Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Archive 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Contents 1 Terminology 2 Beliefs section 3 Straw poll 4 small change to membership 5 "traces its origins" 6 A BIG SUGGESTION 7 Roman Catholic series 8 Roman Catholic Weekly Collaboration 9 Holocaust and U.S. Slavery 10 Aborted Move to Catholicism 10.1 Discussion (Old) 11 Social teaching 12 Not the leader of all Christians 13 REQUESTED MOVE to Catholic Church 13.1 Survey 13.2 Discussion 13.3 Mediation 13.4 A Simple Resolution to this Issue 13.5 An Alternate Resolution 13.6 Why this has not been a fair vote 14 Overview section? 15 Social Teaching needs attention! 16 The formatting of the intro. 17 Proposed move

Terminology

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this article part of an ecumenical exercise?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lima 20:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Beliefs section

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lima 17:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Lima 17:38, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Straw poll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

Lima 15:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

small change to membership

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"traces its origins"

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

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

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

A BIG SUGGESTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roman Catholic series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roman Catholic Weekly Collaboration

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

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

Holocaust and U.S. Slavery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aborted Move to Catholicism

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

---

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

Discussion (Old)

Add any additional comments

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Affiriming Catholicism's aims state:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

catholicity n.

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

2. General application or acceptance; universality.

3. Catholicity Roman Catholicism.

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

Catholicism n.

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

Social teaching

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

Not the leader of all Christians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview section?

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

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

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

Social Teaching needs attention!

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

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

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

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

The formatting of the intro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proposed move

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lima 18:06, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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