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What Bible do we use?

http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/index.htm

The New American Bible

this isnt mentioned anywhere —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.194.72.10 (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

What Bible does who use? The denominations in question use several different ones. Fishhead64 01:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
And not one word of the Bible was written in English. Lima 05:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
The New American Bible is used by the Roman Catholic Church for official liturgical purposes, although the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition is also in use, many Anglo-Catholics use the Revised Standard Version, although the King James Version is widely read by all English speaking Christians. --Uniuni 11:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)Uniuni
Catholics don't use the King James as it is missing the apocrypha. IrishGuy talk 17:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Point of information - Greek (Byzantine) Catholics use the KJV for the New Testament as the KJV NT is based upon the Byzantine Text tradition. InfernoXV 17:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Another point - the KJV does include the Apocyphra, always has. Rmhermen 19:54, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Are you sure about that? I know that the Maccabees and Book of Wisdom are not in the KJV. Are you misremebering the APOCALYPSE (of John the Divine) in Revelations with the Apocrypha (sometimes refereed to as the "Lost Books of the Bible", mistakenly, since those are very different texts, normally, often early Christian Gnostic texts). Bill Ward 20:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by W.E.Ward.III (talk • contribs).
The fact that modern American editions of the KJV usually omit the deuterocanonical books does not obviate the fact that they were included in the original translation and are still included in all complete editions. It's the Western deuterocanonical books of course; from an Eastern perspective it's still missing a few.TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
At my particular church[1], we use the RSV-C for Roman Catholic use and the NIV (OCCASIONALLY, we'll go back to the KJV, but that's very rare) for Episcopalian use. Granted, our church is unique (to my knowledge), but I think we're forced to be pretty mainstream because of the close scrutiny we get from our Bishops, and from the Holy See in Rome, as such a strong statement of Ecumenism. Bill Ward 20:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by W.E.Ward.III (talk • contribs).

As this article covers all churches that claim Catholicity, "we" don't use any one Bible translation. TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with that statement; it's unfortunate (there SHOULD be one bible for all, since every one of us uses the Scripture as at the very least one of the foundational principles of faith (if not THE; not getting into a Holy War (pun intended) over that!), but there never has been a single, canonical translation of the Bible (or even, actually, one single Canonical VERSION that was universally accepted). Bill Ward 20:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by W.E.Ward.III (talk • contribs).
Yes and no WRT that last. Yes, it was a rather long time before the canon was settled on and some particulars never reached universal agreement, but aside from minor textual variations those books that were used in common were all the same "version" until Jerome made the Vulgate. From that point on we were using different Old Testaments, since the East continued with the LXX but Jerome translated the Hebrew.
But we're talking about modern translations, and in that case we really shouldn't all be using the same one. Each nation should be able to hear the Gospel in its own language. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans

Chapter IV.-Beware of These Heretics.
I give you these instructions, beloved, assured that ye also hold the same opinions [as I do]. But I guard you beforehand from those beasts in the shape of men, whom you must not only not receive, but, if it be possible, not even meet with; only you must pray to God for them, if by any means they may be brought to repentance, which, however, will be very difficult. Yet Jesus Christ, who is our true life, has the power of [effecting] this. But if these things were done by our Lord only in appearance, then am I also only in appearance bound. And why have I also surrendered myself to death, to fire, to the sword, to the wild beasts? But, [in fact, ] he who is near to the sword is near to God; he that is among the wild beasts is in company with God; provided only he be so m the name of Jesus Christ. I undergo all these things that I may suffer together with Him,29 He who became a perfect man inwardly strengthening me.

I've just read this text of Inatious, and could not conciliate it with the catholic ecumenism. Could any catholic friend give some insight? Thanks. []'s Mauro do Carmo 20:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what your definition of "heresy" is. Fishhead64 21:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the answer goes by my definition of "heresy", since I am trying to understand the mind set of Inatious. Actually, my question could be much more abroad and cover all people who have this mentality: "I am good, because I am a believer. However, beware of those "whatsoever" because they don't think/act righteously as I do. Thanks God." Consider that I am a catholic of denomination. Thanks so much for your time.Mauro do Carmo 22:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
It might be more expedient for you to post your question at Catholic Church and ecumenism, if you have not done so already. Fishhead64 01:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I will do that. Thanks a lot. But in addition, could you give you view about this general question? I am asking you because I've checked your page, and noticed you are Anglican priest. So, I would appreciate your attention on that. Thanks again, []'s Mauro do Carmo 02:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Reads like a dictionary

The beginning reads like a dictionary. Well, it is one. The beginning is more suited to wiktionary, not Wikipedia. Jake95(talk!) 16:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The beginning needs serious help. I've never read another wikipedia article that begins by quoting multiple definitions from a dictionary. Like almost every other article, this needs a short, concise definition of what Catholicism is: a religion, a branch of Christianity, from which Protestantism and Eastern Orthodox branched off later on, constructed around a pope and cardinals, Mary and saints play important roles, elaborate and ritualized, blah blah blah, etc.Rglong 06:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that seems to be the point; I disagree, strongly, with your definition of Catholocism as expressed here. I'm an Episcopalian (Anglican). My faith is every bit as much Catholic by my understanding and definition as the Roman Catholic church, and right off the bat, we don't have a Pope. You are confusing ROMAN Catholicism with Catholicism. Unless the term is defined at the start, you instantly give a non-Neutral POV to entire Theological arguements. Indeed, by the strictist reading of what it Catholicism means, I would have to say that any Roman Catholic who denied Anglican Catholicism could only do so by either abandoning the definition of Catholicism, or stating that they themselves were no longer Catholic, due to Papal Intergnums, Anti-Popes, the Bishop becoming Pope wars of the 10th and 11th century, etc. By the strictest definition that would be useable, only the Eastern Orthodox and Assyrian Catholic churches would still be truly Catholic; since I reject that overly strict interpretation (as do Roman Catholics) you're putting out a VERY non-Neutral POV with that statement. Bill Ward 18:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by W.E.Ward.III (talk • contribs).

Disputed

Section The term "Catholic Church" carefully avoids to define what is the "Catholic Church", except defining some majority position. How was the term constructed by Ignatius/Antioch, and what was his "rationale" (spiritual ditto – You know what I mean!)? How was the term used afterwards? The punishments, evil spirits' possessions, spiritual chafes, and eternal damnations to all who had another opinion – is sort of secondary and trivia to any reasonable mind. Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 06:42, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Reading the Letter to the Smyrnaeans, I get the following very intuitive (unciteable, original "research", don't use!) impression: Ignatius/Antioch spoke against those who didn't properly regard "sin", "repention" and "God's saving grace" according to the interpretation of Ignatius/Antioch himself, in my own words a "Hakka-Päällä-Idioten!" emotionalism. Cf. Dr. Marcus Borg's deviant interpretation on the reason for Jesus'es death on the cross. At the same time it seems that Ignatius/Antioch propones an "all-humanity" christianity in opposition to one or more elitist groupings, so that catholicism acc2 I/A approximately stands for: "your elitistic disregard of your sin and God's saving grace makes you a not catholic bunch of sect-heretics". Next problem: find a citeable Dr. or Prof. that already have written something like this. Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 07:08, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
So what you're really saying is that it's unclear, not inaccurate. It certainly is accurate as far as it goes. I'm removing the tag since you have not even suggested any points of inaccuracy. TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Removed content

None of this has anything to do with Catholicism or its relation to the Roman Catholic Church. It is nothing but residue from an old battle from another page that need not remain here. I have moved it to the tal kpage:

"Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" are held not to be synonymous by those who are not members and who use the term "Roman Catholic Church" to imply that the Church in question is only the "Roman" section of a larger entity that they call "the Catholic Church" and that, in their view, also includes sections not in communion with Rome. And some who are members and who consider that communion with Rome is an essential element of the Church's identity apply the term "the Roman Catholic Church" not to the Church as a whole, but only to its Latin Rite component.[1] This contrasts with the terminology used by the highest authorities of the Church. Popes have treated "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" as synonymous,[2] and official documents concerning dialogue between the Church and groups outside her fold repeatedly use the term of the whole Church, not just of the Latin-Rite part.[3]

The use of the adjective "Roman" in relation to the Church as a whole is explained as acknowledgement of the central role of the see or diocese of Rome for the entirety of the Church.

