Category talk:Eastern Christian vestments

:See: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 September 14# Orthodox Christian categories.

Vestments

I noticed that all the pages formerly in Category:Vestments have been put in one or more of Anglican vestments, Roman Catholic vestments, and Orthodox vestments. Many if not all of the vestments currently in Orthodox vestments are also used in the Eastern Catholic Churches. Either the RC category should be added to those pages, or this category should be renamed in a way that refers to the liturgical rite, rather than the juridical church. There is discussion at the Talk:Eastern Rite to move that page to Eastern Catholic Churches (currently a redirect), and have the article at Eastern Rite discuss the rites of the Divine Liturgy common to both Orthodox and Eastern Catholicism. Gimmetrow 15:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The RC category has unique entries, so it should stand alone.

Sorry if I seem dense, but I'm not sure what you mean by "those pages." Are you suggesting that Eastern Catholic Churches should have their own category, or that the Orthodox category needs to be renamed? Let me know and I'll happily try to accommodate. The Editrix 16:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, the problem is, if I go to pages such as Sticharion and Phelonion, I find that they are only in categories identified as Orthodox. They are used in Eastern Catholic, non-Orthodox, Churches as well. But if I go to Category:Roman Catholic vestments, they are not in that category. There are various possible solutions.

• Include Category:RC vestments on pages like Sticharion and Phelonion.
• Rename this category in such a way that it encompasses both Orthodox and Eastern Catholic, possibly something like "Eastern Christianty vestments" or "Eastern Rite vestments"
• Create yet another separate category for Eastern Catholic Vestments.

I tend to prefer the second option. Gimmetrow 17:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Your second option is not possible because it eliminates the critical word "orthodox" from the category name; since Orthodoxy is internally referenced in each article, and Orthodoxy is used elsewhere throughout Wikipedia, I have a strong objection to removing the common term and substituting what appears -- to an outsider to both traditions -- to be more of a political/theological concern for ECs than a genuine confusion about terminology.

For consistency, I prefer the first option. The problem though is that each of the two articles you cite have internal references that make them decidedly NOT R.C. If you'll promise to go amend those two articles to explain specifically how the items are Eastern Catholic, but NOT R.C., I'll gladly go add a new category to accommodate uniquely EC vestments. Thanks! The Editrix 20:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, that relates to a different issue about an ambiguous use of "Roman Catholic." When "Roman" refers to being subject to the pope, Eastern Catholics are "Roman". When "Roman" refers to practices particular to the western Catholic Church, they are not "Roman". The latter sense is how "RC" would have to be taken in those two articles. These two senses are mentioned early on in Roman Catholic Church.

Yes this is basically a theological concern for EC. Could you explain further why you have objections to a rename on those grounds?

The other issue is that there may not be many vestments uniquely Eastern Catholic or uniquely Orthodox. Almost every eastern liturgical tradition has a Catholic and an Orthodox use. The third option would probably create two identical categories. The first option would basically create "Orthodox vestments" as a subcategory of "RC vestments." I can see objections to either one, and we probably need other input. Gimmetrow 21:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Was in the hottub last night with a RC and a Greek Orthodox (of which I am neither), so couldn't resist bringing up this discussion. Honestly, neither of them could work out what "Eastern Catholic" even means. It appears to me that the term Orthodox is infinitely better known.

Since the consensus on Wikipedia appears to me to be that there are two categories of Orthodoxy -- the Eastern one of which is specifically referenced on this page -- I am honestly unable to make out why this discussion is occurring here on this minor page, when your real objection would seem, to me, to be MUCH larger, and needs to take place on the top-level pages related to Orthodoxy.

Personally, it's of no consequence to me, but I'm starting to dig my heels in because it seems you're asking that this page -- alone, out of the hundreds on Wikipedia related to Orthodoxy -- recognize Eastern Catholicism as a tradition equal in weight to, but not categorized within -- Orthodoxy.

