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This page has is being assembled by the User:Vaquero100 to summarize and apply WP naming principles to the naming of WP Articles and Categories concerning the Church centered on the Pope. For full disclosure, this user argues for the use of "Catholic Church" over "Roman Catholic Church," as it is the name that this self-identifying entity uses for itself.
The SIX key principles are:
A number of objective criteria can be used to determine common or official usage:
Subjective criteria (such as "moral rights" to a name) should not be used to determine usage. These include:
Example:
In other words, Wikipedians should describe, not prescribe.
This should not be read to mean that subjective POVs should never be reflected in an article. If the term "Cabindan" is used in an article, the controversy should be mentioned and if necessary explained, with both sides' case being summarised.
Objective Methods:
A number of methods can be used to identify which of a pair (or more) conflicting names is the most prevalent in English.
Principle 1: The most common use of the name: "Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholic Church":
Principle 2: Does not apply (There is no conflict between the common and official name. Both are "Catholic Church"
Principle 3: How does the subject identify itself?
while a search on the exact terms, "Roman Catholic Church" turned up only 5 results [6]
Such addresses and communiques are not intended to be authoritative documents. Authoritative documents concern matters of faith and morals, are signed by the pope and adress to the world as binding always and everywhere. [8] As diplomatic language is often couched in the language preferred by the addressee and is addressed to a very specific public, as a matter of gentility or courtesy, it is not helpful in determining the language which the author or speaker typically uses in other forms of communication. Conclusion: on the Vatican Website's document library, there is no evidence of the Holy See referring to the "Catholic Church" by any other term in its normal and even form public statements to the general public.
Principle 4: Names of WP articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.
There is one other rather specialized use of the term "Catholic Church," which some say would to ambiguity for readers. Anglicans and other Christians use the term "Catholic Church" to refer to an invisible entity or theological concept which includes all baptized Christians. This could be a source of ambiguity; however, in the actual use of the English language this sense of the term is extremely rare, almost exclusively used by theologians, some church officials and in a quite indirect way in the creeds ("One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church"). These are quite specialized contexts as shown in the various searches above.
Quoting SynKobiety from his entry on Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Name:
"... To put this in the context of Wikipedia:Naming conventions ... "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." And, "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists". To assess what readers would recognize "Catholic" to mean, we can see the ways it is used. Applying 'catholic -"roman catholic" -"orthodox catholic" -"old catholic" -"anglican catholic" -wikipedia' as the search term in Yahoo will return uses of the word "Catholic" without common qualifiers. [9] When reviewing these unqualified uses of "Catholic", you would have to drill down into the list past the 970th place to find the first use of "Catholic" to refer to anything other than "institution headed by the Bishop of Rome." Even there the entry refers to a group calling itself "United Catholic," which is not an unqualified use of the word "Catholic". This certainly appears to be a minimum of ambiguity! In accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conflict, the article should be named "Catholic Church", as it would be a purely objective description of what the Catholics call themselves. ... (emphasis author's) SynKobiety 18:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
As most objections to "Catholic Church" appear to come from Anglican sources (with whome the argument historically began ), it may be useful to show instances of "Catholic Church" referring to the Church centered on the Pope. (Granted a majority of Anglican references include "Roman" but references without "Roman" do not appear to be more "ambiguous." Examples: [10], [11], [ see line 2], paragraph 8, paragraph 5, line 2, paragraph 4
Conclusion: "Catholic Church" is not an ambiguous term in everyday usage. Even in articles on the Anglican website, use of Catholic Church with out "Roman" does not require any further explanation in most cases in order to be understood.
The Catholic Church is both a Church in itself and a communion of 23 Particular churches. 22 of the 23 Churches within the Catholic Church are Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. They are in communion with Rome and they are fully Catholic Churches, but they are not "Roman Catholic" Churches. The Western or Latin or Roman Church is the one Western Church under the Pope as Primate of the West. While in communion with the Church of Rome, Eastern Catholic Churches are sui juris that is, independent in their governance. The term Roman Catholic Church refers to the Western Church under Rome and does not include the Eastern Churches. However, the Eastern Catholic Churches are part of the one Catholic Church. This is in large part why the Catholic Church does not use "Roman" to describe itself in its authoritative documents. An example is the Melkite Greek Catholic Church which has an online Information Center explaining the use of these terms.
