually make a case to do something different if it is going to clearly be against the consensus of editors here and at FAC? Why is this minor issue being made into such a big issue anyway? Clearly there is room for personal judgement on this issue from what these sources are saying and given that the article is a long one that makes mention of different churches and happens to be about one particular church, it is common sense to capitalize the one church you are talking about in an effort to make that fact clear to the reader. That is not POV, that is good style. NancyHeise (talk) 21:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Casting aside "assume good faith", its evident to me that this is a minor issue that has been raised for POV reasons. I'm not acussing anyone of anything but I really don't think it matters what is capitalized or what is not that much. Doesn't the fact that there is no grammatical standard say something about the importance or lack of importance for this issue? I mean we have global standards for many things because its useful. I think we should use this standard for every Christian article; when referring to the Church of the article, it should be capitalized. That sounds good to me, I agree with whoever proposed that. So far, my argument about the Catholic Church being a Katholicos Church, a universal Church are being ignored. Tourskin (talk) 22:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Please refrain from casting aside 'assume good faith'. It is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia relies on it to achieve its goal.

The reason that argument has been ignored is because it is not helpful to your cause. The Roman Catholic Church views itself as a universal Church. Others dispute this identification. If to capitalise "Church" is to affirm that claim, then that would be a breach of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy; in fact, that is the best reason I've yet seen not to capitalise "Church".

This isn't a huge issue, and I don't think anyone is really pretending it is; but if people want this article to be featured, then they need to be prepared to get it right, and minor issues like this can affect the impression that an article gives.

I'm not convinced by the asymmetric approach of each article using "Church" for its own church and "church" for all others (which would seem to give e.g. "the Pope gave a message to his Church, while the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a message to his church" - in this article, but "the Pope gave a message to his church, while the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a message to his Church" in the Church of England article). Even if applied to all church articles - and I see no reason why editors of other articles would feel bound by a consensus here - this may still to seem inconsistent or asymmetric to readers of any one particular article.

I think that the Manual of Style conveniently gives us a rule that lets us avoid all debate about which bodies deserve to be capitalised and which do not -

Proper names of specific institutions (for example, Harvard University, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College, etc.) are proper nouns and require capitalization.

However, the words for types of institutions (university, college, hospital, high school,bank, etc.) do not require capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name:

Incorrect: The University offers programs in arts and sciences.

Correct: The university offers… or The University of Ottawa offers…

I don't see why this shouldn't apply to this article. TSP (talk) 23:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Articles on various protestant denominations also use "Church" capitalized when referring to the subject of their article. Both the "Anglican Communion" and "Church of England" articles capitalize more often than not. Gimmetrow 00:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Back to my argument, IT IS A FACT THAT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS A UNIVERSAL CHURCH CONSISTING OF MANY OTHER CHURCHES IN COMMUNION WITH ROME. This is not a violation of a neutral point of view, it is a hard core fact. Check it out: List of Roman Catholic Churches. I did no say that Rome owns all Christianity. When I said "cast aside good faith", I did not say it in that I am gonna assume everyone out there is just trolling, but that whilst this issue was raised alledgely for style reasons and to get this article to FA status, the intention was seems to me to be less neutral. Tourskin (talk) 00:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

We should leave the article as is since there is no conclusive manual of style determination from on high as my research shows above. What we need to do is all just sit quietly, leave the article as is and see what other editors say at the FAC. There are some very intelligent and highly qualified editors who come around and go through the article before the final FAC judge makes a determination. Let's see what they have to say and stop our back and forth here. NancyHeise (talk) 01:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Here is some of the conversations that have gone on in the past:

Here was my accompanying talk page comment: [4]. Here is a section link for the general discussion on the RCC talk page at the time: [5]. There was also discussion at a WikiProject about it here. I also solicited the discussion at WikiProject Christianity but did not receive a response here.

This was copied from Vassyana discussion page where I asked her if she could remember some of our past conversations.

Thanks for providing those links, very interesting conversations. Can we all just take a vote and do whatever the consensus decides? I mean, gosh, wow, I thought this was such a minor issue but this has generated more discussion than major items. I can go either way, I would just like to come to consensus.NancyHeise (talk) 07:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Sayre’s Law: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue—that is why academic politics are so bitter.” Gimmetrow 09:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I personally think it is unprofessional to alter basic qualities of a style guide based on the whim of a small handful of editors. Wikipedia would me more cohesive (and professional) if there was a more universal adaptation of a Manual of Style (and that is it's expressed purpose). Accordingly, I went to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters) and asked the style experts what they thought on this issue. One diligent wikipedian opened up some actual style manuals (instead of going on and on about personal opinion, or what they think they remember they learned in school). I wish some parties would realize "You know, wikipedia is bigger than this one article, and for the sake of the project, I'm willing to let my personal feelings aside to accept a greater, more universal Manual of Style". I'm not trying to curtail consensus or autonomy here (and take it, there isn't a consensus anyway, with about it split even). I'm just saying, the idea of a subjective or relative guideline that is sympathetic towards the subject matter has yet to be implemented and seems less neutral than what is already stated in the Manual of Style (plus, having a discussion about proposing a new style guideline here, instead of on a MoS talk page also seems inappropriate). If it's good enough for the LDS, I think it should be good enough here, and throughout wikipedia! -Andrew c ^[talk] 13:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Andrew, I would like to say that I was also diligent and went to the library to research this issue. I documented what I found in what books by certain authors on the subject and gave page numbers. This is a contested subject in academic circles. Some styles do it the Chicago way, others do it another way. There is room here for us to make our own decision on which way we want to go since there is no "consensus" among the experts. Can we all just take a vote now? I would like to start and you all can just follow along the page after me - just say "support" if you want to keep the page with capital "C" when referring specifically to Roman Catholic Church or "oppose" if you want every mention of church in the article lowercased whether it is speaking about the subject topic or not. Here goes:

Straw Poll

If I follow the conversation above correctly, the proposal is to to capitalize the word "Church" in this article. Thus, a support !vote is to capitalize "Church" when it stands alone, an oppose is to capitalize "Church" when it is used with the proper name(s) of the institution ("Roman Catholic Church" "Catholic Church") and to use the lower case when the word stands alone

SupportNancyHeise (talk) 17:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Support Per my un-dilligent reasons above. Tourskin (talk) 17:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

PS please don't delete messages that are acceptable on wikipedia, it shows a lack of sportsmanship. Being diligent is not necessarily researching the opinion of another indivdual and blindly following it. Tourskin (talk) 20:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. I think I understand that I am !voting that our style conform to TCMOS. I think the rationale behind the Chicago MOS is that it is the most NPOV way of presenting the information, and given that the same is also our goal, it would make sense to follow the same guideline. This also, for me, opens a whole can of worms of having to deal with each religious institution (church, congregation, denomination, middle judicatory, etc, etc) on a case by case basis; rather than having one standard for capitalization (TMOS) and applying it the same across the board. Pastordavid (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - as a practicing member of the RC, my gut says capitalize in all cases. But in the interests of being NPOV, I would have to say oppose, favoring capitalization only when the word is being used as a part of a more or less officially recognized name, like Roman Catholic Church. (Yes, I know it's officially CC, not RCC, but let's not go there again, please?) John Carter (talk) 19:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, just for the sake of clarity, what are we supporting or opposing here? John Carter (talk) 18:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

