- The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
- The result of the discussion was: the result is mixed
- renaming Category:Priestesses to Category:Female clergy no
- Support for these proposals:
- Category:Ordained Christian women to be recategorised and not under Priestess.
- Category:Priestesses is not to be used for Christian or Buddhist Religious workers.
- take out Category:Christian nuns as a subcategory of clergy
- Female Christian clergy to become a child category of Christian clergy
- Creation of a new Category:Female clergy under Category:Clergy and under a new Category:Female religious workers, that will contain Christian and Buddhist female clergy
- Creation of a new Category:Female religious workers under Category:Religious workers that will contain Female clergy (Christian and Buddhist) and Priestesses (excluding Buddhist)
- recategorise ('other') Priestesses from the Clergy tree to under Category:Female religious workers
- rename Category:Female Christian clergy and religious to Category:Female Christian clergy
- No consensus or needs another CFD
- Renaming any categories to include the term "leader"
- Moving clergy from religious workers to religious leaders
- renaming Category:Ordained Christian women to Category:Female Christian clergy
Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Five proposals in conjunction[edit]
Current categorization tree (at the moment of posting the proposal)[edit]
Currently the categorization tree for women clergy across religions is as follows:
Please note that, in the across-religion tree, Christian subcategories appear with different namings. While within Category:Christian clergy there is nothing quickly visible as female Christian clergy.
Proposed categorization tree (as a result of the proposals)[edit]
The proposed consistent categorization tree for women clergy across religions would simply be as follows:
And similarly within Christianity the proposed simple and categorization tree would be as follows:
The five proposals describe together how to get from the current categorization to the proposed categorization tree.
Marcocapelle (talk) 20:36, 2 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- keep Priestesses, as an analogue to Category:Priests; it was in the wrong place which I fixed. Is there a difference between Ordained women and clergy? Can one be ordained without being clergy? I fixed some of the categorizations so some of the problems you describe are fixed already.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:12, 2 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Of course there is no difference between Ordained women and Female clergy, that's exactly why I've left out Ordained women from the proposed categorization tree. Thank you for trying to fix some problems, but I've lost track of what you did exactly. For example, how do you now get from Clergy to Female clergy? How do you get from Christian clergy to Female Christian clergy? Isn't it better to revert these changes while this discussion is still pending? I think the best is that we discuss first whether or not the proposed categorization I posted here is indeed the most logical and simple one.Marcocapelle (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- I don't think we need a "female clergy", any more than we need a "male clergy". These are trees which are divided by gender for the most part, so under Category:Clergy by type you find Category:Priests and Category:Priestesses. Category:Female Christian clergy and religious which contains nuns is nonetheless a useful container, I don't think we need to ensure that the Category:Clergy tree never includes people who aren't clergy, it is common as you go down the branches of the tree to violate some of the precepts of the parents. another possibility might be to rename Category:Ordained Christian women as Category:Female Christian priests since the word priestess is not used for them.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:29, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Also, I think some deaconesses are not ordained, but may still be considered clergy. I think in some religions there are also deacons who who aren't ordained. I don't think "clergy" can be kept entirely free of people who aren't necessarily called Clergy.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:47, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for your comments, here's my reply:
- I don't agree that we wouldn't need 'female clergy', the reason being the controversiality of female clergy in history and between christian branches and (still) the scarcity of female clergy. Female is really a distinctive characteristic within clergy.
- I don't really understand why putting Female Christian clergy and religious could be useful, since clergy and nuns are entirely different. One wouldn't put Monks under 'Clergy and Monks' either, right?
- Renaming Ordained Christian women into Female Christian priests instead of Female Christian clergy is an interesting suggestion.
Kind regards, Marcocapelle (talk) 19:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- comment I am not convinced that there is a way to shoehorn all these religions together; indeed, I'm finding it hard even to pick a single word word that I feel comfortable in using across all. I would say, however, that if "priestess" is retained it should be limited to religions in which there is a specifically female priestly role. In Christianity, for instance, those groups which have women priests most emphatically do not call them "priestesses" because the point is, after all, that men and women fulfill the same role without regard to gender. Mangoe (talk) 12:48, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- I've considered this while thinking this all over. It's really a tough puzzle. My proposal consists of having 'Female Christian clergy' and 'Ancient priestesses' next to each other, both as subcategories of 'Female clergy'. So I'm deliberately not proposing to rename 'Ancient priestesses' into 'Ancient female clergy'. However, the parent category of them both cannot be anything else than 'Female clergy', entirely analogue to the way as the parent category across religions is named 'Clergy' (which includes Christian clergy and Ancient priests).Marcocapelle (talk) 19:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Comment - (1) nuns are not "ordained" at all. (2) "Priestesses" in a Christian context is entirely inappropriate. (3) "Clergy" in a non-Christian context is also mostly inappropriate. (4 and principally) It's not appropriate to categorise people (or things, or anything) as something they are not simply to make a category scheme work. Eustachiusz (talk) 15:21, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- I'm suggesting renaming to the rather bland "Female clergy" is less inclusive and less easy to understand than "priestesses", which captures a broader spectrum. As you go deeper in the category tree, the grandparents and great grandparents sometimes become less applicable - c'est la vie.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for your further comments, here's my reply:
- Commenting on Eustachiusz' #1: entirely agree! That is exactly the point of my 5th proposal.