--SECisek 18:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggested improvement

It does seem very odd to have the Eastern Catholic Churches under Roman Catholic Church rather than under Eastern Christianity. Shall we reorganise this into Western Christianity (including Latin Catholics, then the assorted Protestant groups) and Eastern Christianity (including Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholics)? InfernoXV 06:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Some alterations

The Catholic character of Anglicanism cannot be ghettoized as "Anglo-Catholic," as noble a tradition within Anglicanism as it is. As the section itself discusses (with citation), the Catholic and Reformed nature of Anglicanism is broadly considered by all Anglicans to be a characteristic of this branch of Christianity. I have also edited the section on sacraments to make it more universally applicable. At present, it reads like a description of Roman Catholic sacraments, with occasional passing references to what is done in other churches in the Catholic heritage. fishhead64 (talk) 03:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Seems good to me. I have made some further alterations, especially on Confirmation. Lima (talk) 05:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Even better! How good a thing when brethren dwell together in unity. fishhead64 (talk) 07:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The article on Catholicism tries to be inclusive of all groups that are considered or consider themselves Catholic, per the NPOV policy of Wikipedia; I think for the most part it succeeds. However, I've noticed that in the External Links areas, many of the websites that are linked are RCC, but describe themselves with the Catholic moniker normally in the URL. That's not an issue (it's their URL, after all), but sometimes the descriptions tend to follow that, and thus lose NPOV. One of the sites purported to be a "Catholic You-Tube", for example, but it appears that it's a portal to RCC videos and a host of videos for one particular RCC church (as an aside, I'm not sure that it's authoritative or important enough to warrant inclusion in the External Link area to begin with for this issue, since it seems to be single church oriented). Another proclaims to be "All Things Catholic" but even it self identifies as being a RCC Wiki. In this case, I'm conflicted because the URLs and the self identification of these areas says "Catholic", but in reality, most of them are RCC specifically. In an article where the various authors have gone to lengths to make sure that there is a neutral POV in reference to the various definitions of what "Catholicism" means, this seems wrong. Can one of the more authoritarian editors please take a few minutes to look at this? I don't feel totally comfortable saying "This site is RCC only, so it should be identified as such, versus this site is Catholic in the bigger sense, or applicable in the bigger sense, and so can be called just Catholic". But it looks like someone needs to do just that to get back to NPOV on those links. While I'm at it, it seems obvious that over time the same effect is going to bleed into some of the other source material descriptions over time, so this might be a good time to develop a coherent policy on the issue. Bill Ward (talk) 13:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to deal with this problem. It is legitimate to use "Catholic" either to refer exclusively to the Roman Catholic Church or in wider senses. The introduction of the article indicates three meanings of the word. We cannot restrict the word to the third, alone, of these three meanings. That isn't its only meaning. The second, too, is a legitimate meaning. Excluding that meaning from the article would not be NPOV. "Catholic (Roman Catholic)" is the best I can suggest as a possible solution. I will try it out on Bill Ward's edit. Lima (talk) 13:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection

Seeing as how almost every edit in the recent past has been a reversion of vandalism, would we be justified in semi-protecting this article, or is the criterion that the article be undergoing active editing? Nautical Mongoose (talk) 01:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think semi-protection would be a fine idea. Dgf32 (talk) 02:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Image

I changed the caption in the Roman Catholic section. It was incorrect. Now, it is worded funny but is correct.

Also, the Eastern Catholics would not call themselves Roman Catholic. They are Catholic. - Pop6 (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Start Class

This article no longer warrants a B class rating, and so I've reassigned it to start class hoping this will prompt someone from the wikiproject to work on improving it. While there is good content, the article needs significant improvement in terms of organization. The biggest problem and the most easily fixed is that the lead section needs to be rewritten according to the Manual of Style guidelines, which can be found at WP:Lead. Once a suitable lead section is written, the article would warrant a return to B class. Dgf32 (talk) 02:43, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Facts

Richard McBrien's book on Catholicism should not be cited. The USCCB officially disapproved of his book, warning people that though it claims to explain the basic doctrines of Catholicism, it seriously distorts and misrepresents the teaching. He is not a trusted authority on the Church, nor are his views representative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.249.220.210 (talk) 00:10, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


You need to put some numbers in here. how many catholics are in the world? when was it started? do the adherents live in an paticular region of the world? if so is it rural/suburban/urban? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexw6 (talk • contribs) 21:32, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how Ignatius of Antioch had a here-say in how Catholicism started or where the name originated. As a Catholic, it all started as Peter(Paul) was the rock(Pope) of the first catholic church. All of the apostles played a big role as to the spread the word of God and Jesus Christ and his teachings. Whether to call a Catholic church, a Catholic church or a Roman Catholic church has no point. They both mean the same thing, the Roman Catholic church tries to have mass the same way as the Vatican. The word Catholic means Universal, there isn't a play on words. That means, that no matter what denomination you are, you will be accepted in a Catholic church. I think that the writer was having a debate in their head when he/she wrote this. I'll add more feedback later when I read more of the article. Please read more about the faith in a whole before writing about it. Us Catholics would appreciate it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.114.81.104 (talk) 20:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Further reading

Some of the books listed for further reading seem odd choices. For example, the Patrick Madrid and Karl Keating books are good, but are primarily about Protestant-Catholic relations: about doctrinal controversies, 20th-century Protestant proselytism, and individual conversions. I think it's probably better to recommend books that look at the big picture of Catholicism on its own, in a big-picture way, rather than in its relation to American Protestantism. Chonak (talk) 00:01, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Divergent ideas?

The third category listed seems to be unneeded since according to what is written, those in this category have no "institutional descent" and do not call themselves catholic. Does this seem unnecessary to anyone else. There is also no source for this. Is this part of something that was discussed earlier that I did not see?MephYazata (talk) 17:50, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The "See also" section

I think that the "See also" section is being turned practically into a couple of portals, and I see this as inappropriate. However, I will not myself intervene. Lima (talk) 16:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree as well. I'm not sure exactly the right approach. Tb (talk) 06:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
I also agree. Perhaps something along the lines of what was done for the United States article which has an separate page, Index of United States–related articles. Barkeep Chat | $ 12:52, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Any objection if I remove the Roman Catholic Church part of the section, since those links belong rather in the specific article on the Roman Catholic Church? Lima (talk) 13:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't think something like the United States case is needed; we have portals and such already. I think that just some pruning would be good. More specific: I think that Christianity, Divine Liturgy, Ecumenism, One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, Religious Orders should be there; and links to specific "branches" (sorry, sounding Anglican there), such as Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, Assyrian Church of the East, Old Catholic Churches and then a few carefully selected movements, perhaps Anglo-Catholicism, Traditionalist Catholic, and perhaps Neo-Lutheranism. Tb (talk) 18:39, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
Since nobody has objected, I am going ahead with removing the RCC part of the section. I do not think that this is sufficient. But I do hope that it may get the editor who is creating the WP:Linkfarm to discuss the matter here. Lima (talk) 16:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
How one can drop something as essential as "Vicar of Christ" and "Marian dogma" in "See Also" yet retain something as insignificant as, say, "Anglo-Catholic" (a very numerically small group within Anglicanism)? And to leave out the visual components of Catholicism (cathedrals, shrines, etc), which give expression to belief, impoverishes the richness of Catholicism! Prattlement (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC).
So, remove yet more? I await other comments. Lima (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
The "see also" section is not for the purpose of linking to all articles that are related to Catholicism, not even all important ones. It's for linking to relevant related articles which are not otherwise linked within the article, of the highest importance. Note that Anglo-Catholicism has been removed, since it's already linked within the article. What remains now are mostly articles which are of so low importance, they are not even linked in the article, and they should probably be removed, but I was going to wait to do that as a second-round thing later. Tb (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
As Prattlement has showed us, the number of links that could be added to this section can grow exponentially. If Prattlement and others should feel one link "deserves" to be listed over the other because it's, for instance, "more significant," I would favor removing both such links then get into a debate over which to include. Every link has a case to be made for its significance over the other. I feel a just a very few core topics should be listed in the 'See also' section (I couldn't say which). Barkeep Chat | $ 15:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

By-words for Catholicism

I noticed that contemporary secular writers will sometimes use by-words when refering to Catholicism. One of these terms is clericalism, hence the expression anticlericalism, which is very close to anti-Catholicism. Other by-words such as this include Sacerdotalism, Obscurantism, Reactionism, Dogmatism, Sacramentalism, Medievalism, Fascism, Romanism, Natalism, Patriarchy, Anglo-Catholicism and Cultural Christianity. ADM (talk) 04:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is. Some of these such as Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism are probably apt descriptions of the Roman Catholic Church although they can be applied in a positive or a negative way. Some such as Natalism are characteristics which, while accurate descriptors of the church, overemphasize one doctrine over the others. Others such as Reactionism and Dogmatism describe aspects of the church which may dominate from time to time but are not necessarily descriptors of the whole church over its entire history. Others such as Clerical fascism represent aberrations and should not be used to malign the Church as a whole. Still others such as Romanism, Obscurantism and Medievalism are just out-and-out hostile attacks with relatively little validity. All of this could be useful in the article on Criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. However, with the exception of Anglo-Catholicism, I doubt that discussion of these belong here in this article. --Richard (talk) 04:37, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The Methodists

also consider themselves part of (the more hardcore ones consider themselves to be) "the holy catholic church," claiming direct descent from the original Christians through their Anglican roots. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.33.158.121 (talk) 22:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Most mainline christians consider themselves to be part of the holy catholic church, that is reffering to the universal church in the Apostle's Creed.. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 02:08, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

intellectual dishonesty

The first paragraph of this article is intellectually dishonest, never mind poorly thought out. It is hard, for example, to sustain the points in the third and fourth sentences on the basis of the footnotes to which the reader is referred. Indeed, the sources, to which we are directed, do not support with proof or evidence what is declared in the above mentioned sentences.

For example, in the third sentence, Wikipedia editor states: "More broadly, it [Catholicism] may refer to many churches, including the Roman Cathlic Church and others not in communion with it, that claim continuity with the Catholic Church before separation into Greek or Eastern and Latin or Western." Then as his/her source for this statement, the author cites a single paragraph on "Anglo-Catholicism" from Richard Mc Brien's Encyclopedia of Catholicism (p.52), which states: "Anglo-Catholicism, the name given since the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century to the 'high church' party within the Anglican communion. Anglo-Catholics emphasize the historic continuity with its medieval predecessor...." Mc Brien's paragraph, however, never mentions the Schism between the Western and Eastern churches. Furthermore, the "historic continuity" to which Mc Brien was referring was with Anglo-Catholicism's "medieval predecessor," the Western/Latin Church of the 12th, 13th, 14th centuries, not the church before 1000. The wiki editor of that sentence, however, gives the article a different spin, intellectually dishonest. That is, the source cited does not back up what is stated in the paragraph, sentence 3.