John, you make me smile; thank you. There is confusion about which MOS directive we follow. Some feel it is clear that when referring to the church, we write church; not , "the Church". If you read the thread above you will grasp the gist of it. Cheers. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 18:50, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully a section division and a little word of explanation helps to clear things up. Pastordavid (talk) 18:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Polls are evil, and wikipedia is not a democracy. Wikipedia has a manual of style. Currently the manual of style says that we are NOT to capitalize church when it isn't part of a proper noun. You are undermining the integrity of wikipedia by doing this. You are creating a double standard where LDS articles clearly have to lowercase "church", but you are now trying to open the door where we capitalize "church" when it comes to the RCC. You are setting a dangerous precedent (that some Churches get big shiny capital letters while other churches get lowly lowercase letters. Why can't you live with all churches equally not getting special privileges?). What happens if there is an article that discusses both religious bodies? We'll have conflicting standards. The manual of style is larger than this one article, and it is unprofessional (and conniving) to try to second guess it. And why has this been such a big deal? This is really really pitiful. Shame on us all. -Andrew c ^[talk] 18:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
- Andrew, does the MOS directly address this case in the way you think it does? I don't really care either way on this, but it's obvious the articles on protestant churches do not consistently follow your interpretation of the MOS. Whatever you all decide here will apply to them too. Gimmetrow 19:07, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  - Gimme, the MOS does directly address this. If the articles for other church bodies differ fromthe MOS, perhaps it is time to bring them all into conformity with it. Andrew, it is from discussions like this, which seek to discover where the consensus is, that such guidelines originate. Perhaps this isn't the best place to have the discussion (the MoS pages would be better), but nonetheless here we are. Pastordavid (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
    - Well, yes, I suppose MOS does, since the revision of 9 May 2008, refer directly to "church". Before then (a day ago) it "said nothing about that".[6] And we wonder why people have no respect for the MOS. Gimmetrow 19:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Support. In the instances for which capitalization is being used in this article "Church" DOES represent a proper noun. It is shorthand for the (Roman) Catholic Church. It should be capitalised for the sake of clarity in article where "church" has several other possible meanings Xandar (talk) 20:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Support. per Xandar. Unless writing out the full name is possible in every instance you mention the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, I do not support using "the church" when referring to the institution, and I agree completely with Xandar that it is in fact shorthand for a proper noun and that it is much more clear when capitalized. I also support this convention in similar entries like the one for the LDS. Lastly, this is how I read the Chicago MOS guidelines as well, baring any more detailed clarifying evidence from said manual.PelleSmith (talk) 21:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. This is just the RCC article. This isn't he MoS or the LDS style page. What you say here will have no bearing on the rest of the encyclopedia. We can't instate one guideline here that has implications with other articles, without opening the dialog to a grander scale. I think we may need to make this a larger, site-wide MoS discussion to see if we should adjust all articles. That would make much more sense to me than having this random odd-ball article that is different from what is already established elsewhere.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Why did you just respond that way to my comment? No offense but my vote pertains to this entry, I just wanted to clarify that I also support the same guideline across the board. The more general MoS discussion belongs in more general MoS venues, but I have every right to contextualize my position on this particular issue with regard to the more general style guideline I also support. There is nothing "ridiculous" about it.PelleSmith (talk) 02:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support. I support the use of "the Church". --WikiCats (talk) 22:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I support following MOS and that each editor should understand its importance. When writing about a topic that concerns a church, the term "church" will always be "shorthand" for the proper name of the church. However, MOS clearly states it is "church" and not "Church" in those circumstances. It is a little stunning how a group of editors consciously votes to ignore policy and performs all sorts of mental back flips to rationalize their position. Also, when reading polemic writers for any religion they will use the term "Church"; for them there is no question that it is THE CHURCH; all other churches are subservient to it. Why is that surprising to anyone and why is that evidence that it is OK to use "Church" or to violate our own policies? What makes a society or community civilized is when each obeys policy for the sake of the community. When we begin to ignore policies that are inconvenient or because they violate our personal sensibilities, we take one step toward anarchy. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Storm Rider, the MoS did not specifically support this position until Dank changed it which took place after the discussion had already started here. I think it isn't helpful to claim the policy high road here when the more general guideline isn't all that clear. This is particularly the case when people are arguing here that the "Church" is actually a short hand or abbreviated version of a proper noun, in which case the general guideline, as it existed before Dank added his example about the pope, would not have supported your position. I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but simply trying to suggest that things are not as clear as you make them seem in regards to our existing style guidelines. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 03:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support. If one is using the term "Church" in the sentence as a PROPER NOUN, then it should be capitalized. If the use is a COMMON NOUN, then it is not capitalized. For example, if one says: "Mill Baptist Church is the largest Baptist church in my town. The Church's property is beautiful, but many of the church buildings are falling into ruin." Note that "Church" is capitalized when used as a proper noun, but not capitalized when used as a common noun, or as an adjective modifying a common noun. This is what I have always been taught, and this is what I have verified today after searching through 4 different grammar books. Polycarp7 (talk) 00:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This is also the style used by many of our scholarly works used as references. There is no agreement among MoS experts on this issue, that is why we are having this poll to make our decision on which style we want to follow. NancyHeise (talk) 00:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That is the problem, it is style question, which is not open to changing willy-nilly based upon a group's personal preference. I have not seen one MOS "expert" enter this conversation. Few have address our MOS, but have gone outside of our policies to support their position. The simple answer is actually talking to those who are experts and following their instruction. I don't' know who anyone is talking to, but the MOS is clear as well as the Chicago Manual of Style, which I believe is followed by more universities than any other.--Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I just did a Google search for Capitalization proper nouns" and checked about 7 different sites - all of them said the same thing. "Capitalize proper nouns and lower case common nouns." One site even refered to the "AP's MoS" so it would seem the AP using the same convention. Does the Chicago MoS say something different than this? Polycarp7 (talk) 01:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support, just as with university, city, and government. – Kieran T ^(talk) 00:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure you understand the policy; what you have stated is support capitalizing, but you have used the correct style by not capitalizing.--Storm Rider ^(talk) 00:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but I do, and you've missed "what I did there" ;) In a specific case, such as for example "Oxford University", one might say, "...the University awards degrees." One capitalises when referring to a specific entity. "A university", in the general sense, doesn't receive the capitalisation. The Roman Catholic Church is therefore in this sense "the Church", as well as being "a church". – Kieran T ^(talk) 01:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support means that Church used alone when referring to the article subject and as an alternative to repeating the full name of the subject over and over will be capitalized because it is being used as a proper noun. NancyHeise (talk) 00:57, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Kieran T, haven you read Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Institutions? The MoS says the exact opposite of what you said above. If you want to change the MoS, that's fine. But here isn't the place to do that. Please try to base your arguments more on established guidelines. What is the point of the MoS anyway if we just throw it out the window due to personal preference on each individual article.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough (I'd not read that, no, I was just adding a viewpoint to this question, as put.) As it happens, having now read it, I think that's a poorly worded section of the MoS. If what you say is absolute, however, it suggests that you consider this entire !vote to be pointless, in the context of a clearly prescribed MoS guideline and/or rule! – Kieran T ^(talk) 01:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support The phrase "the Church" is a short form of the proper noun "Catholic Church". Per the proper noun/common noun distinction pointed out above. Lwnf360 (talk) 20:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

May I remind everyone here that this vote:

1) Does count, thats why we are doing it, duh 2) Should not just blindly follow some random rule found on wikipedia or another source of information without asking yourself first if its logic follows through. No point in agreeing to a rule just for the sake of it being called a "rule" - I don't expect people to live their lives according to someone else's interpretation, unless thats how you want it. Rules are not set in stone to be blindly obeyed but adjusted/acceptd according to how much their logic follows through. Tourskin (talk) 02:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Its amazing that of all the Opposes posted thus far, 1 has done so for sake of NPOV and the other two for MOS. Tourskin (talk) 02:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. See WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Church.2C_when_used_alone.2C_is_usually_lowercase for what the American style guides say. (They unanimously oppose, and not because they don't have roughly the same readership and pressures we have, and not because they haven't thought about it, a lot.) I like the fact that people are trying to be as sensitive and respectful as possible, but the style guides seem both stable and unanimous on capitalizing less often in the current editions, and there are many reasons to try to keep our style guidelines not radically out of line with what professionals do.

P.S. Note that I was the one who just added the "church" example to WP:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters), so don't take its presence there as a sign of "consensus" until a variety of people have weighed in. Again, I do like the Wikipedian instinct that makes people want to capitalize Church in the third sentence in this article; it's such a little thing, and it might comfort some people. It's just that a large consensus of North American copyeditors (and maybe others, I don't know) have gotten very uncomfortable with "playing God", with doling out the capital letters to some institutions and not others in similar sentences. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 02:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

To be more specific, though, in the case under discussion regarding the RCC article, the question really is whether to capitalize "church" when it is used as an abbreviation, i.e., instead of having to write out "Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholic Church." Some of the grammar books I've been looking at say you are supposed to capitalize abbreviations for proper nouns, but the only examples I can find are like: "Rev. Miller" instead of "Reverand Miller." Is there anything in the MoS about this? I can't find anything. Polycarp7 (talk) 02:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)Polycarp7 (talk) 02:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I put this on the MoS talk page, too.

(edit conflict)Dank55 in regards to your linked discussion I am not sure that your reading of the TCMOS is correct. Chicago clearly states that when used in a proper noun Church is capitalized. Here are the relevant discussions in Chicago: from 8.106 1) "When used alone to denote organized Christianity as an institution, the church is usually lowercased." 2) "Church is capitalized when part of the formal name of a denomination (e.g., the United Methodist Church; see other examples in 8.105) or congregation (e.g., the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle)," and from 8.105 3) "Roman Catholicism; the Roman Catholic Church (but a Roman Catholic church)." To use "the church" according to TCMOS is not correct when referring to one denomination specifically. The "Church" here is used as an abbreviated form of the "Roman Catholic Church," and hence is a proper noun that specifies one denomination only. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 03:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

To complicate matters, there seems to be no uniformity in the main-stream media. I just checked several news outlets reporting on Pope Benedict's recent trip to the U.S. - the BBC capitalized "Pope" throughout the article, even when used alone. The International Herald Tribune used lower case "pope" throughout. A Catholic publication used lower case "pope." Even though each article was using "pope" as an abbreviation for Pope Benedict XVI, there was no consistency between them. Polycarp7 (talk) 03:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Just because examples exist elsewhere, does not make it correct here or there; other stuff is not an good excuse and has no bearing on the topic. We either have a MOS or not. There is no other argument after that. A proper noun is only a proper noun when stated. An abbreviation is easily recognized as such and church is not an abbreviation and it is not a proper noun nor was it ever. That is the MOS for Wikipedia and that is the Chicago Manual of Style. I personally wrote to the them (you can to, google them, join for a month, and ask a free question) and they made it unequivocally clear it is church. I think it can be a POV issue, but the major reason is simply MOS. Policies are not relative just as truth is not relative. Just because you feel like it, or you see a higher logic, does not make it right. Styles change over time and the current standard clear. If you look for loop holes, you can attempt to make an excuse (think proper noun, but for goodness sake please go back and study what a proper noun is first!), but rationalization and choosing to ignore policies is still not acceptable. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 08:16, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Note: I had to add the text "if they do not appear in a proper name" to the copy paste job you did below, since it appears in the MoS language but for some reason you left it out. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 12:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

←I guess we want to argue this one place at a time, and we've currently got 3 threads on this page and 2 threads on WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters). This seems to be the most active thread, and the current FAC is the most urgent issue, so I'll stay here, for now. The main argument of the supporters above is that the opposes have not considered that sometimes an apparently generic noun standing by itself is an abbreviation for a proper noun, and therefore should be capitalized. But this is exactly what the American style guides consider, and nowadays reject, although this argument was widely accepted 20 years ago. (There is, of course, no hard requirement that Wikipedia do what journalists do, or follow current usage instead of older usage; but when the journalists are unanimous, we usually wind up following them. This is an interesting question that probably deserves a thread in WT:MoS when we're done.) NYTM and AP Stylebook are clear in recommending lowercasing in situations such as the third sentence in this article ("The Church [sic IMO] looks to the Bishop of Rome..."); again, see WT:Manual_of_Style_(capital_letters)#Church.2C_when_used_alone.2C_is_usually_lowercase.

My interpretation of Chicago has been challenged. Unfortunately, Chicago doesn't nail this one with one sentence, so to rebut, I'm going to have to quote more of Chicago than I usually like to. I'm considering bringing up the subject of some kind of "institutional license" for Wikipedia with the Chicago people. Disclaimers aside, here's what they say:

8.2 The “down” style
Chicago generally prefers a “down” style—the parsimonious use of capitals. Although proper names are capitalized, many words derived from or associated with proper names (brussels sprouts, board of trustees), as well as the names of significant offices (presidency, papacy), may be lowercased with no loss of clarity or respect.

8.3 Names versus generic terms

Many proper names combine a given name with a generic (or descriptive) term (Albion College, the Circuit Court of Lake County, President Bush). After the first mention, an official name is often replaced by the generic term alone, which (no longer strictly a proper name) may safely be lowercased.

Albion College was founded in 1835. The college has some illustrious alumni.

Her suit was filed with the Circuit Court of Lake County. Appearing in court made her nervous, since she had little experience of circuit court procedures.

They asked to speak with President Bush, but the president was unavailable that day.

Note that "President Bush, but the president" is exactly the case that the supporters say the style guides haven't considered; they have, and they do. So the question is, is there some specific exemption from lowercasing for the word "church", or generally for religious institutions? The problem is, Chicago devotes 23 sections to questions of capitalization of religious terms, and I'm not going to quote all 23. None of them is precisely on point, but these are the ones that seem persuasive:

8.97“Down” style
Chicago urges a spare, “down” style in the field of religion as elsewhere. Lowercasing rarely gives offense. Understanding is best served by capitalizing only what are clearly proper nouns and adjectives in the context under discussion.

