Proposal talk:Catholic

Full communion

Not every denomination=* value beginning with “catholic” represents a rite in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, as implied by this proposal. For example, the Polish National Church is not recognized by Rome. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 16:05, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

That's true. I think that's an error in the denomination wiki page that needs to be corrected. --Raspbeguy (talk) 16:25, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

The rationale for this key is partly that the various rites aren't distinct denominations, which is a fair criticism of the denomination=* key. Presumably it doesn't pertain to other liturgical rites used within the Latin Church. (While in Milan for State of the Map 2018, I had the privilege of attending Mass in the Ambrosian Rite for the first time.) I'm not sure how to succinctly explain the difference to a non-Catholic figuring out how to map a Catholic church.

I am practicing catholic.--Raspbeguy (talk) 05:44, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Raspbeguy: Oh, I didn't mean to imply that you aren't, just that we have to account for others who aren't Catholics but still need to map Catholic churches correctly. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 20:07, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Treating rites differently than denominations risks debates about what counts as Catholic enough to use denomination=catholic versus a different tag. If catholic=* is limited to rites in full communion with Rome, then that's a point of view not necessarily shared by every mapper who may identify as Catholic. If an ecumenical effort succeeds, do we need to go around retagging churches that otherwise have not changed? The status quo is that denomination=catholic is underspecified and can be refined by any number of denomination=*_catholic tags, which seems less thorny.

I don't think there will be any debates. I think being in full communion with the catholic church is an objective criteria.--Raspbeguy (talk) 05:44, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

The actual definition of denomination=* is probably a lot more flexible than Key:denomination would lead one to think at first. Protestant denominations in particular can be very granular, some with no more than two congregations apiece that blur the line between denomination=* and operator=*. It would be impractical to organize Protestant denomination values hierarchically, because those values can be organized according to several facets that nonobservant mappers – and even plenty of observant mappers – would be unlikely to tag correctly.

Let's not talk about protestants. This proposal is only about catholic.--Raspbeguy (talk) 05:44, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Raspbeguy: This proposal may be specific to Catholicism, but it sets a precedent for other faiths to be clarified similarly using a variety of subkeys. I find that possibility concerning because Catholicism is, as you point out, more cut and dry. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 20:13, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

From a practical standpoint, it makes sense that someone searching for churches of a certain denomination would appreciate knowing about all the "compatible" churches they could technically attend without violating their beliefs. But it may be too confusing a situation to accurately and reliably model in OSM. Wikipedia's article on full communion gives a glimpse at the complex web of agreements among Protestant denominations to mutually recognize sacraments while remaining distinct denominations.

But full communion in catholic church isn't that complex, and that only what we are talking about.--Raspbeguy (talk) 05:44, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should focus on allowing mappers to tag churches with as precise a faith category as possible, allowing for less precise values as a stopgap. That's basically what we have with denomination=*. A data consumer that needs to understand the relationship between various denomination=* values could cross-reference the values on Wikidata, which has established structures for this kind of data. (To facilitate cross-referencing, many of the denomination=* values already have Wikidata concept (P12) statements on their associated data items and OpenStreetMap tag or key (P1282) statements linking in the other direction. For obscure denominations, some mappers have used denomination:wikidata=* as well.)

 – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 23:21, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Three-level tagging is a tad bit too complex

As a practicing Catholic who is also mapping parishes and dioceses in my country, I prefer a two-level tagging system (religion=christian + denomination=roman_catholic) for simplicity over trying to add another level (+ catholic=*) along with debates over which rite or organization is "truly" catholic. —seav (talk) 01:23, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how a third level could start a debate over "who is truly catholic". All rite would have denomination=catholic and not only the roman rite like today. Raspbeguy (talk) 05:22, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Raspbeguy: All Catholic rites already can be tagged denomination=catholic if the specific rite is unknown. If the specific rite is known, the current standard is to retag it with a more specific denomination=* value. This is currently true of Roman Catholicism just as well as any other Catholic rite. If anyone assumes that denomination=catholic means denomination=roman_catholic, it's partly because such an assumption would be accurate a lot of the time and partly for historical reasons, as the wiki page didn't used to encourage tagging rites as it does now. But I agree that such an assumption is wrong. It's true rites are being superficially called "denominations", but there are many misnomers much worse than that in OSM's tagging system. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 21:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Why not have a general subdenomination key?

If we were to apply this proposal as is to all religions, we would end up with a lot of keys.

I think that we can avoid this clutter by having a single subdenomination=* key and use values like subdenomination=catholic/latin and subdenomination=catholic/coptic. GabriNori (talk) 19:16, 28 October 2023 (UTC)