Talk:Catholic Church/Archive 7

message: The Roman Catholic Church uses that name also in the following document found at vatican.va: The Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council. It is clear that there is apparently no objection from within the Church to the name Roman Catholic.
I think it could be helpful if a reference was found (I am sure there are) of the name "Roman Catholic" prior to the creation of the Church of England, just to refute Vaquero's ridiculous claim that that name only came into use because of the Anglican claim to be a Catholic Church itself. --Benne ['bɛnə] (talk) 15:52, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not only Anglicans 

message: Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation as to whether we should follow the guidelines, then sign your opinion with  ~~~~
* Support Basically, I think we should follow the guidelines. --WikiCats 02:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: Despite the present conversation now taking place, User:Andrew_c has seen fit to call for a move of a related article without mentioning it here.  He is not required to by any policy, except that of common decency.  This is not the first time such maneuvers have been attempted by opponents of the CC proposed name change.  For those having an interest in this topic, please follow the above link.  Vaquero100 07:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a complete lie. The page was moved with a small consensus back in May. Vaq waited till things died down on talk, and moved the page against that consensus, without requesting a move, or going to talk, or gaining consensus or anything. All I wanted was admin help to revert that move. I am not trying to drag the RCC vs. CC debate out on small pages. This is about process. You vote first, move second. If the community supported Vaq's move, then there should have been a vote first. I seriously cannot believe what this has turned into. Look at the page history, look who moved the page without extenting the courtesy of mentioning it here.--Andrew c 17:01, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

text: No, what you should have done is not hit the "Move" tab while this discussion was going on. Period. There is no need to drag this debate onto smaller pages. I do not know what "present" move you are refering to. I simply requested an admin to revert your out of process move. End of story. You have misunderstood my intentions.--Andrew c 01:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Talk:Sacraments_of_the_Catholic_Church#Requested_move]] 

message: Yet another surreptitious move to add "Roman" without regard to this discussion.  It is amazing how these come up during this discussion but are not mentioned here on this page.  It seems that if you cannnot win on reason, one must win by trickery.  It is interesting that this has now happened twice within a matter of days.  These moves give all the more reason to make the change on this page from RCC to CC.  Vaquero100 17:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm the one who proposed the move and I did so completely unaware of this debate. Please assume good faith and avoid accusing others of "trickery". --dm (talk) 09:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Catholic_Churches_in_Washington.2C_D.C.]] 

message: The assault on the CC continues.  For more information on the WP policy with regard to this issue, please see CC vs. RCC.   Vaquero100 17:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. 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 debate was No Consensus TSP 12:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_August_29#Category:List_of_Catholic_Comedians]] 

message: # Kylef81 22:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Option 1

message: # Support.  This option could be an acceptable compromise position that lets the two meanings of "catholic church" (theological concept and existing Church in communion with the Pope) have equal priority.  However, a satisfactory solution would require a judicious selection of the "descriptor" for each case.  Chonak 16:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Option 2

message: # Support. "Catholic Church" is an ambiguous title. It seems like there are other churches that claim to be 'the' catholic church-- in which case Wikipedia shouldn't just pick one over another.  "Roman Catholic" is very common usage in the English-speaking world, used by members of the religion themselves even if it's not their 'most official' name.  Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, and Encarta all use "Roman Catholic Church" as their article title.  It seems like the name change is trying to make a religious point, rather than just improving the encyclopedia.  --Alecmconroy 16:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Option 3

