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Comment by varenc | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: The definition of a cathedral includes hosting or being associated with a particular bishop. So if it hasn’t done that I don’t think it’s really “cathedral”.

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This why St Peter’s Basilica, though a very very large church, is not the world’s largest cathedral, because the cathedral of Rome is St John Lateran.

Cathedral comes from cathedra meaning chair.

This Told In Stone episode "The Roman Toilet That Became a Papal Throne" is relevant here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZbzCp8HtRQ

I guess saying cathedral is more impressive than saying a guy built a church, albeit big or fancy.

Same with the also mentioned Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I've often seen it referred to as a cathedral but it is just a large church. The actual cathedral in Barcelona is elsewhere. Although now it is deemed a basilica, which I understand is generally just a very special and honored church.

Well, he’s Catholic and I think the Catholic Church has specific rites that must be performed even to call a building a church. So really he just built a really cool building inspired by his faith.

3d cathedral fan art?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consecration#Churches,_altars,...

From the article, he built a house of worship which he intended to offer for consecration. If that had happened, it would have been an oratory, probably, since a church has a resident priest.

The intention is important, I'm not sure what to call it but "chapel" as distinct from oratory is probably closest. To a Catholic these are the same thing, but: any Christian would recognize this as a chapel, just not a Catholic one, and we have the precise term "oratory" to cover that.

Yeah same thought here. Cathedrals were built by the Church and the community of a city, usually over multiple generations. They’re meant to be overwhelming and humbling to an individual, reminding you that you’re only a small part of a bigger whole.

Cathedrals are also usually “alive”, constantly renovated, modified, expanded etc.

If I build a waterpark, but it's not yet opened and I haven't yet hooked it up to any actual water, I've still built a water park.

If you're desperate to be pedantic about it, you could say this guy tried to build a cathedral. But I think the headline is close enough to being true.

If you build a waterpark and call it "bishop's waterpark" without a bishop in it, I think the same thing still applies. It is just a waterpark.

And let's not even get into all the bishop-free houses with cathedral ceilings. People have no respect these days.

I think a better analogy would not be a waterpark but a „city hall”.

So if I build a city hall in a city, then probably someone might have a problem with that. Because for something to be a city hall it must be built by the municipality or local people or something along those lines. Same with a cathedral - it’s not just a very big church, it actually has a function in the bigger organization etc.

That being said I definitely would not have even clicked the link, read the article, or commented here if it was titled “guy built church” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Surely there are other definitions listed for informal use? One can often see for example race tracks like Monza in Italy referred to as "the Cathedral of speed" when clearly no bishop lives there.

"Cathedral of speed" is just an analogy. If I say that a book contains a tonne of information then it's clear I don't mean 1000kg (but I'm still referring to that definition). If I say my builder delivered a tonne of bricks, but really I just mean quite a lot, then that's confusing.

(I do disagree with the GP comment though as maybe this guy was trying to build an actual cathedral. But there's no quote in the article that really indicates either way.)

I understand analogies.

I just contest that there is only one understanding of what cathedral is.

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