8.106 Church

When used alone to denote organized Christianity as an institution, the church is usually lowercased.

church and state

the early church

the church in the twenty-first century

the church fathers

Church is capitalized when part of the formal name of a denomination (e.g., the United Methodist Church; see other examples in 8.105) or congregation (e.g., the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle).

8.107 Generic versus religious terms

Many terms lowercased when used generically, such as animism, fundamentalism, or spiritualism, may be capitalized when used as the name of a specific religion or a sect. Similarly, many of the terms listed in 8.105 may be lowercased in certain contexts.

a popular medium in Spiritualist circles, but

liberal versus fundamentalist Christians

8.108 is the one that seems closest to being on point to me:

8.108 Religious jurisdictions
The names of official divisions within organized religions are capitalized. The generic terms used alone are lowercased.

the Archdiocese of Chicago; the archdiocese

the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church

the Fifty-seventh Street Meeting; the (Quaker) meeting

the Holy See

the Missouri Synod; the synod

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That TCMOS quotation is clearly a choice among allowable styles. The effort to make it mandatory here is an unwise violation of idiom. MOS should be ignored (or preferably fixed) when it is urging something stupid or unnatural. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Support English idiom over MOScruft. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Support Chicago seems in fact ambiguous, or not to address the point directly - 8.108 refers to "official divisions within organized religions" (my bold), so would seem not to apply here. The matter should of course be taken up at the MoS, which seems too prescriptive, and also probably too US-centric here. Johnbod (talk) 21:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll continued

The subhead is an arbitrary break. I'm copying this over from WT:CAPS, because it's a very nice statement in support. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I was a significant contributor to the Roman Catholic Church article. I have almost all of the source materials used to create both the Beliefs section and Church History sections. I am not an MoS expert but I will tell you that in all of the peer reviewed source materials where the subject of the book was specifically about Roman Catholic Church, the university professor authors used the upper case C when using the word Church as a substitute for repeating the name Roman Catholic Church over and over again throughout the book. As a reader, I found it easier to understand their meaning when these books talked about Roman Catholic Church issues and their interactions with other Christian institutions. I also did some research at our local library that I posted on the RCC page that I have copied and pasted here from the RCC page:

"I spent some time in the library doing some research on this subject. According to L. Sue Baugh, author of Essentials of English Grammar, p 57, "Rules for capitalization, abbreviations, and numbers can be confusing. Not all grammar books agree on the same style." According to Anne Stilman, author of Grammatically Correct, p 271 "It may sometimes be appropriate to capitalize certain descriptive or identifying names and terms that are normally lowercase. The decision to capitalize may be made on the basis of convention, policy, expectations of readers or any other reason that is specific to your circumstances." According to Jim Corder of Texas Christian University and John Ruskiewicz of Univerisity of Texas at Austin authors of Handbook of Current English 8th edition, p 276 "Some words can be spelled either with or without capitals. These forms must be distinguished because they often have different meanings: Several examples ensue among which is "Orthodox beliefs (of the Greek Orthodox Church) vs orthodox beliefs (conventional) and Catholic sympathies (of or with the Catholic Church) vs catholic sympathies (broad; universal)." Clearly there is room for personal judgement on this issue from what these sources are saying and given that the article is a long one that makes mention of different churches and happens to be about one particular church, it is common sense to capitalize the one church you are talking about in an effort to make that fact clear to the reader. That is not POV, that is good style."NancyHeise (talk) 19:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I feel a discussion coming on in WT:MoS when this is over about which sources are most persuasive in our style guidelines, and why. The best Wikipedia articles reflect both journalistic and academic values. Like good journalists, we attempt to appeal to a cross-section of readership in a lively fashion, showing equal respect for all persuasions and points of view, and like academics, we rely heavily on authority and on the faithful transmission of knowledge. There's no such thing as a "consensus of all authors", but fortunately, for many questions of orthography, there is such a thing as a consensus of journalists, and for American English, it's well-represented by Chicago, NYTM and AP Stylebook. What Nancy says is "good style" was good style in American English 20 years ago, and as I said above, there's no hard rule that Wikipedia must follow current usage, so I'm inclined not to say that capitalizing Church is a reason for this FAC to fail. It's also good style in the books she read, which like all books are usually aimed at making a particular readership happy; perhaps Catholics, perhaps certain academics, I don't know. But when the current American style guides not only agree, but restate the same thing in several different ways, we can say with some confidence that it's probably not good usage nowadays among journalists, and Wikipedia's readership has much more in common with the target readership of journalists, especially in its diversity, than it has in common with the target readership of any particular journal or book. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not entirely persuaded by the argument that our own conventions should be dictated by a notion of "good style" as lined out in current manuals thereof. I think basic comprehension is more persuasive, and I think that current conventions say more about this than a style manual does, though I'm not sure how to mandate "convention." That said if it is no longer good style to use "the Church" as an abbreviation for "the Catholic Church" within contexts that discuss Catholicism then academics today have not caught on. In fact one also runs into "the Church" used for the Orthodox Church, and others, in similar contexts. I am also still not persuaded by Dan's reading of Chicago as it currently presents the issue, which explicitly doesn't hit a nail on the head that one would assume it should, especially given the clear conventions that are still practiced in academia (yes I'm suggesting that maybe they chose not to clarify the issue at this time). I am persuaded now that once Chicago updates, perhaps next time or the time after, they may specify in line with Dan's reading, and make this explicit along the lines of their more general lower case/upper case guidelines. I have a feeling that they have not done so to this date because convention is not inline with this, at least not yet. I did some database searches, and purposefully within history and the social sciences, so as not to form an opinion based upon Catholic publications. Within these contexts, for something supported by style manuals especially, "the church" is a rare thing. More common is "the Church" and alternately always sticking to the full name. On the other hand should we create style guidelines based upon a survey of common usage? Probably not. I have always felt that "the Church" makes for better clarity, in referring to one singular entity, a religious institution, but Dan makes a good point by introducing the Chicago guidelines for other terms like "synod" and "archdiocese." Where do we draw the line in terms of singular institutional entities, and the ability to "abbreviate their names" by using the generic terms that make up part of their names? Again I think convention still makes it seem like "the Church" is a special case--in other words convention has it that this one is allowable (here I clearly disagree with the suggestion that this was only the case 20 years ago). I'm now torn, so maybe this post is not so useful. I do think however that the issue should be framed in light of clarity and comprehension and that we need to think outside of the MoS boxes that are being presented here. Regards, and thanks Dan for all of your work on this.PelleSmith (talk) 23:59, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

These would be the same incompetent and illiterate journalists now ruining American political discourse? We are not intended for them; we can do better. We should not defer to such sources, especially when they are tentative. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have stated it before and I will state it again; I prefer the way I was taught and I would generally capitalize Church when it is the topic of an article. The problem is that the MOS is clear, att least to me, that current policy and most MOS available today would not capitalize church even when it is the topic of an article. My only objective is that we observe policy. I would disagree with Dank in one regard, if policies are flatly ignored in an article then that article is not worthy of being a featured article because it cannot be held up as an example for all others. If the policy changes then great, let's follow that, but until then there are no options, it is not appropriate to vote or rationalize. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 23:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)\

MOS is not policy. It never has been; it has no claims to be. It is the opinion of the more successful edit-warriors among a half-dozen regulars. Please ignore it; there have probably been more discussion here than there ever was to write that section. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

To add to that: for those claiming that the MOS required lowercase in this case (before Dank's edit a couple days ago), why have they not corrected this alleged violation of the MOS where Caps are used elsewhere? Actions speak louder than obscure MOS pages. Gimmetrow 00:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Pelle, it's a pleasure, and thanks. Everyone, I completely buy the arguments that "the Church" was right a short time ago and is still right in many academic contexts (in the relevant sentences), and therefore I think what would be helpful is a clear statement from everyone involved that there's no reason to hold this poor FAC hostage to this discussion; it's a judgment call, and for most of the disputed sentences, it's right either way, as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Sept and Gimmetrow, I very much look forward to the debate in WT:MoS after this FAC is over, but I'd rather not prolong things here. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Manual of style for institutions

It seems like people are confused with a proper noun and a generic noun. Proper nouns are names, think Catholic Church. A Generic noun is something used to refer proper noun among other things, think church. Using a generic term instead of a proper noun does not make it a proper noun. This is quoting from the manual of style dated May 1, 2008:

"Institutions

Proper names of institutions (for example, the University of Sydney, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, George Brown College) are proper nouns and require capitalization. Where a title starts with the, it typically starts with lowercase t when the title occurs in the middle of a sentence: a degree from the University of Sydney.
Generic words for institutions (university, college, hospital, high school) require no capitalization if they do not appear in a proper name:

Incorrect	(generic):	The University offers programs in arts and sciences.
Correct	(generic):	The university offers ...
Correct	(title):	The University of Ottawa offers ..."

