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-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.
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.
And that's before you even get into pro-cathedrals and things...
70% of Ireland is nominally Catholic, and look at the confusion over this, say: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dublin/2023/06/22/dublin-...
Like, the church had to come out and clarify that Dublin didn't have a cathedral.
But still I think these are bad examples. If asked before this thread I would have said sagrada familia is a cathedral. But that's out of ignorance about that building, not about what a cathedral is. The dublin confusion looks similar to me: those people may know well what a cathedral is and just thought the pro-cathedral was one.
Nah, some event, I assume. It's a big church in the city centre, and I'd assume it has virtually no parishioners these days, so wouldn't surprise me if they use it for other stuff.
You can see it directly in church architecture. Compare Catholic Church interiors from the early 20th century and ones now. Now do the same comparison for Orthodox ones. It’s clear that the former desperately don’t want to be Catholic anymore.
The seminarians have shifted very far ideologically away from the cohort who moved the altars, ripped out communion rails, and stripped the ornamentation. That's pretty much consistent with the cohort of Catholics who attend mass weekly (a bare minimum requirement).
Those rails, altars, and decorations are being renovated back into place in some places.
And it’s not only administrivia, for example only half of US Catholics have heard about transubstantiation and only a third believe in it. [1]
1. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/05/transubst...
The USCCB is trying to work on this, we're almost 2 years into a 3-year Eucharistic "revival" (that word has weird connotations for me, but it's the word they used), https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/
That's a startling figure, but I've been out of the church for a while. I recall that being taught during first communion and confirmation.
For most, faith and culture are intertwined as they go about their day. You fast because of course you do, not because you know the thousand-year history of that practice and the relevant scriptural phrases.
The only other country I can think of that comes close would be Poland, if that counts as Western.
Of course today few in Europe would go to war over religious differences. The world has changed (for the better unless by odd chance you happen to be the same religion as me - note I do not state which religion that is - this omission makes this a statement you can agree with whereas if I stated the religion you would disagree)
If that trivia was that a cathedral is required to make a city, or that the presence of a cathedral makes a place a city, then that is _wrong_, though commonly believed. It was the case during the 16th century, kind of (Henry VIII did it) but it became far messier after that; by the 19th century non-cities with cathedrals and cities without cathedrals both existed.
Change two words in your opening sentence and the rest reads like the system is working as intended!
I find it shocking that writers there have heard different words for "big impressive Catholic church" but lack the intellectual curiosity to learn the difference. Words are what they deal in all day.
Getting the difference between a Cathedral and a Basilica wrong is also not an example of "news media being anti-religion" because most religious people, including probably most American catholics, hardly know the difference since it's a piece of nomenclature that only matters if for some reason you've been charged with buying the right ceremonial hat for the guy in the back office.
Obviously they should correct it, because it's journalism's job to educate people, but I would stay far away from claiming it's any kind of institutional hostility to religion to make a typographical error or repeat a common misconception. Newspapers make these kinds of minor errors about all topics all the time: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/reader-center/corrections...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/10/quarter-christia...
However fact still remains that a huge number of people who consider themselves Christian do not believe in the resurrection, and that in itself makes it entirely reasonable to word things that way whether you agree that those people are Christian or not.
I think this is more a minor phrasing thing than anything: "where many Christians believe that Jesus was buried".
I've seen the Sagrada familia, and it ain't small!
But colloquially, Sagrada Familia is what most people would consider a cathedral.
There can be, though it's not common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-cathedral
> Although known as the "Basilica of St Denis", the cathedral has not been granted the title of Minor Basilica by the Vatican.
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".
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_Lat...
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 :)
Seems like the four major basilicas have historical (maybe even pre-Schism?) associations, while the minor ones are designated by the pope.
Pitt didn't call their big building the Cathedral of Learning because their equivalent of a bishop in their organizational hierarchy sits there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur...