Talk:Roman Catholicism

This is a rough start and others will need to help

I'm out of my depth here. I really wanted to write something that explains that "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" are not synonyms. I think what I've written is sorta-kinda-roughly correct, and I'm not knowingly trying to push any particular point of view. If I've inadvertently stepped on any Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican toes here, my apologies, and please fix whatever I've gotten wrong. (Try to keep it "as simple as possible, but no simpler.") Dpbsmith 13:15, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Generally, catholic (lowercase) means "universal", whereas Catholic refers to the RCC, by default. If speaking of an Orthodox Catholic church usually it's denoted as to which branch is being discussed. Cracker^talk 13:39, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Actually, "Catholic" doesn't refer to the Roman Catholic Church. The "Roman Catholic Church" refers to a specific Rite of the Catholic Church. It's the largest rite, by far, but is not the only rite in the Catholic Church. (These rites are also distinct from the Orthodox Churches. They have little to do with the Great Schism.) I'll try to see if I can clean this up a bit. As it now stands, it's more wrong than right. Kolbe 22:17, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

In the last edit, we lost the information about non-Roman and non-Latin rites:

Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the Roman Catholic Church, as the single true church founded by Christ, is the universal Catholic Church. Some prefer not to refer to their own church as the "Roman" Catholic Church, on the grounds that such formulations implicitly deny this point of doctrine.

I'd argue that it's not the Roman Catholic Church that is the single true church, but, rather, the Catholic Church. I understand that in the US (and in the west, in general) the two terms seem interchangeable, but I'd rather not lose the distinction between Roman Catholic and Catholic.Kolbe 03:01, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Moved here, until sourced:

Findings of an investigation determined that sexual abuse of children could probably be almost halved if women were allowed to be ordained in the church.

I've never seen any such study, and I'm not sure how it would even be determined. I also changed hebephilia to ephebophilia, which is more commonly used (both words mean an attraction towards adolescents). Kolbe 22:06, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

Lone sentence

Roman Catholics claim to be the apostolic successors of Saint Peter, who was given authority over his flock in the Bible.

Can this be merged? Was at Roman Catholics. --Ed Poor 18:35, 25 March 2007 (EDT)