This just completely fails to understand or acknowledge that what it describes as "generic" are not always generic at all, but sometimes an abbreviation for the proper noun! 81.178.67.229 (talk) 13:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to make new proposals to alter the MoS. If you disagree with the MoS, it is easy enough to change it. It works on consensus, just like the rest of Wikipedia. This is not the place to have a discussion to alter (or undermine) the MoS. I think there are some compelling arguments on the other side. If a new consensus is reached, I would respect that and be happy that the process worked. I'm upset now because this isn't the way you deal with disagreements in the MoS. A cabal (if you will) of editors on a single article are using voting, not consensus, as a means to go above the MoS. It spits on the spirit of Wikipedia. I mean, the cabal could have the better position, and if the conclusion they wanted was reached through more appropriate means, I would be really happy. But like I said, this isn't how you do that. Are the editors here willing to have a MoS discussion on this, make new proposals, see if a new consensus can be raised, and then live with the outcome the community reaches?-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Andrew I read the MoS guidelines (prior to Dank's very recent change) to have been at least unclear on this matter. If in if fact "the Church" is an abbreviated name, then in fact the MoS, prior to Dank's recent change, supported the reading that "the Church" and not "the church" was in fact appropriate. What spits in the face of Wikipedia is adding language to the MoS during a discussion which then makes what had been one reading of the MoS seem like it in fact goes "above the MoS." Where is the consensus behind Dank's change to the MoS? At the very least recognize the progression of events here and don't just vilify one side of this issue. I welcome an MoS discussion about this, and I mean a generic one not just about the Catholic Church. I posted once again to the talk page there because a quick search of peer reviewed journals in the social sciences and in history makes the case that "the Church" and/or always using the full name is much more common in usage than "the church" in the relevant academic literature. This fact makes me wonder about the clarification that TCMOS apparently gave Storm Rider, or at least suggests that the editorial oversight of peer reviewed academic journals rarely takes the TCMOS guidelines into account. The issue is not as clear cut from either our MoS guidelines (at least prior to Dank's change), from TCMOS and/or from academic usage as some here want to make it seem. These same people want to suggest that the opposition are spiting in the face of the encyclopedia and disregarding current policy. What is wrong with having a discussion here, and a straw poll (which is not a binding vote), and then moving onto a more general MoS discussion. Since you are so concerned would you mind starting this MoS discussion in a more official capacity? Thanks.PelleSmith (talk) 15:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: "What spits in the face of Wikipedia", that's a little harsh. I immediately posted that people should not take my edit as indicative of consensus. I made the edit not to change the guidance, but because there was no guidance, or rather it was thought that there was guidance on all other institutions but not on churches. Now it does say one way or the other, so people are free to agree, disagree, revert, etc. We got the guidance on lowercasing other institutions in similar sentences from the style guides, and those same style guides support lowercasing "church" in sentences such as the third one in this article (Roman Catholic Church), so I went with that. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Dan, I'm sorry, I was reacting to the language used by Andrew but I will say I am sure you acted in good faith and I did not mean to be so harsh. I just don't like the fact that there are one or two editors here who make it sound not like what you have just said that "there was no guidance" but instead that the MoS has always clearly said X, Y and Z--which it simply hasn't. Again, sorry for being harsh.PelleSmith (talk) 23:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know why the MoS was so crystal clear to me (and TSP, and Storm Rider, among others), and others felt it lacked guidance. I agree we shouldn't point to Dan's recent change as long standing precedent. We had a section in the MoS on institutions. It didn't specifically list church, but it did say that common nouns, when used as common nouns outside of titles (even if the common noun is found in a title) are lowercase. Saying the MoS lacked guidance is like saying because the institution section doesn't mention "credit unions" or "restaurants" or "museums", that we have no guidance on how to capitalize those terms. I can understand completely with users disagreeing with the MoS. I just disagree with using this as a venue to discuss bigger issues (like what Michael Hardy is doing below). I'm sorry you feel my act of going to the MoS to discuss a MoS issue was inappropriate. Like I've said before, if there is community wide consensus to change the MoS on this issue, I'd support that (I even find some of the more general arguments persuasive). But clearly there WAS some guidance in the MoS regarding similar matters, and clearly it's inappropriate to try to discuss broader MoS issues on a single article's talk page. -Andrew c ^[talk] 14:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Andrew I fully understand your interpretation of the original language, the language which is copied above. The problem with this language, as identified by others who do not share your interpretation, can by summed up in the caveat about generic terms that they are only written in lower case " ... if they do not appear in a proper name." Those who don't agree with you claim that "the Church" when used in certain situation is in effect a proper noun. The lack of clarity lies exactly there, in that we don't know if we really should consider it a proper noun. Some of you claim emphatically that it shouldn't, but I don't see where this is clear in the MoS. What Dank's edit did was force the point that it is not a proper noun, by putting a concrete example down. One of the problems with this particular term, "church", as opposed to "university" or "bank," is that there is a well worn convention to capitalize it as if it were a proper noun (and not just for Catholics--feel free to search peer reviewed academic journals in the social sciences and in history as I did). Is this a special case? Should it be a special case? If so how far does the "case" extend? To other "churches," to other religious institutions, to other institutions? You are right to say that this is a larger MoS discussion. You are wrong to imply that the MoS has always been clear and that those who don't agree with you must be missing something. There are not only two options here ... agreeing with the MoS or disagreeing with the MoS. The third option is to discuss what Dank boldly went about doing (again in good faith), providing clarity. Cheers.PelleSmith (talk) 15:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

(resetting indent) The trouble is that there are a lot of people who feel that the MoS is wrong, or at least, worded in such a way as to miss out a potential case; it's misleading. So it's not "crystal clear" unless one simply fails to see where it is flawed. I agree with you that this isn't the place to fix that, and that the best course is to fix the MoS. However, in the meantime, it would be a mistake (and a waste of the effort of all of those in this discussion) to throw common sense out of the window. If the MoS is wrong, we should "rebel" here in the hope and faith that it will soon be fixed (perhaps by some of us). It'd be crazy to make this article wrong just until the MoS gets it right, and then have to change everything (again). 81.178.67.229 (talk) 14:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Depends on the word's meaning in the particular context!

My practice has been that when the phrase "the Church" is used as a abbreviation of the name "the Roman Catholic Church" or of the name of some other church, then it's a proper noun and should be capitalized, but in other contexts it's a common noun (e.g. "The church to which John Smith belongs practices infant baptism."---lower-case since it's not an abbreviation of the name of any particular church). Michael Hardy (talk) 22:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

"The University" is also correct in some cases

"The University of Slobovia is committed to blah blah blah. That is because the University believes in ... etc."

Capitalizing the "U" in the second sentence is correct because it abbreviates the name of that one university.

"I was a student at a very big university."

Lower case is correct in this case because it's a common noun rather than an (abbreviated) name. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Ojective: clarity

Getting back to what should be the prime objective; here is some illustrative text from the article:

The worldwide Catholic Church is made up of one Western or Latin and 22 Eastern Catholic autonomous particular churches.

According to canon law, one becomes a member of the Catholic Church by being baptized in the Church.[138] Christians baptized outside of the Church or those never baptized may be received by participating in a formation program such as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

In the second example, particularly, without the capitalization of Church, confusion would soon arise as to whether one was being baptized inside or outside of a building or an institution!Xandar (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point! Polycarp7 (talk) 05:16, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Isn't it obvious that by using the words "The Church" as opposed to "a church", that the former would have the meaning of "the institution", where else the latter would have the meaning of a building? Take care when you read "the" and "a". Furthermoore, you don't have to be baptized in a church; Jesus was baptized outside of one, so whats the alledged confusion? Tourskin (talk) 05:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Everyone knows Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River - not outside of a church. Kidding aside, it doesn't follow that "the church" always means an institution, while "a church" always means a building. Therefore, "the Church" would make it more clear that one is referring to an institution and not a building. Polycarp7 (talk) 19:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

There are, however, more subtleties here; I don't think that "the Church" is entirely unambiguous. "The Church" is often used to mean the single unified body of Christians, as in "the Church and the World", and so on. Now, it is Roman Catholic doctrine - to oversimplify for a minute - that this body and the Roman Catholic Church are more or less synonymous; which is, indeed, a reason that one user above gave for capitalising when referring to this church. However, it would be a breach of the NPOV policy for an article to use language which equated these concepts. I think that such possible implications are best avoided by following the Manual of Style and lowercasing the term, when not used in as part of a proper noun, throughout.

To address the specific examples, I think that "one becomes a member of the Catholic Church by being baptized in the Church" is confusing and ambiguous however it is capitalised, and the first example would be unaffected by this decision. TSP (talk) 20:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI, a related discussion started at Talk:Anglican_Communion#.27Communion.27_or_.27communion.27.3F. Gimmetrow 18:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Nicene Creed

This is copied and pasted from the FAC page and I would like some opinions from both Catholic and non-Catholic editors so we can gain consensus please. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 18:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment. I have mixed feelings about including the entire Nicene Creed in the article. Might there be a better way to express the creed of the Church? I'd consider summarizing the salient elements. Majoreditor (talk) 03:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That would take vastly longer. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 04:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

We hashed this out in previous FACs. Non-Catholics want to eliminate the Creed and Catholics want to keep it stating that there is no better or more concise way to explain our core beliefs in a nutshell, the Creed already does it for us and it is so important to our faith and so small a paragraph that it is imperitive that we include it. NancyHeise (talk) 15:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe at least a few Catholics also suggested that the full text of the Creed be removed. We need to ask whether it actually provides value to the reader in this format, and if multiple people who are not familiar with the religion believe it doesn't, then the article has an accessibility problem. Karanacs (talk) 15:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

--end of copied comments --

I copied this response also from that page: I'm not sure what the objection to the Nicene Creed is exactly. The Creed IS a summary. I don't think it is possible to summarize a summary and do it any better. I feel an attempt would be unwieldy, inaccurate or both. Perhaps Karanacs could suggest wording that says things better. Xandar (talk) 18:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC) I am in agreement with Xandar here, just for the record. NancyHeise (talk) 18:54, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Previous arguments against including the text have included:

other religions also use and believe in the Nicene Creed
- because it is not unique, it does not provide unique information to the article
- More general information about Christian belief belongs in Christianity article
- It may also be better placed at Roman Catholic theology
the space devoted to the creed is too long/too much detail
The Creed has its own article which can provide detail for those who are interested or unfamiliar with it
Other encyclopedias, such as Encarta, don't even mention the creed, just explain the beliefs
- "If one were asked to write about a poem, one wouldn't just re-print the entire poem "

Previous arguments for including the full text

it will take more space to explain it - Creed is more concise
this is THE statement of faith for Catholics
- "Most people reading the article will not be familiar with the creed, and it is so important, it deserves being there in full"

Karanacs (talk) 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

As to Nancy's comment above, I'd just write, Catholic belief is encapsulated in the Nicene Creed. and then leave it at that. The rest of the beliefs section should discuss Catholic belief (and I haven't read it in weeks so I'm not sure exactly what it does say right now). Karanacs (talk) 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, for the record. I think that's all that's required. The Nicene Creed should be mentioned; but it has its own article, which people can go to to find out what it says, and indeed what it means.

I don't think that it's the most helpful introduction to Catholicism or Christianity for someone who isn't already familiar with it - I certainly didn't know what "begotten, not made" meant the first time I heard it, and knowing why it's important to affirm that probably requires an understanding of Arianism. The Creed is not intended to be an introduction to Christian beliefs; it is intended to be a checklist of beliefs (chosen not because they are the most important beliefs of Christianity, but because they are those which others might not believe).

