User talk:Eldamorie/Archives/2012/June

"not even a little bit true"?

I see you undid one of my revisions (of the Reign of Terror article, when someone referred to the Catholic Church as the "Roman Catholic" Church) with no explanation other than rudely commenting that I was incorrect. Please promote a healthy Wikipedia community, rather than a hostile one, and please make your revision explanations more helpful and informative. I still think what I said was correct, in part because you provided nothing to the contrary, no explanation why I would be incorrect. -- Newagelink (talk) 13:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Please see the discussion on the article for the Catholic Church. There has been ongoing discussion of this issue, taking it to other articles isn't helpful. eldamorie (talk) 12:50, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

To elaborate, you claimed that "saying "the Roman Catholic Church" is like saying "the White United States of America" which is both inflammatory and factually incorrect. You claim that I provided no explanation for why you would be incorrect, but consider that you provided no explanation for why you were correct. eldamorie (talk) 12:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Why do you regard this analogy as inflammatory? and thank you: I was not aware there was an ongoing discussion regarding this topic at that article; I may check it out some time. However, I did not "take it to other articles", especially given that I didn't know the "it" existed ... But we do have the right to make various corrections to articles, so it's not right for you to ask me to refrain from making such corrections. Of course, you think such corrections are in fact introducing error, but I think that idea is itself erroneous... -- Newagelink (talk) 18:59, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking that this boils down to a fairly harmless misunderstanding, so I'll state my case and then probably just let it go.

• I regarded the analogy as inflammatory because I read an implied analogy between using the phrase "Roman Catholic" and white supremacism. I'm willing to admit that I was probably oversensitive in this regard - there have been past discussions on the Catholic Church talk page where editors have argued that the term "Roman Catholic" is derogatory in some way, and therefore those who use it are somehow biased against Catholics. This was also the origin of my edit summary, as I've gotten tired of the constant claims that "Roman Catholic" is somehow derogatory. I'm guessing your intended meaning was "using the term Roman Catholic excludes Eastern Catholics and is therefore inappropriate because it excludes a large number of Catholics" which makes sense to me.

Right, there are members of the Catholic Church who do not follow the Roman rite, and hence are not "Roman Catholics". (A "Roman Catholic" is a Catholic following the Roman rite.) The Roman (or 'Latin') rite of the Catholic Church is the most common rite, but one cannot call it the "Roman Catholic" Church because of that fact. My analogy was likewise, people from Europe are -- or were -- most common in the USA (and are commonly called "white"), but one cannot therefore call the USA the "White United States ..." I can't find where I wrote it down, but there are something like seven other rites, apparently being used in "Eastern" countries. If I had to guess (but I'm a bad guesser), trying to recall what I'd read and heard, I'd say Chalcedon, Syrian, Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, ...

"Roman Catholic" is seen as derogatory for two reasons, as far as I can tell: 1) It seems to emphasize "Roman", as if the person is a member of a Christian denomination rather than the universal church which Jesus established; 2) It enforces a distance between the speaker and hearer, "You say you are Catholic, but I say you are Roman Catholic", perhaps producing the same effect as "Muslim" vs. "Mohammedan": "You say that you submit to God, but I say that you follow Muhammad" (refusing to say that they submit to God), i.e. "You say you're a member of the universal church which is also a visible church, but I say you're only part of that church led by Rome." It seems to me those who insist on calling Catholics "Roman Catholics", etc., do so because they do not wish to acknowledge the authority of the Catholic Church, from whom they are separated to various extents. -- Newagelink (talk) 20:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

• The "take it to other articles" comment is because you made a similar change with the same edit summary on the Catholic Church page a while ago, which was reverted by another editor (I think?). In this context, the "Other articles" I was referring to was in fact Reign of Terror. The discussion on the matter is in the archives of the Catholic Church talkpage, where there has been endless, not particularly productive discussion over whether or not the article should be "Catholic Church" or "Roman Catholic Church" and what the exact meaning of the term "Roman Catholic" even is.

I hope that clears things up. eldamorie (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

It does, thanks, although I don't recall but wouldn't be surprised to find the edit on the Catholic Church page. It's almost amusing how people with agendas to push undo others' edits ... Wikipedia is plagued with editors pushing the secularist agenda, even while they insist that they are achieving "POV neutrality". -- Newagelink (talk) 20:46, 26 June 2012 (UTC)