Talk:Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle

Full Protection
I have fully protected this article to prevent the disruptive edit warring about its name. I reverted it back to the name it had before a page move earlier today by User:Yorkshirian which broke the redirection of the talk page, and so on. I encurage all people to discuss the name that this article should have, but I would expect that a consensus solution should involve more than just the two editors who have been edit-warring over the name: User:Yorkshirian and User:Benkenobi18. I will shortly issue a RfC on the matter and post messages on various message boards and project pages that I can identify which would help create a wider discussion. DDStretch   (talk)  13:19, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

What should the name of this article be?
Two editors are edit warring the name of this article between "Diocese of Herxham and Newcastle" and "Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle". The issue needs proper discussion involving more than just these two editors, and so wider input is requested and will be welcomed.

As well as the RfC, I have placed suitable messages on the following pages: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Christianity‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism‎, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anglicanism‎, and Wikipedia talk:UK Wikipedians' notice board‎. DDStretch   (talk)  14:06, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

If this is a Latin-rite diocese in communion with the Pope, then the name should be Roman Catholic Diocese of, not Diocese of. I thought that this had been settled, no?--Lyricmac (talk) 19:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comment. If you could give a link to where it has been settled, I think that would help immensely, as this particular edit war needs to be stopped as soon as possible.  DDStretch    (talk)  19:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

For info: It appears that all UK RC dioceses were moved from "Diocese of" to "Roman Catholic Diocese of..." around 4 Dec 2007, and have been moved back and forward several times since then. A large number of dioceses in the rest of Europe have been moved similarly earlier this month, eg Roman Catholic Diocese of Nantes. PamD (talk) 10:30, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

For info: There's a small previous discussion last month here PamD (talk) 10:30, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I support Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle and similar titles, without the prefix. I can see no justification for the fuller version, especially while we do not have Anglican Diocese of Bradford etc. WP:NPOV surely suggests that a diocese is a diocese, unless it needs a disambiguator because there is an identically named diocese for another tradition. What is the article name for? It's so that someone can find the article. Is anyone going to type "Roman Catholic Diocese of xyz"? It doesn't seem likely, especially if it's in a predominantly catholic country. (But by all means let's provide a redirect from that version just in case!) Whatever is agreed, something needs to go into WP:NAME eventually so that we don't go round the loop again unwittingly. PamD (talk) 10:34, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've looked around further, and changed my mind. USA dioceses seem all to have been long established as Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut or Roman Catholic Diocese of Dodge City etc. Australian Anglican dioceses were discussed here and are all "Anglican Diocese of ...".  I now propose that we rename the UK CofE dioceses as "Anglican Diocese of...", for consistency.  A couple already have that name, to distinguish from dioceses elsewhere, as in Anglican Diocese of Norwich, which has a dab page at Diocese of Norwich.  We need redirects from the non-prefixed version, but will get them automatically if we Move Diocese of Bradford to Anglican Diocese of Bradford.  To leave UK CofE dioceses un-prefixed, while those of other countries or other traditions are prefixed, seems to me to go against WP:NPOV. PamD (talk) 11:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * And, as redirects are cheap, it might be as well to have a redirect from Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to this article - there's one from Catholic Diocese of Leeds already, and a small handful of others, but, at least for UK where "Catholic" is used interchangeably with "Roman Catholic", it might be helpful for them all. PamD (talk) 11:23, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

The last I heard, the Church of England was still the State church in the UK. Thus when the term "diocese" is mentioned without qualification, one would expect it to be a CoE diocese. Others should be properly qualified. I would not object to qualifying the CoE ones as well. However the precedent of the US is not complete parallel. The US does not have a State church, hence there is no natural default denomination. Hedrick (talk) 19:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

You can see my full comments here and here. I support the naming as "Roman Catholic Diocese of ..."Npeters22 (talk) 13:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Naming of a Diocese - Anglican or otherwise
Anglican dioceses should also have the words Anglican Diocese in their title. The argument that the Church of England is the established, or State, religion in the United Kingdom does not have value in an international English encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is apolitical; it informs the reader, dispassionately. Above all, subjects for encyclopedic article should be treated equally without prejudice or favour. When a reader in Surinam reads about a diocese - Anglican or otherwise - she will not know about the privilege that church has in the UK. In the United Kingdom, there are still laws in existence which discriminate against Catholics. Let's at least have some equality on the pages of Wikipedia. Francis Hannaway (talk) 09:03, 26 June 2013 (UTC)