[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - catholic

[Bert -Araali- Van Opstal]

The arguments of Greg and Mateusz are very valid.

There are several reasons we should not support making a specific 
religious oriented subkey or semantics to improve the correct use of the 
key:denomination:

1 denomination is a general term, very suitable to describe the 
diversity amongst different  churches, faiths or whatever you call 
them... applicable in all religions.
2 neutrality in OSM, both to avoid expression or domination of one 
religion to another, vandalism. All denominations in one key forces a 
mapper to treat them all equally. The introduction of a subkey 
semantically named "catholic", might express a certain preference or 
even claim of a certain denomination on the semantic name. Catholic is 
used by different churches within Christianity and in different context, 
well described and summarized in 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicity 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicity>
3 high diversity and complexity: turning already biased denomination 
values into subkeys does not improve simplicity or ease of use and 
interpretation, accuracy. In the contrary, it makes it more complex. If 
we would follow this data scheme one would have and see the creation of 
denomination subkeys, as much diverse and lengthy as the list on our 
wiki https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:denomination 
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:denomination>

I suggest to improve our wiki on the page. The situation and need you 
describe, particularly for Catholics,  is of course existing. The 
introduction of "Catholic" as a valid value in my perception justified 
and introduced for this particular case, with the advise in the wiki of 
being more specific by using one of the other denomination, more 
specific and less biased values.
If we want to improve accuracy, remain with a simple and neutral tagging 
solution, improve the definition of catholic on the wiki page value 
table. In the process of doing so add more context and explain why it 
was introduced.  Not as to refer to roman_catholic church in general or 
other catholic denominations, but to cater for the diversity within, 
being it as different opinions on communion, adherence to the bishop of 
Rome, or being Catholic and reformed (Anglicans and Lutherians call 
themselves also Catholics, within a different context).
Mappers should be able to determine and use the denomination values 
within the correct context as intended on our wiki, no matter what their 
own religion or denomination is. We can't expect every mapper, to be an 
expert in the matter. In complex and biased situations like Catholicism, 
the same key provides a value to express this as well as the values to 
be more accurate and specific. An example for other tagging schemes I 
would say rather then a shortcoming which needs to be resolved.

Greetings,

Bert Araali

On 10/08/2021 00:55, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Guy Godfroy <guy.godfroy at gugod.fr> writes:
>
>> Anyway I still disagree. On a semantic point of view, being catholic and
>> following the roman, greek, armenian or byzantine rite are totally
>> unrelated. Honestly, I think having one single denomination=catholic
>> even without another key would be more correct than the present situation.
> Do you have a reference to scholarly work in comparative religion that
> supports the view that the there is a Catholic denomination which has
> sub-denominations within it?  This does not seem like parallel structure
> to the many denomimations that consider themselves Protestant.
>
> Also, it seems that Catholic is (in the outside-of-OSM world) considered
> an abbrevation/synonum for Roman Catholic, and I would not have thought
> it reasonable to refer to members of a Greek Orthodox church as
> Catholics.  And, it seems that there is one denomination "Eastern
> Orthodox" with 7 national churches, and another "Coptic Orthodox".
>
> I'm not an expert in this, but I have a general reaction that OSM
> tagging should be informed by consensus nomenclature of professional
> scholarship of the things being tagged.
>
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