Wikipedia's guideline Explain Jargon is relevant here - I think perhaps it's hard for Christians to understand how dense and unfamiliar some of our language is to those not already intimately familiar with it. Read any sentence of the creed, and imagine coming across it in the middle of a paragraph of a Wikipedia article. You'd immediately want to take it apart, explain some terms, rephrase it more neutrally and factually, perhaps take out repetition, emphasise some parts and de-emphasise others. The Nicene Creed is a good thing to refer to in the article; but I don't think it's a good thing to form part of the article. TSP (talk) 23:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If a majority of editors want the Creed eliminated I will eliminate it and do what Karanacs wants. I think that in the last FAC it was not a majority. It is an issue that should not prevent the article from becoming FA if the majority want to leave it, there is no violation of policy, its just a matter of personal taste and opinion.NancyHeise (talk) 01:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that this is just a matter of "personal taste and opinion." At least part of it is an accessibility issue. The Nicene Creed is written in Christian jargon, which does not really make sense to non-Christians (and some Christians don't really understand it either). That's why TSP linked to the guideline on explaining jargon. This has been brought up over and over (by lots of people), which tells me that consensus may be leaning against the inclusion of the entire Creed. Karanacs (talk) 13:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Karanacs, lets see who brings it up on FAC. I already know you dont want it there. When I go to the last FAC, there are only a handful of editors who wanted it gone, everyone else (there was a huge number of support votes remember) either opposed for other reasons or supported it with the creed. I want to see what everyone else thinks. I dont want to impose either your or my view upon everyone else, I want to follow Wikipedia policy and get a consensus. NancyHeise (talk) 15:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that consensus should be followed. It is important to remember however, that just because someone supported the article at FAC, that does not mean that they disagree with any proposed changes, just that they did not feel the issue was enough to change their opinion of the overall quality of the article. Unless a reviewer specifically commented on the issue, their opinion is not known and cannot be assumed. Karanacs (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Karanacs and TSP. The Nicene Creed has meaning primarily to well-informed Christians. Many Christians don't understand all the theological nuances of its phraseology and repeat it simply because they are told to do so. Non-Christians won't either unless they have a particular reason to be informed on the topic. The Creed has its own article. A summary of the key beliefs should be presented here with the Roman Catholic "spin" on those beliefs identified as such. Because other denominations also claim to adhere to the creed but with different interpretations of some points, it is important to discuss the Roman Catholic perspective on the Creed rather than to simply present the full text and say "There! that's what we believe". --Richard (talk) 16:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe the Creed needs to be removed and linked to, perhaps the energy put into defending its retention could be put into the article about the Creed, itself. For the record, I say this as a practicing Catholic, baptized when I was 2-days old.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 16:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to say I strongly disagree with karanacs on this. I notice she hasn't take up the challenge to produce an improvement on the creed. If the creed was not there, then the information in the creed would have to be explained anyway, and in different words. That would just add to the chunkiness of the article, be more poorly written and less accurate. The argument on "religious" language is a whole other issue, and I think is bogus. It was a big sixties-seventies thing to decry "religious" language and re-express things like the Lords prayer in "supermarket-speak". In fact most people remember and understand these things in the older more-relevant forms. (Is begotten really that hard to understand? -and if yuou remove it what do you replace it with - an overview of the argument as to whether Jesus is an equal part of the Trinity or a divinely created but lesser being? Begotten says all that needs to be said in one word.) The argument to remove the Creed and substitute "Catholic beliefs" is puzzling. Firstly the Creed IS the summary of Catholic beliefs. Second, anyone coming to this article wants to find all the important facts HERE, not be directed to loads of other articles all over Wikipedia. Putting a "Catholic perspective on the Creed", whatever that is, would be an invitation to produce something very lengthy, involved an unreadable. If the Creed took up a huge amount of space, I might understand the argument for removing it. But it doesn't. It's there in its little box, and people can read or ignore it as they please. As has been said earlier, many readers won't have seen it before. It is fundamental, and it should be there. Xandar (talk) 16:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I actually did post a suggestion above, Xandar, which is what several of the other commenters have referred to: As to Nancy's comment above, I'd just write, Catholic belief is encapsulated in the Nicene Creed. and then leave it at that. The rest of the beliefs section should discuss Catholic belief (and I haven't read it in weeks so I'm not sure exactly what it does say right now). Karanacs (talk) 19:03, 8 May 2008 (UTC) (I've proposed similar wording in the past - check the archives.) The Creed is also the main statement of belief for the Methodist Church, but it doesn't mean the exact same thing to Methodists as it does to Catholics. And for people who aren't Christian, it doesn't really mean anything at all. Summary style highly encourages us to create separate articles to provide detailed information on more specific topics. This article should be a high-level overview to allow the average person to learn a bit about Catholicism. Those who are more curious can go to child articles to get information about the pieces they are curious about. That's how WP works. I also encourage you to stop focusing on me. I have made no efforts to contact others to weigh in on this issue, yet numerous people keep bringing this up at FAC and on this page. However, there seems to be a trend that if I bring up something, any subsequent mention of that issues is my "fault" or at least my responsibility to fix it. Please stop focusing on me and focus instead on the article. Karanacs (talk) 16:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Just a word to those who SAY it can be done better. Let's not remove the creed until someone has actually produced something we can agree on to replace it with. Xandar (talk)

Actually, if everyone would read the Beliefs section, the different parts of the Creed are explained in each section. While I prefer to keep the Creed just as is it would be OK if we removed it and placed a sentence right after the opening Beliefs section sentence that wikilinks it and proclaims its centrality to Catholic belief. Before we do that, lets all see what others think. I appreciate those who have come to this talk page and given us their views. Wikipedia wants consensus of editors so lets do it all according to the policy so we dont have arguments one way or the other. NancyHeise (talk) 18:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Since you're asking, I'd say that the article would be fine with the link, as described, instead of the full text. The Nicean Creed may be central to our belief, but it is also used by non-Catholics, and it does not summarize everything we believe. It's not even exactly a mere expansion of the Apostles Creed, since it omits both "he descended to the dead" and "the communion of saints", both of which are vital Catholic teachings. -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Good points. Those omitted beleifs are already included in the Beliefs section. Thank you for speaking up and giving us your opinion. We need more people to do so. NancyHeise (talk) 20:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Top Wikipedian FAC reviewer Awadewit wanted the creed out during the last FAC. Top Wikipedian Peer reviewer Karanacs wants the creed out. What more do we need? </tongue in cheek comment>-Andrew c ^[talk] 02:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I know that having it in the article takes space, but I think it is so fundamental to Catholicism that it should be included. I understand that it is also fundamental to other denominations, but this church was the Church where it came to be. When I read the article I just like being able to read here rather than go elsewhere to read it. I understand the logic of removing it, but it is simply a personal preference to keep it here.--Storm Rider ^(talk) 02:44, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I removed it because Andrew c is right, Awadewit and Karanacs are top reviewers at Wikipedia and I do respect their opinions although I sometimes disagree and I hope they respect mine. If everyone would read through the entire Beliefs section, you will see that we have already incorporated detailed explanations of everything that the Creed summarizes. It is also hard to miss that the consensus of this talk page bends almost overwhelmingly toward removing it. NancyHeise (talk) 02:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If you will all please take a look at Beliefs section, I have incorporated the Nicene Creed into every part of the Beliefs section using actual quotes that lead into an explanation. This should satisfy everyone - we have the Creed words and we have the explanation and we have eliminated the entire quote. NancyHeise (talk) 03:33, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nancy, Andrew was making a joke. Awadewit and I are editors just like everyone else. We both review a lot of FACs and that informs our opinions, but that doesn't mean what we say is the be all and end all of the discussion. I'd rather all decisions be made here based on consensus and strength of arguments rather than looking at who made the argument. Karanacs (talk) 16:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Karanacs, you are just too humble. I knew Andrew was joking. NancyHeise (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Good work, Nancy! I actually thought of another reason why the entire Creed shouldn't be quoted here. According to our article English versions of the Nicene Creed in current use (which could maybe be linked to from here), Catholics in the U.S. use a slightly different version from English-speaking Catholics in other countries. Specifically, in the U.S. the 1973 draft for an ecumenical version is used, while elsewhere the 1975 ecumenical version is used. By quoting the Creed in full, the article would have given precedence to one or the other version. Actually, the current state of the article still uses the 1973 version as it cites "one in being with the Father" rather than the 1975 "of one being with the Father". —An gr 19:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This is what Wikisource is for (it should include both). Here it may be preferable to reserve "the Nicene Creed" for the Greek text, since non-Catholics need not regard either version as canonical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that including the entire Greek text of the Nicene Creed in an English-language article on the Roman Catholic Church to explain what Catholics' beliefs are would have been utterly useless. —An gr 07:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Who proposed any such thing? I think both English versions should be moved to Wikisource; and that we should be careful about using the where does not apply. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

WND

WorldNetDaily is used for note #265; perhaps a more reliable source could be found. Biruitorul (talk) 01:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I eliminated the two worldnetdaily refs because of your comment here and because they served as doubles to refs that were already there and are better. One of the wnd refs doubled a US govt official document and the other doubled the Washington post. Since Worldnetdaily is not a better ref than US govt or Washington Post, I eliminated them. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 02:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Biruitorul (talk) 14:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Article size

The article is at 140 kilobytes. Wikipedia guidelines say that articles greater than 100 KB should "almost certainly should be divided".

We have the History of the Roman Catholic Church article, so I think that the History section should be moved there and a smaller summary put in its place. --WikiCats (talk) 11:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This is copied and pasted from the [Wikipedia article size guideline page]. It is the statement that is at the top of the page and says "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article." The article size for Catholic Church is not too long. Readable prose is 65Kb using the same method used by FA reviewer SandyGeorgia. Per Sandy, in discussion after the last FAC, we are allowed to have a longer article because the subject matter is expected to require a longer page to meet FA criteria. There are other FA articles that are also long see Intelligent Design. NancyHeise (talk) 13:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, we can't toss the history section because it contains mentions of most notable criticisms - and there are several over the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church. We have used the format suggested by Jimbo Wales which says to put the criticisms throughout the article to avoid having a separate section called "criticisms" which has a tendency to become what he called a "troll net". It is unreasonable for us to be expected to have a Wikipedia article that meets all FA criteria without allowing for it to be longer - the subject matter warrants it and the guidelines obviously allow us to have it. NancyHeise (talk) 13:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nancy. We've been through this debate more than once. To cut the History section would just bring up a chorus of critics who would say certain topics (Crusades, inquisitions, Reformation etc.) need to be discussed in detail. If those things are in the article in detail, to balance, and avoid Undue Weight, the other equally important (though less controversial) events occurring at the same time, need to be covered also. Hence we have the article as long as it is.Xandar (talk) 16:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That's fine then. --WikiCats (talk) 09:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Beliefs section

I have a new perspective on this debate over the inclusion/exclusion of the Nicene Creed.