The above citation is confirmed by a search on "Roman" on an online "Catechism of the Catholic Church." The results are [12]. Every instance of the word Roman was a reference to one of the following:
The references to the "Roman liturgy," the "Roman Church," and the "Roman Missal," most often occur in contradistinction to the liturgies and practices of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, which only serves to demonstrate that "Roman" does not refer to the entire Catholic Church, but only the Western Catholic Church. There was not a single reference in the entire CCC where "Roman" was used to refer to the entire Church, East and West, contered on Rome. It is clear that the emphasis on the dignity of the Eastern Rites forces in Catholic use the term Roman to only refer to the Western Church and not the Catholic Church as a whole. As has been said before many times, "Roman" is not to be applied to the Eastern Catholic Churches whose tradition is centered on Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, but not Rome. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, "Roman" refers to the Western Church, and communion with Rome does not make a Church "Western" or "Roman." by
Furthermore, the Catholic Church is opposed to "Roman Catholic" as an official designation. The Church uses "Roman" in its name in no context save some instances of diplomatic courtesy, which texts have no doctrinal nor any other authority.
The reasons are several:
So, "Roman Catholic" is a problematic and ambiguous term, the ambiguity of which is far greater than any ambiguity attributed to "Catholic Church" in the Anglican sense. It is more ambiguous in that these terms refer to real entities in the world, whereas the Anglican use of the word refers to an abstract concept which does not have the same potential for confusion. One could write articles on the Roman Catholic Church in one sense or another, but one could not really write an article on the "Catholic Church" in the Anglican sense without it becoming a listing of Churches with the claim to Catholicity. Such an article can only be about a series of Churches not a single entity because Catholic Church in the Anglican sense has not real content proper to it. It is just an idea without a real world referent.
To determine the balance of these criteria, WP suggest a table like the following:
Criterion | CC | RCC |
1. Most commonly used name in English | 1 | 0 |
2. Current undisputed official name of entity | 1 | 0 |
3. Current self-identifying name of entity | 1 | 0 |
1 point = yes, 0 points = no. Add totals to get final scores. |
On the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic page, WP has a general solution to the present difficulties with the CC/RCC page. It states clearly that when a title refers to more than one topic but one of those topics is significantly more common than the others, the most common topic gets the title and a disambiguation page is set up for the other topics. Giving the example of Rome which refers to many cities of that name as well as the ancient civilization, the modern city of Rome is the predominant use of the term. The modern Italian city is under the title "Rome" with a disambiguation page for the other uses of the term.
It has already been demonstrated that the overwhelmingly most common use of the term, Catholic Church is for the Church centered on Rome. According to WP policy, this institution should be under the title Catholic Church with other uses of the term placed on a disambiguation page with additional qualifiers attached to distinguish them.
Following this WP policy, I would propose that the current Catholic Church (disambiguation) page become an actual disambiguation page rather than appear like another article. Another article called Catholic Church (theological concept) could include the present material found at Catholic Church (disambiguation) and at Catholicism. Catholicism which like Catholic Church almost always refers to the CC/RCC could redirect to the CC page once renamed
While NPOV is a policy and Naming Conventions are guidelines, apparent conflicts between these WP principles are addressed thoroughly in the section on Naming Conflicts. It says in short that when two groups have opposing POV's with regard to the name of one of them, WP should use the name that the group uses for itself. Here is the example:
Conclusion: WP naming policy does not want to prefer one POV over another with regard to the naming of groups. Use of the name the group uses for itself is reporting no prefering. Applied to CC v. RCC, this clearly points to "Catholic Church" as the name for the institution centered on the Pope.
Again, WP refrains from making judgements based on subjective criteria such as appropriateness or moral claims. WP considers naming of self-identifying entities as a matter of reporting objectively the fact of how the entity names itself. An example is the article on the True Catholic Church. An article using the name of this Church does not espouse or reject the theological point of view of this Church but merely reports that objective fact that this is how the Church names itself.
Similarly, the
Church of Christ has the problem of like named churches as well as name which can be interpreted as theologically exclusivist. The solution found at that article was to name the article according the the Church's name for itself with a lengthy disambiguating paragraph refering readers to other churches with some form of claim to the name "Church of Christ."
Another interesting parallel is the Anglican Communion. Since the mid 20th century, there have been numerous churches which have broken away from the Anglican Communion. Most of these churches still consider themselves to be Anglican and many of these churches believe that they are examples of true Anglicanism and that it is the Churches in communion with Canterbury which have strayed from the true Anglican tradition. These churches call themselves Continuing Anglican churches. If the logic behind changing the name of the Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church were to be applied to the Anglican Communion, it would have to change its name to the Canterburian Anglican Communion. Of course, no one is making this demand for several good reasons:
If the Continuing Anglican Churches were to press the Anglican Communion to change its name and "Canterburian Anglican Communion" were to become to a degree a part of the English language, WP by its own policies would not force the use of the new name in its articles unless the Anglican Communion itself had officially changed its name, because WP conventions call for the preferred name of a self-identifying entity.
The parallels with the Catholic Church and the moniker "Roman" are obvious. I hope that this thought experiment was helpful to clarify the issues.