Then the wiki editor states the following (in the fourth sentence): "Churches that make this claim of continuity [as if they did!] include the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental churches, the Assyrian Church of the East [really an Oriental church], the Old Catholic churches, and the churches of the Anglican Communion." To back up the content of this sentence, the Wiki editor creatively cites another Roman Catholic scholar, Jeffery Gros, who ironically, in his book, Introduction to Ecumenism, states something completely different and much more nuanced. In regard to claims of continuity, Gros states the following on page 155: "The Eastern Orthodox churches consider the West to have broken away from the "common Tradition." Later, in the same paragraph, he calls it "the Apostolic heritage." However, there in no mention of the "Catholic Church" before 1000 as an ecclesial institution.

Finally, none of the Roman Catholic scholars he/she uses in this paragraph state or even allude to the idea that the Roman Catholic church (or any one of its popes) claims continuity with itself (or with an earlier pope, say, before the 10th century) anymore than an American president would. It is a given, even in regard to those presidents born under a foreign power, the British government before the nation declared its independence in 1776. (I believe Van Buren was the first native born president, born after the American Revolution when the United States was already a free nation, free of the king. But even he never saw a discontinuity between himself and Madison or Adams, both born before 1776.) Anyway, as Gros notes, "the Catholic Church" and the abovementioned churches all claim continuity with the "Apostolic heritage" and with the "common Tradition," not with the Catholic Church before 1000.

If the editors wish to state the contrary, they should not cite Catholic sources (or any scholarly sources, for that matter) that do not support their statements or opinions. They shoudl find other sources to back up thier statements. Prattlement (talk) 18:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear how removing the references addresses these concerns, so I've restored them. Tom Harrison Talk 18:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
One shouldn't attribute things to scholars (in this case, Catholic scholars; but it could be Muslim or Jewish or Lutheran scholars) that they never said. In any number of ways, they (the cited sources) are in the wrong place.

Well, at least you are hearing another side (although contradictory evidence seldom puzzles the indifferent mind, considering the many people who go along with indifference today). Prattlement (talk) 20:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggest you read Lumen Gentium. Prattlement (talk) 01:30, 10 August 2009 (UTC) If the "Church of Christ" subsists in the "Catholic Church" (i.e., Roman Catholic Church), no Catholic Scholar (such as those cited in the first paragraph) would ever state that the Roman Catholic Church "claims continuity with the Catholic Church before the separation," not if the Church of Christ subsists in their church (and has for all time), according to this document. Interestingly too, the "Catholic Church" and the "Roman Catholic Church" are used synonymously by these writers in their work.Prattlement (talk) 01:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Wiki authors need Anglican scholars to back up the first paragraph! Good luck!Prattlement (talk) 01:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I quote the Jeffery Gros paragraphs in full: " In the present day, words 'schismatic' and 'heretic' are seldom used by Western Christians, but the differences of perception between West and East are no less real and profound. The Catholic Church recognizes the sacramental character of these 'sister churches' and insists that any study of the nature of the Church take full account of developments of both East and West. Pope John Paul continually reminds Catholics that the Church must learn to breath again 'with both lungs,' and that the first thousand years of full communion is a common resource for reform and renewal. For the Roman Catholic Church this means taking account of the Eastern synodical tratition, the early relationships among the five patriarchates, and the collegial relationships among the autocephalous Orthodox churches when renewing its own collegial, synodical, papal, and episcopal conference life to better serve the unity of churches.

The Eastern Orthodox churches consider the West to have broken away form the common Tradition. This view has factual support in the events of 1054 and 1204. Likewise, such developments as the addition of the 'filioque,' papal infallibility, the Marian dogmas in Catholicism, and the ordination of women in Protestantism are seen as unilateral develpments moving away from the Apostolic heritage. Sacramental theology has also developed under different patristic emphases, leaving Orthodox less easily able to recognize the sacraments of the Catholic Church than Catholics are able to do in regard the sacraments of the Orthodox Churches." p 155

No mention here of the Catholic Church (to quote Gros) claiming continuity with the Catholic Church before the schism or separation of 1054!Prattlement (talk) 16:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Finally (at least in this post), may I suggest you find Anglicans authors (instead of dishonestly misusing/misquoting Roman Catholic sources in citations) who might be able to explore and back up the type of catholic ecclesiology which the Anglican Communion has lived for the past 4 hundred years. You might want to start with Tom Wright, Anglican bishop of Durham. Prattlement (talk) 17:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the ref (attached to the second sentence of the second paragraph) because it cannot be found, validated in Thomas Rausch's book, CATHOLICISM IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM, the source originally used to validate the statement. The wiki editor needs to find another source to back up the statement. Throughout his book, Rausch also refers to the Roman Catholic Church as the "Catholic Church," because "that Church continues to refer to itself simply as the 'Catholic Church' in its official documents." LIkewise, he refers to the "Catholic Church" and the "Eastern Rite Catholic Churches," not the "Roman Catholic Church, Western and Eastern," etc. Wiki editors need to find another source (for this concept) supported by scholarship.--Prattlement (talk) 20:11, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Sacraments

Regarding the Sacraments section, receiving the Eucharist (or First Communion) comes before Confirmation. Also, it is a common practice that Confirmation occurs when the faithful are around the age of 12 or 13, not at the age of 7, as stated in the article. DakotaW (talk) 02:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

That was a practice introduced in the Latin Rite the twentieth century and no longer universal even in the Latin Rite. Esoglou (talk) 09:37, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


There needs to be a section for anti-Catholicism and/or criticism of Catholicism

I think that there should be a section for anti-Catholicism and/or criticism of Catholicism where the objections can be posted along with the Catholic Church's response. --PaladinWriter (talk) 17:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Such sections are disfavored in Wikipedia. "Criticism of..." is a bad idea because it tends to become a debating platform rather than actual encyclopedic information. Tb (talk) 17:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. Any criticisms should be incorporated into the article itself.LedRush (talk) 18:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay well this is a big downer. I really thought wiki had a chance but money must be back in the game. Back to dredging like the old research methods always require. I guess things just peak in truthfulness and then are invaded by "interested parties" as is always the case. In my life, I have never met a catholic who didn't spit bile about their church, and yet here I am reading some sort of propaganda piece vomited up by the fear riddled middle managers of religion. Grow up people... God's real people f it up and stick a label on the process. Controlling people is the only thing you're not allowed to do, and it creates exactly what you fear... fing fearful people are the devils hatchetmen. Change is here, fear only what you do with your own hands... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.220.158.150 (talk) 13:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
In the context of the whole article, does it fit? "Anti-Catholicism" generally means opposing the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, but the article is about the concept of catholicism generally, and many anti-papists would consider their own Protestant church to be part of the "holy, catholic and apostolic Church". Thus the Church of Scotland's Confession of Faith declares the Pope to be "antichrist" but it considers itself to be "catholic"; is it catholic or anticatholic then? Howard Alexander (talk) 06:36, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
This article says nothing about the age old sexual abuse charges filed against the Catholic church, even though that topic is widely discussed on the world scene and within the ranks of its members. Other articles about religions have criticism sections. It hardly seems fair to determine what is an acceptable level of criticism based on how many members an organization has. This article's absence of criticism seems to be directly due to the number of Catholic contributors involved here. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 20:29, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
That is because that is mentioned in the article for the Roman Catholic Church. "Catholicism" in this article does NOT only reffer to the Church of Rome. It reffers to the branch of Christianity that accepts an orthodox, catholic, and apostolic teaching. This includes the Roman Catholic Church, Old Catholic Churches, Independent Catholic Churches, Liberal Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, Continuing Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church.. and to some extent even protestants that are Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian... NOT only about Rome. The Church of Sweden (Lutheran), Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), etc. are protestant but reffer to themselves as Catholic as well. There are also Anglo-Catholics (Anglicans [which are already considered "reformed catholic"] that accept teachings of the RCC). Then there are also Protestants (like I said earlier) that follow Evangelical Catholic traditions, such as most Lutherans, United Methodists, etc.. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 13:57, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

There have been many edits to the main article since I posted this. Please address. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 04:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

See my post above. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 14:02, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm not asking anyone to add a criticism page. If anything, I'm asking that we remove such pages from other religions. Say one way or the other. Would you like to make a criticism section for this article, or remove criticism sections from other religion articles? --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 20:59, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
See my post above. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 14:02, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Personal opinions aside about religions or religious practices, I find there to be no problem with sections detailing criticism thereof and/or a controversy section. Criticism of given religions have easily proven to be notable enough for wikipedia, and I have no reason to believe that one religion can have a criticism information area, while another shouldn't. A criticism section, if not directly criticizing the religion itself, is in harmony with the guidelines of wikipedia. A paragraph or group thereof would be perfectly acceptable, along with a link to the main article, if there is one. That's my input on the situation. Backtable Speak to meconcerning my deeds. 22:04, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm doing some research on the topic. I'd like to expand the conversation at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Religion#Criticism_and_Religion_Articles to apply to more than Catholicism as this "problem" is found in many other articles. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 01:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

This article is meant to be about the concept of "Catholicism" in its manifestations in various Christian churches. It is not - despite the efforts of some - meant to be an article about the Roman Catholic Church. Afterwriting (talk) 07:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

largest single religious body?