As I have said above, the problem is that some people want to include the Creed because it neatly encapsulates all the key beliefs of the RCC while others want to exclude the Creed because it uses so much Christian jargon that it imparts insufficient information to many Christians and to most non-Christians.

Excluding the Creed does not help these readers because exclusion imparts less information about RCC beliefs, not more. Including the Creed does impart important information but not enough for most readers.

So, the solution that I propose is to include the Creed and then use it to structure the rest of the Beliefs section. The crucial insight that I had is that the rest of the Beliefs section does not help the reader understand the central importance of the Creed to RCC beliefs. To address this problem, I took the existing Beliefs section and restructured it around the assertions of the Creed in the order that they are mentioned.

Here is my proposed restructuring of the Beliefs section

User:Richardshusr/Beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church

I think this new treatment shows more clearly the linkage between the Nicene Creed and RCC beliefs. There is more work to be done but the guiding principle, IMHO, should be that any belief of the RCC that we mention should be tied to one or more of the assertions in the Nicene Creed.

If we can do this, it would resolve the inclusion/exclusion debate while providing a concise and logical exposition of RCC belief in the context of the Creed.

--Richard (talk) 02:57, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Richard, I appreciate your restructuring and I think it is very good. However, it will not pass for Good Article or Featured article because it is not concise in headings. The table of contents can not be long and detailed. Can you please take a look at the changes I just made to the Beliefs section? I eliminated the full quote of the Nicene Creed but it is still there, it is quoted in each section of Beliefs and then followed by explanation. The Nicene Creed is not gone from the article, it is just dissected and explained in parts. This is exactly what you have proposed but maybe a bit more concise and respects the consensus of editors to eliminate the full quote. It is true that several top editors have told me that the Creed should be mentioned and wikilinked and the quote eliminated but explained in the Beliefs section. NancyHeise (talk) 03:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm OK with the changes you have made to this article incorporating the essence of my proposal. I'm glad that my idea made sense to you and that you were willing to buy into it. I hope that this will satisfy editors on both sides of the include/exclude debate.

When you have time, I would like you to compare my proposal with Roman Catholic theology and give me your opinion on how we can improve that article as I think it is a real mess. I believe that we should restructure that article along the lines of User:Richardshusr/Beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church or along the lines of the Beliefs section in this article. A reader should be able to jump between this article and Roman Catholic theology and get a holistic view of RCC beliefs with a summary overview here and a fuller exposition in Roman Catholic theology.

--Richard (talk) 04:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, being the impatient sort, I decided to be bold and merge text from the Beliefs section of this article and from the Beliefs section of Christianity into Roman Catholic theology. The Roman Catholic theology still needs a lot of work but at least it now provides a more comprehensive overview of RCC beliefs. I invite other editors to take a look at Roman Catholic theology and help to improve it. --Richard (talk) 05:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Comparing the Beliefs section of this article against my recent revision of Roman Catholic theology, I find these differences:

no mention in this article of Prayers for the Dead and indulgences
a difference in treatment of veneration of the Virgin Mary and the saints

It would be good if the Beliefs section of this article and Roman Catholic theology covered substantially the same topics with summary treatment in this article and a more detailed exposition in Roman Catholic theology

--Richard (talk) 05:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought the Roman Catholic Theology page looked good. I did not give it an in-depth examination but I will when I get through this FAC. Regarding your suggestions for Prayers for the Dead, indulgences, and Virgin Mary and saints : Please read the last paragraph of the section entitled Devotional life and personal prayer. This covers Mary and Saints. Prayers for the Dead are mentioned as one of the works of mercy in the Church section in Beliefs and we dont mention indulgences. I think it is quite a minor issue that can be covered in depth in the Roman Catholic Theology page that we wikilink. Because we can't put the whole Catechism on the page, we just mention the major items and provide wikilinks for readers who want more. NancyHeise (talk) 06:42, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there once was a distinct section on Mary and the saints in this article, but it must have vanished in one of the many revisions. Mary is a topic that is of interest to people reading up on Catholicism, however lets not make any unnecessary changes at the moment. Indulgences should have a wikilink somewhere in the article to an article PROPERLY explaining the issue in Catholicism, but we can't really go into such a complex topic in the main article. As for the changes to the catholic Theology article. It's an important article that needs the extra input, however it still seems to need a lot of work organising, avoiding duplications etc. Xandar (talk) 10:46, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added a subsection head under BELIEFS, titled "Teaching Authority" I think this defines most of the paragraph beneath is about and helps the reader find or avoid this material. However there is some other material on sacraments and other churches in the para which is not quite relevant to that title. Catholic teachings or Church teachings might better cover everything in the section. So if people dislike the new heading , please alter or remove.Xandar (talk) 11:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Mary Links

On Mary. I think we need two links, the one at present, and one lower down where Mary is discussed. At the moment I think the Blessed Virgin Mary article is the higher standard and more Catholic-related article, and needs to be linked to at least once in the text. Mary mother of Jesus, linked to at the moment is a confusing mish-mash at present. Xandar (talk) 10:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I've made a link to Blessed Virgin Mary from the Devotional life and personal prayer section, since the BVM article has more information about Marian devotions and practices. Xandar (talk) 11:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

We are voting in a section above

Please cast your vote on this page in the section discussion on Capitalization of Church, Thanks.NancyHeise (talk) 17:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

necene creed

necene creed is not italicized in a consistent way in the article 131.111.247.194 (talk) 19:48, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

It's only italicized once, I'm not sure why. It isn't a book title. —An gr 20:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I got rid of the italics. NancyHeise (talk) 16:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Very minor image issues

When going through and slightly expanding some image captions, I noticed that a handful of images aren't in the proper section, but instead are directly about the section header. Is there a reason why we can't move the images directly under the corresponding image header (so that when you hit the edit button of the section the image is closest to, you will actually get the code for the image)? -Andrew c ^[talk] 15:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think left-hand images should not go directly under sub-section headers, for some technical reason. Otherwise no. Johnbod (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you both for addressing this for me. I appreciate it very much. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 17:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Henry VIII

I've altered the Six Articles passage in the English Reformation part of the history section. There has been a long debate in FAC about this, and I do not think the former version was defensible, since no actual reformation legislation was reversed by Henry. The Six Articles were a royal proclamation, based on Henry's powers under the reformation legislation. Xandar (talk) 23:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

While I disagree with the above assessment (both Haigh and Vidmar use the word "reverse" when referring to this and why would celibacy need to be restored if it had not previously been abandoned - ie Cranmers wife?) I do not oppose the wording compromise put forth by Xandar. I have also created and referenced a new Wikipedia article on author John Vidmar. Please take a look and let's not have any more fuss over this. NancyHeise (talk) 04:46, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

See my comments on Talk:John Vidmar. I have doubts that Vidmar is notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia article. --Richard (talk) 18:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

See my response on his talk page. I was trying to help eliminate the questions over his credentials as a history professor per one FAC reviewer who said he was not a history professor just a theology professor. The Wikipage I created on him helps future reviewers see who he is and what works he has accomplished, it has references to support that he is and has been a history professor for many years and lists his books that he has written as well as popular reviews of the books showing that he is not some sort of radical or disrespected scholar. I think you would be doing Wikipedia a disservice by eliminating his page that is fully referenced and in much better order than some other professors I was looking at whose information is completely unreferenced. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Cranmer married (his second wife) in Germany, celibacy was actually still the rule in England a tthe time I beleive. His first wife died before he took orders. David Underdown (talk) 08:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I realize that Vidmar's comment about Cranmer is not OK with a couple of people here. Vidmar offers a viewpoint of history that is Catholic. His book is not some radical book that has been rejected among scholars however you may disagree with his quote on Cranmer. The article is not about Cranmer anyway, the disputed quote is not in the content of the article text but part of a sentence used by Vidmar to elaborate on how Henry VIII viewed his new church's teachings. NancyHeise (talk) 15:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to offer an opinion one way or the other on this issue because I haven't looked closely at it, but beware of violating WP:UNDUE. If Vidmar's Catholic persepective on Henry VIII's actions is not very accepted by other historians, then including it here is a violation of the undue weight guideline. A view can be accepted by scholars and still be in th minority and thus need to be excluded. The history that this article should present is an independent vision of the history, not an exclusively Catholic perspective on history. For the most part, I think it's trying to do that pretty well, but if there are a few instances that are not these need to be looked at. Karanacs (talk) 18:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I would like to include on this talk page two links of book reviews for the Vidmar book used for 13 citations in the history section of Roman Catholic Church. Here's a peer review from Graduate Theological Union at Berkly, California [7] and here's the review from Googlebooks [8]. Please, take a look and verify for yourself. Thanks. NancyHeise (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Vidmar's book is also reviewed by scholar and historian Thomas Bokenkotter in the Church history academic journal Catholic Historical Review. Bokenkotter recommends it to readers at the end of his review without citing any errors. NancyHeise (talk) 18:44, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I would certainly deny that Vidmar's views are in any way "far out" or outlandish. When we say a historian has catholic view of the Reformation, this is to say that there are of-necesity, a more pro-catholic, and a more pro-reformation view among historians. the pro-reformation view would emphasize church corruption and persecutions, the pro-catholic would emphasize that often "reformations" were top-down, financially motivated, and also involved persecutions. On the henry issue, Vidmar's view is actually more in the pro-reformation camp in that he stresses Henry's catholic preferences - Henry being a figure that Protestants tend to want to dissociate themselves from. Xandar (talk) 10:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Sacred Scripture

Reading the intro to Septuagint, I found Many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional books. Roman Catholics, however, include some of these books in their canon while Eastern Orthodox Churches use all the books of the Septuagint. Anglican lectionaries also use all of the books except Psalm 151, and the full King James Bible in its Authorized Version includes these additional books in a separate section labeled Apocrypha. This however does not have a citation. Do the Catholics use the whole Septuagint, including all additional books, or just some of the additional books? The table at Books of the Bible seems to suggest Catholics do not use Odes, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and there is some naming confusion when it comes to Ezra, 1 and 2 Esdras, and Nehemias. Not sure if Deuterocanonical books helps matters. On top of that, I just wanted to note that the phrase "Jewish Old Testament" should not be used because the phrase is an oxymoron and offensive to Jews. I like having a sentence that briefly explains Sacred Scripture, and linking to the other articles is quite helpful, so thanks Nancy for doing this. -Andrew c ^[talk] 18:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I also added extensive quotes from the scholarly source to help make everyone OK with the wording used. The source, "The Essential Catholic Catechism" is written by Dr. Alan Schreck, a professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and author of the best-selling book "Catholic and Christian". NancyHeise (talk) 18:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing most of that up. I'm still a little confused on whether Catholics use the whole Septuagint or not, and why the Orthodox have more books. This article clearly shouldn't be the place to discuss the details, but I'm thinking a very slight word adjustment or the addition of one more citation could help. It seems unfortunate that Schreck doesn't seem to cover this topic. -Andrew c ^[talk] 20:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I can address this right now, Andrew. Maybe after FAC I'll do some more research on that and fix the Sacred Scripture page if its incorrect. NancyHeise (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The brief history, as I understand it (and my understanding of it may have been influenced by wikipedia articles from a few years ago, I honestly can't remember) is this:

1) The Catholic bible was formally codified in the Church during the council of Trent. Prior to this, the passages in the lectionary were taken from St. Jerome's Vulgate, and the lectionary's composition was determined by the bishops and various councils--as it still is today.

