Talk:Catholic Church

GA Reassessment

Catholic Church

The following discussion 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.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: No consensus. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Several uncited sections, including almost the entire first section of the History section. History focuses disproportionately on 20th and 21st century. Z1720 (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Disagree that the history weighting is a significant problem. Might require a minor rebalancing—-I’m not sure why John Paul II has his own section while other popes do not (aside from Francis, but the case for having a section on the current pope is strong)—-but that’s a modest edit, not a reason to delist. The several uncited paragraphs in the History section (which look to be the only significantly uncited section to me) do need fixed, but I note that History of the Catholic Church has a pretty well-cited early history section, so that shouldn’t be a hard fix. Reassessment seems a pretty big overreaction for these problems—-it’s pretty firmly WP:JUSTDOIT territory. El Sandifer (talk) 20:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

• Keep on grounds offered. The first part of the History section appears to be a lede-style summary of the subsections afterward (a la WP:LEADCITE), with the relevant citations in the respective subsections. If truly desired, go and move the relevant citations back up, but this is a style that isn't unreasonable. As for focus - the Catholic Church is a topic where multi-volume books have been written on it, there is no one perfect amount to cover on each time period. I will say that random readers are probably more interested in the recent history aspect, so it wouldn't shock me if the 2424 article on the Catholic Church disproportionately focuses on the 24th century. SnowFire (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
• Delist 1) if the unsourced content in the history section is a sourced elsewhere in the article, it is redundant and needs to be removed per GACR#3b 2) obvious recentism in the history section. The Catholic Church has a really long history so the twentieth and twenty first centuries need to be covered in similar amount of detail as other historical epochs, and summary style needs to be used. Note that I did not look at the rest of the article (t · c) buidhe 17:41, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
• Keep There is no obvious "recentism" in the history section. The 20th century section does not appear disproportionately long compared to the rest of the section. I also see no uncited sections. Note that my comments pertain to this most recent revision. –Zfish118^⋉talk 18:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that Zfish118's comment follows my examination and removal of the offending parts. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Excellent work in trimming the history section! –Zfish118^⋉talk 03:30, 27 February 2024 (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.

RfC: Establishing an independent Catholicism article

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Firstly this appeared to me to be a WP:SPLIT discussion rather than an WP:RFC. A rough headcount was 9ish oppose, 3ish support and 1 suggestion for a rename. A lot of the argument from those opposing a split was that Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church are by and large inseparable, while those supporting a split brought up examples like Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodox Church. As one could reasonably expect in a discussion where WP:OTHERCONTENT is brought into arguments there were convincing rebuttals that perhaps those two articles should be merged given the heavy overlap and short article sizes. Anyway getting to the point, there is clear consensus against a split.
Given the proposer of the split used WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as part of their argument, and another editor !voted for a rename, I'd suggest that if editors want to discuss a rename WP:RM is that way. TarnishedPath^talk 10:24, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

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Currently, Catholicism redirects here. The reason was that Catholicism was moved to Catholicism (term) then moved again to Catholicity several years ago in Talk:Catholicity/Archive 6#Requested move 23 August 2017 and Talk:Catholicity/Archive 6#Requested move 10 October 2017. The reason was that the original article did not talk about Catholicism, but instead about the term Catholicity. It is time to finally finish the job.

I believe that Catholicism deserves its own actual article as a major branch of Christianity and the primary topic of WP:CATHOLICISM, similar to its peers Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and minor branches of Christianity such as Anglicanism. A lot of the content of this article and its related articles would be moved over there, and this article should be more like the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion. Kenneth Kho (talk) 08:53, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Help me here. You're thinking of a demonominational article broader about Catholicism, that is distinctly broader the ambit of communion with the Pope? Remsense ‥ 论 08:57, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

If I read Catholic theology correctly, Catholicism would be "as interpreted authoritatively by the magisterium of the Catholic Church", consistent with the Mediation Committee decision in 2009. Kenneth Kho (talk) 09:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, the clear counterargument here would seem to be, to a degree unmatched in each comparable example, Catholicism as a social, cultural, and confessional reality is coextensive with the particular institution and authority of the church. Clearly, like any thing that includes billions of people, that doesn't mean it's a monolith, but I do not really see how a split along the pattern of the example above is even workable. Remsense ‥ 论 12:22, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Catholicism and Catholic Church are essentially the same thing, I'm confused as to how you're proposing to split it. ~Darth Stabro^{Talk • Contribs} 14:10, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

