Template talk:Infobox diocese

Adding an "attendance" parameter?

What do editors think about the addition of a parameter for "attendance" under the statistics section of the infobox? Average weekly/Sunday attendance is a documented metric in the Anglican Church of Canada, Episcopal Church, Church of Ireland, Anglican Church in North America, etc., and its inclusion where figures are available provides a valuable data point for understanding the subject of the article. Dclemens1971 (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

OPPOSED You can add it. But to what purpose? And where do you find the data? More categories does not necessarily make a better infobox, Vicedomino (talk) 07:59, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

parameter "Catholics"

On the "Catholics" parameter, the parenthetical remark "(including non-members)" has unclear meaning – it isn't clear what "non-members" refers to in this context. I guess it is trying to say that the figure may contain "lapsed Catholics" who no longer consider themselves "Catholic". However, whether or not that's true in any case depends on where the figure is coming from. For example, for Australian Catholic dioceses, the number is probably coming from the optional religion question on the Australian census – since identifying as "Catholic" on the census is completely voluntary, it seems reasonable to assume that any adult ticking the "Catholic" box actually considers Catholicism to (in some sense) be their religion, at least at the time they filled out the census (once every 5 years). So, for Australian Catholic dioceses, whatever this confusing phrase is trying to say, is probably incorrect. However, for Catholic dioceses in other countries – since there are numerous ways of counting "who is Catholic", it is possible some of those ways are including people who view themselves as "ex-Catholic". But, here's the thing – if we put this kind of proviso in the template, it ends up everywhere, even in cases where it is wrong; if it is wrong in some cases, it doesn't belong in the template. Added to that, from a Catholic viewpoint, "members" is not really the right terminology – Catholicism does not have a notion of "membership" as such. It is really taking a term which makes sense in secular contexts, or maybe even for some other churches (especially some Protestant ones), and applying it to a religious tradition which generally doesn't use it, and I don't think that makes a lot of sense. @Vicedomino: you raised this issue in 2020 but nobody responded. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 07:27, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with all the criticisms expressed by SomethingForDeletion. Catholic statistics, as found in Annuario Pontificio are often estimates, and (as in the case of Italy, where estimates run 90-99%, where the actual figure is admitted to be below 40%). They are said to represent "baptized Catholics" in a diocese, but, in addition to all the considerations expressed above, people move from place to place, making baptismal statistics a poor guide to who is actually there. "Including non-members" has to be dropped. Vicedomino (talk) 08:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I added an edit request below to remove this phrase. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:38, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 March 2023

Change "Catholics (including non-members)" to just say "Catholics" per above discussion SomethingForDeletion (talk) 08:27, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

 Completed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 13:13, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 22:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

my pleasure! Paine  22:25, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Deacons

It was previously proposed to add |deacons= as a parameter to capture a count of the number of deacons (permanent) in the diocese, but there was no follow-up discussion or action taken to implement this. At least for Catholic dioceses, this information could be sourced from the dioceses themselves or from the Annuario Pontificio.

Are folks open to adding this parameter to be placed immediately below the |priests= parameter?  — Archer1234 (t·c) 00:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I support your proposal. I think you can go ahead and create a "Template-protected edit request" to officially request adding it. Nobody has spoken against it, and I'd be surprised if anyone is going to. Especially since it is an optional parameter, which means that if there is any diocese (especially non-Catholic ones) for which the information might not be available/relevant, we can just ignore it for them.

One comment though – I'm worried people will be confused about the distinction between permanent deacons, transitional deacons, or counting both. It might be better to have "permanent_deacons" as a parameter–I'm assuming any available statistics re either only going to count permanent deacons, or separately count the permanent and transitional ones. Another concern I have is around deaconesses, which while they don't (currently) exist in Catholicism, are found in some Anglican and Orthodox dioceses. Orthodox understand deaconesses as a separate order from the male-order only of deacons, so they'd never include deaconesses in statistics on deacons; but the majority (but not all) of Anglicans do view deaconesses as female deacons, and so would include that in a count of deacons. I'm not sure how best to address those differences, but I don't see those concerns as blocking your proposal, I'm just raising them for your awareness as potential gotchas worth thinking about. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I know I'm a bit late here, but would we want to draw a distinction between permanent and transitional deacons? Does the AP differentiate the data in such a manner? Maximilian775 (talk) 19:48, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

That's a good question. How does the AP count deacons? Ergo Sum 21:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Leadership

The current leadership of the Diocese of Sodor and Man is Mark Davies, bishop of Middleton, after the retirement of Peter Eagles in October 2023. 147.161.145.93 (talk) 09:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)