User:Pbritti/Are Catholics Roman

For as long as the Catholic Church has been a subject covered by Wikipedia, the question of what to call this very old, very massive, and very influential body has been debated. In particular, there have been dozens of discussions asking whether this project should defer to the term "Roman Catholic". This essay identifies the causes and implications of this debate, the consensuses of previous discussions, the relevant policies, and possible solutions to confront this perennial issue.

Why this matters

Some debates on Wikipedia far predate the project. Some debates are emotionally charged and precipitate disputes on the project, disrupting efforts to achieve Wikipedia's purpose. The name used for the Catholic Church–the largest Christian religious body with more than a billion members–is a subject that often spurs these sorts of debates. Since 2005, the talk page for the article on the Catholic Church has hosted numerous debates on this subject–ultimately resulting in a long-winded debate in 2009 and the subsequent move of Roman Catholic Church to Catholic Church.

Despite this consensus, Wikipedia currently uses the term "Roman Catholic" for many purposes: titles of articles (eg. Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond), categories (eg. Category:Lebanese Roman Catholics), and in-article descriptions (eg. in the article Lutheranism: "This is in contrast to the belief of the Roman Catholic Church..."). Often, the terms "Roman Catholic Church" and "Catholic Church" (and the associated "Roman Catholicism" and "Catholicism") are used interchangeably even within the same article.

This internal inconsistency often results in confusion, ire, and accusations of neutrality violations. By introducing a standard–even a standard that recognizes instances where inconsistency may be necessary–we can reduce disagreement between editors, prevent confusion among readers, and improve accuracy in content.

Causes

Internal nomenclature

Perhaps the most proximate cause of this issue is simply the Catholic Church's scale: it is a body that claims continuity extending nearly two thousand years, spans every continent (and perhaps further), and has counted billions as members. Naturally, this immense scale results in local variations on nomenclature, social incentives to use certain terms, and immense inertia and connotative power behind certain terms.

In primary internal legal documents translated into English, the Catholic Church refers to itself as "the Catholic Church". This applies in both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches, which utilize the term "Catholic Church" when referring to the church body as a whole. However, the Catholic Church has also officially interacted with other religious bodies under the name "Roman Catholic" (eg. the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission). The term "Roman Catholic Church" is also used in modern papal documents.

What policy says

Often, policies and sanctions dictate discretion and deference to the most recent reliably sourced academic literature on a subject. When quality sources disagree, editors often rely on both objective measures (eg. the number of sources that support one conclusion versus another) and subjective ones (eg. analyzing the potential biases in a given source). Perhaps the most relevant policy to this issue is Wikipedia:Article titles#Use commonly recognizable names (also known as WP:COMMONNAME).