This article states that the roman catholic church is the single largest single religious body. Is this true? What causes the muslim faith to not be considered the largest single "religious body"? I believe a distinction should be added to notify the reader of the fact that the muslim religion outnumbers the roman catholic religion. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html#People) Psypherium (talk) 12:43, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Because you are comparing apples to oranges. The distinction is the same as saying Christianity vs. Catholic and Muslim vs. Suni. The Catholic church is the largest single religious body. The Muslim faith is made up of various sects, each answering to a different authority.Marauder40 (talk) 13:13, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Article reorganisation

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a proposed merger. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposed merge request was: Not merged. SMasters (talk) 05:22, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I propose a merge of this article with Christianity. This, as as both are one and the same. Roman Catholicism is however a division of Catholicism/Christianity, and this should have its own article; for this article I propose the article Catholic_Church which should be renamed to Catholic Christianity. See Major_religious_groups / http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/File:Prevailing_world_religions_map.png which both use a same disctinction. 91.182.53.128 (talk) 10:12, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
NOTE: Editors may wish to comment at Talk:Catholic Church#Article renaming also, where there is a proposal to rename "Catholic Church" to "Catholic Christianity".

Because "Catholicism" and "Catholic Church" are two very different things. Catholicism reffers to much more than just the church of Rome, while "Catholic Church" refers to Rome. "Catholic Church" is an organization, Catholicism is a beleif system. --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 21:14, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
To provide a more verbose explanation, the Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Eastern Catholics and Anglicans all claim to be "catholic". And, if you look at their theology, there is, in fact, a commonality that runs across their beliefs that distinguishes them from the Protestants and the Restorationists. It is arguable that the only major difference between the aforementioned groups is ecclesiastical in nature (i.e. how is the polity of the church formed, are bishops more collegial in nature or more hierarchical in nature viz. what is the nature of the respect and submission due to the See of Rome). In other words, the theology is the same, the practices are different but not unacceptably so and there are some major issues around ecclesiology (e.g. can priests marry, how much power should the Bishop of Rome have, etc. etc.)
There have been long, contentious discussions about the POV stance taken by naming the article about the church in communion with the Bishop of Rome as the Catholic Church instead of the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of England is arguably the "Anglican Catholic Church" and the Eastern Orthodox Church is arguably the "Orthodox Catholic Church". There is even some question as to whether the Eastern Catholic Churches would accept being called "Roman Catholic". They are catholic churches that worship using Eastern rites (i.e. liturgies other than the Latin liturgy) but are nonetheless in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
The Catholic Church article could be named Roman Catholic Church. Either way it would describe the church in communion with the Bishop of Rome. The title of the Catholicism article is potentially problematic. Many readers would assume that it was intended to describe the Roman Catholic faith. The article does go to quite some effort to explain to the reader why this is not the only interpretation of the word "Catholicism". (But please don't propose renaming the Catholic Church article to Roman Catholic Church. That's a can of worms that we've already eaten more than a few times and by now many of us are sick of eating the same worms over and over.
Alles klar? --Richard S (talk) 22:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for a good explanation, Richard. I think an even smaller can with even more worms is the proposal here to merge Catholicism with Christianity. I think that would find broad disagreement, including many non-RC denominations. Cresix (talk) 22:48, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a proposed merger. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merge Catholic into Catholicism

I believe merging the content from Catholic into Catholicism would benefit both articles. At this point in time, both articles seem awfully redundant, and this article seems to be the more developed of the two. The "Catholic" article speaks mostly about the term itself, where as this article speaks about the term "Catholic", as well as the religious beliefs common to all Catholic Christians. Both articles still have difficulty distinguishing between "catholic" in the generic sense, and "Catholic" as in the Roman Catholic sense.

As an alternative, one article could focus solely on history and usage of term "Catholic" and the other on the religious beliefs. This would involve merging some content from one article into the other and visa-versa.

--Zfish118 (talk) 01:43, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged the histories of the term "Catholic" into Catholic (Christian terminology). The content was nearly identical, with only slightly different lengths of passages selected, and different levels of commentary provided. --Zfish118 (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm closing the discussion for now, leaving the former "Catholic" page (now Catholic (Christian terminology)) as a sub-page of "Catholicism" --Zfish118 (talk) 17:59, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches

I propose revising or removing this section, as it is very focused on the (Roman) Catholic Church. Could possibly be tweaked to better fit in this more general discussion of "Catholicism", or merged into another more appropriate article. --Zfish118 (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Purely new testament catholicism?

I would like to know if it is still possible to be a roman catholic church faithful without learning and hearing about the Old Testament at all?

I heard the RCC before the 1960s 2nd Vatican Council was an almost purely New Testament church for the layman adherents, who did not seek to be a deacon or anything. They were not required to learn about the Old Testament and it was not read from during any public masses. Is that true? If true, is that still possible after the 2nd V.C.?87.97.104.92 (talk) 19:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

While ignorance is a drawback that one should try to overcome, it is certainly possible to be a faithful member of the Roman Catholic Church while being ignorant of many things. Ignorance of the Old Testament is one such drawback. What you heard is essentially nonsense, though based on the fact that, before 1970, passages from the Old Testament were used more rarely than now in the Roman Rite Mass, but were never totally excluded. In some Eastern Catholic Churches, the Old Testament is never read at the Eucharistic celebration: a bishop of one such Church remarked that to him it seemed out of place to read from the Old Testament when celebrating the sacrifice of the New Testament. Esoglou (talk) 07:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification! It is not ignorance, but I wish to refrain from hearing stories of (k)haram and never-ending violance by jews. Allegedly the violent God of the Old Testament is the same as the Heavenly Father of Jesus and one cannot be christian without professing that explicitly, but I cannot support present day haram in Palestine by listening to OT every weekend. 91.82.35.23 (talk) 12:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Universalism?

This page contains an infobox saying it is "part of a series on Universalism." Not to disparage either Catholicism or Universalism, but it's obvious that they are very distinct. Although the Greek word "katholikos" means "universal" in a sense (very broadly) akin to "ecumenical" or "orthodox" as opposed to "heretical" or "sectarian," the dogma of the Catholic Church differs from the "Universalist" theology of Origen or Hosea Ballou: Universalists hold that all souls will eventually attain Heaven, while the Catholic Church makes no such claim. I suggest that this infobox, along with its link to a frankly rather muddled article on various religious universalisms, be removed from the Catholicism page. As it stands now, it seems rather like having an article on Universal Studios link to the article on Universalist theology: just because something has "universal" in the name, doesn't mean the theology of Origen and Ballou is involved. Barring any complaints here, I'll remove the infobox in a few days. Rinne na dTrosc (talk) 23:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

In the absence of any objection, I just removed the Universalism infobox. Here's hoping Catholics, universalists, atheists, and everyone else reading this has a lovely day. Rinne na dTrosc (talk) 19:22, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

What the?

What do you mean by "For many the term usually refers to Christians" What do you mean by Usually!?!?!?! It REFERS TO Christians... ALWAYS!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.149.112.243 (talk) 13:19, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

You should have read a little further and completed the phrase: "... usually refers to Christians and churches, western and eastern, in full communion with the Holy See". Esoglou (talk) 19:15, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

History of the term Catholic

This section claims the earliest use of the term "catholic" was by Ignatius of Antioch in 107 AD. When in fact it was used by St. Clement I in his Epistle to the Corinthians around 96 AD.

"Heretical teachers pervert Scripture and try to get into Heaven with a false key, for they have formed their human assemblies later than the Catholic Church. From this previously-existing and most true Church, it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then, are counterfeit and novel inventions" - St. Clement I [Epistle to the Corinthians] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.29.212.194 (talk) 02:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

(New comments should be put at the end.)
There is no such statement in the letter, which mentions neither "Catholic Church" nor "heretical teachers". You can check in the translations given here. Whatever source you took the quotation from is clearly unreliable. How could a first-century writer be seriously imagined to have spoken about "these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then", saying they "are counterfeit and novel inventions"! Esoglou (talk) 14:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Translation

I am failure with the translation as "Universal" or "General" Google translate

However google also offers this:

Google translate: καθ ολικι σ μ ός -- 'along with TOTAL in ordination' [2]

Interesting,

Tim Sheridan 

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.233.128 (talk) 17:19, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Anglican/Lutheranism history

This sentence is vague, unsourced, and not particularly accurate:

" or else repudiated papal authority and the teaching office in the Western Church for the authority of a civil ruler in religious matters--> (e.g., in Anglicanism and parts of the Lutheran Church)."

I have commented it out for now; a better sentence might be needed in the history section for these two. --Zfish118 (talk) 14:33, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

McBrien Essay

In the Catholic Church subsection, the material covering McBrien's opinions seems to use Wikipedia's voice to state the source's opinion's regarding the material. This creates an awkward dialog format that reads more like an opinionated essay than an encyclopedic article. I would appreciated it if someone with access to the source could restate the material. --Zfish118⋉talk 18:03, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I think my edit fixed the confusion issue. It was a quote all along, but it was easy to miss. Made it an obvious block quotation. Deus vult! Crusadestudent (talk) 18:09, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! --Zfish118⋉talk 22:42, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 5 June 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved as consensus to keep the article at it's current name has been established. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Music1201 talk 01:28, 12 June 2016 (UTC)


Catholicism → Catholicity – I know there was an old discussion about making a move like this, but there are a few problems with this title.

