Talk:Virgin Mary

1. The wikipedia is not a dictionary.
2. A list of bar drinks might be interesting.
3. I clicked on the article because I thought it was abut Jesus' mother, but was disappointed to find a drink definition instead. Ed Poor

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Discussion moved from User talk:65.94.51.84

Zoe expressed concern that changes from [[Virgin Mary]] to [[Blessed Virgin Mary]] were introducing POV ...

Regarding January 1, the link Blessed Virgin Mary is correct in that particular context ... others are grey, and others are outright incorrect. --TimmyD 06:48 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Zoe, I don't think 65.94.xx was trying to add POV to the articles linking to the Virgin Mary. That page is basically just a disambiguation page, so we don't want much linking to there. And our anonymous friend was dealing with it in exactly the way I would - moving the link to a more suitable page (Mary, the mother of Jesus) without changing the text of the article. If it's OK with you, I'll make it clearer that Virgin Mary is a disambiguation page and fix the links. Regards -- sannse 07:19 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Adding "The Blessed" to every Virgin Mary page made me very unhappy. -- Zoe

I can understand that. A lot of the changes were from [[Virgin Mary]] to [[Mary, the mother of Jesus|Virgin Mary]], the ones that were [[Virgin Mary]] to [[Blessed Virgin Mary]] were those where the article described visions of Mary. Maybe in these cases the link should go to [[Blessed Virgin Mary|Virgin Mary]]? How would that seem to you? Or I can put all of them to [[Mary, the mother of Jesus|Virgin Mary]], what would be most appropriate do you think? -- sannse 07:55 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Seeing as how "Blessed Virgin Mary" is the correct terminology, especially with regard to visions etc., it seems to me a step backward for it to goto [[Blessed Virgin Mary|Virgin Mary]] ... if this is the case, then all references to [[Jesus Christ]] should go instead as [[Jesus Christ|Jesus of Nazareth]] in order to follow the same conventions. --TimmyD 08:07 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

end of moved talk

I've moved this here and will wait before going ahead with any changes to give anyone interested a chance to comment. Personally I would be happy with either solution. I can see Zoe's point that adding Blessed may give the impression that we are saying Mary is Blessed (a POV statement), but can also see TimmyD's point that this is the correct terminology for visions of Mary within the Catholic Church. The text of the articles in question has been [[Virgin Mary]] for some time, and I don't see a problem with leaving it as such (although I would want to change the link to one of the other options, fixing links to disambiguation pages being my own WikiObsession ). But, as usual, I'm pretty much on the fence here and will go along with the consensus -- sannse 08:29 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

The [[Blessed Virgin Mary]] and the [[Virgin Mary]] pages are deliberately separate for an obvious reason. 'Virgin Mary' used generally by many christians to refer to Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mary is a specificially Catholic (ie, Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic') reference largely unique to those religions. The contents of both pages differ because they are describing two different concepts of the VM. As to which should be tied into articles, if the article is specificially referring to the Roman Catholic/Anglo Catholic concept of the VM, then the link should be to the BVM. If it is broadly christian and non-denominational in tone, the link should be to the VM. It is that straight forward. And it would be absurd to create a [[Blessed Virgin Mary|Virgin Mary]] link. That would be nonsensical. If the link is referring to the BVM then it should say so. And no, Zoe, Blessed is not POV if it is linking to the right page in the right context.

Also, BVM is more than just to do with visions. Put simply, RC/AC sees the BVM as a continuing living figure with an interventionist role with Christ on behalf of mankind. In contrast, VM is more historical in tone, looking back at the historic person, though some faiths to see a continuing role for the VM, albeit less than that of RC/AC. So in different contexts, different links make sense, and using the 'Blessed' is not in any way endorsing the title, merely stating its existence. ÉÍREman 21:07 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Is this in some way analogous to the difference between "Old Testament" and "Hebrew Bible" -- virtually all of the content is identical, but the terms are used by two different groups of people (and in two different contexts) to mean two different things? Slrubenstein

I bow to ÉÍREman's interpretation, and will withdraw my objections. -- Zoe

Someone bizarrely moved this page to [[Talk:Virgin Mary (cocktail)]], presumably a cock-up. I've moved it back. I have also re-instated the disambigulation page which should have been attached. ÉÍREman 01:50 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

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So we're saying that -- since there is Blessed Virgin Mary and also Mary, the mother of Jesus, which are two distinct articles -- it is just a matter of disambiguation and context? So in certain instances, it would be good to have

... most notably the Blessed Virgin Mary in the case of ...

whereas others would be better with

... the mother of the Virgin Mary who ...

Do you see what I'm saying? I hope this is at least somewhat clear ... this is a difficult topic to come to straight answers with. --TimmyD 06:48 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

That's how I understand it. And I see someone has done the disambiguation work overnight - thanks to whoever that was :) -- sannse 06:55 May 4, 2003 (UTC)