It is difficult for me to understand what the Catholics believe and practice, because a lot of the attention in the current article is given to the Church itself. On the other hand, it is very easy to read what the beliefs and practices of Protestantism are. I had to go to Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on Roman Catholicism to be able to much more easily read how Catholicism and Protestantism compare, and I had to guess many readers throughout the past 20 years share my experience. I know that Wikipedia has a page on Catholic theology, but it is much more involved and scholarly than a summary style article. Kenneth Kho (talk) 14:47, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

If you find the subject very difficult to grasp, I question why you are are proposing this massive restructuring with the confidence that it will clarify matters. It seems like you would not know one way or the other. Remsense ‥ 论 14:49, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I did know, by looking at Encyclopedia Britannica, which is unfortunate because Wikipedia has a much larger readership. I am proposing this restructuring for the benefit of other readers. Kenneth Kho (talk) 15:35, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I am skeptical presently, but I think I would be interested in what discussion comes of this. Remsense ‥ 论 15:37, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: While this proposal has appeared a couple times before, I have a hard time seeing the utility in creating a "Catholicism" article when we could instead discuss ways to improve Catholic theology. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  There was no such proposal when I looked into Talk:Catholic Church/Archive 55 and Talk:Catholic Church/Archive 56 which contains all the discussion of this article after in 2017, Catholicism article was renamed to Catholicity and there was no more Catholicism article. The theology articles are just different in scope, Protestant theologies and Eastern Orthodox theology are narrower and deeper in scope to Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Kenneth Kho (talk) 16:25, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  There is no singular "Protestant Church", so that comparison is a bit imprecise. If anything, I'm more convinced that separating Eastern Orthodoxy from Eastern Orthodox Church is a difference without distinction. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  If Eastern Orthodoxy is proposed at AfD, the result would be snow keep. Kenneth Kho (talk) 18:23, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  No one is proposing an AfD, but perhaps a merge is sound, especially given Remsense's comments below. ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:05, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: -I agree with Pbritti. Rjensen (talk) 16:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support: I support this. Catholicism (its theology, tradition, etc) exists outside the roman catholic church as well (see independent catholicism, sedevacantism and old catholicism, for example). Στάλιν και παραλλαγή (talk)

  What benefit would be obtained by a new article, as those subjects already have articles covering them? The scope of those subjects is explicitly that they are not part of the Catholic Church, which is consistent with equating Catholicism with the Catholic Church. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  We have an article on Protestantism as a branch and theology, which is separate from individual protestant churches, and we have an article on Eastern orthodoxy as a branch and theology, separate from the eastern orthodox churches, why don't we do the same for catholicism as a branch and theology, have a catholicism article separate from the catholic churches (Roman Catholic, Old catholic, independent catholic, etc)? It just seems logical, you know. The benefit would be consistency and an article on Catholic beliefs, theology, traditions, etc that would summarize everything nicely. Στάλιν και παραλλαγή (talk) 20:46, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  I mean, given what has been touched on so far I feel the difference is pretty clear: we're running into issues when there is one identifiable institution that underlies and is more or less coextensive with the denomination in question. These aren't monoliths, but we're not writing comparative monographs, but brief articles. Remsense ‥ 论 20:52, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• Question – what I would want is a rough outline at the very least. As it stands, I am rather unimpressed by the distinction in scope that exists between Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Orthodoxy. It simply is not clear to me what should go in one article or the other, and this needs to be discerned before we make any premeditated changes here. Let's break the bodies down:
  • Eastern Orthodox Church is 15k words – divided into roughly equal thirds of "history", "institution", and "theology/religious life".
  • Eastern Orthodoxy is 6.5k words – with three-quarters "theology/religious life", and one-quarter "institution".

To make the confusion explicit, that roughly works out to a "theology/religious life" suprasection given 5k words in each article, so one is effectively not summarizing the other. Much of the content seems to be of roughly equivalent merit if it appears in the overlapping scope of each articles. It just feels an immensely awkward line if we wanted to cut it more cleanly—either we get a totally bloated or over-summarized omnibus article if we do it wrong (we could potentially do it right by keeping this article in mind, maybe), or we could get two incomplete, broken articles. I think it's fair to say in their present state these articles aren't really separate in scope—one is contained within the other.

