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This is an archive of past discussions about Catholic Church. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest comment: 4 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I'd like to ask a question because I was left with some doubt when I looked up the common name for the Church of Rome in English. In Spanish (my native language), it's common to call it the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church because it maintains that it is the only Church founded by Christ, entrusted to the Apostle Saint Peter, to whom He entrusted its spread and governance along with the other apostles. This is because the title of the true Church of this apostle was debated with the Eastern Orthodox Church (Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church). The issue is that in the United States there has been a Restorationist church since 1831 that calls itself the "Catholic Apostolic Church", so I don't know if the term "Apostolic" is used for the Church of Rome in the Anglo world or only in Romance languages. Lulasaurius (talk) 02:22, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. But wouldn't it be a good idea to call the page "Roman Catholic Church"? The Eastern Orthodox Church is also called Catholic (officially the Orthodox Catholic Church). Lulasaurius (talk) 04:03, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
This has been discussed ad nauseam, with the short answer being "no". See the discussions listed above for some of the discussions the lead to most recent precedent. The longer answer is that any reasonable reliable source discussing things at an encyclopedic level could refer to the subject as the "Catholic Church" and there would be no doubt about what they were referring to. Reliable sources primarily refer to this subject with the term Catholic Church. Reliable sources sometimes use the term Roman Catholic to distinguish Catholics from other Christians or simply to describe the church, but other reliable sources use Roman Catholic to distinguish the Latin Church from the Eastern Catholic Churches. As such, we include the alternate name bolded in the first sentence of this article, but do not use it as the preferred name for the subject. It can get more detailed than that, but that's the high-level summary of thousands of lines of debates over the last two and a half decades. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 14:33, 4 April 2026 (UTC)