  1. The page on the church headed by the pope has been moved to Catholic Church. That makes it very easy to confuse the 2 pages. "Catholicism" is the WP:COMMONNAME of the faith followed by the Catholic Church. The two are practically indistinguishable.
  2. When referring to the "catholic-ness" of a church, the correct term is "catholicity", not "catholicism" or "Catholicism". This term is already used a few times in this article.
  3. The WP:COMMONNAME use of "Catholicism" is to refer to the Catholic Church headed by the pope. Even WikiProject Catholicism is about that specific church.
  4. I realize some parts of the article would probably need to be reworded or even restructured, but that is not an argument against getting the title right. Wikipedia is WP:NOTFINISHED. Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 20:14, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Support. Well put. Chicbyaccident (talk) 20:19, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Support At least some Protestants will be willing to call themselves "catholic" and to support "catholicity" while seeing "Catholicism" as something distinct which they do not identify with. That means "Catholicism" is overly WP:PRECISE; it narrows the topic to not include some people it intends to include, as there is a section on these Protestants in the article. See for example books like Reformed Catholicity, Towards Baptist Catholicity, The Mercersburg Theology and the Quest for Reformed Catholicity, The Catholicity of Protestantism, but no similar examples with "Catholicism". --JFH (talk) 02:00, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose, I am not sure why this is being proposed. According to Merrian-Webster's dictionary, Catholicism means the "Roman Catholic Religion", while Catholicity means "the character of being in conformity with a Catholic church"; definition-wise, neither clearly states that the article refers to more than the Roman Catholic Church. Currently, the "Catholicism" article deals with the broader branch of Christianity, including the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholic, and (by some measures) High Anglican. It is more in line with the "religion" definition, than the "conformity with" definition. The article is peers with Methodism, Lutheranism, Mormonism, etc. "Catholicism" refers to a concrete group of churches possessing certain traits and characteristics; "Catholicity" in contrast, refers to the abstract nature and characteristics directly. "Catholic" redirects to Catholicism, because these traits are difficult to discuss apart from the churches and communities that possess them; "Catholic" was at one time a standalone article that was nearly identical to "Catholicism". I do not see the advantage of using the very uncommon third form "Catholicity" as as an alternative title. Protestants who identify as "catholic" but not part of Catholicism could be covered under "Divergent interpretations"; they are also covered in Catholic (term). --Zfish118⋉talk 03:14, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Note: edits made to clarify purpose of article, as Catholicism and Catholic were indeed previously incorrectly described in lead. --Zfish118⋉talk 03:29, 6 June 2016 (UTC)}}
Addenda 1: The Common Name issue has been resolved by hatnotes and disambiguation pages. --Zfish118⋉talk 12:41, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Addenda 2: Oxford Dictionaries recognizes Catholicism to refer to "catholic" independent of "Roman Catholic", but does not even have an "Catholicity", treating it instead as a variant of "Catholic". --Zfish118⋉talk 12:48, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Upper case Catholic, Catholicism, and Catholicity all refer to the Catholic Church, while the lower case versions of these words refer to the broader concept of universality. Compare the first and second definitions of "catholicity" in Merriam-Webster.[3] Gulangyu (talk) 20:21, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Could you please clarify/rephrase what you meant by "definition-wise, offer no clarity that the article refers to more than the Roman Catholic Church"? I think it's just a grammar thing, but I want to make sure I understand you. Thanks. Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 03:36, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up. I think the definition you cited makes the case for the proposed move, though. If "Catholicism" is "the Roman Catholic religion" or (the long M-W definition) "the faith, practice, or system of Catholic Christianity" (where "Catholic" is hyperlinked and defined as "of or relating to the Roman Catholic Church"), then it does not apply to Old Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, or any flavor of big-O Orthodox, to say nothing of Protestants. The instant "Roman" is introduced, all the other claimants to catholicity are immediately disqualified—that is the rationale of using the "Roman" in the first place. Since that is not the intent of the article, then, per both my own and JFH's arguments, the preferable title would in fact be "Catholicity". Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 04:02, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Very Strong Oppose: Once again there is a POV attempt to assert that "Catholic" and "Catholicism" should only refer to one particular Christian tradition. This assertion is simply not factual nor historical but based in ignorance and prejudice. Wikipedia needs to present things factually and neutrally, it is not a platform for promoting biased views. Afterwriting (talk) 03:53, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Afterwriting, this has nothing to do with POV. This proposal was made as a good-faith attempt to clear up confusion, make the title more accurate, and, per JFH's arguments, to make it more inclusive, not less so. Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 04:02, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
It has everything to do with POV and it certainly doesn't clear up any "confusion" or make anything more "accurate" (just the opposite in fact). Your comments only reveal just how extremely non-neutral your views actually are. Afterwriting (talk) 04:40, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
As do yours. How about we raise the level of discussion above "bias! prejudice!" to some substantive debate, shall we? See literally every other thread here for comparison. Definitions, sources, etc. On another note, who are you to decide what my motives are? Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 04:48, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: – I see that Catholicity is already a redirect to Catholicism so I do not see how making this change would be a useful improvement to the encyclopedia for the average Wikipedia reader. — JoeHebda • (talk) 04:20, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Support. According to Merriam-Webster, both upper case "Catholicism"[4] and "Catholicity"[5] refer to the Catholic Church. What we want here is lower case catholicity. (catholicity, definition No. 2.) Update. New Catholic Encyclopedia has an equivalent article titled "catholicity," while Britannica uses lower case "catholic".[6] Gulangyu (talk) 20:23, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: article titles ending in the productive suffix -ism are the common form in Wikipedia. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 16:49, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia titles should be decided by their appropriateness to the particular subject rather than statistics. The suffix "-ism" often indicates a specific movement or school of thought, while "-ity" suggests an inherent quality, e.g. Velocity and Viscosity. This suggests that in the present case "catholicity" should be the preferred title. — Jpacobb (talk) 20:33, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the argument made by Zfish118. It is about the Catholic religion. CookieMonster755 📞 ✉ ✓ 17:31, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the argument made by Zfish118; this is a very recherche term which will puzzle readers and lead to drop in views. Johnbod (talk) 01:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. I doubt whether most people have even heard the word "Catholicity"! -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:44, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
    • It's the topic that "most people haven't heard of." That's true regardless of what you call it. Upper case "Catholicism" is certainly a more common term, but that generally refers the Roman Catholic Church, which is not the topic of this article. As far as commonness goes, see this ngram. The sources don't necessarily recognize the upper case/lower case distinction, so IMO the reference works that I cited in my !vote are more authoritative. Gulangyu (talk) 12:10, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Distinguishing beliefs

It has come to my attention that there are very few, if any, citations to secondary sources in the "Distinguishing beliefs" section. There are a handful of citations to scripture, which border on original research. Secondary sources are critical to the credibility of the article, as the definition used here appears to be non-standard. Most general purpose dictionaries define "Catholicism" as affiliated with the "Roman Catholic Church". Only in more advanced, scholarly dictionaries is a use similar to this article hinted at. --Zfish118⋉talk 02:52, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

There should be some good sources in documents and other publications associated with Christian traditions other than Roman Catholicism. I'll try to find some. Afterwriting (talk) 06:03, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

When was the founding date of the Roman Catholic Church?

When more or less was the founding date of the Roman Catholic Church? I know RCC has got their own narrative on this, but this lacks credibility in the light of the evidence. The emerging of the RCC seems to be an evolutionary process around the time Christianity was legalized in the Roman empire. Does someone have more knowledge about this and can this be integrated in the article? --41.146.63.51 (talk) 17:26, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus in the 1st century at the Great Commission and his apostles began their mission after Pentecost. The First Epistle of Clement (c. 100) and The Shepherd of Hermas (c. 140) show that the Catholic Church already existed in Rome when those works were written. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 03:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistency between the article and the category

We had some serious discussions on this page, but still we are faced with awkward inconsistency between the article Catholicism and the corresponding category Category:Catholicism. Article treats the term "Catholicism" in its broader meaning as Catholicity, including the relevant positions and views of all main branches of Christianity, while on the other hand category is exclusively dedicated to the Catholic Church of Vatican and its various branches. So, something should be done about that. In light of previous inconclusive discussions and persisting terminological problems, maybe we should consider the possibility of making some complex changes. First, we should note that similar problem with term "Catholic" was resolved by naming the relevant article as Catholic (term). That article deals with the term "Catholic" in its broader meaning and since the page presently named just Catholicism also deals generally with the term "Catholicism" maybe it should be moved to Catholicism (term). That would allow us to use the title Catholicism for a new disambiguation page that would point (1) to this page, renamed to Catholicism (term), and also (2) to the present page Catholic Church. There might be some other solutions for this problem, along those lines, so lets talk about that. Sorabino (talk) 09:39, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

The first stage would be to merge this article with Catholic (term). There are no remaining points of difference to justify their separate existances. Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:04, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
I do not see any inconsistency. Categories have dynamic content based on how the articles are tagged. The title Catholicism (term) is not needed since the article title Catholicism already exists. Why add (term)? –BoBoMisiu (talk) 15:49, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
  • It is true that content of of this article, in its present form, overlaps in many segments with content of the article Catholic (term) and that question should also be addressed. There is a fine line between terms Catholic, Catholicity and Catholicism, and that distinction should be reflected in relevant articles and disambiguation pages. That is why proper use of titles is so important. This article deals with Catholicity in general, but it is named "Catholicism" and that term is used in category system exclusively as designation for one denomination: the Catholic Church of Vatican. So, we have a clear inconsistency: here we are using title "Catholicism" for an article on Catholicity in general, and in category system we are using the same term as designation for only one denomination. Sorabino (talk) 07:47, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Good comments. I have opened a widened discussion related to this one on Talk:Catholic_Church#Related_terms_as_well_as_their_disambiguation_pages. Chicbyaccident (Please notify with {{SUBST:re}} (Talk) 16:48, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

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Letter on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion needs a link that works. Overall, the information is from catholic sources, but there should be different sources to accurately represent the other sects of the catholic faith as described in the article. There should be more information under Oriental Orthodoxy since the few sentences appear as if there is barely information on the topic. Rcelenta (talk) 23:49, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Article name concerns (August-September 2017)

What happened with all of redirects to this article?

