Talk:Titular ruler

Catholics in Muslim states

'''In the Catholic Church, the Pope may give a cardinal another sort of titluar honour. That is, he is created a Bishop or Archbishop in partibus'''' infidelibus ('in the lands of the infidels'). This refers to dioceses which historically used to be under Christian rule but which were conquered by the Ottoman Empire or other Muslim states. Now these dioceses either no longer exist, have no Christian population or are settlements too small to have a bishop. The Pope continues to appoint clerics to these 'dioceses'. Incumbants however, have no responsibilities toward them. They are certainly not required to reside in or even visit them.

Churchhound 4-6-06

Plans

I am going to add some historical and current examples of titular rulers, with documentation, to meet the problems of referenceing. It may be several weeks before I get to this. Unschool 18:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Queen of England

The Queen of England shouldn't be used as an example for a titular leader as by definition A titular ruler, or titular head, is a person in an official position of leadership who possesses few, if any, actual powers. As the Queen serves as the head of Armed forces and that all public offices in the government be it MP's or the Prime-minister swear oath to the monarch it would defeat the purpose and definition. There has been no physical exercise of authority in recent times that overrule the government however, this doesn't mean it cannot be exercised. --Olowe2011 (talk) 10:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Meaning of Tituar and poor examples

The proper sense of "titular" is essentially the same as "nominal" or "in name only." It is used for situations where a person occupies an office with certain formal or ascribed powers, but cannot or does not exercise those powers in fact, despite that the office is supposed to bestow those powers. Titular does not properly describe the situation wherein a person has an office which formally comes with very few or no powers, which might well be described as "sinecure." Thus the use of the President of Germany as an example of "titular leader" is a poor and ambiguous, if not erroneous, example. The office of President of Germany comes with well-defined, publicly known powers and these powers are routinely exercised by the President of Germany. To twist this situation into one which there is supposed to be some disparity between theoretical and actual power is wrongheaded.

Titular vs Ceremonial

A lot of this article including the examples like Hirohito and certain countries' presidents seems to assume that a titular leader is more or less synonymous with a ceremonial leader. I'm not sure I agree. By definition, a ceremonial leader is someone with a real job with real duties that are mostly ceremonial. Also by definition, a titular leader has the title but nothing else--there are no duties, ceremonial or otherwise, associated with that title. For example, Louis XVII was the titular king of France. He was referred to as king by monarchists but that was in name only. There were no duties of any kind because at the time of his brief "reign", the monarchy was out of power and exercised no duties of any kind. Later when the monarchy was restored his titular reign was acknowledged when the next king called himself Louis XVIII not Louis XVII. A more modern example of the difference would be Queen Elizabeth II. Her role is ceremonial but not titular. Her position as queen is widely acknowledged and she has many duties, albeit mostly ceremonial, that she is expected to attend to. On the other hand, if due to advancing age (she is already 91) the queen is forced to leave public life and have Prince Charles as regent perform all her ceremonial duties, she would at that point be a titular queen--retaining the title for the rest of her life but no longer expected to perform any duties.Dash77 (talk) 23:00, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I see your point, but not sure I agree. Merriam Webster says that a titular ruler is one "having an important or impressive title but not having the power or duties that usually go with it". The argument here might be, what powers "usually" go with being the monarch (using your Queen Elizabeth example)? One might argue that the only powers that go with that title are ceremonial. But historically, monarchs have had absolute power, and the British monarch's absolute powers waned only gradually, from Magna Carta to the early 19th century. And in fact, Elizabeth actually does have many powers that she simply cannot exercise (such as the right to veto legislation) simply because her position is titular. Ostensibly she has the power to decide whom to ask to form a government. She has only once even considered exercising her discretion in this, and though the power remains the monarch's on the books, I doubt any future king or queen will do so.

Now the President of some of our newer democracies, like Israel and Germany, those might better be called ceremonial than titular, because those offices were created without real power. Unschool 03:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

EDIT. I see that the person in the section above this has made a similar point to the one I just made, at least, as far as I understand what they are saying. Unschool 03:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Dash77 and with 40.139.134.26 who said about the same in the previous discussion section. The presidents of Ireland and Israel are largely ceremonial leaders with limited powers, which is definitely something different from a titular leader. Apparently, Hirohito is sometimes called a titular leader both regarding his position in democratic Japan and when one states that before 1945, real power was exercised by the military elite and that he was only a puppet figure. But in general, it would be more exact to use the term titular for secular rulers in the same way as for bishops. Bever (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2018 (UTC)