- Commenting on Eustachuisz' #2: I agree, that's also why I prefer 'female clergy' over 'priestesses' as the generalizable term across religions (another reason is that female clergy does not only contain female Christian priests but also female Christian bishops).
- Commenting on Eustachiusz' #3: according Clergy, it appears that clergy is a generalizable term across religions. This is what I've based myself on.
- Commenting on Eustachiusz' #4: I agree. Though if something works for men, it should also work for women.
- Commenting on Obiwankenobi: according to Clergy, 'priests' is under 'clergy', so 'clergy' is apparently more inclusive rather than less inclusive. Generally, I do recognize with you that it's sometimes not possible to have a perfect match between (grand)parents and (grand)children.
Kind regards, Marcocapelle (talk) 19:07, 4 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Thank you for your replies. It seems to me that it's necessary to keep "Priestesses" and "Female clergy" separate. Neither is adequate as an over-term, as neither can include the other (Wikipedia can't serve as its own source and I discount the article on "clergy"). I appreciate that some flexibility may be necessary but there is a point beyond which a cat has to be accurate, however inconvenient that may be. Another term is needed which can accurately include both "Priestesses" and "Female clergy" level with each other as separate cats. English is a versatile language: it must be possible to come up with something that will cover both - accurately (which is more or less what Mangoe said above).
- So of your five proposals I agree with the last four but not with the first one. Eustachiusz (talk) 23:32, 6 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Thank you! May I then also conclude there is overall consensus about proposals #2, #3, #4 and #5, but no consensus yet about proposal #1 ? Marcocapelle (talk) 07:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Priestesses and Female Christian clergy[edit]
This continues on the comments of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Eustachiusz in the 4th round of comments.
The question really is, is 'priestess' a type of clergy or not? In the current categorization, for what it's worth, it is indeed regarded as a type of clergy. If they belong to clergy, then they certainly belong to female clergy too. While if they aren't clergy, we do not need to discuss the subject at all.
(Btw I thought solely for categorization purposes we are allowed to rely on the main Wikipedia article of the respective category. If we're not, I'm not really sure how to proceed from here.) Marcocapelle (talk) 07:15, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Well, you're not bound by my opinion! and you have a precedent in the parallel cat tree. But I didn't see, even in the Wikipedia article, any claim that priestesses - I'm thinking primarily of what Wikipedia calls "Ancient priestesses" - are clergy. Eustachiusz (talk) 15:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I know I'm not bound :-), it's just that I'm neutral in the choice between two extremes:
- keep priestesses included in clergy -> then also include them in female clergy
- or remove priestesses from clergy entirely
While I'm opposed to keeping them in clergy but not including them in female clergy.