There were several redirects to this article before the move, and now there are none. What happened to those redirects? Some of them were used as links in many articles, and now they are pointing to some other articles, or what? How did this mess happened? Sorabino (talk) 09:45, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

The justification for the move was, as far as I can see, that "Catholicism" usually referred to the Catholic Church, so that should be the primary topic. Presumably all those redirects now go there, and someone needs to process them all to move the ones that should be here back. TSP (talk) 09:59, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
The old title of this article ("Catholicism") was justly redirected to the article Catholic Church, but that is the only thing that was proposed and discussed. There was no basis for the summary transfer of all redirects from this article to another article. This article has new title and the same content, and all of its original redirects should be returned to this article. Total mess is created now in many articles that contain those terms as links, and after the summary move they are now pointing to entirely different article! Sorabino (talk) 10:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
I would partly object to those premises. The reasons for the move included 1) "in most articles the term and link Catholicism refer simply to the Catholic Church, as you will find if you investigate a little", and 2) "a little bit of information could [then] be extracted from Catholicism (term) and moved to Catholic Church", while 3) "making Catholicism (term) [in fact, in final prospect Catholic (term)] a little bit more consistent in its content, focus, and perspective, which isn't fully the case yet". There might be some mess to deal with, but arguable the mess was larger before if taking #1 into account. One may argue that #3 partly supports your concern in the section immediately below ("reorganize and upgrade this article"), depending on what improvements you actually visualise. Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:55, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, there was some mess and confusion, and some of that mess is now resolved, thanks to the proposed move of the old title, but unfortunately additional mess is created now because all redirects were automatically moved, not to the new title, as they should have been moved, but to the different article, and that is the problem here. For example, within that summary move, some redirects on common theological terms like: Catholicity, or Catholicity (term) and even Catholicity of the Church, were summary redirected from this article to the article Catholic Church. I warned about that in the original discussion. Sorabino (talk) 11:14, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
It seems that some of the redirects mentioned above have just been moved back to this article. Sorabino (talk) 11:31, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Unconvinced by move

Sorry, I was on holiday for the entire requested move period so missed it.

Is this article really about a term? Catholic (term) still has in its hatnote "This article is about the term. For the church in full communion with the Pope, see Catholic Church. For the beliefs and practices other denominations that use this term, see Catholicism." (Which now go to the same article, but the latter is clearly meant to go here.) Catholic Church until yesterday had "This article is about the church headed by the Pope. For associated tenets, see Catholicism."

So it looks to me like this article was always meant to be about beliefs, not about the term (which is covered better at Catholic (term); even if it didn't do that job very well. Not sure what the best solution is but I don't think this is it. I'm inclined to think the previous situation was better, with clear hatnotes to take people to Catholic Church if that's what they meant.

If this article actually is meant to be about the term, then (a) it should be merged with Catholic (term) as proposed; and (b) I think we need an article on the broader concept of Catholicism. TSP (talk) 10:31, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

That is true, maybe we need to reorganize and upgrade this article to the general article on "Catholicity" as a theological concept. That would solve many problems. Sorabino (talk) 10:36, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

What will be the fate of "Category:Catholicism" and its numerous subcategories?

Discussion initiation moved to Category talk:Catholicism for convenience

Requested move 23 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved DrStrauss talk 19:58, 30 August 2017 (UTC)


Catholicism → Catholicism (term) – This article states clearly already in the first paragraph that it is about the term, and this focus is further emphasised down the headings. The most important reason for this proposal, however, is that in most articles the term and link Catholicism refer simply to the Catholic Church, as you will find if you investigate a little. This state creates unnecessary confusion, violating WP:Primarytopic, and WP:Commonname. Therefore I would suggest that this article is moved in order for Catholicism to be redirected to Catholic Church - per WP:Consistency just as Roman Catholicism is (in addition, compare also WP:Catholicism content consensus). What exact title this article then ought to have after the move I would consider secondary, but the proposed new name is in analogy with the article Catholic (term). On a further note, such a solution would arguably mean that a little bit of information could be extracted from Catholicism (term) and moved to Catholic Church, while making Catholicism (term) a little bit more consistent in its content, focus, and perspective, which isn't fully the case yet, per WP:Notfinished. Chicbyaccident (talk) 08:51, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I've determined the consensus to be in support of the move but I cannot execute it because it is sysop-protected. DrStrauss talk 19:58, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I feel like this move could potentially be contested later. More participation is probably needed to determine a clearer consensus. Alex ShihTalk 23:56, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Whilst I do agree with Alex Shih that there wasn't really enough participation to make this an uncontestable decision, it was closed in line with all the requirements of WP:RM (which admittedly aren't very stringent). I'm therefore going to implement he move as requested; the inevitable tarring-and-feathering committee are welcome to assail my talkpage whenever they wish. Yunshui 雲水 13:34, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Why wasn't there any notification about this discussion on Portal talk:Catholicism, and on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism? With more participation we could of reached a stronger consensus. And now, we have a contested move, not to mention additional technical questions. Sorabino (talk) 13:54, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Archives moved; I've left the old RfDs where they were since they refer to specific redirects. Sorry for missing those in the initial move. Incidentally, the archives weren't protected; you didn't need an admin to move them. Yunshui 雲水 07:18, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Merge proposal with Catholic (term)

Note: This discussion was previously located on talk:Catholic (term)

Obviously heavily overlapping content. In regression, the article Catholicism (term) strictly refers to the Nicene Creed i.e. the term "Catholic (term)", as clearly indicated in its lead section. Neither original nor later included source(es) in that article deal with anything but the adjective term of said Nicene Creed and its percussions. Thus, nothing motivates two mirroring locations for essentially identical content/reflection of discussion. Compare also Roman Catholic (term) which lacks equivalent Roman Catholicism (term) for analogous reasons. Furthermore, Catholicism (disambiguation) redirects to Catholic (disambiguation). Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:16, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

  • Comment. Yes, that is true - significant sections of the article Catholicism (term) are indeed overlapping with the main content of the article Catholic (term), and those sections should be definitively merged with the main article, but the question remains - what to do with sections that are distinctively dedicated to the very relevant theological terms "catholicism" and "catholicity"? Those sections can not be simply merged with the article Catholic (term), since that would create quite a confusion. Major theological dictionaries and encyclopedias have separate articles on terms "catholic" and "catholicism" (catholicity), not to mention the common practice in scholarly literature, where clear distinction between those terms is always maintained. Are there any scholars who would argue that term "catholic" and "catholicism" (catholicity) are identical? That is a non-existing question among experts. And it is not even a denominational issue, since some of the most prominent Roman-Catholic scholars (including cardinals) have recently published several major works dedicated to the complex theological questions of "catholicism" and "catholicity". One of the key problems with the articles discussed here is that most of the main scholarly works on the subject are not even listed in our articles :) not to mention the fact that frequent editorial feuds and hasty structural changes are actually quite discouraging for editors with expert knowledge on the subject. Sorabino (talk) 16:38, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

*Comment When was the article "Catholicism (term)" written? I have never stumbled on it before. It appears to overlap considerably with Catholicism, and should probably be merged there. –Zfish118⋉talk 12:41, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose Merge and partial Revert Page Move: Reviewing the recent history, this article was proposed and renamed with a slim consensus, and is now proposed for merger with another article. I would strongly recommend returning this article to its original name, as it originally dealt with the broader Catholic traditions (within and outside the institutional (Roman) Catholic Church), not just the history of the word "Catholicism" as in the "Catholic (term)" article. A previous page rename proposal from last year (#Requested move 5 June 2016) was rejected after considerable discussion, suggesting there is a consensus for this article to remain within its immediately prior scope. Certainly, some overlapping content can be trimmed and moved to "Catholic (term)" as needed - I had done trimming work myself some years back. Numerous other discussions on this talkpage (#Article name concerns (August-September 2017) highlight numerous other difficulties, such as the fate of the associated Category:Catholicism (with considerable non-Roman Catholic content listed within it), and the difficulty of sorting inbound links that were meant for the original "Catholicism" article. I would not oppose the addition of an alternative name or qualifier instead of "term", such as "Catholic Denominations", "Historical Catholicism", etc. I think there is value in having a free standing article discuss all branches of Catholicism, and think its scope is sufficiently different than the etymological history of discussed in "Catholic (term)". –Zfish118⋉talk 07:01, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Edit: It is clear that many if not most inbound links to "Catholicism" were more properly meant for the Catholic Church article, and thus support keeping Catholicism as redirect. I would prefer Catholicism (qualifier) over the more obscure term "Catholicity". –Zfish118⋉talk 00:37, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Interesting comment, but why do you think that term Catholicity is "obscure" ? :) It is one of the most important terms in Christian theology: Google Books Search: Catholicity. All scholars are using that term, and it is quite common to anyone who is interested in Christian studies, regardless of their religious or denominational affiliation. Sorabino (talk) 11:35, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Post merge content concerns