2) The Vulgate has 76 books, of these the fathers at the council of Trent choose the 66 that protestants also codified, and 7 which the protestants did not choose, for various reasons, some political. The 7 additional books are: 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, and Baruch. This makes total of books for the catholic bible as 73. Three books of the Vulgate were dismissed by the council as Apocrypha--i.e. contemporary to the other OT books which are worthy religious writings, but not inspired by the Holy Spirit.

3) The Orthodox, at a point in time that I do not know, also independently codified the bible. Their bishops choose the 73 books that the catholic bishops choose, and the three that the Catholics dismissed: 3 Maccabees, Esdras, and Odes. In addition to the three mentioned, the various Orthodox Churches add additional apocrypha which vary between the Churches. I do not know for sure, but my intuition tells me that the Orthodox did not use the Vulgate as their base, but rather the Septuagint or its appropriate Greek descendant.

The Catholic Encyclopedia probably has an article discussing this. Lwnf360 (talk) 06:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Trent only repeated the list from the 1441 Council of Florence. Take care using the term 'apocrypha', as it has different meanings. The 1604 Douay described 3&4 Esdras as "commentary on the scriptures", presumably because Esdras describes the translation from Hebrew to Greek ClemMcGann (talk) 08:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The Council of Florence only repeated the list of books from the Councils of Rome in 382 and Carthage in 397 AD, approved by Pope Damasus. This list excludes for whatever reason the books included by the Orthodox. Remember that even the Septuagint was not one big book as we know now. Those came into use at about the time the bible was codified in the 4th century. It would have been a mass of scrolls. Jerome originally translated only the Hebrew Old Testament books, but was told to add the rest to his translation. Xandar (talk) 10:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed ClemMcGann (talk) 00:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Catechism

The word is sometimes in italics, sometimes not. Please be consistent. Randomblue (talk) 22:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Randomblue, I just went through to check and couldn't find any inconsistencies, maybe someone else already changed them or I am missing it. NancyHeise (talk) 23:59, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

This article is far too biased towards the Catholic Church, in particular the introduction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.49.32.126 (talk) 08:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Care to elaborate? Nautical Mongoose (talk) 12:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Vidmar

As Nancy asked, I went through and looked at every single usage of Vidmar's book. I can't say I found that much that was utterly wrong, but a lot of oversimplification and some NPOV concerns. Rather than throw it on the poor FAC page, I am putting it here. Comments Okay, I sat down and looked at every usage of the Vidmar book in the article.

"The Catholic Church considers Pentecost to be its moment of origin because this was the day when the apostles first emerged from hiding to publicly preach the message of Jesus after his death." Okay, this is Catholic opinion, and doesn't seem to contentious. No problem, although I don't think I've ever seen it stated quite like that, that the start is Pentecost. I'm not an expert on that aspect of doctrine.

You are correct, this is not a contentious point. However, to be sure, I have added a citation to one of our scholarly Beliefs section sources, "The Essential Catholic Catechism" by Dr. Alan Schreck, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. NancyHeise (talk) 02:23, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"The apostles traveled to various Jewish communities in northern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, Greece, and Rome forming the first Christian communities." Other than the fact that others than the apostles helped set up churches, I dont' see any great issue with this. The details can go into the history article, so no worries on this one.

Thanks, the National Geographic Society book also said the same thing but we eliminated that citation because you did not like the book even though it was written by a set of over 10 scholars, all history professors. NancyHeise (talk) 02:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"From the first century onward, the Church of Rome was respected as a doctrinal authority because the Apostles Peter and Paul had led the Church there." Hm. This one is a bit more problematic. From Robin Lane Fox Pagans and Christians p. 512 "Rome had the most prestige, but had no agreed status as the senior power." That's what I have on my shelves, and it's mainly a matter of degree and emphasis, not of explicitly being wrong.
I added two references with quotes to this sentence to back up Vidmar. One is to Edward Norman's university press book and the other is to McManners university press book just to make sure no one thinks that Vidmar is the only historian to come to the conclusion stated in the text. NancyHeise (talk) 02:45, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
- The dating is questionable; it involves the question of the historicity of Peter and Paul's leadership of Rome, and the existence of Rome as a single power; mid-second century would be IIRC indisputable. . Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
The Origin and Mission section of the article has more detailed coverage of this point. Xandar (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"In the early 700s, iconoclasm became the source of conflict between the Eastern and Western churches. Under the direction of the Byzantine Emperors, Iconoclasts forbade the creation and veneration of images, claiming this to be a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Iconodules, backed by the Pope and the Western Church, disagreed with this interpretation." Yep, a fact that's pretty much beyond dispute, although it's greatly simplified here. (that's somethign for the iconoclasm article though)

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"The pope refused to recognize Photios, declared his election invalid and excommunicated him. Although Rome eventually approved his election, the dispute added to the growing alienation between the churches." Yep, utterly uncomplicated statement.

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Afterward, the Church ushered in the Carolingian Renaissance when the pope crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor in 800, partially in response to the dispute over iconoclasm. Charlemagne attempted to create an international unity through the common bond of Christianity. Although this resulted in many reforms including the creation of an improved system of education and unified laws, it also created a problem for the Church when succeeding emperors sought to appoint future popes." Err.. this one I take exception to. The Church did not "usher in the Carolingian Renaissance", as the Reniassance then had nothing to do with the fact that Leo crowned Charlemagne. The Carolingian Renaissance owed quite a lot to Charlemagne himself, as well as his advisors, some of whom were ecclesiastics, some of whom weren't. Pretty much that needs to be rewritten.

I eliminated the words "ushered in" and did a minor reword. NancyHeise (talk) 02:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"A dispute over whether Constantinople or Rome held jurisdiction over the church in Sicily led to mutual excommunications in 1054. The Western (Latin) branch of Christianity has since become known as the Catholic Church, while the Eastern (Greek) branch became known as the Orthodox Church. " Somewhat of a simplification, as I believe the terms catholic and orthodox were being used before the final schism, but this isn't my field so I'm not sure. But nothing terribly wrong with it either.

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) each failed to heal the schism. Some Eastern churches have subsequently reunited with the Catholic Church, and others claim never to have been out of communion with the pope." Another simplification, as there were plenty of other attempts to reconcile, but nothing too wrong either.

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"most notably by the Caliph Hakim," This one, I am not sure we really need this detail in the article, quite honestly. Probably could be lost without any great loss to the article.

It is an uncontested fact that is also mentioned in some of my other sources who go into great detail about the abuses. I think that my treatment of the matter has been quite merciful and I think it is important to provide the wikilink to Caliph Hakim for the reader who wants to know more. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Abuses committed by the crusaders caused Innocent III to institute the first inquisition to prevent future abuses and to root out the remaining Cathars." Hm. I don't think that it was abuses that really concerned Innocent here. And this is a great oversimplification, there were bishops' inquisitions, and it was really Gregory IX who got the real papal inquisition started. Malcolm Lambert Medieval Heresy Third Edition p. 108-109. There were some precursors under Innocent III, as he wished the bishops to increase their episcopal inquistions, (Lambert p. 106-107) but the papal inquistion didn't really start until Gregory IX.

You are incorrect. I added a reference to Bokenkotter with quote to supplement this sentence in addition to providing the quote from Vidmar. Please see these quotes as they specifically state that Innocent III began the Inquisition which was later institutionalized by Gregory IX. I think my sources are more expert and more correct than Lambert on this issue. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Over a 350-year period this Spanish Inquisition executed between 3,000 and 4,000 people..." I have nothing on the later Spanish Inquisition, which anyway was primarlily under the control of the Spanish rulers, and not the papacy.

This fact is part of our text. Agreed that there is no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 03:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"While one percent of those tried in the inquisitions received death penalties, scholars confirm that even at its most active point, the inquisitions as a whole were regarded as far more enlightened than secular courts whose judgments and punishments were often far more severe." Hm. No idea on this, we're getting past my sources, but I think I'd want this sort of apologia sourced to something besides Vidmar and Norman. This statement is going to get a LOT of controversy, so a few more sources backing it up won't hurt it at all, that's all.

Of course more would be better but having two scholarly works is not exactly bad either. I will do some research for more citations but I dont think the text needs any alteration for FAC. NancyHeise (talk) 05:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Historians note that for centuries Protestant propaganda and popular literature exaggerated the horrors of the inquisitions and "identified the entire Catholic Church ... with [the] occasional excesses" wrought by secular rulers." the only problem I see with this statemtent is that it says "Historians" and then you give one quotation. I would reword this so that it gives the exact historian that is saying the quotation, so that attribution is correct and easy to understand.

I did a minor reword and rearrangement of the references to make this clear. NancyHeise (talk) 03:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"a period known as the Avignon Papacy. The papacy returned to Rome in 1378 at the urging of Catherine of Siena and other "devout men and women who revered the Roman church as the See of Peter." Same as above, with two footnotes on the statement, I don't know which author said the quotation being given. Also, this is a simplification, as there were rulers (including the English kings and the German emperors) who wanted the papacy back in Rome too.

I reworded to eliminate quote and I left the simplification. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"In 1517, Martin Luther included his Ninety-Five Theses in a letter to several bishops, hoping to spark debate." Nothing wrong here, although it's simplified, as it should be.

Agreed. No action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences." Same as above.

Agreed. No action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
" Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others further criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges developed into the Protestant Reformation." The main problem with this one is that it seems to put Zwingli and Calvin as pretty much contemporanous, and they weren't really.

