Lots of really good work here. Thank you very much to everyone who has been involved. In what follows I am not trying to be theological - just to draw attention to some possible complications, awkwardnesses and sensitivities.
On a quick think about all this, I think I have identified three areas of difficulty. All are on relative detail. One is, what counts as Reformed Faith? Anglicanism is a particularly difficult example: in the UK at least, some Anglicans may see themselves as in the reformed tradition while others would emphatically not. There may be other denominations with similar difficulty. Do we need to use Reformed Faiths? Might it be better just to use individual denomination names in Fifth Level Christianity subcategories?
The second difficulty relates to how we categorise institutions like dioceses which have changed from one denomination to another, or where there may be two dioceses of different denominations based in the same place (eg Portsmouth, Hampshire, England). Let’s take Rochester as an example of the first. Clearly there needs to be a geographical component to the category nomenclature to distinguish between Rochester dioceses in different locations. Now take the Diocese of Rochester in Kent, England. It is now in the Church of England. In the 16th century it switched from being Roman Catholic to something independent of Popes but not called Anglican back to being Catholic but with the Pope’s role limited. It was not until the religious settlement of the reign of Elizabeth I that the diocese settled down as being what we would now call part of the Church of England. If we distinguish (as I think the document suggests) between the Rochester (Kent) diocese when it was Roman Catholic and the diocese when it has been part of the Church of England, can we expect someone dealing with a 16th century profile to negotiate their way through this, how would we deal with the in-between period between Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the Elizabethan settlement, and how would we deal with religious professionals in the diocese who lived through the changes and adapted to them? Might it be better just to have a category for Diocese of Rochester, Kent, England? For individual churches we would not, I think, attempt to distinguish between pre-Anglican and Anglican periods of their history. I suspect similar issues will arise in mainland Europe, where the religious history of the 16th and 17th centuries was in places quite complicated.
Move on to Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, where there are two cathedrals and two dioceses, one Church of England and one Roman Catholic. We do need to distinguish between them. For Portsmouth, where both dioceses are historically relatively recent creations, it would be straightforward just to label one Church of England and the other (Roman) Catholic, because none of the historical problems which arise with Rochester, Kent will apply. I think that will be true of almost all areas in the UK where there are Roman Catholic and Anglican dioceses with the same name. But there are probably exceptions. I am sure different denominations have dioceses with the same name elsewhere in the world.
I am afraid I do not have totally neat answers on all this.
The third point I would like to flag is that the terms Catholics and Catholic Church may also be a bit awkward. In the UK, if I am striving to be accurate, I use ‘Roman Catholic’, because members and ministers of a number of other denominations, including the Church of England, often think of themselves as part of the (wider) Catholic Church, and the creeds used regularly in Church of England worship refer to belief in the holy catholic church.
I am sorry if some of this sounds pedantic. But I hope it is helpful to explore these points.