  • Comment. This discussion is becoming quite complex, with several overlapping issues. Since it is obvious that we need an article on theological concept of "catholicity" it would be best to improve the content of this article, under the denominationally neutral name like "Catholicity", and that would automatically solve some other issues. In any case, this article should not be completely merged, but it needs much work. Concerning some other issues, I still think that term "Catholicism" is primarily associated with the Catholic Church, and therefore we should not revert the previous move. But if we eventually arrive to that point, there is another solution: to turn "Catholicism" into a disambiguation page, with list of terms like "Roman Catholicism" (pointing to the Catholic Church), "Anglican Catholicism" (pointing to the Anglican Communion), "Old Catholicism" (pointing to the Old-Catholic Church) and so on ... With "Catholicism" as a disambiguation page, and "Catholicity" as the title for an article on the theological concept, many current problems might be solved. Sorabino (talk) 09:58, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Has anybody clearly addressed and/or objected to the split/merge propal templates I inserted into the sections of this article? If not, I intend to initiate the most obvious of those section merge proposals in order to see what will be left of this article for the merge proposal to Catholic (term). Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:16, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
There is no doubt that some parts of marked sections can be merged as proposed, but there is no need for hasty and summary actions. Some of those sections are also dealing with theological concept of "catholicity" and such content should be left in this article. As I stated before, we should improve the content of this article, by relying on scholarly literature that deals with the question of "catholicity". I guess that is your intention too, since I just saw that during some previous discussions you supported the change of title of this article to "catholicity". Anyway, the main problem is solved - Catholicism points to Catholic Church, and now we must discuss other issues. And, please - can someone finally place notifications about these discussions on Portal talk:Catholicism, and on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism. We need more participation. Sorabino (talk) 15:03, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
Done. I placed some notifications on talk pages of relevant portals and projects, in hope for more participation from users that are interested in this subject. Sorabino (talk) 15:48, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I haven't seen any clear objections with arguments against my content improvements proposals neither by you, nor by any other user. Any content pertaining to your suggestion of "catholicity" could be added later if so, rather than maintaining the content as it is now, needing improvement. Chicbyaccident (talk) 15:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, I hear you, but so far you made several different proposals. At first, you proposed that this article should be merged with Catholic (term). Nobody supported that, on the contrary. It would be unimaginable to completely abolish the article on theological concept of "catholicism" (term) or "catholicity" since that is one of the most important concepts in Christian theology, not to mention its ecumenical significance, in past and in present. Later, you proposed that this article should be split between Catholic (term) and Catholic Church on the grounds that it needs a cleanup because of overlapping segments, but again, complete split would lead to the same outcome - this article would not exist anymore. Nobody here supported complete split or total deconstruction of this article. I agree that cleanup is needed, but that should not lead to the total decomposition of this article. Please, can you clarify your proposals? Sorabino (talk) 16:15, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
I was thinking most importantly to merge most of "Summary of major divisions" and "Beliefs and practices" to Catholic Church, while naturally leaving a reference to these bits appropriate location. Chicbyaccident (talk) 18:43, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
I was expecting that your will initiate the process of editing by merging section "Sacraments or sacred mysteries" to the Catholic Church :) since 90 % of that section is dedicated to sacramental practices of the Catholic Church. Same goes for the section "Beliefs and practices". I think that it could be merged as proposed. Contrary to that, I really do not see why should we merge section "Summary of major divisions" to the article Catholic Church? That section is dedicated to general history of Christian divisions and can be used as a historical base for future editing here. Sorabino (talk) 20:58, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Requested move 10 October 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Catholicity — JFG talk 23:03, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Catholicism (term) → Catholicism (concept) – As the proposal to merge/split this article has been rejected in favor of keeping this as a stand alone article, and because many inbound "Catholicism" links are meant more correctly for the Catholic Church article, I would propose this article be renamed to address the concept of Catholicism, to more clearly differentiate it from the article "Catholic (term)". –Zfish118⋉talk 16:01, 10 October 2017 (UTC) --Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:15, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Addenda, in the August 23 page move, the rational for the move included: "This article states clearly already in the first paragraph that it is about the term, and this focus is further emphasised down the headings." The line referred to in the original first paragraph (see Catholicism 28 August 2017) was: "Catholicism [...] is a term which in its broadest sense refers to the beliefs and practices of Christian denominations that describe themselves as Catholic in accordance with the Four Marks of the Church... [Emphasis added]" is admittedly poorly phrased. As the primary author of the sentence, it was never my intention to limit the scope of the article to Catholicism as a "term".
This article was meant to cover the substance of Catholicism, while Catholic (term) was to cover the history and usage of the word. The History/Use of Term subsection links to "Catholic (term)" and "Roman Catholic (term)" as main articles, so this article can focus on the concept of Catholicism, rather than its etymology. The collection of historical beliefs and practices are what define Catholicism; "Catholicism" however is not a term that means beliefs and practices shared by numerous denominations. These denominations share Catholic traits, and this article is meant to discuss the meaning and significance of those traits, rather than how the word is used (as the qualifier "term" would imply). –Zfish118⋉talk 23:02, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Prefer Catholicity as first choice, per WP:NATURAL, as the term is widely used in scholarly literature and is unambiguous. Support the proposal as second choice – a clearer disambiguator. No such user (talk) 10:18, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Keep Given the decision to keep this article, I think that this proposal is premature, ill conceived and bordering on disruptive. Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:23, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Move - not necessarily to there, but it's an improvement at least. Prefer Catholicism (Christianity) or Catholicism (theological concept). My conclusion from the failure of the merge proposal is the opposite of Laurel's - the reason it wasn't appropriate to merge this with Catholic (term) is because this page isn't about a term. If this page was really about the term "Catholicism", we should merge it with Catholic (term). It isn't, so we should move it instead - though I admit I am not sure where. (My preference would be "back to Catholicism" - like quite a few people who edit in this general area, I completely missed the original move proposal which was closed in a week with four opinions - but I'm not sure I actually want to open that can of worms.) I'm not convinced by 'Catholicity' - I think that means a different thing again. Everyone I can think of who uses this term in the way the article talks uses the noun form 'Catholicism' - Affirming Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, Category:Old Catholicism; not Affirming Catholicity, Anglo-Catholicity, Old Catholicity. TSP (talk) 12:00, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Comment: I really view this as perhaps an interim move. No one seemed happy with "Catholicism (term)"; I am baffled and borderline offended that Laurel Lodged considers this "disruptive". I would also prefer "Catholicism" as well, but that would require significant work to ensure that inbound links are appropriate, and not intended for the "Catholic Church" article. If that work can be done, I would very much support moving it back (the "Catholicism" article has always been about more than the Roman Catholic Church), but for now I just want to give it a clearer name so that it isn't gradually edited to be a clone of "Catholic (term)". –Zfish118⋉talk 13:00, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
While I agree with the arguments of Laurel Lodged as opposed to Zfish118, I would like to commend the latter's credibility and efforts in arguments conveyed. I don't see any reason to question this user's contributions in a condescending way. Rather the opposite. Actually I am delighted about the user's efforts in defence of a legitimate concern as for the level this user presents the case, in comparison with many users who make brief drop by comments despite lacking background check in these unfortunately sometimes contentious discussions. Now, as for the limit of this discussion, I am not quite sure and would need more arguments pro/con. Chicbyaccident (talk) 18:37, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Regardless of the merits of the decision, it behoves us to respect it. A decent internal of time should elapse before the question is again broached. To do anything else would involve us in an endless cycle of moves and acrimonious reversions. Get it a chance for a year. Meanwhile, use that time to hive off those parts that don't really belong here. Laurel Lodged (talk) 11:38, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
This decision effected an article as old as Wikipedia based on three votes. The proposing editor almost immediately then proposed the renamed article be merged, and that merge was rejected. It would have been better to propose the merge directly first, but here we are. As this is a single block of actions, it is not inappropriate to reconsider the former in light of the latter's rejection. I was unavailable all of August, and numerous other editors expressed concerns soon after. There is simply no strong consenses that article name or scope needed to change. Since there is a real problem of inbound links, I do not right now advocate full reversal (although may in the future), but the failure of the merge proposal very strongly suggests that having parallel articles regarding closely related terms goes against the consensus. Thus I propose changing only the qualifer. –Zfish118⋉talk 12:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Keep "Concept" gives the impression that Catholicism is vague and I wouldn't suggest using it. "Term" shows that it has a much stricter definition. I don't think the move would be an improvement. Filpro (talk) 23:16, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
Can you suggest any better words? I'm not incredibly keen on 'Concept'; but the article fundamentally isn't about a term. The article about the term is Catholic (term), and while it stays at this name people keep trying to edit this article into that one. A stricter definition doesn't help when the strict definition is not what the page is actually about! TSP (talk) 16:37, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Did you find any relevant interpretation in Wikipedia:Broad-concept article? Chicbyaccident (talk) 19:39, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Other possibilities (in no particular order, and variations thereof):
  • Catholicism (Christianity)
  • Catholicism (denominational family)
  • Catholicism (theological concept)
  • Catholicism (Nicene) (weak preference)
  • Catholic (Mark of the Church)
  • Catholic (Nicene Creed)
  • Catholic (Apostolic Creed)
These are kind of off the top of my head, but tying the article to the Nicene Creed/Nicene Christianity might give the article more focus. –Zfish118⋉talk 01:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
I think Catholicism (Christianity) would be my preference of those; Catholicism (theological concept) second. The "Nicene" or "Apostolic creed" ones seem to me to presuppose the content of the article; I'm not sure that all uses of the term are simply what is meant in the Creeds. Almost all Christians use those creeds, so in that sense call themselves "Catholic", but there is clearly more meant by people who specifically use the word to distinguish themselves. An Anglican who described themselves as 'Catholic' would not be suggesting that other Anglicans who called themselves, say, 'Evangelical' were not part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. TSP (talk) 10:09, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Following what TSP has just said, why not Catholicity? When Churches claim to be catholic (note the lowercase), what they are claiming is their catholicity.
It already exists in frwiki, eswiki, itwiki, dewiki, among others. --Grabado (talk) 13:45, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
Mm, like almost anything, it's an improvement. It was proposed above; as I said in my vote, I wasn't entirely convinced because it's not the usual term used in any circles I'm familiar with; but I'm happy to go with it. Almost anything but what we have at the moment would be better! (Though note that several churches outside the Catholic Church use upper-case 'Catholic' - [8] "The Church of England sees itself as both Catholic and Reformed"). TSP (talk) 13:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid none of the arguments presented above makes the case stronger for a separate article, no matter what suffix disambiguator, as opposed to a merge with Catholic (term), or a transformation to a disambiguation page. The more we discuss it, the more the content overlap seems clear. In fact, given Catholic (term), I wonder what more legitimacy a Catholicism (term) or a Catholicism (concept) would give than the for good reasons inexisting Catholic Church (concept) or Catholic Church (term)? Chicbyaccident (talk) 11:14, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

The Eastern Orthodox Church considers itself to be both [[Orthodoxy|orthodox]] and [[Catholicity|catholic]]...

vs

John Henry Newman was a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] cardinal...

