Category talk:American Roman Catholics

message: The article about Diane Keaton states that she was raised as a Methodist, and became agnostic/atheist. It  has no indication that she was ever Catholic.  Shouldn't that entry be removed from the list?  206.53.197.12 02:50, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Diane Keaton?

message: William Donovan, Medal of Honor recipient and head of the World War II Office of Strategic Services should be added to this list.  His Catholic faith was a prominent element in both his upbringing and adult life and he was recognized for service to the Vatican.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.237.208.21 (talk) 20:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  William Donovan 

message: The vast majority of articles listed here and in the Catholic sub-categories give no source for religious practice or belief as an adult; many articles under these categories do not mention religion in the text at all. This is a contravention of basic wikipedia policy on sourcing, Wikipedia:Citing sources.  It also goes against WP:BLP.
BLP also states  "Categories regarding religious beliefs ... should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief ... in question; and the subject's beliefs ... are relevant to his notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources." The personal faith of 99% of the people in this category is not notable in their public activities. I therefore would strongly urge deletion of these inaccurate categories that deeply compromises Wikipedia's attempts at factual representation. Span (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It is ambiguous what you are asking for. If you are encouraging the removal of the category from the articles where sufficient documentation is missing I very much concur, however, if you want the category itself to be deleted I think you are attacking the problem in the wrong manner. __meco (talk) 07:22, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree with Span that this category "compromises Wikipedia's attempts at factual representation". Some of the designations of Catholics seem to be based on their being a graduate of a Catholic school, even though many Catholic-school graduates are not Catholic. One option would be to retain the category, but limits its members to people who self-identify as a Catholic, based on cited sources. For example, many baptized Catholics later stop practicing Catholicism and no longer dentify themselves as "Catholic". Eagle4000 (talk) 17:24, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That's already the case, as stated in WP:BLPCAT, which is why I'm removing the cat from articles with no sourcing that the person self-identifies as Catholic as an adult. I think the point of disagreement is how notable the person's Catholicism needs to be (such as Brooke Shields). Cresix (talk) 17:39, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

text: I certainly agree that there is a very serious problem with appropriate sourcing. I've removed hundreds myself (sometimes with some good faith resistance until I point out WP:BLPCAT), and probably will remove hundreds more over the next few months. And I agree that many of the examples are utterly absurd; apparently some editors have added the category based solely on whether someone attended Catholic school, or are good friends with a Catholic priest, or even if their last name sounds Italian.As I've stated, however, I believe there is a gray areas regarding whether a person's self-identified faith is notable for that person. I don't think there are clear balck-and-white distinctions in some cases. That, of course, is just my opinion, and it is an opinion for anyone who comments here because WP:BLPCAT provides almost no guidance on that issue. It may be a worthwhile endeavor to try to hammer out some more specific guidelines for this issue at the talk page for WP:BLP. I suspect your 99% figure is probably an overestimate, although I have no idea what the actual percentage would be. Thanks. Cresix (talk) 01:08, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

text: So far not many have popped back up, and the great majority that have were made by editors who fully understood after I gave them a detailed explanation. I have created my own template (not a warning template, just a message) for explaining this to editors who restore the category, which has helped things to go quite smoothly. I think many of the improperly sourced categories were added long ago, then some of the crusaders drop out and others drop in. I hope (and think) over time we will get a handle on this problem, but it will take time, especially if we go beyond the Catholic category and work on other denominations or religions. Cresix (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Deletion of this category

message: I don't think Eugene McCarthy died as a Catholic.  I think that he's buried in an Episcopal cemetary and I think he converted to Episcopalianism.2602:30A:2C52:C170:7D75:C42F:69FA:5D8E (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Eugene McCarthy