Talk:Jesuits

Requested move 31 July 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. The !vote count suggests we have a consensus to move, and more importantly the strength of arguments points in the same direction: the supporters make strong policy-based arguments (particularly under WP:COMMONNAME), while some oppose !votes aren't rooted in policies or guidelines at all. There are reasonable concerns based on WP:PRECISE, but those arguments have been rebutted and, ultimately, haven't convinced most !voters that the current title best satisfies the criteria. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:36, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Society of Jesus → Jesuits – "Jesuit" is the common English name used for the order, used in public branding. For example, the website for the order first mentions "Society of Jesus" only on the "About Page"; the use of "Society of Jesus" has similar limited use on the United Kingdom website. Renaming this page to "Jesuits" would be more familiar to the general public, and be in line with the articles for other major orders such as the "Order of Friars Minor" (Franciscans) or the "Order of Preachers" (Dominican Order) –Zfish118⋉talk 00:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC). In the renamed article, "Society of Jesus" would remain a bold faced official title in the first paragraph. –Zfish118⋉talk 00:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 20:16, 8 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting.  –Zfish118⋉talk 23:31, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Move. Jesuit is definitely the most common name. Smallchief (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Jesuits is ambigious as to what the topic is. Is it the individuals collectively or is it the order.
 * The proferred examples are not, in fact analogous. The equivalent of "Dominican Order" would be "Jesuit Order" (a move I could live with) and the article at Franciscans is about Franciscans in general, the Order of Friars Minor has its own separate page. Jahaza (talk) 01:05, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I could live with "Jesuit Order" as well, but don't think it's necessary from a disambiguation perspective. The Jesuits and Dominicans are a monolithic order, where as the Franciscans have three equal and independent orders (OFM, OFM Conv, OFM Cap). The Franciscan umbrella article covers all three, as well as affiliated female orders and lay orders. The Jesuits do not have these layers that need an umbrella article for Jesuits collectively, versus the order specifically. Conversely, though similarly monolithic as a religious institute, Dominicans use "Order" in the article title to disambiguate it from residents of the Caribbean nation, an issue that doesn't exist with Jesuits. –Zfish118⋉talk 18:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * That blows up your own WP:CONSISTENT argument, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:45, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I would tend to agree I am making a common name argument, rather than a strict argument for consistency. –Zfish118⋉talk 13:48, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * @Zfish118: The Dominicans are not monolithic; their ranks include priest friars in the OP, nuns and sisters who are also OP but in different branches, and they have a third order laity branch as well. So the Jesuits stand alone among these big families as the singular monolithic order. And this undivided nature is the only viable argument I can envision for retaining the page at its current title, if indeed the preponderance of WP:RS would tip the balance in favor of renaming. Elizium23 (talk) 06:28, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I am making a very narrow claim of "monolithic". There is only one Order of Preachers, of which there are male and female members, as well as lay associates/tertieries. There is no "Order of Preachers Capuchin" or "OP Conv", unlike the parallel Franciscan orders. Women religious are also part of the OP proper, not in a separate order like the various Orders of Saint Clare. –Zfish118⋉talk 16:22, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I suppose that is a narrow claim. www.opwest.org: In the Dominican family there are several branches. Although independent of one another in terms of governance, they all share in the charism of preaching, and are united under the Master of the Order of Preachers. Certainly there is a matter of degree here; the OP is more monolithic than Carmelites who are slightly more monolithic than Franciscans, but I hope that you could agree that Jesuits are the most monolithic of all: there are no women, there is no laity, there are no independent communities or branches, there are Jesuits united under one governance, one Superior General, one Rule, and only distinguished by territorial jurisdictions. Elizium23 (talk) 20:22, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The unity under a single superior general is essentially what I meant, although I could not find the proper term for the office (ie, Master of the Order of Preachers). –Zfish118⋉talk 17:37, 7 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to support, on a WP:COMMONNAME basis. I agree with Jahaza that "the proferred examples are not, in fact[,] analogous", but this also means that the "Is is the individuals collectively or is it the order" question is not being asked; "individual members, collectively, of the Society of Jesus" is not an encyclopedic topic, while the equivalent for Franciscans arguably is due to multiple orders.  I'm not inclined to support "Jesuit Order" because that is not a proper name, not "Jesuit order" which is unnecessarily non-WP:CONCISE when Jesuits will suffice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:49, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * "individual members, collectively, of the Society of Jesus" is not an encyclopedic topic"