Marcocapelle (talk) 06:32, 8 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- I suspect that there is too much unclarity in both terms, "clergy" AND "priestesses", for it to be possible to reach a stable conclusion based on either of them. It also seems very debatable that "priestess" is the correct term for a female Buddhist priest any more than it is for a Christian one. The easiest solution is perhaps to eliminate the overlap by (a) reducing "Priestesses" to "Ancient", "Fictional" and "Wiccan"; and (b) restricting female members of modern organised religions to "Female clergy"; both Category:Priestesses and Category:Female clergy (with Female Buddhist, Female Christian etc as sub-cats) can then sit side by side as sub-cats of Category:Female religious workers under Category:Religious workers. (Let's not even worry about whether "Religious workers" is OK or not!) "Vestal virgins" can be slotted in under "Ancient priestesses". Eustachiusz (talk) 15:35, 8 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Summing up[edit]
It seems like we've an agreement on the following:
Propose renaming Category:Priestesses to Category:Female clergy (original proposal no longer relevant)
- Propose upmerging Category:Female Christian clergy and religious to Category:Ordained Christian women
- Propose renaming Category:Ordained Christian women to Category:Female Christian clergy
- Propose taking out Category:Christian nuns as a childcat from the new category Female Christian clergy
- Propose moving the new category Female Christian clergy to become a child cat of Christian clergy instead of a child cat of Clergy
- (new proposal) Creation of a new Category:Female clergy under Category:Clergy and under a new Category:Female religious workers, that will contain Christian and Buddhist female clergy
- (new proposal) Creation of a new Category:Female religious workers under Category:Religious workers that will contain Female clergy (Christian and Buddhist) and Priestesses (excluding Buddhist)
- (new proposal) Moving ('other') Priestesses from the Clergy tree to under Category:Female religious workers
Kind regards, Marcocapelle (talk) 17:41, 8 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Yes - the only thing I can see at the moment to add is that "Buddhist priestesses" should be renamed Category:Female Buddhist clergy.Eustachiusz (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Rename the tree to have consistent use of "female Christian clergy". Remove nuns from being in this tree. Avoid using "priestess" with any Christian. In most Christian traditions most of the uses of that word are associated with non-Christian practices and views. The one exception might be in certain areas of thought among Latter-day Saints, but no Latter-day Saint would go around referring to Bonnie L. Oscarson as a priestess, but I could argue that such a title might be theologically sound. From a terminology standpoint these are terms Christians do not use. Christians use the term "female priest" or "woman priest" when they recognize the possiblity of such. It is true that in 1st millenium Christianity in places such as France, the term "obispa", which I cannot think of even how to make an English feminized form of bishop would be, bishoptess maybe, did exist. But this was the title of the wife of the bishop, and apparently not a clerical figure at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:57, 2 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"Religious leaders"[edit]
- As for Category:Clergy, move it back down from Category:Religious workers into Category:Religious leaders; the article clergy says Clergy are some of the formal leaders within certain religions. In the longer term, I think it may be best to merge/rename all clergy categories as "religious leaders", as has already been done for Islamic clergy, see CFD 2012 August 12, because of SHAREDNAME and because it's largely a duplicate layer, but that is beyond the scope of this CFD. @Cgingold: can you remember why you made this change? – Fayenatic London 10:16, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Thanks for your contribution! I won't go into all details (yet), I think the most important thing to discuss is the concept of Religious leader. This concept would be perfectly fine for non-hierarchical-organized religions, but I foresee a problem with hierarchical-organized religions. 'Leaders' would then only be applicable for people higher up in the hierarchy (starting at which level?), while 'Clergy' is already used to indicate everyone ordained in the entire hierarchy (regardless level). For this reason I guess it's a sort of unavoidable to keep a 'Clergy' category here in Wikipedia (as well). What's your opinion about this? Marcocapelle (talk) 17:58, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- I don't see a problem there. "Leaders" does not only mean top-level, but all who exercise leadership over congregations as well as any hierarchy above them. It is no different from clergy, as defined above.
- Please see Category talk:Religious leaders#Clergy categories where I have set out an overview of the restructuring as I envisage it. "Clergy" should be kept only as the category name for religious leaders within denominations that use that term, e.g. Category:Lutheran clergy should be at the same level alongside Category:Methodist ministers and Category:Pentecostal pastors within Category:Protestant religious leaders by denomination. Above the level of denominational families, "Christian clergy" is not needed and would be merged into "Christian religious leaders". – Fayenatic London 20:01, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Fayenatic, your proposal is well-structured for sure. But still I think your definition of leader goes a bit against common use of terms, in the sense that local clergy in hierarchy-organized denominations or religions is probably not perceived as leaders - it's more likely that they are perceived as workers instead of as leaders. If you know anyone here who is more specialized in e.g. the Catholic or Orthodox Church hierarchy than I am, you'd better check with him/her first. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:50, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Marcocapelle: Thanks! I still think there is no contradiction; the Roman Catholic church sees priests as leaders of the parish community, e.g. [1] and [2]. OK, the RC church does not ordain women, so here is a generic citation: ReligiousTolerance .org has a page on women clergy, which is headlined "Women as religious leaders". [3] Moreover, the principle of these renamings has been accepted at the CFDs in May-June 2013. – Fayenatic London 22:48, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- Comment. I came here because closure was requested at WP:AN, but if I were going to close it (I'm not), I would have to close it as "Too confusing". Perhaps there's consensus here, but the layout and the discussion are very confusing, and it would probably be really difficult for anyone to close — you've basically had a normal "how does this work" discussion, not a CFD. I'd advise that someone start a new CFD with a specific proposal shaped by this discussion, ensure that all other participants in this discussion participate in the new one, and give others the chance to participate without understanding everything that happened here. Nyttend (talk) 12:05, 19 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
- The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