Well they really weren't that far apart in years. In the Roman Catholic article a decade or two IS contemporaneous. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"In Germany, the reformation led to war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 and was followed by a more serious conflict, the Thirty Years' War, which broke out in the following century." nothing really wrong here either, although "followed" really implies something a lot closer in time than the distance between 1555 and 1618. That's a quibble though.

Agreed. No action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"This ended under Pope Clement VIII who supported King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted civil and religious toleration to Protestants." Hm, outside my period again, so I'm less clear on the intricate details. Nothing in Diarmaid MacCulloch's "Reformation" says that the papacy supported the Edict.

This is refernced to both Duffy and Vidmar. Eamon Duffy's University of Cambridge press book is my main critic source and Vidmar is there to back him up on this fact.NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"The Acts of Supremacy made the English monarch head of the English church thereby establishing the Church of England. Then, beginning in 1536, some 825 monasteries throughout England, Wales, and Ireland were dissolved and Catholic churches were confiscated." Hm. The churches weren't really confiscated, they were still owned by the church in England, it just didn't acknowledge the papacy any more.

Churches that belonged to the Roman Catholic Church were confiscated and became property of the Church of England. They are two different organizations headed by two different heads. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Henry VIII executed those like Thomas More, who disagreed with his Act of Supremacy. He later reaffirmed Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy in the Six Articles of 1539, in opposition to the Calvinist and Lutheran views that were dominant among the Protestants of continental Europe." Honestly, I"m not sure what all this about the English Reformation is doing in the RCC article, but it's mostly correct, if greatly simplified.

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Theres a lot of interest in the English reformationXandar (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"However this affirmation did not extend to papal authority or the dissolution of monasteries and when he died in 1547, all monasteries, friaries, convents of nuns and shrines were gone." Didn't the chantries go under Edward though?

I have included in the text what the source states. Honestly, I am not absolutely sure that Chantries and shrines are one and the same, but they may be different. I dont think I am going to be incorrect to include the wording used by the author to name these institutions. NancyHeise (talk) 05:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

The chantries went under Edward but the pilgrim Shrines went under Henry.
"Mary I of England reunited the Church of England with Rome and, against the advice of her Catholic spiritual advisor, persecuted Protestants during the Marian Persecutions." This one smacks of POV to me, the insertion that her advisor advised against the persecutions seems like an apologia to me.

We have to have the Catholic side in there too! It is POV to explicitly exclude the Catholic or non-Catholic side of the story. Mary I did not only go against the advice of her spiritual advisor, there were others telling her not to do her terrible deed. I inserted the words and "and others" to help.NancyHeise (talk) 04:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

There were personal elements to Mary's actions. She was in many ways after revenge. Xandar (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"After some provocation, the following monarch, Elizabeth I enforced the Act of Supremacy. This prevented Catholics from becoming members of professions, holding public office, voting, or educating their children." Hm. I think you mean sending the children to university, not prohibiting them from learning to read and write.
"Executions of Catholics under Elizabeth I then surpassed the Marian persecutions.." oh, POV here. Yeah, the surpassed the numbers under Mary, but that's because Elizabeth reigned a LOT longer.

OK, I inserted language to make that clear. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"...but were less effective than in England.." Not a lot to argue about here, except that all of English rule in Ireland was less effective than it was in England, for a lot of reasons.

I think the next sentence makes that fact clear. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

It depends what is meant by less effective. The laws didn't eradicate Catholicism,but they were very effective in impoverishing and disempowering the Catholics Xandar (talk) 13:04, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"In part because the Irish people associated Catholicism with nationhood and national identity, they resisted persistent English efforts to eliminate the Catholic Church." Nothing particuarly wrong with this statement.

Agreed, no action needed here. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"It also reformed many areas of the Church's mission, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia." Nothing to really argue about here, although I don't like the use of the term "mission" which strikes me as less than NPOV. Perhaps "organization" or "structure" or "government" would be less charged terms.

Reworded to eliminate "mission" and using other words. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Improvement to the education of the laity was another positive effect of the era, with a proliferation of secondary schools reinvigorating higher studies such as history, philosophy and theology." On this, I am getting out of my time frame, and can't really judge this.

And it is not a contentious point either. NancyHeise (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"A few decades later, in 1938, Pope Pius XI warned Catholics that antisemitism was incompatible with Christianity." Nothing to argue about here, although it does kinda strike me as an apologia here, but it's not that bad.

I reworded this, added the wikilink to the actual papal encyclical where he states this (amazing how all these encyclicals are already on Wikipedia) and added the reference to Bokenkotter. NancyHeise (talk) 05:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"... others noted the significant numbers of Jews saved by the Church." I think it'd be better if we noted who these "others" are, but otherwise, nothing to argue about.

Done. NancyHeise (talk) 05:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
"Stating that some 400,000 Jewish lives were saved, one Israeli consul claimed that the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined." I'd prefer to see the consul named explicitely, but otherwise nothing to argue with.

I kept this sentence but added who also said it in the sentence just before it - Rabbi David Dalin.
"Some efforts to help save Jewish lives failed and by the end of the war, almost 5,000 Catholic priests had been executed by the Nazis and many others imprisoned." The only problem with this is that they weren't all executed for attempting to save Jews, a large number of Polish priests were killed just because they were Polish and priests. The combining of the two phrases gives the impression that the 5000 were all killed because they were attempting to save Jews.

I eliminated the phrase "some efforts to help save Jewish lives failed" and kept the rest of the sentence. NancyHeise (talk) 05:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully, that helps. I don't see it as a particurally strong source, myself, but obviously Nancy and others feel it is, so whatever. There are my criticisms. Take them as they are. I am honestly wanted the best article possible, but it's just way too much effort to fight every single step of the way. My own article writing, which I had planned to do today, has gotten lost in the shuffle. I'm not watch-listing this article, and I'm not really feeling the need to reply. You've worn me down, I'm done. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your much appreciated comments. I will be addressing changes to the text as you have recommended. I too want the best possible article and it is offensive to me to be continually accused of wanting less or of being POV when I have clearly indicated how we have used both critic and apologia sources in balanced manner. Vidmar is a very important apologia source for us to use in the ariticle to provide the balance Wikipedia desires in the guidelines. His inclusion is what makes the article particularly FA quality. NancyHeise (talk) 01:41, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

All comments here have been addressed and completed. NancyHeise (talk) 05:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

disambig

Please disambig Dominicans and death and resurrection. Randomblue (talk) 16:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your constant help in this matter on this page! I just disambigged them both. Thanks! NancyHeise (talk) 11:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I notice a slight problem with meaning-creep, following on one of the amendments. A sentence on the eucharist originally said. "The main elements and prayers of this Mass are almost identical to the form of the Mass described in the Didache and First Apology of Justin Martyr in the late first and early second centuries" Almost identical was then changed because of an objection to "very similar", and now the "very" has gone, leaving just "similar". Going from almost identical to similar is a significant change of meaning. If we're worried about sticking to the meaning in the reference, without copying the wording, we need a good synonym for "almost identical." Xandar (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree but I can't think of one. I'll do a bit of phrase searching. For now, I think we can leave "similar" without too much fuss. NancyHeise (talk) 19:08, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

"Official name"

On the Vatican website itself, their are quite a few references to the church as Roman Catholic: [9] Since both within the RCC and outside, the names RCC and CC are used more or less interchangeably, it is in my opinion more correct to change the lead -- as had been agreed before -- into "often referred to as CC". --Benne ['bɛnə] _(talk) 08:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

More or less? No, you're trying to minimalise. The people who are part of the Church refer to each other primarily as "Catholics", the official name is the Catholic Church. Really can we just skip the whole part where people argue over the name issue backwards and forwards with masses of text again? Its compromised enough already by being at the location Roman Catholic Church without people trying to "soften" what its official name is in the intro even more. - Yorkshirian (talk) 13:05, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Within the worldwide Catholic Church, the term Roman Catholic refers specifically to the diocese of Rome. The Church does not refer to itself as a worldwide institution as "Roman Catholic" but as "Catholic Church". The text in the article is referenced and has the backing of consensus of editors. NancyHeise (talk) 14:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

So in ARCIC, the anglican Communion is talking to only one diocese? And all those other examples on the Vatican and other websites. David Underdown (talk) 14:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This is wrong if you refer Roman Catholic Church only referring to the diocese of Rome. It should be the Catholic Church that is headed by the Bishop of Rome, which is the pope. In Indonesia, the church is called as "Katolik Roma" w_tanoto (talk) 21:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I think [[10] searching the Vatican website for instances of "Roman Catholic"] suffices to prove that RCC is used by the church itself to refer to the church as a whole, wherever and whenever disambiguation is needed, and certainly not to the diocese of Rome. I said "more or less interchangeably", because the names RCC and CC are apparently used synonymously within the RCC, and to a certain extent also outside the church. --Benne ['bɛnə] _(talk) 14:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

The Catholic Church uses the term Roman Catholic in its conversations with the Anglican Communion to be polite - the Anglican Communion calls itself the "catholic" church too. Also, in legal documents the Church will use the term Roman Catholic in some countries (like England). We can't go by legal documents, here in the United States, all assets (and mortages) of a diocese are held in the name of the bishop, not in the name of the Church, that does not make the official name of the church the name of the bishop! We have references to support the text in the article. If you have any references that support some other name then please provide them. No Vatican site makes any statement that the official name of the Church is the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican documents and all major publications of the Church name it the Catholic Church.

The above hits the nail on the head. But even then, in Great Britain itself if you say "I am a Catholic" in every day conversation, people automatically presume you mean the subject of this article. Most of the average Anglicans just call themselves "Anglican" or "C O E", unless they're specifying between themselves which "side" of the Anglican Communion they're on. Only then is it realistic that you'll hear "Anglo-Catholic". - Yorkshirian (talk) 15:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd point out that there is also a usage where 'Catholic' and 'Catholic Church' refers to those in communion with the Pope of Rome, and hence 'Roman Catholic' refers to the Latin rite Church in distinction to 'Eastern Catholic' which refers to those Catholics who are not Roman, either liturgically or jurisdictionally. InfernoXV (talk) 16:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you on that but per Wikipedia policy WP:NC, "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number 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. This is justified by the following principle: The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists." Based on that policy, the article was named "Roman Catholic Church" with the redirect for "Catholic Church" coming to this page as well as offering the reader the fact that the Catholic Church officially calls itself the "Catholic Church". Differences between Eastern Catholic and Western Catholic are also mentioned throughout the article as well as the lead. I believe we have satisfied all Wikipedia policy and provided reader with all the info he/or she needs to know in the very first two sentences. NancyHeise (talk) 20:46, 28 May 2008 (UTC)