Am I misunderstanding your position? It's very likely. I've googled it, but I still don't understand precisely what "Eastern Catholicism" is, or how it's related to, but not a subgroup of, Orthodoxy. Help? The Editrix 13:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to explain. RC and Orthodox differ mainly over the primacy of the Pope. It also happens that the most common visible ceremonies used by the RC are very different from the visible ceremonies most commonly used by the Orthodox. Eastern Catholics have the same visible ceremonies as the Orthodox, but recognize the primacy of the Pope in the RC sense, and so they identify with being Roman Catholic and not Orthodox. This issue is already reflected in most of the other pages I have looked at, and there is a general category called "Eastern Rite Catholicism".

(There are also other Christian groups which are neither Orthodox nor Roman Catholic, and also have the same visible ceremonies. On wiki these appear to be called "Oriential Orthodox" while what most people would understand by simply "Orthodox" are called "Eastern Orthodox")

This page is a category page. I'm having the discussion here because it relates to a number of pages that are linked to this category. Basically I am objecting to finding articles of relevance to EC that are categorized only as Orthodox. The same articles are relevant to Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, but "Eastern Rite Catholics" would not identify with either of those categories. Gimmetrow 15:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Did we ever come to a conclusion on this? Gimmetrow 19:39, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a proposition for resolving these concerns? --The Editrix 16:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Various possibilities are listed above. The ideal for me would be two categories, named something like Category:Eastern Christian vestments and Category:Western Christian vestments, and an overal Category:Christian vestments that contains the subcats and the vestments common to both. (This would be a subcat of Religious vesture.) This also neatly avoids an issue with the word "Roman."

The other possibility (that seemed to be where you were going) was to create a fourth Category:Eastern Catholic vestments - while this is reasonable, I can't think of anything that wouldn't end up in both this and Orthodox vestments, so the two categories would probably be identical. Gimmetrow 17:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I see where you're going with this. I'm of two minds:

You almost had me agreeing with the idea of redirecting Orthodox to Category:Eastern Christian vestments and Roman Catholic to Category:Western Christian vestments. Unfortunately, though, this grouping makes Eastern Catholics happy, while antagonizing anyone who considers themselves Christian, but neither Eastern nor Western Catholic/Orthodox.

Then you proposed Category:Christian vestments as a super-category. That clarified to me the problem:

Perhaps to the Eastern Catholic mind, there are but two branches of Christianity, East and West. But to everyone else -- not only hundreds of denominations of Protestants, but also Latter-day Saints, Adventists, dozens of other Restorationists, and even Roman Catholics -- there are MANY branches of Christianity. You worry that the heading "Orthodox" ignores Eastern Catholics. But this proposal slights many, many more Christians.

Now I'm sure we can find a workable solution here. Since they contain precisely the same items, how would you feel about creating a Category:Eastern Catholic vestments, and then doing a category redirect to Orthodox? The note at the top of the Orthodox category page could acknowledge that the items within that category apply also to Eastern Catholic vesture, with a link. That way, the category itself could be linked as a sub-category of Eastern Catholicism categories, while having the practical advantage of maintaining existing categories. Would that work?

Perhaps I'll go through and make this change outright, so you can see what I'm talking about. You'll want to examine this link to ensure that the category names are correct. --The Editrix 18:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Progress

Now I'm not sure I understand your concern. In so far as vestments are concerned, Latter-day Saints, Adventists, and most Protestants use vestments in the western traditions. No reason "Western Christian" has to mean only RC. On the category redirect from EC to Orthodox, the redirect is in some categories that don't really fit; I can edit that. But back to sticharion, the issue is that the categories there do not include EC. Do we still need to list the category on every article, even it refers to the same thing as Orthodox vestments? Gimmetrow 19:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

You say: "Latter-day Saints, Adventists, and most Protestants use vestments in the western traditions"...Actually, very much not the case. Likewise, Amish, Jehovah's Witnesses, and more. They use different or no vestments at all.

You say: "some categories don't really fit." Categories? I'm not following.

You say: Same thing as Orthodox vestments. If you'll read the Category:Orthodox vestments category header, I think you'll see that Eastern Catholic is well represented within the Category now, though the fact that ECs are NOT orthodox is made very clear.

You say: "sticharion" I've just added the EC category on that page, so I think all the issues are resolved with that change, yes? Thanks for working with me! --The Editrix 02:23, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Just adding Category:Eastern Rite Catholicism doesn't quite address my point, but I guess it's workable. Gimmetrow 04:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)