Actually, what I think could work here is treat History of the Eastern Orthodox Church seriously, i.e. mercilessly summaryslash down the history chunk of Eastern Orthodox Church, which then maybe has room to balance the other material that's presently awkwardly copied or elaborated upon slightly in Eastern Orthodoxy. The point I'm making here, is this does not seem like the best model for basing a premeditated refactoring like this on. Remsense ‥ 论 19:01, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

To start with, the theology, liturgy, traditions, sacraments sections of Eastern Orthodoxy are already much more expansive than their much smaller counterparts in Eastern Orthodox Church. If there is a Catholicism article, we would see those sections expanded there and reduced here, and we also have room for minority views such as traditionalist Catholicism, and expand upon how Catholicism affected the rest of the world such as our calendar and our holidays. Kenneth Kho (talk) 23:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

• In principle this is a solid proposal, my hesitation is similar to Remsense's in that I'm not really sure what such a page would look like... Perhaps an alternative could be to make Catholicism a disambiguation page, that would allow for broader coverage while preventing us from just duplicating a lot of existing text in other articles. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:58, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  Catholicism (disambiguation) already exists for this purpose. The redirect Catholicism has a daily viewership about 2/3 larger than Catholic theology and is linked on over 4,900 articles (and over 6,500 pages), almost universally in reference to the Catholic Church. ~ Pbritti (talk) 22:13, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  That doesn't seem to address that we're favoring one tradition at the expense of a number of others... Might does not make right as they say. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The fact that the disambiguation page has that many traffic means people are looking for the actual Catholicism article and did not find any, it is natural that people say they understand Catholic Church has authority over Catholicism but at the same time Catholicism is still a religion used regularly in national censuses that usually has its own page. Kenneth Kho (talk) 23:43, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

  The disambiguation page gets ~30 views a day. As to Might does not make right as they say, that's a nice sentiment but not in keeping with Wikipedia's policies. One could make the same arguments as HEB to justify reassigning United States as a disambiguation. Indeed, proportionally, there are more people resident in countries that have some permutation of "United States" in them that are not the USA than self-described Catholics who are not part of the Catholic Church. ~ Pbritti (talk) 01:18, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  We have a well documented pro-USA bias on wiki... Pointing to that to excuse another bias doesn't make sense. I would also note that any members of Catholic denominations (Roman or otherwise) should be disclosing a COI when participating in this discussion given the clear bias issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  Not bias, but a reflection of policy. This is a typical case of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, indicated clearly but how the term is used in reliable sources and across the project. ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  It is not clear that the Roman Catholic Church would be that primary topic, if we want to look at what other wikis do they generally seem to have an article at catholiscism, for example Simple[1]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  All of these are primarily–if not exclusively–devoted to the religion of the Catholic Church. Seems pretty clear cut. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  That seems like an exaggeration to me, but if that is how you see it I guess that is how you see it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:55, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose What with Catholic (term) (not I think mentioned yet) and Catholicity, I can't really see what a new article would contain. Admittedly these may be relatively hard to find, but a little tweaking should sort that out. Johnbod (talk) 03:52, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  These two are talking about concepts of universality, not a branch of Christianity. Kenneth Kho (talk) 06:13, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

  Er, no! Have you actually read the lower parts of Catholicity? Johnbod (talk) 23:06, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Comment What are the high quality sources that the proposed article would be based on, and how do they define "Catholicism" as a phenomenon/term apart from the Catholic Church? Seltaeb Eht (talk) 21:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't see the need for the article, but sources are in appalling abundance - see Catholicity and Catholic (term). I don't think the problem is this. Johnbod (talk) 23:06, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose - per Pbritti. Raulois (talk) 10:19, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose I get what you mean, the Roman Catholic Church isn’t the only Church that sees itself as Catholic, but I think this is already covered in Christianity BathTubJesus (talk) 12:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. If this is intended to be a dedicated superarticle of Catholic Church and Independent Catholicism, I don't think there's a need for that as it could be better covered by improving Christianity#Churches and denominations, which doesn't seem to currently discuss this distinction. If this is about distinguishing between the beliefs of the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church as an institution, there are already articles such as Catholic theology, which could use some improvement. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 04:29, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose The Oxford Dictionary defines "Catholicism" as "the beliefs and principles of the Christian Church led by the pope", specifically referring to the Roman Catholic Church. Including other groups like Independent Catholics under this term makes little sense, as "Catholicism" inherently refers to those in communion with the pope.