![]() |
Part of a series on the |
WikiProject Catholicism |
---|
![]() |
![]() |
This page has is being assembled by the User:Vaquero100 to summarize and apply WP naming principles to the naming of WP Articles and Categories concerning the Church centered on the Pope. For full disclosure, this user argues for the use of "Catholic Church" over "Roman Catholic Church," as it is the name that this self-identifying entity uses for itself.
The SIX key principles are:
A number of objective criteria can be used to determine common or official usage:
Subjective criteria (such as "moral rights" to a name) should not be used to determine usage. These include:
Example:
In other words, Wikipedians should describe, not prescribe.
This should not be read to mean that subjective POVs should never be reflected in an article. If the term "Cabindan" is used in an article, the controversy should be mentioned and if necessary explained, with both sides' case being summarised.
Objective Methods:
A number of methods can be used to identify which of a pair (or more) conflicting names is the most prevalent in English.
Principle 1: The most common use of the name: "Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholic Church":
Principle 2: Does not apply (There is no conflict between the common and official name. Both are "Catholic Church"
Principle 3: How does the subject identify itself?
while a search on the exact terms, "Roman Catholic Church" turned up only 5 results [6]
Such addresses and communiques are not intended to be authoritative documents. Authoritative documents concern matters of faith and morals, are signed by the pope and adress to the world as binding always and everywhere. [8] As diplomatic language is often couched in the language preferred by the addressee and is addressed to a very specific public, as a matter of gentility or courtesy, it is not helpful in determining the language which the author or speaker typically uses in other forms of communication. Conclusion: on the Vatican Website's document library, there is no evidence of the Holy See referring to the "Catholic Church" by any other term in its normal and even form public statements to the general public.
Principle 4: Names of WP articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.
There is one other rather specialized use of the term "Catholic Church," which some say would to ambiguity for readers. Anglicans and other Christians use the term "Catholic Church" to refer to an invisible entity or theological concept which includes all baptized Christians. This could be a source of ambiguity; however, in the actual use of the English language this sense of the term is extremely rare, almost exclusively used by theologians, some church officials and in a quite indirect way in the creeds ("One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church"). These are quite specialized contexts as shown in the various searches above.
Quoting SynKobiety from his entry on Talk:Roman Catholic Church/Name:
"... To put this in the context of Wikipedia:Naming conventions ... "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." And, "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists". To assess what readers would recognize "Catholic" to mean, we can see the ways it is used. Applying 'catholic -"roman catholic" -"orthodox catholic" -"old catholic" -"anglican catholic" -wikipedia' as the search term in Yahoo will return uses of the word "Catholic" without common qualifiers. [9] When reviewing these unqualified uses of "Catholic", you would have to drill down into the list past the 970th place to find the first use of "Catholic" to refer to anything other than "institution headed by the Bishop of Rome." Even there the entry refers to a group calling itself "United Catholic," which is not an unqualified use of the word "Catholic". This certainly appears to be a minimum of ambiguity! In accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conflict, the article should be named "Catholic Church", as it would be a purely objective description of what the Catholics call themselves. ... (emphasis author's) SynKobiety 18:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
As most objections to "Catholic Church" appear to come from Anglican sources (with whome the argument historically began ), it may be useful to show instances of "Catholic Church" referring to the Church centered on the Pope. (Granted a majority of Anglican references include "Roman" but references without "Roman" do not appear to be more "ambiguous." Examples: [10], [11], [ see line 2], paragraph 8, paragraph 5, line 2, paragraph 4
Conclusion: "Catholic Church" is not an ambiguous term in everyday usage. Even in articles on the Anglican website, use of Catholic Church with out "Roman" does not require any further explanation in most cases in order to be understood.
The Catholic Church is both a Church in itself and a communion of 23 Particular churches. 22 of the 23 Churches within the Catholic Church are Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. They are in communion with Rome and they are fully Catholic Churches, but they are not "Roman Catholic" Churches. The Western or Latin or Roman Church is the one Western Church under the Pope as Primate of the West. While in communion with the Church of Rome, Eastern Catholic Churches are sui juris that is, independent in their governance. The term Roman Catholic Church refers to the Western Church under Rome and does not include the Eastern Churches. However, the Eastern Catholic Churches are part of the one Catholic Church. This is in large part why the Catholic Church does not use "Roman" to describe itself in its authoritative documents. An example is the Melkite Greek Catholic Church which has an online Information Center explaining the use of these terms.
