Talk:Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church

Improvement
This article is in need of drastical improvement, since it says almost nothing about the history of Ruthenian church and what is says is plain myth. I have never heard of any evidence of St. Cyril and St. Methodius visiting Ruthenia, whose westernmost boundary is located 400 km east of Nitra in Slovakia, the westernmost mentioned missionary area visited by Thessaloniki-born brothers on the referred latitude.

On the other hand, there is no mention of colonization of Carpathians in 15th century, when a large masses of population of Galicia and Volynia have crossed the moutain ranges of Carpathians, bringing with them Eastern Christianity.

The Unia of Uzhhorod, the principal event in the history of the Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church, is also neglected in the article. Does anybode have any troubles mentioning that the population was primarily Ortodox before the middle 17th century ?

I consider circumstances and aftermath of this event a crucially important for understanding the subject of the article. Because of this I tag the article as factually inaccurate.--Rachotilko 08:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I have now made a poor attempt to do what Rachotilko could well have done far better himself, by adding to the article the information in his possession and correcting any false information it may contain. Lima 10:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Rite or Church
I was redirected to this article when I went looking for Ruthenian Rite, and found this article about the churches of that rite, but not too much about the rite itself. (Imagine if I had typed in Ambrosian rite and wound up at Archdiocese of Milan instead.) I don't particularly object to combining these two subjects, but it would be nice to have more info on the liturgy. To what family of rites does the Ruthenian belong to? What is its liturgical language? When was it written? What is the nature and provenance of its Latinisms? What is controversial about its reform?

Thanks for all your efforts. Rwflammang (talk) 15:44, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Requested move 3 July 2017