message: GRBerry, "Catholic Church" is an abbreviation? Haven't seen that argument before. Would you mind pointing to a declaration made by the Catholic Church stating that the full name is "Roman Catholic Church"? Yes, they've used RCC in a very limited number of official communications, but the vast majority have used "Catholic Church". If RCC is the official, full name, why would they choose not to use it in the majority of communications? Why isn't the Catechism of the Catholic Church called the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. You think they "abbreviated" it to save space? Seems odd. And, I think reasonable people can disagree on what "most English speakers" would recognize. I would argue that most English speakers would recognize Catholic Church, not RCC. I've asked several people about this since the issue started (some Methodists, Baptists, and a few Mormons). They all know the church that I go to as "Catholic Church". When I asked them if they knew what "Roman Catholic Church" meant, they thought it must be some different kind of church. Certainly not a statistically valid poll, but I think it does show that "most" people I know don't recognize RCC as the official name, or even know what it means. RCC is ambiguous. Cathoic Church is not. Kylef81 02:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think what GRBerry is referring to is what is known in linguistics as “ellipsis”(warning: this article mostly discusses the use of an ellipsis - three dots - in written language, rather than the more common usage of ellipsis in spoken language) - the omission of a word or words in normal speech which the listener can be reasonably expected to infer. The phenomenon is part of the natural tendency in speech to only say as much as is necessary to get your message across. In this case, consider the average speaker of English, who is unaware that “Catholic Church” has any senses other than Catholic Church1, but is also unaware that the Catholic Church1 is composed of numerous different Rites (i.e. the speaker hasn’t heard of “Ukrainian Catholics” and so on). This speaker will hear the terms “Catholic Church” (most often) and “Roman Catholic Church” (less often), and assume they must always refer to the same thing (Catholic Church1), since (in this speaker’s knowledge of the world) there is nothing else that they could refer to. Seeing as in most cases when two terms are interchangeable (cf. “United States of America” and “United States”), this is a normal result of ellipsis, and the longer term is usually considered the “more formal/correct/official” version, our speaker will apply this intuition to the distribution of “Catholic Church”/”Roman Catholic Church” and assume that “Catholic Church” is an elliptical version of the “more formal/correct/official” version “Roman Catholic Church”. This then leads the speaker into thinking that “Roman Catholic Church” (despite being encountered less often) is more “formal” or “official” than the more common term “Catholic Church”. If the said average speaker of English goes on to read this article on Wikipedia, then the name of the article and the introductory sentence will misleadingly “confirm” his conclusion, and he won’t discover that it is actually the other way around until he gets to the section “Terminology”. Thylacoleo 07:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at some of the web searches Vaquero uses in his essay, this can often be seen at work.  As he states Roman does not appear to be used all that often as a qulaifier, but when it isn't there is normally some more subtle disambiguation going on from the context in which it is used, Cardinal X of the Catholic Church said Y, for example, the use of Cardinal immediately gives us sufficient context.  I note also that for the 22 Dicoesan homepages for Catholic Dicoeses in England and Wales, 8 of them specifically refer to themself as the Roman Catholic Diocese of X on the main homepage, a similar number admittedly use just Catholic Diocese of X, whilst the remainder just use Diocese of X without any qualification (and there's one dead site).  Of course this is doubtless due to lingering English anti-Catholicism... David Underdown 12:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Dioceses you mention are part of the western Latin Rite. In this specific instance, the modifier "Roman" is accurate: it simply points to the fact that the diocese is from the Western Rite side of the CC. The same is not true for this article, which aims to describe the whole entity, not just the Western / Latin Rite. --Leinad ¬  »saudações! 18:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does Leinad-Z seriously think these dioceses meant to identify themselves specifically as part of the Western/Latin Rite and not simply as belonging to the whole Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome?  Lima 18:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm showing why, in the specific case of these dioceses, the modifier is not problematic... while for the present article it is problematic indeed. --Leinad ¬  »saudações! 18:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I'll repeat what I said: The title of the article is RCC. There will be a disambig page pointing to other "Catholic" notions. There will be a place in the article that briefly comments on RCC vs CC (without giving undue weight to minority views). CC will stay a redirect to RCC. Wikipedia can use the phrase CC in articles, but the first instance should be a wikilink to RCC. It isn't perfect, but I cannot imagine another compromise that would still allow both RCC and CC. Each article would only have one instance of RCC. After the first RCC, CC would be allowed as many times as necessary. Having CC redirect to RCC, and allowing such a wide usage of CC is the compromise. I said clearly that having the word Roman required before every instance of CC is one extreme POV, and the other extreme POV is removing the word Roman completely. A compromise is something that both sides have to give. Do you have any other suggestions for compromise? We could do the other way around? Have CC be the first instance in an article, and then have every other instance of CC be prefaced with "Roman" (no, that wouldn't work).--Andrew c 19:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I asked you specifically if you had another compromise suggestion, and I guess by your response, your answer is "No". Anything short of the removal of every single instance of "Roman" is unacceptable to you? I stand by my proposal. But like you said, we need a way to make this more than just words. What I proposed on another page is (after this discussion) starting a centralized discussion to create a naming convention policy for catholic related articles. We could establish rules such as RCC has to be used as the first wikilink, but isn't required after the first use (and the R word should only be used if contextually necessary). We could also specifically state that adding or removing the word "Roman" just to push a POV is against policy (however, contextual necessity is a different story). Articles that use only CC in their title must mention the Eastern Rite view, and possibly other applicable views. If a topic isn't applicable to the eastern rite, RCC must be used. etc. Anyway, these are just ideas. My main point is that I don't want to see this debate move on to every subpage, and have the title and usage of RCC vs. CC dependent on the number of people who bother to vote in a particular week. Getting a working policy is going to be hard work, but I feel worth it to prevent name change chaos on every single page (because really, arguing over one word on so many different pages for so many months is not helping the content of any article. really now, when is this article going to get up to FA status?)--Andrew c 23:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: IN large part I agree, but I fear you may be wasting your time with Vaquero.  He has announced his mission to Right Great Wrongs and will be satisfied wiht nothing less than unqualified adoption of his preferred nomaenclature. Guy 23:31, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

text: That is an interesting solution. I agree that it isn't very elegant, but it wouldn't be the first time something slightly ackward arose out of compromise (namely the BC/E solution at Jesus). I'd be willing to seriously consider this as an alternative working compromise, if others agreed as well (but then what would we do with all the RCC vs. CC debates on all the subpages and categories etc.) I'd like closure on this current debate, but I'd also like a working policy for the lofty purpose of trying to end these sorts of discussion in the future, so editors can focus their time and energy on improving articles, instead of arguing over the word "Roman".--Andrew c 01:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Option 3 discussion