Talk:Roman Catholicism in Great Britain

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This article uses British English dialect and spelling. Some terms that are used in it differ from, or are not used in, American English. For more information, see American and British English differences. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Contents 1 Link 2 Break down the page into three 3 annul vs declare null 4 Headings 5 Move 6 Move proposal 6.1 Survey 6.2 Discussion 6.3 This Talk page 7 Move proposal no. whatever it is 7.1 Survey 7.2 Discussion 8 Very strange behavior 9 Consistency in geographical references 10 Congrats 11 Some Biased Coverage of The Tudor Era 12 Converts 13 Taskforce Roman Catholicism in Great Britain 14 Sorry - I was 'bold'...then had second thoughts!

[edit] Link

The link for the cathedral of the Catholic archdiocese of Cardiff goes to a page about the Anglican cathedral in St David's, on the other side of the country! What's going on? Marnanel 22:08, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Break down the page into three

Very Good Page, however perhaps a bit long, is it worth breaking the page into three articles : Great Britain, England And Wales and Scotland. --Timsj 13:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Good editing work on the whole, classifying the article into sections. However, in the sections on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, isn't the rejection of the intellectual/literary convert contribution just a bit biased? "Self-regarding coteries" etc.? I recognise that these converts were a small minority of British Catholics (against the ethnic Irish working class majority) but they certainly were very influential in gaining for Catholicism in Britain (and the English speaking world) much more attention than for centuries. I also question the exaltation of Pugin over all the literary converts - I suggest more people (including Catholics) would recognise the names of, and have been influenced by, G.M. Hopkins or Evelyn Waugh than Pugin (though of course Pugin is an central figure in architectural history).

[edit] annul vs declare null

Readers may notice a small change under Henry's marriage -- a change from "annul" to "declare null." Although frequently used as if they had the same meaning, they do not. "To Annul" means to invalidate something that exists, "To declare null" is to recognize that the thing never existed in the first place. With Henry's marriage, the issue was consanguinity. The bond of "same blood" or the impediment of affinity arose from Catherine's marriage to a member of Henry's family. The result was they could not enter into a valid sacramental union. The Holy See dispensed (waived)the bann to allow the marriage. Effectively, what Henry wanted, was a decleration that the dispensation was either ineffective or wrong, neither of which would make logicial, juridical sense. As a result, and as a result of the Papacy's relationship with Spain, the request was denied and Henry left the Catholic Church.

[edit] Headings

It is silly to insist on using the name of the royal house for the heading for each and every era. There is no reason to call the twentieth century "the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Windsor period" This term is not used widely to identify our era, unlike 'the Tudor era' or 'the Stuart era'. Furthermore, in those periods the identity and policies of the monarch were vital factors for the Catholic Church in England (how bad would the persecution be?); now the identity of the monarch no longer has that importance. Finally, insisting on using the heading "the Hanoverian era" to cover both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ignores the fact that despite the fact the same house was on the throne, these two centuries were completely different, as our own article states, for the Catholic Church in Britain; the 18C. was a moribund period, the 19C. was the era of the Catholic revival, mass Irish immigration and the wave of Oxford Movement conversions. It is necessary that seperate headings cover these two periods. Hence I will be altering these headings. IP Address, please don't change them back again without rebutting my arguments on this talk page. (User 129.78.64.105)

You've already been warned twice for vandalism. IP Address 07:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

When and why have I been warned for vandalism? I have explained the reasons for my changes, and I have given you the opportunity to respond. (User 129.78.64.105)

Have you not seen your own talk page?! IP Address 04:42, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move

This article seems to concern itself with Roman Catholicism, and not other forms (most notably Anglo-Catholicism). Thus, it is worth considering either changing the content, particularly the introduction, or moving this article. Bastin 13:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree, and since no-one is objecting - I'm going to do this. --Aoratos 11:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It has been reverted without discussion (which is bad). Until we can resolve this, I'm adding a 'disputed' tag - it is not neutral nor factually accurate to imply that the Roman Church is the only Catholic Church in the UK. Indeed as a Reformed Catholic, I find the claim highly offensive.--Aoratos 13:40, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

There is only one entity called the Catholic Church. There is no ambiguity in this name. The forced use of the qualifyer "Roman" is offensive to Catholics and unnecessary Catholic baiting. By the way, all Catholics are "reformed."