--Grabado (talk) 07:50, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Concistency within article

Following the move Chicbyaccident made these changes after the move. TSP reverted most of them here. I've restored the original changes with this edit, mainly focusing on the intro sentence, but I also concur with the other changes throughout the article. The RM closed with a move of this title to Catholicity as a natural disambiguation, and as a term that is used in academic reliable sources, and changing terms, especially in the first sentence, to comply with the new consensus title is standard practice after a move. This term also has the advantage of maintaining an neutral point of view because of the different groups who lay claim to the term catholicism. Not using terminology within the article that is consistent with the consensus title does nothing to benefit the reader, and has the possibility of causing confusion. I'm open to discussing tweaks in specific instances, but as a whole, keeping this article consistent is important so as to not confuse the reader. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:37, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Article naming has different concerns to style in general. "Catholicity" was chosen because the decisions was taken to redirect "Catholicism" elsewhere; but, nevertheless, "Catholicism" is overwhelmingly the term used in my experience for this concept. I'm not sure I've ever actually heard anyone say "Catholicity" to mean this. I'm not convinced it's justified to invent a specifically Wikipedia vocabulary as a solution to a technical problem of article naming. Note that an earlier proposal to move this article from 'Catholicism' to 'Catholicity' in 2016 was overwhelmingly rejected; this title has only been adopted as the article name because 'Catholicism' is no longer available, not because it is the usual term; 'Catholicism' is still the usual term.
There are also changes to meaning in the revised text - "In Catholicism, a sacrament is considered to be..." means something different to "In terms of catholicity, a sacrament is considered to be..." - specifically, the second of those is nonsense. Similarly, "A common belief in Catholicism is..." means something almost totally different to "A common belief related to catholicity is..." - they may coincidentally both be true, but changing from one to the other is very odd.
Some of the changes you've restored also don't relate to this change at all. In the phrase 'The use of the terms "catholicism" and "catholicity" is closely related to the use of Catholic Church ', the final link was changed from the disambiguation page to the Catholic Church article - in a sentence specifically relating to the different ways the term "Catholic Church" is used, it seems like an NPOV failure to redirect that term to one particular meaning of the term. It seems like effectively saying "People use this phrase in many ways, but this one is right". TSP (talk) 22:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
Good points. I've tried to address them here. My main reason for restoring was that I think many of the changes for consistency made sense and were in line with the above consensus with them in the article than it is going through the history. My experience re: the use of the term is the opposite of yours, and I think it is important to keep the terminology consistent throughout the article, deviating where necessary for clarity or when a change of term doesn't make sense in context. Thanks as always for your thoughtfulness here. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:13, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Catholicism redirect

It redirects here now? Not that I disagree, but I was under the impression that there was consensus to redirect Catholicism to Catholic Church. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Edit in question.​ AdA&D 04:25, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I've restored it per the cosnensus at the RM in the archives. A retargeting would likely need an RfD since the previous retargeting was in response to consensus in an RM in a controversial area. It was a sparsely attended RM, so its not inconceivable that there would be a different outcome in an RfD, but given how contentious this naming dispute is (its been ongoing for over a decade), things such as this should not be done without discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:31, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Merge discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Not merged. Discussion closed per WP:MERGECLOSE as no opinion was expressed beside mine after several months. Place Clichy (talk) 16:17, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Hello,

I notice that the article Catholicity was tagged for merger with Catholic (term) but no discussion was started.

I believe that this merger would be a bad idea, and would not be in line with the move discussion above. I suggest keeping an article for the theological concept (Catholicity), and a separate article for the Catholic term, which specifically discusses the use of the term is relation both to the theological concept (briefly, linking to the previous article) and to the Catholic Church. Duplicated content should be moved to one or the other article. Place Clichy (talk) 18:15, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Main category?

Would this article merit its own main Category:Catholicity for convenience? PPEMES (talk) 19:45, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposed wording for dispute

@Elizium23 and GPinkerton: Agree. GPinkerton needs to revert his restoration of "Though the faith and practices led by the pope in Rome are known as the Catholic Church ...", which is incorrect and has no support. Sundayclose (talk) 00:18, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
  • I would even drop "led by the pope in Rome" and let the "Catholic" terms nudge right up close to each other. I don't care what the source says. Elizium23 (talk) 00:21, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't have any problem with dropping "led by the pope in Rome", but I have a serious problem stating that "faith and practices" are the church. Sundayclose (talk) 00:23, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
I think GPinkerton would do well to self-revert, so that we don't have to report him on WP:3RRN. Elizium23 (talk) 00:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Pinging GPinkerton again. Sundayclose (talk) 00:31, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
If you look at the history you'll see that wording was not added by me, so you can stop blaming me for trying to change it. The pope leads the Roman Catholic Church. Many other churches not lead by the pope are called Catholic. All the sentence needs to say is "Many churches call themselves catholic and the pope only leads the one in Rome and there are others". (If you don't care what the source says, why is it so bad that I have removed it, since it says nothing about any of this, which you'd know if you'd read it?) The words "Although a unique set of disciplines and deposit of faith characterize" are completely unnecessary, add nothing, and read like advertising or worse. The words "and thus" are pointless too. GPinkerton (talk) 00:32, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: Here you changed the wording from "Though the faith and practices of the Catholic Church are led by the pope in Rome" to "Though the faith and practices led by the pope in Rome are known as the Catholic Church". So yes, it was you who made the original claim that "faith and practices" are the church. And in your most recent edit, you restored that phrase. Two of us here are telling you that you need to revert that edit until this matter is settled. Sundayclose (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Or instead of lodging demands like these, why don't you suggest something better? GPinkerton (talk) 00:46, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Already done. Look at Elizium23's suggest wording above, which I support. Sundayclose (talk) 00:48, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
I've changed it to "community". GPinkerton (talk) 00:47, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
@GPinkerton: Thank you for finally getting the point and not denying what you did. Now, please don't make any more changes until this issue is settled here. Sundayclose (talk) 00:50, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Elizium23's wording is opaque and unnecessary. GPinkerton (talk) 00:50, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
@Elizium23 and GPinkerton: I disagree. Now please wait to see if there are other opinions one way or the other. Sundayclose (talk) 00:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
And what is the objection to the wording as is. I have not changed my position on anything; I did not add the clumsy wording you are objecting to and the present article is now improved since I have removed it and its attendant ambiguity. Thanks for your agreement. GPinkerton (talk) 00:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
My objection to your wording is that Elizium23's version is better organized and better expressed. When you changed "Though the faith and practices of the Catholic Church are led by the pope in Rome" to "Though the faith and practices led by the pope in Rome are known as the Catholic Church", that was a serious misstatement. Elizium23's version is an improvement on both the original version and your version. Sundayclose (talk) 01:02, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
No, your opinion is that it is a misstatement. Nothing about it is wrong. In any case, it is not the present wording and apart from you no-one is arguing it belongs in the article. Anything that uses the words "deposit of faith" in the first clause is not an improvement and the word "unique" is wholly spurious puffery. GPinkerton (talk) 01:06, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Drop the stick of claiming that "faith and practice ... are known as the Catholic Church" is not a misstatement. It is an incorrect statement. But now the issue is which version is better: yours or Elizium23's? I disagree that Elizium23's version is puffery. Sundayclose (talk) 01:12, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Read the words. I did not mistate. The Pope leads the Roman Catholics. Bears shit in woods. Roman Catholicism is no more or less unique than any other notable thing that has a WIkipedia article. Uniqueness is not something that comes in degrees. No English-speaker is going to agree that "Although a unique set of disciplines and deposit of faith characterize the Catholic Church, led by the pope in Rome, the traits of catholicity, and thus the term catholic, are also ascribed to churches such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East" is better than the more concise, more jargon-free, more grammatically intact, and less POV: "Though the community led by the pope in Rome is known as the Catholic Church, the traits of catholicity, and thus the term catholic, are also ascribed to denominations such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East."GPinkerton (talk) 01:23, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm finished discussing this issue with you. I'll wait and see if others have comments. Sundayclose (talk) 01:28, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Admin comment: I have fully-protected the page for 2 days to stop the edit warring while you discuss. Two of you, User:Sundayclose and User:GPinkerton, were already at the WP:3RR limit, and I always prefer not to let good-faith users get themselves blocked for edit warring, if protection will save them from themselves. Keep discussing, see if you can reach WP:consensus by the time the protection expires, and do not change it in either direction until you have consensus here. Remember that consensus does not have to be unanimous. -- MelanieN (talk) 03:37, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Thanks that's ideal! GPinkerton (talk) 04:27, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
P.S. If you need more opinions here, you might post a request (neutrally worded, please) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism. -- MelanieN (talk) 03:39, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Or indeed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Eastern Orthodoxy which is no less relevant (or even more so). GPinkerton (talk) 04:27, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Or both. Just be sure to state clearly and neutrally what the issue is. -- MelanieN (talk) 14:22, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
  1. ^ "Melkite Greek Catholic Church Information Center
  2. ^ Pope Pius XI in Divini illius Magistri; Pope Pius XII in Humani generis; Pope John Paul II in his talk at the general audience of 26 June 1985 (actual text in Italian, Spanish translation).
  3. ^ Examples of such documents can be found at the links on the Vatican website under the heading Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
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