The above citation is confirmed by a search on "Roman" on an online "Catechism of the Catholic Church." The results are [12]. Every instance of the word Roman was a reference to one of the following:
The references to the "Roman liturgy," the "Roman Church," and the "Roman Missal," most often occur in contradistinction to the liturgies and practices of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, which only serves to demonstrate that "Roman" does not refer to the entire Catholic Church, but only the Western Catholic Church. There was not a single reference in the entire CCC where "Roman" was used to refer to the entire Church, East and West, contered on Rome. It is clear that the emphasis on the dignity of the Eastern Rites forces in Catholic use the term Roman to only refer to the Western Church and not the Catholic Church as a whole. As has been said before many times, "Roman" is not to be applied to the Eastern Catholic Churches whose tradition is centered on Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria, but not Rome. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, "Roman" refers to the Western Church, and communion with Rome does not make a Church "Western" or "Roman." by
Furthermore, the Catholic Church is opposed to "Roman Catholic" as an official designation. The Church uses "Roman" in its name in no context save some instances of diplomatic courtesy, which texts have no doctrinal nor any other authority.
The reasons are several:
So, "Roman Catholic" is a problematic and ambiguous term, the ambiguity of which is far greater than any ambiguity attributed to "Catholic Church" in the Anglican sense. It is more ambiguous in that these terms refer to real entities in the world, whereas the Anglican use of the word refers to an abstract concept which does not have the same potential for confusion. One could write articles on the Roman Catholic Church in one sense or another, but one could not really write an article on the "Catholic Church" in the Anglican sense without it becoming a listing of Churches with the claim to Catholicity. Such an article can only be about a series of Churches not a single entity because Catholic Church in the Anglican sense has not real content proper to it. It is just an idea without a real world referent.
To determine the balance of these criteria, WP suggest a table like the following:
Criterion | CC | RCC |
1. Most commonly used name in English | 1 | 0 |
2. Current undisputed official name of entity | 1 | 0 |
3. Current self-identifying name of entity | 1 | 0 |
1 point = yes, 0 points = no. Add totals to get final scores. |
On the Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic page, WP has a general solution to the present difficulties with the CC/RCC page. It states clearly that when a title refers to more than one topic but one of those topics is significantly more common than the others, the most common topic gets the title and a disambiguation page is set up for the other topics. Giving the example of Rome which refers to many cities of that name as well as the ancient civilization, the modern city of Rome is the predominant use of the term. The modern Italian city is under the title "Rome" with a disambiguation page for the other uses of the term.
It has already been demonstrated that the overwhelmingly most common use of the term, Catholic Church is for the Church centered on Rome. According to WP policy, this institution should be under the title Catholic Church with other uses of the term placed on a disambiguation page with additional qualifiers attached to distinguish them.
Following this WP policy, I would propose that the current Catholic Church (disambiguation) page become an actual disambiguation page rather than appear like another article. Another article called Catholic Church (theological concept) could include the present material found at Catholic Church (disambiguation) and at Catholicism. Catholicism which like Catholic Church almost always refers to the CC/RCC could redirect to the CC page once renamed
While NPOV is a policy and Naming Conventions are guidelines, apparent conflicts between these WP principles are addressed thoroughly in the section on Naming Conflicts. It says in short that when two groups have opposing POV's with regard to the name of one of them, WP should use the name that the group uses for itself. Here is the example:
Conclusion: WP naming policy does not want to prefer one POV over another with regard to the naming of groups. Use of the name the group uses for itself is reporting no prefering. Applied to CC v. RCC, this clearly points to "Catholic Church" as the name for the institution centered on the Pope.
Again, WP refrains from making judgements based on subjective criteria such as appropriateness or moral claims. WP considers naming of self-identifying entities as a matter of reporting objectively the fact of how the entity names itself. An example is the article on the True Catholic Church. An article using the name of this Church does not espouse or reject the theological point of view of this Church but merely reports that objective fact that this is how the Church names itself.
Similarly, the
Church of Christ has the problem of like named churches as well as name which can be interpreted as theologically exclusivist. The solution found at that article was to name the article according the the Church's name for itself with a lengthy disambiguating paragraph refering readers to other churches with some form of claim to the name "Church of Christ."
Another interesting parallel is the Anglican Communion. Since the mid 20th century, there have been numerous churches which have broken away from the Anglican Communion. Most of these churches still consider themselves to be Anglican and many of these churches believe that they are examples of true Anglicanism and that it is the Churches in communion with Canterbury which have strayed from the true Anglican tradition. These churches call themselves Continuing Anglican churches. If the logic behind changing the name of the Catholic Church to Roman Catholic Church were to be applied to the Anglican Communion, it would have to change its name to the Canterburian Anglican Communion. Of course, no one is making this demand for several good reasons:
If the Continuing Anglican Churches were to press the Anglican Communion to change its name and "Canterburian Anglican Communion" were to become to a degree a part of the English language, WP by its own policies would not force the use of the new name in its articles unless the Anglican Communion itself had officially changed its name, because WP conventions call for the preferred name of a self-identifying entity.
The parallels with the Catholic Church and the moniker "Roman" are obvious. I hope that this thought experiment was helpful to clarify the issues.