 * I mean, we actually have an article at List of Jesuits. --Jahaza (talk) 14:10, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. I knew about Jesuits, but didn't know they were the "Society of Jesus" until I saw this discussion. Jesuits is more common.PrisonerB (talk) 13:52, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Since one of the first things you must learn about the Jesuits is that they are members of the Society of Jesus, the current title is fine. Srnec (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The webpage of the Jesuits is Jesuits.org, not SocietyofJesus.org. If the Jesuits call themselves the Jesuits, as do the vast majority of non-Jesuits, who are we to disagree.Smallchief (talk) 13:02, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Is this the same website that starts with "We are the Society of Jesus..."? Walrasiad (talk) 06:37, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's the webpage titled "The Jesuits." And the second sentence of the text says "Most people call us "the Jesuits." WP:COMMONNAME says "Use commonly recognizable names."Smallchief (talk) 08:36, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I come from one of the more ancient lineages of Jesuit scholars, and Society of Jesus has never been a name by which they went. They have always referred to themselves historically as Jesuits. 2001:8F8:1621:7ADB:49CE:A984:EF3C:7C1B (talk) 12:09, 2 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose -- "Society of Jesus" is the canonical and official title of the organization, so that should be the title of the main article about the organization. A change to "Society of Jesus (Jesuits)" to incorporate the organization's common English nickname, with the title of "Society of Jesus" becoming a redirect thereto, would be reasonable.  The title "Jesuit" should be a redirect to the main article about the Society of Jesus, under either form of the title.  Norm1979 (talk) 18:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * On the policy page above, Recognizability and Naturalness support Jesuit. Precision and Consistency support Society of Jesus (Franciscans are a special case and "Jesuit Order" isn't really a thing). Concision is the main reason I see. Ironically we have the same split: slightly more people in favor but maybe not overwhelming enough to change. Oltremontano (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Support - There are strong arguments per WP:CONCISE and WP:COMMONNAME. WP:CONSISTENCY is also observed with many other major religious orders to use the collective noun where it is the common name and unambiguous (see Benedictines, Cistercians, Trappists, Redemptorists, Premonstratensians, Carthusians, Carmelites, Trinitarians, etc etc). 'Jesuits' is sufficiently unambiguous. Arguments about 'Society of Jesus' being the WP:OFFICIALNAME are invalid because that contravenes Wikipedia's article title policy which prefers the common name over the official name. Arguments about needing to maintain separate titles for the members and the order are also invalid as both are extremely closely related even if not synonymous and can be discussed within the same article. They do not currently or are likely to need separate articles to discuss both separately, much like any other article for other religious orders. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 23:16, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hah! The Carmelites were one of the first things I thought of as I was typing that Franciscans are special. A Franciscan would be the first to tell you they're anything but special anyway. I don't pretend to have read every WP:JARGON link in full, but both article titles are fine to me. Oltremontano (talk) 00:36, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support On the basis that this is clearly the common name. Whether other RC orders are more complex is an issue which should be dealt with appropriately in relation to these orders. PatGallacher (talk) 00:43, 6 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Neutral Hey folks, unfortunately today I don't have a strongly-held opinion on this one. I would say that either title is valid and recognizable! "Society of Jesus" does indeed contribute to their postnomials. I'm rather curious how they are referred to in non-English sources, although non-English sources would probably not have an impact on our naming an English article. Their monolithic nature sets them apart from Dominicans and Franciscans mentioned above, so it wouldn't be necessary to change the article name to widen its scope. That's really all my thoughts for now. Elizium23 (talk) 06:30, 6 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Support: Jesuits is the common name and will be more recognisable to most readers. It is also more concise than the alternatives, is precise enough to define the topic (both the order and the people are discussed in the article) and per consistent with the titles of other similar articles. Alduin2000 (talk) 01:17, 16 August 2022 (UTC) [Edited to correct user referenced, 01:20, 16 August 2022 (UTC)]
 * Support: Common name. Enough said. ― TaltosKieronTalk 15:17, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support Also analogous with Quakers as a common name, to my mind. William Avery (talk) 10:05, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. Very clear case of common name. Frankly a bit surprised it hasn’t been moved earlier.TheFreeloader (talk) 23:55, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Broken citations
Anybody have an idea why there are so many broken citation links in this article? It seems like more than just regular over time link rot? Jahaza (talk) 04:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Largest?
I see several references that the Society of Jesus is the largest male religious order in the world. In this article it merely makes the claim that it's the largest order of priests and brothers. If the SJ is the largest male religious order, what is the largest religious order overall? I can't imagine a monolithic order of female religious that comes close. Elizium23 (talk) 17:28, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Ireland
The new Ireland section is very long. It may be better to create a Jesuits in Ireland article, and put a summary here. –Zfish118⋉talk 21:02, 8 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I would agree with that approach. Primarily I wanted to get the text out of the original article it was posted in. I can move it to a new page myself, or if anyone else wants to they're free to, as this topic is not my forte. ForsythiaJo (talk) 04:08, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with this approach as well. Perhaps the same can be done for the Canada section, or more information can be added to the United States section, where they can be combined into one separate article. Roaringplatypus (talk) 20:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

"abbreviation"
I think what you want is "postnominal" 2607:FEA8:FF01:4FA6:716E:222E:5ED9:FE10 (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)