Philip Jenkins, an Episcopalian historian, in The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 0195154800) maintains that some people who otherwise avoid offending members of racial, ethnic or gender groups drop their guard regarding religion. Earlier in the twentieth century, Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. characterized prejudice against the Catholic Church as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people" and Yale professor Peter Viereck once commented that "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals."

"Reformed Catholicism" seems to be a minor breakaway sect confined to North America and a few African countries. I don't see the value in totally rewriting and/or moving this well written article to please a few dissenters.GiollaUidir 20:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

No, most/all Reformed Churches maintain that they are also Catholic - part of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. See for instance [1]. From the earliest period of the Church, the term Catholic was applied to the true church to differentiate it from heretical groups. Mainstream Reformed theology (and Luthern) has always maintained that it is part of the Catholic church - standing, as it sees it, on the apostolic doctrines and practices. The Roman communion usually maintains that it is the only true, hense only 'Catholic' Church. Protestants must reject that claim. Wikipedia must not take sides in this dispute - it must remain neutral. Thus we should record that the Roman Communion considers itself to be the Catholic Church, but we should not endorse (nor reject) that view. --Aoratos 23:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

But this article is about the Roman Catholic Church. I don't see what your problem is. Surely it would be with an article called "Catholic Church in Great Britain"??GiollaUidir 23:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Infact, my mistake, I just noticed the redirect...GiollaUidir 23:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC) Which has now been changed by another user. GiollaUidir 17:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I have just noticed that, to my surprise, this move has not been straight-forward. As I originally proposed the move, I shall explain the position.

Although there are issues regarding small Catholic churches (such as the afore-mentioned Reformed Catholic Church), the real exception is that of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion can be defined (and, indeed, defines itself) as a Catholic church, and is the largest church in the United Kingdom (or on Great Britain) by a substantial margin. Even if one accepts that not all of the Church of England is Catholic, one must still recognise that those Anglicans that are Catholic (Anglo-Catholics) make up a great part of the English (and, therefore British) population: possibly even a greater part than Roman Catholics do.

As already correctly stated by Aoratos, to promote the idea that Roman Catholicism and Catholicism are synonymous is to accept the Roman Catholic Church's own POV. The full name ought to be used to differentiate between Roman Catholicism and other Catholic practices; this is the practice adopted for other countries, for which it is 'Roman Catholicism in...'.

One remaining problem is that Great Britain isn't a country, and so doesn't fit into the series of 'Roman Catholicism in...'. The three possible solutions are:

1. Move to 'Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom' and merge in Northern Ireland from Roman Catholicism in Ireland.
2. Split (the two separate sections) into 'Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales' and 'Roman Catholic Church of Scotland', which are distinct branches of the Roman Catholic Church.
3. Move to 'Roman Catholicism on Great Britain', reflecting the fact that Great Britain is an island, not a country.

Out of principle, I prefer the first, but recognise that the second would be considerably easier to execute and would avoid duplication of information (the third, frankly, isn't, but must be included for purposes of completeness). Bastin 22:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any need for a move. While the Anglican Church describes itself as Catholic, that is not the name of the Church. Nobody looking for info about the Anglican Church or the Church of England would type in "Catholic Church". To give a parallel, the Catholic Church would doubtless describe itself as united and reformed, but this does not make the article United Reformed Church POV.--Stonemad GB 08:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The article isn't currently titled 'Catholic Church in Great Britain', but 'Catholicism in Great Britain'. That includes Anglicanism, in addition to other churches. The difference ought to be obvious from the fact that Catholicism doesn't redirect to Roman Catholic Church. Bastin 11:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Where? The handful of mentions of Anglicanism exclude it from the Catholic Church ("conversions from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church" may be the clearest example). This is a history of the Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and should be so called. Septentrionalis 17:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I meant that, were this title correct, the article would include Anglicanism, etc. However, since the title is easier to change, and more appropriate to change, that the article itself is, it should be moved to reflect its content. Bastin 17:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and will so propose. Septentrionalis 17:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move proposal

[edit] Discussion

There is a much broader discussion of CC and RCC formats for article naming. This is presently taking place at Talk:Roman Catholic Church. As this discussion is now in progress some have asked that no moves related to the discussion take place. Vaquero100 06:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

