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The article mistakenly refers to Sagrada Familia as the cathedral of Barcelona. It's not. It's a minor basilica, not a cathedral.
by anon291 3y ago
The article mistakenly refers to Sagrada Familia as the cathedral of Barcelona. It's not. It's a minor basilica, not a cathedral.
- diggan 3y agoThe actual cathedral of Barcelona is "The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia", which yeah, is not Sagrada Familia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Cathedral
- amarant 3y agoI'm curious what "minor" means exactly in this context? I've seen the Sagrada familia, and it ain't small!
- Cheer2171 3y agoOrganizational hierarchy of the Catholic Church: a building is a cathedral if and only if it is the seat of a bishop, no matter how grand or modest the building is. There can not be more than one cathedral in a diocese. But colloquially, Sagrada Familia is what most people would consider a cathedral.
- rsynnott 3y ago> There can not be more than one cathedral in a diocese. There can be, though it's not common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-cathedral
- prmoustache 3y agoAlso a basilica can be a cathedral and vice versa. Saint-Denis in Paris is both a basilica and cathedral.
- areyousure 3y agoThe page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Saint-Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Saint-Denis states > Although known as the "Basilica of St Denis", the cathedral has not been granted the title of Minor Basilica by the Vatican.
- prmoustache 3y agoDoes it matter when it has been called like that for more than 12 centuries?
- pas 3y agoWell there's a lot of people with the family name King, but you know, they still have to play (and win!) the fancy hat game to be actually granted royal rights.
- prmoustache 3y agoIn that case it is different because it is/was a building used by the french church. Not some random one named like this by someone with no relation to the church.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- epolanski 3y agoA cathedral is the official seat of the local the bishop and the Sagrada Familia isn't one. A basilica on the other hand is an honorific title granted to some churches by the pope for historical/religious reasons. An interesting note: Saint Peter in Rome, the most famous church in the christian world is not a cathedral itself as it is not where the pope has its seat, that's actually another basilica in Rome, Saint John Lateran, which makes it the most important church in the catholic hierarchy with the title of "Omnium Urbis et Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput", or "Mother and leader of all the churches in the world".
- bombcar 3y agoThe other interesting thing about that is the cathedral seat of the Pope is outside the Vatican City - so it is in his religious territory as Bishop of Rome but not in his secular state.
- anon291 3y agoIt's also why St Peters is not the cathedral of Rome. It's not in Rome.
- pmontra 3y agoIt's been not in Rome only since Vatican City came into existence in 1929. It's been in Rome every single year before then. Saint John Lateran is also not in Italy [1] due to an extraterritoriality treaty in 1929, part of the same treaty that established Vatican City. By the way, that church is exactly 1700 years old this year. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbasilica_of_Saint_John_Lateran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbasilica_of_Saint_John_Lat...
- anon291 3y agoI should have said it's why it can't become the cathedral of rome.
- 3y ago
- diggan 3y agoReligions like to "rank" things so it's clear who's on top and who's on the bottom. In terms of churches, same thing applies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur... In short, the "major" is reserved for four top churches in Rome. "Minor" is used to signal that the church is of significant importance, but not as important as the major ones. It's not related to the size at all :)
- eadmund 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur... indicates that there are four major basilicas and almost 2,000 minor ones. Seems like the four major basilicas have historical (maybe even pre-Schism?) associations, while the minor ones are designated by the pope.
- eadmund 3y ago> The article mistakenly refers to Sagrada Familia as the cathedral of Barcelona. It's not. It's a minor basilica, not a cathedral. There may not be enough institutional knowledge at CNN about Catholicism that the editors would know that there is a difference between a basilica and a cathedral. This is the sort of thing that the folks at GetReligion.com were trying to address: not advocating any particular religion, but helping newsrooms ‘get’ religion, in the senses of understanding it and of not getting things wrong. The example at https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2023/12/29/why-we-did-what-we-did https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2023/12/29/why-we-di... is a really good one: the New York Times in 2014 published ‘the vast Church of the Holy Sepulcher marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried.’ There was no-one on the editorial team that handled that article who knew enough about Christianity to know that Christians don’t believe Jesus is buried anywhere.
- pradn 3y agoThere is this odd split in American society that makes this possible. You can go through your entire life, end up a professional journalist at the Times and not actually have asked someone about their sincerely held faith and practice. Kids rarely talked about religion in HS, outside of like the Interfaith club. (I ran my high school's and we had an annual panel of a rep from each major religion. I was was quite popular.) Colleges, especially large ones, do have tons of students of different faiths, but I felt contacts were still minimal. My randomly-assigned freshman year room-mate was a devout Christian and would sing in worship - super wonderful guy. But after that, not much. It's so easy to just hang out with people similar to you - at all stages of life. Even when you meet someone of a certain faith, you're likely to experience that interaction through holiday, festival, food, dress and so on - think asking a Muslim about Ramadan or being invited to a Hanukah party - but you're not likely to ask doctrinal or theological questions.
- rsynnott 3y agoWell, the other thing is that many, perhaps most, religious people don't know very much about their religion. Very few Catholics would know the difference between a cathedral and a minor basilica, say (which is what started this thread off in the first place). Actually, I'd argue that this isn't a religious question, anyway; it's administrivia.
- mizzao 3y agoThey should switch it over to this one, because it looks far more awesome than the current one.
- Cheer2171 3y agoI literally couldn't care less, but I'll wade into the depths of pedantry with you. It did not refer to the "cathedral of Barcelona", it just called it "the cathedral". Cathedral has an official meaning in Catholicism, but the colloquial use of cathedral in the US means "large fancy church building" and not "Capitol of a Catholic jurisdiction”. Pitt didn't call their big building the Cathedral of Learning because their equivalent of a bishop in their organizational hierarchy sits there.
- seydor 3y agowhy not a major basilica. it s pretty big
- pas 3y agoit's a technical term in Catholicism, it's a rank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur...