Talk:Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saigon

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Auson, if you are going to revert, please discuss here. Thank you.

This page should be the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City, in accordance with the rest of the dioceses. Benkenobi18 (talk) 23:38, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Benkenobi18. Frankly, I think all of the diocese articles' names should be changed to "Catholic *diocese of *" since...

1. Many of these dioceses, such as the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, comprise several prominent churches of different rites. From its website: "16 Eastern Rite Catholic Churches."
2. They're not called "Roman Catholic Archdiocese of *" internally.
3. The Catholic Church as a whole styles itself the Catholic Church and uses the phrase "Roman Catholic" much more rarely, and typically not in reference to the church as a whole.
4. The phrase "Roman Catholic" is commonly chosen by English speakers for its (generally negative) political or religious connotations (the term is more commonly a tool for bigotry or religious intolerance than for clarity).
5. There is no other notable institution from which the actual Catholic Church needs to be distinguished by adding "Roman" to the name. There are Eastern Catholic Churches, but they're part of the Catholic Church. There are sedevacantist Catholic Churches, but few are notable and the name "Roman" doesn't help to distinguish the Catholic Church from them. Adding "Roman" would only help clarify the referent if there was some other large, competing institution called, like, the "Greek Catholic Church." But there isn't.
6. Related to #5, the name "Roman Catholic" is misleading, because it suggests a regional subset of "Catholic," just like all other national/ethnic qualifications do. The "Vietnamese Catholic Church" refers not to a competing organization, but to a regional subset of the "Catholic Church." So anyone who's not already familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Christian discourse will be confused by a name like "Roman Catholic" and assume it refers merely to something Catholic from Rome.
7. Several other larger, more prominent, and more recently updated articles that reference the Catholic Church use the form "Catholic Church" in their titles. You can see this just by scrolling up: "Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City is within the scope of WikiProject Catholicism, an attempt to better organize and improve the quality of information in articles related to the Catholic Church." and "Catholic Church portal" and "Catholicism task list". If people didn't know what we're talking about when we say "Catholic Church," to the extent that we needed to add the sensitive qualifier "Roman," then all those quotes would say "Roman Catholic," not "Catholic." The fact that they work just fine demonstrates that everyone knows that "Roman Catholic" is just another way of saying "Catholic," but with added political and religious connotations that are fundamentally corrosive to the mission of a neutral encyclopedia. So we have a better convention already, and the diocese pages are not in harmony with it.
8. All other things being equal, it adds additional characters to the names of articles, so the justification needs to be really good. And all other things are not equal in this case. Not only is the justification very weak but there are several reasons militating against it.

As far as I can tell, the reasons for maintaining this convention are...

1. It's the status quo for these articles. Redirects would have to be added.
2. Some people are used to saying "Roman Catholic" instead of "Catholic."
3. Some people take offense at the Catholic Church's monopoly on the word "Catholic" with a capital "C," similar to the offense surrounding Eastern Orthodox Churches' monopoly on "Orthodox" with a capital "O." But for better or worse, when people see "Catholic" they know you're talking about the Catholic Church whose headquarters is in Rome, just like they know you're talking about the Eastern Orthodox Churches when they see "Orthodox."
4. A minority of non-Catholic Christians might prefer the phrase "Roman Catholic" since the Bible associates Rome, like Babylon, with sin, persecution, unjust authority, etc.
5. An even smaller minority of Catholic Christians might prefer the phrase because they take pride in the association with Roman culture.

Maybe I've missed some better reasons. From where I'm standing, I don't see a justification. Certainly not a justification that would outweigh the fact that it's controversial and contradicts a more prominent, better-established convention. Aminomancer (talk) 00:13, 15 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]