[the_conscience]

Thanks, but that doesn’t make it right for you to capitalize it.

Why not?

And it certainly doesn’t justify claiming a right to jump in on the “Catholic Caucus” when that has been understood for quite some time to be a caucus of members of the Catholic Church proper.

I'm not asking to jump on the "Catholic Caucus". I'm asking that the Caucus tags reflect a particular Church more precisely. Since I'm Catholic I find it confusing that the Church of Rome is able to use that term that I identify with as their own.

[GCC Catholic]

I'm asking that the Caucus tags reflect a particular Church more precisely. Since I'm Catholic I find it confusing that the Church of Rome is able to use that term that I identify with as their own.

The Catholic Church (termed by you the "Church of Rome") refers to itself as "the Catholic Church" and refers to its members (members proper) as Catholics or as Catholic Christians.

From my point of view, there is no term other than "Catholic" with which the Catholics on the forum may call ourselves that is concise, accurate, and nonoffensive.

Certainly the bizarre terms of "Vatican Agent" and "Papal Submissive" as well as the clearly offensive terms of "Papist" and "Romanist" are out.

"Roman Catholic" is out because it isn't accurate - there are Eastern-Rite Catholics who are Catholic but not "Roman".

Similarly, the Orthodox shouldn't be reduced to referring to themselves as "Eastern Orthodox," as there are Orthodox who are not Eastern-Rite per se.

Of course, all of this is assuming that "catholic" and "orthodox" are simple adjectives, and don't mean the same as their capitalized counterparts.

I'm sorry that the term that Catholics (i.e. those in communion with the Pope) use to precisely reflect our Church is confusing to you. I explained the capital 'C' / lower-case 'c' manner of understanding it - that is the way that most people keep the two straight and in the world outside of FR seems to work pretty well. Beyond that, I really can't help you.

[Petronski]

The Catholic Church has been the Catholic Church for centuries. Your attempt to expropriate the term will necessarily fail.

[Cronos]

Ok, how about this categorisation:

Top-level: Christian and non-Christian

In the Christian you have Western Church aka Catholic, Eastern Church aka Eastern Orthodox, Oriental aka Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian and Assyrian aka Church of The East. Oh and Other Trinitarian aka believers in the Nicene Creed but not Apostolic

In the non-Christian, we can have Islam which is sub-divided into Sunni, Shia and Others. Sunni to be divided into Sunni-Sunni, Sufi, Dervish, Wahabbi, Deobandi, Mutawilli etc. The Shias to Twelvers, Fivers, Ismailies, Boris, etc. And the Others to Ahmaddiyas (sub-divided into the two groups), Druze, Alawies, Ibadis etc. etc.

For the Christian-Other Trinitarian aka believers in the Nicene Creed but not Apostolic, we subdivide into Anglican (sub-divided into High Church, Low Church and Gay Church), Lutheran and SOME Baptists and Others.

In the "Others" category we'll put the OPC, BPC, APC and DPC as separate categories or do they fall under one category? So, the next caucasus you can put togeter will be labelled as :

Christian\Other Trinitarian aka believers in the Nicene Creed but not Apostolic\Others\Prebyterian\New developments post Civil war\Orthodox Presbyterians\American Baptist Presbyterians\Baptist Orthodox Prebyterian CalvinoLutheran West-Central Church caucasus.


There! Done!