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved — JFG talk 15:49, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church → Ruthenian Catholic Church – Undo disambiguation attempt 72.201.104.140 (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Given the real world history of confusing nomenclature regarding several of the Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches and the imprecise way that the term "Ruthenian Catholic Church" has been used all over Wikipedia, I thought the introduction of a disambiguation page was good and helpful. Also, keeping this article at this page keeps its name parallel to the various other Eastern Catholic Churches of Byzantine Rite. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 11:54, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You'll need to provide reliable secondary sources that document the difference between the Ruthenian Catholic Church that became the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Ruthenian Catholic Church that is known by that name today.
 * Why can't this be done with a hatnote? People searching for the Ruthenian Catholic Church today are going to be looking for the one that exists today. If they meant to look for the Ukrainian Church then we can link a note at the top of the article.
 * If the redirect stands, are you willing to carry out WP:FIXDABLINKS?
 * 72.201.104.140 (talk) 14:35, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Why is all of the burden on me when I'm the one in favor of the status quo and nobody else is on your side? (And why are you doing all of this from an IP address?) To address your particular points: (1) Again, I'm not sure why the burden of proof is on me to explain distinctions and facts that are already covered on Wikipedia and thus have been sourced elsewhere. If you were familiar with the history here, I don't think you would be asking me to provide proof, and the history is complicated. Basically, the starting point here is the Union of Brest by which a bunch of Orthodox Christians under the Metropolitan of Kiev (i.e., the Ruthenian Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) joined the Catholic Church and created a new "Uniate" Church (which we would now call "Eastern Catholic"). Because of their location and ethnicity, this church was generally referred to as "Ruthenian" (or in Latin, ruthena, although Galician would probably have been a better name), but it was generally based in either Kiev (Kyiv) and Lviv (Lemberg) throughout its history (which continues to the present day), and the Eastern Catholic Byzantine churches in Kiev and Lviv are both part of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church now, although I believe the switch in nomenclature identifying this church as "Ukrainian" rather than "Ruthenian" does not come before the 20th century. The later Union of Uzhhorod (1646) brought Ruthenian Orthodox Christians in the Kingdom of Hungary into union with the Catholic Church much along the same lines as the Uniate group from 1596. Clear terminology and clear jurisdictional structures were far in the future at this point. The main distinction between the two at this time was political geography (Poland-Lithuania vs. Hungary), but there is also something of an ethnic difference between the Rusyns (of Ruthenia or Transcarpathia) and the Galicians (of Galicia). So the "difference" between the historical Ruthenian Church and the one currently known as "Ruthenian" is one driven more or less by political history and ethnicity: ethnic Rusyns (in Ruthenia) have now been granted their own hierarchically distinct churches (including both the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and the Slovak Greek Catholic Church, as well as at least arguably the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church and maybe even the Romanian one), while ethnic Ukrainians (originally from a region known as Galicia) remain the main population of the church now known as the "Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church." But originally it was the nucleus of the current Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (along with perhaps part of the modern Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church) that joined the Catholic Church in 1596 at the Union of Brest and became known as the "Ruthenian Catholic" or "Ruthenian Uniate" Church. After the Union of Uzhhorod, the whole group seems to have been collectively referred to as "Ruthenian", and the division into the churches we know today comes much later. The UGCC has the clearest historical claim to continuity with the original Uniate church given its location and major sees, while the other groups (including the current "Ruthenians") are structurally at best "daughter" churches of that Union or rather products of the Union of Uzhhorod. But as a result of this history, the use of the term "Ruthenian" in either a European context of a pre-20th-century context usually refers to what we would now identify as the UGCC; on the other hand, "Ruthenian" in an American (but generally not in a Canadian) context or in a modern context will often refer to the RGCC, which on the other hand is quite often referred to as the "Byzantine Catholic Church" (which is much worse terminologically, since there are technically 14 churches that that phrase would reasonably describe). If you want some outside sources, maybe you can start with the Encyclopedia Britannica: here's one article that describes "Ruthenians" coming into union with Rome in 1646 at Uzhhorod, and here's another that says the "Ruthenian church" because Catholic in 1596 at Brest. Like I said, the history is complicated and the terminology is confusing (and much confused), and apparently even other encyclopedias can't necessarily keep straight what they're talking about. (2) Well, the distinction between the two can be handled with hatnotes, and indeed I have edited the hatnotes on both pages to give a better indication of why someone on the one page might be looking for the other page. However, part of the problem here, and what made the disambiguation page useful was the fact that the term "Ruthenian" had been used poorly on Wikipedia and the disambiguation page helped to sort that out. I also disagree that people searching for "Ruthenian Catholic Church" today are necessarily going to be looking for the RGCC rather than the UGCC. If they're reading something talking about pre-modern history, they might very well end up looking for "Ruthenian Catholic Church" on Wikipedia to learn more as should be evident from the fact that the article on the UGCC acknowledges that it has historically been known as the "Ruthenian Catholic Church." Even if we make all of the terminology on Wikipedia consistent, we can't control how it's used outside Wikipedia or in materials that we don't publish. (3) I would certainly be happy to help, but for the third time, I don't understand why all of the burden is on me when my position is to maintain the status quo. One of the reasons that the disambiguation page is useful is precisely because there are ambiguous links that haven't been fixed yet. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:36, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Last point, just to be clear: I oppose moving this page, even if I lose the argument about keeping Ruthenian Catholic Church as a disambiguation page. In that event, I would favor turning that page into a redirect to this one, rather than the other way around, and for two reasons: (1) consistency of terminology (cf. articles the other 13 Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches on Wikipedia) and (2) the redirect to an article with a slightly different title might help to alert readers who really are looking for information about the historical Ruthenian Catholic Church that they may not be where they really want to be. As a third alternative, perhaps we should have a substantive article at Ruthenian Catholic Church that deals with the historical Ruthenian Church. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * So: you have no WP:RS. You are not willing to follow WP:FIXDABLINKS. A hatnote is sufficient. I'm just fine with leaving this page where it is as long as Ruthenian Catholic Church is a redirect to this one. But now we have about 150 articles marked with "disambiguation needed" tags that need to be sorted out. 72.201.104.140 (talk) 19:52, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * (1) I gave you two links to Encyclopedia Britannica, that's a reliable source, if tertiary. The articles on the various terms have their own RS already linked. In general, I don't think there's a particular requirement that we find a RS which performs the act of disambiguation for us; it is enough (if needed at all) to find RS that show that the term is used ambiguously. (2) I did not create the disambiguation page, so WP:FIXDABLINKS didn't apply directly to me. I have worked in the past on fixing the incoming links, but I didn't do all of them. I am still willing to help. (3) Those "disambiguation tags" are still going to need to be dealt with whatever happens here (although I see the Ruthenian Catholic Church page has already been changed to a redirect), because the term has still been used ambiguously on Wikipedia and now there are links that will come directly here that actually refer to the UGCC. So even if someone has removed those tags, if they haven't checked to see whether they're supposed to be coming here or to the UGCC, they're still problematic in a way that Wikipedia needs to deal with. Hence, the beauty of the disambiguation page. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 14:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There is another way forward. This Church is known in the United States and other English-speaking nations as the Byzantine Catholic Church. Instead of trying to impose arbitrary names on her, we could simply allow her to self-identify. The (arch)eparchy articles were renamed in this way, rather unfairly, because the official websites tell another story. 72.201.104.140 (talk) 20:09, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That would be fine . . . if the church being dealt with in this article only existed in the United States (and other English-speaking nations), but it also covers two jurisdictions in Europe, one of which (Mukachevo) is much larger (by membership) than the entire "Byzantine Catholic Church" in the United States. The question is how we ought to refer to the entire entity which the Vatican has loosely composed of American Byzantines, Eastern Catholics in the Czech Republic, and the Eastern Catholics of Zakarpatia, and "Byzantine Catholic Church" is not the right term for that. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 14:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose move. (1) The two titles Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church neatly parallel each other in an area which can cause confusion. (2) Ruthenian Catholic Church has around 100 incoming links. I've seen and corrected several which related to the Ukrainian church and were therefore wrong. If the move is made, any other wrong links are likely to remain wrong for ever, Narky Blert (talk) 11:02, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I've also seen a couple of links to Ruthenian Catholic Church (tagged as disambiguation needed) which I could not disambiguate and which need attention from an expert. Narky Blert (talk) 11:41, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with the point that the incoming links need to be looked at and evaluated regardless and that the disambiguation page is helpful at least until the time that that work is completed. LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 14:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It's now down to 37 incoming links - WP:DPL have been getting stuck in. FWIW I agree that a DAB page is appropriate here, whatever WP:TWODABS says. It's not an article title which is ambiguous, but a redirect. I don't consider either church to be WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; both articles are substantial. Narky Blert (talk) 10:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I meant to say this earlier, but if there are any incoming links that you or someone else is having trouble disambiguating, I would be willing to give them a shot. Post them on my talk page? LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 14:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I've just checked Ruthenian Catholic Church using the Dablinks tool, and it now has no incoming links :-) Narky Blert (talk) 12:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, another editor pointed me there last night, and I disambiguated the last 15 or so. Cheers! LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 13:45, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I came here because the dab page has an unusually large number of incoming links. The question of whether there is a primary topic is key.  If not, WP:TWODABS says keep the dab, and I'd strongly agree with it here.  If there is a primary topic, let's make it the destination for the term, but not until the incoming links have been checked and (where appropriate) diverted to the Ukrainian article. I've fixed a few more but, as  says, the two topics are confusingly similar to a layman. Certes (talk) 13:53, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Support - revert to the status quo before the recent bold move of this article. As the nominator says, no evidence has been presented that the church currently called the Ruthenian Catholic Church is not the primary topic, and it is the job of those who wish to change the status quo to present that evidence. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has not borne the name "Ruthenian" for centuries, and a cursory Google search seems to suggest that the present Ruthenian church is indeed primary by common usage. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * A bunch of editors (myself included) just performed a lot of disambiguation work to sort out the incoming links to this page, probably half of which ended up being redirected to the UGCC. Based on my own work doing disambiguation, it's obvious that neither church is the primary topic on Wikipedia. Factually, I think you're wrong about when the UGCC began to be called "Ukrainian" rather than "Ruthenian". The shift dates to the 20th century, not hundreds of years ago. This 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article on "Ruthenians" uses the term broadly to refer to both what is now the UGCC ("one province in Galicia") and what is now the Ruthenian Church in the US, as well as the present Greek Catholic Chuches of Hungary (Munkacs), Slovakia (Eperies, now Presov), Croatia (Kreuz, now Krizevci), and Romania (included in what was then Munkacs, but notice the references to Maramures). Actually, it lumps all of these together as the "Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church." Here is another reference which points out that "the ecclesiastical term 'Ruthenian' was formerly used more broadly to include Ukrainians, Belarusans and Slovaks as well". Maybe the term "Ruthenian Catholic Church" is not often used now to refer to what is now the UGCC, but historically it was often used that way, and when reading about Catholic history, one often comes upon these usages, even just on Wikipedia. One of the reasons the disambiguation page is valuable is because Wikipedia as an encyclopedia serves as a resource for more than just current usage. All of that said, I think the long-term solution here needs to be the creation of an article that would deal with the complicated history of the various "Ruthenian Catholics" now scattered across at least seven different Eastern Catholic Churches (Belarusian, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Slovakian, and Ukrainian, but arguably possibly also Albanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian) and serve as the primary destination for generic references to "Ruthenians" or the "Ruthenian Church" or "Ruthenian Catholics" or the "Ruthenian Rite." LacrimosaDiesIlla (talk) 19:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

CN¥
 * Oppose it parallels nicely with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, there is no clear primary topic: the UGCC and RGCC might be more prominent depending on the region of the world you are in and the local dialect. Keeping two dabs at the Ruthenian Catholic Church page makes sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:13, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Catholic Church naming conventions RfC
There is currently an RfC at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Catholic_Church) that may be of interest. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 23:39, 3 October 2017 (UTC)