In this case the article should be moved to be consistent with other articles in the category, an issue independent of the CC/RCC naming discussion. If the discussion is resolved one way or another, then all the articles in the category can be moved by a bot. Gimmetrow 15:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I hate that the RCC vs CC conflict is being dragged out onto subpages. I feel we need to establish a working policy for all pages, but seeing how some people have strong POVs regarding the name, that task may be easier said than done. It may be easier to simply have the exact same debate on every page, and then have inconsistent usages across wikipedia based on the number of editors who comment on particular votes. Maybe, after the name discussion is over at Talk:Roman Catholic Church, we could establish a centralized discussion regarding a naming convention policy for catholic related topics? So instead of each articles name depending on a vote, we'd have each name established by a policy (but again, reaching a consensus policy is going to be the hard part, and voting on name changes and article moves may be easier in the long run, even if it yields inconsistent results).--Andrew c 20:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Vaquero, if you genuinely support no moves prior to the resolution of that discussion, why did you move this article? Guy 09:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This Talk page

Why is the article on Catholicism in Great Britain and the Talk page on Talk:Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain? What is going on here? --WikiCats 06:27, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This article has had a complex move history, and the pages have become detached. From what I can tell, this article was originally at Catholic Church in Great Britain, created in 2003. It stayed there for 2.5 years.

• On May 17, 2006, Bastin proposed changing the content or moving the article.
• Apparently nobody commented on either option of the proposal
• On June 12, Aoratos moved it to Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, "since no one was objecting", edit summary: more specific title to reflect contents
• On June 17, Vaquero moved it back, This move is highly POV and offensive. Before moving again, see Talk:Roman Catholic Church
• On June 17, Aoratos reverted the move rv - to describe the RC church as THE Catholic church is clearly POV
• On June 18, Aoratos noted that the move had "been reverted without discussion (which is bad)."
• On June 18, Someone (Vaquero?) moved it back again, can't find actual move record
• On June 19, Pmanderson moved it to Roman Catholicism in Great Britain, Revert unilateral, undiscussed move. This sort of thing should only be done through WP:RM
• On July 24, Vaquero moved it to Catholicism in Great Britain, This article was moved without due process to a name that is extremely controversial. If you wish to move it to "Roman" you need to do this through the formal process.

So which of these moves were unilateral and which were consensus? Gimmetrow 06:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. --WikiCats 06:46, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It's a mess. There are double and triple redirects resulting from previous moves, at least one of which was a copy-and-paste move which lost history (I have now restored this). But before we go about fixing them there is a slight inconsistency remaining: we appear to have a naming convention, Roman Catholicism in foo, used for other regional RC churches - should we standardise on this? I think that works well enough and is unambiguous; leaving aside a small band of people who are intent on Righting Great Wrongs there is no significant dissent from the view that Roman Catholic is unambiguous and not generally considered problematic by members of the said Church. Guy 09:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I fixed the worst of the multiple redirects. Now I think we probably want to think about standardising. Guy 09:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Very strange behavior

There was a move proposal to move Catholicism in Great Britain to Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain.

The result of the survey was 8 oppose and 6 Support. Now that would be no consensus, the article stays.

But that was not how the survey was closed. Admin.JzG moved the article.

Administrator Code of Conduct: Consensus says "Wikipedia works by consensus. One of the tasks of an admin is to implement that consensus. As such, if a discussion has led to consensus for a certain version or action, an admin should not ignore that to revert to another version or perform the opposite action, if they prefer that for whatever reason."

Clearly admin. JzG has ignored decision of the group and reverted to another version and performed the opposite action. --WikiCats 13:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The part of the Code of Conduct that you just quoted clearly states that the admin is only compelled not to revert on condition that the 'discussion has led to consensus'. Since this discussion has led (by your own admission) to no consensus, it doesn't apply. Thus, the reversion was the correct action, as the initial move was the only action that contravened the principle of establishing consensus. Bastin 18:50, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, the Administrator Code of Conduct you cite is an inactive proposal, having been rejected by the community as a policy or even a guideline. Batmanand | Talk 19:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not the only time admin.JzG has behaved very strangely. In this edit [2] this vote was closed prior the announced closing. It included the comment "Thylacoleo's summary at the end of this section sums it up perfectly. Please note: voting is evil." This is not the way admins. usually close debates. JzG was strongly involved in both debates. --WikiCats 11:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The article needs to be moved back to Catholicism in Great Britain as per the survey. --WikiCats 13:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The {{POV}} tag was placed in July by Aoratos (see diff) in objection to a title and lead section that have both now been changed. I trust it can be removed now, so I did so. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 16:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency in geographical references