EXANXC (talk) 06:09, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Support It is odd that other religions are covered as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zaydism, Isma'ilism and even Christianity, but no Catholicism. It is also odd that we have Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, Church of England and Anglicanism, but we are conflating Catholicism with the Catholic Church. There is no belief system in the world that is synonymous with its church's teachings and religious topics are inherently more complicated than people make this out to be. Jorahm (talk) 18:58, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Look immediately below. Your argument doesn't make sense, as Catholicism is inseparable from the Catholic Church. I'm increasingly inclined to nominate a merge for Eastern Orthodoxy. ~ Pbritti (talk) 07:06, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. However, there should be a section in the article about Catholicism outside of the Catholic Church itself, as peopel can believe in a fairh but not it's leader(s) or all of its components. Sushidude21! (talk) 13:22, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Under this logic, shouldn't we also rename the Independent catholicism article to something else, if catholicism only refers to the roman catholic church? Στάλιν και παραλλαγή (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 12:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Rename this to Catholicism as it's consistent with other religious articles like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zaydism, Isma'ilism etc. Rashidpour Rezanejad (talk) 13:30, 15 January 2025

But inconsistent with Eastern Orthodox Church, Church of England, Assyrian Church of the East, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Church of the Brethren, etc. Apples and oranges. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:33, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

And pretty clearly against WP:COMMONNAME, which is the main policy here. Only Christians use "church", so it's not surprising the other religions don't. The equivalent top level article is Christianity anyway. Johnbod (talk) 15:18, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

• I think the proposal has clearly failed, and this should be closed. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Requested closure here. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:23, 19 January 2025 (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.

Semi-protected edit request on 28 January 2025

In the place where number of catholics in each country, there is a mix up between latvia and lithuania. Pijus08 (talk) 15:46, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

 Question: Can you identify where in the article this is? I cannot find it. LizardJr8 (talk) 23:15, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 14:39, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

• He is probably referring to the table at Catholic_Church_by_country#By_country. Johnbod (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Words "Anticatholic" and "Pseudocatholic"

"Anticatholic" signifies "against Catholicism" and "Pseudocatholic" "Catholically false" or "false Catholic". Its derivated words are "Anticatholicity", "Anticatholicism", "Pseudocatholicity" and "Pseudocatholicism".

200.155.122.146 (talk) 11:50, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Ehrman is not a "protestant scholar"

Greetings, @Pbritti! You reverted my edit removing the descriptor "protestant" from Bart Ehrman, saying that "He was, at the time, Protestant (or in the Protestant school, at least)" and I think this is worth discussing. First, Ehrman was not any kind of Christian at the time. The work cited is the 2006 book Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, but already in the 2005 book Misquoting Jesus he writes about having left the Christian faith altogether. From the postscript: "I eventually decided that I could no longer be a Christian... about seven or eight years ago, I became an agnostic".

As for "Protestant school", I don't really know what that means- if there is any "school" his scholarship is affiliated with, it would the historical-critical school- not affiliated with a Christian denominational viewpoint. In any case, "protestant scholar" isn't an appropriate descriptor for an agnostic historian affiliated with a secular university.

If you would like to preserve the phrase "protestant scholar" for the other two, I suggest the sentence as "On this basis Bart D. Ehrman, as well as protestant scholars Oscar Cullmann and Henry Chadwick, question whether there was a formal link between Peter and the modern papacy". Please let me know what you think and have a nice day. Nukeychess (talk) 04:28, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Top-level characterization needed in lead?

I think a general reader, arriving in ignorance, would find the current lead (and article) fairly daunting for all the technical terms: I understand that the lead needs to summarize the article, and that Wikipedia operates by hyperlinking rather than always needing to explain technical terms, but you should not have to click to understand the first paragraphs of the lead...

But I think the introduction is missing a top-level description of the Catholicism. (I am not re-visiting the discussion on "Catholicism" versus "Catholic Church" merely saying that since there is only one article, it needs to meet the needs of people coming from the keyword "Catholicism".

In concrete terms I suggest something like this:

Catholicism may be categorized as Christian (following Christ), monotheistic (one God), trinitarian (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), incarnationist (Son became a man), synergistic (humans need to cooperate with divine grace), sacramentist (divine made present within creation), liturgical (common regulated ceremonies), apostolic (continuous line from the original Apostles), priestly, eschatological (return of Christ, resurrection of the dead,  purgatory, judgment, beatific vision, etc.), creedal (having a shared statement of core tenets), developing (growing in understanding, liturgy and institutions), universal (made for all humans), pro-life (promoting a culture of life), and Marian (honouring and emulating Mary).

Of course, you could go on forever (A "Syllabus of Non-Errors"?), or just find the relevant -isms for each line of the creed: the intent being to give the general distinctives of Catholicism to, say, a reader in China interested in how Catholicism differs from Buddhism, rather than, say, how Catholicism differs from Orthodoxy.

I left out "hierarchical" and used "Apostolic" and "priestly" instead, as the modern usage of "hierarchy" does not fit how it is used in the church (coined by ps-dionysius I believe, b.t.w.). And there is good stuff in the lead already there. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 17:33, 28 March 2025 (UTC)