I found the 'Approx Territory' column in the Hierarchy section a little consfusing. I realise these are approximate but there is an unhealthy mix of traditional and adminitsrative areas in there. For example, Brentwood covers a large chunk of East London but the term 'Essex' is used without qualifying as its administrative/cerimonial or traditional county sense, whereas Southark talks about Kent and South-east London. Greater Manchester is also mentioned. Can I suggest we stick to one or other reference frame for this? Probably the Cerimonial county structure (as used elsewhere on Wikipedia)?

[edit] Congrats

This is a good article, very informative. Looks like a lot of work has been done here. Thank you for that. Mountolive 05:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some Biased Coverage of The Tudor Era

It has come to my attention that some of the information in The Tudor Era is slightly biased towards a Protestant view.  I have tried editing the article to reflect both prominent views of the issue, but it is hard to do without making the article clumsy.  This particular section is easy to only give parts of facts to sway the view of it in one direction or the other, for example:

'One fact for which she has for ever been reproached is the persecution that was unleashed in her reign on Protestants, with burnings at the stake.' The above is true, however, it is shown that the majority of these Protestants were also criminals, and leaves out the fact that Mary also executed many Catholic criminals along with them. It also fails to mention any of Elizabeth's cruel actions, many of them also for religious dissent. Instead the article chooses to call the people Elizabeth tortured and executed "Catholic Martyrs" as if they have no affiliation with her: 'Significant numbers of English Catholic martyrs died at this time, including St Edmund Campion.' Then, about a week after adding a non-biased statement, the article was edited and this line was added: 'probably because Mary's executions were unrelated to any Protestant revolt and were purely for religious dissent'

Elizabeth's executions were not all from revolts, in fact the Catholics she executed for the revolts were the main leaders and coordinators of the revolts composing of a very small portion of her executions.  Elizabeth's other executions came from priests and families trying to practice their faith in secret, and, like Mary, other criminals who happened to claim affiliation with the Protestant or Catholic side.  It is because of this that I removed this line.  There were more frequent Protestant uprisings in this time period than Catholic ones; however this is often overlooked because of "the glorious revolution" which was a large Catholic uprising in the north.

It should be shown that both sides have been equally brutal in this time period of England's history. Megastealer 04:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: by Megastealer 02:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC). I want to thank everyone who is helping edit this article. It is turning out to be as unbiased as I had hoped.

Really, this will not do. The contention on Elizabethan executions is not only unsourced (and implausible), but irrelevant and misleading. Elizabeth executed for treason, not for heresy, and she did reign nine times as long as her sister. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Elizabeth did count "practicing the catholic faith" as treason during her rule. Sounds like a heresy execution to me. Also, I don't know where we'd put the reigning bit. If you see where to put it in there, you could go ahead, but at the time that was because (and still is) Protestantism is more popular than Catholocism in Great Britan. Megastealer 00:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

After many revisions, I believe that this is no longer biased and removed the POV-section tag. Megastealer 18:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but "it is shown that the majority" of Protestants burnt at the stake in the reign of Mary I "were criminals" must be challenged. You really will have to tell us where "it is shown" Millbanks (talk) 23:26, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Converts

Bishop Richard Williamson, correctly listed as a convert to Roman Catholicism, has now been excommunicated from the RC Church.

In addition quite a few Roman Catholics have joined the Church of England. The process is not just one way. But they are not as high profile, the Church of England is not as active in proselytising as the RC Church, and its public relations are not as good. Millbanks (talk) 23:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Taskforce Roman Catholicism in Great Britain

I have proposed a taskforce relating to this topic in the hopes of improving Wikipedia articles on them, this is set to be related to the main WikiProject on Catholicism. If anybody is interested in contributing please follow the link and leave your username. - Yorkshirian (talk) 02:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry - I was 'bold'...then had second thoughts!

I thought this article should be split into 'England and Wales' and 'Scotland'.. as I started I realised that I was going about it the wrong way - so reverted everything I did! Sorry for the trouble!!! (I still think there should be two separate articles, however.) Cheers Fishiehelper2 (talk) 20:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)