Talk:Roman Catholic Diocese of Arras
Removed
[edit]From the 'History' section, I removed the following material about sacred manna and a plague-stopping candle:
Two famous relics were long greatly venerated at Arras: the "sacred manna", said to have fallen from heaven in 371 during a severe famine, and the "holy candle", a wax taper said to have been given to Bishop Lambert in 1105 by the Blessed Virgin, to stop an epidemic. Not far from Arras, the city of Saint-Omer, a diocese till the Revolution, perpetuates the memory of St. Audomare, or Omer, bishop of Thérouanne, the apostle of the Morini in the sixth century. Its cathedral, a Gothic monument of the fourteenth century, was built over the saint's tomb. The ruins of St. Vaast at Arras, and of St. Bertin at Saint-Omer, keep alive the memory of two celebrated abbeys of the same name; the Abbey of St. Bertin (founded in the seventh century) gave twenty-two saints to the Church.
Saint-Omer was a separate diocese. An abbey giving saints to the Church smacks of POV. Again, this material was in the 'History' section, and it was unreferenced. --Vicedomino (talk) 02:41, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
I removed the French Republic flag icon from the Infobox, in accordance with several sections of WP:ICON; specifically (quoting),
- "Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many."
- "Flags make simple, blunt statements about nationality, while words can express the facts with more complexity." [Arras was not part of France for many centuries, being part of English territory, and then it belonged to the Kings of France (whose flag was a large golden fleur-de-lys on a white background), and for a time to the Empire of Napoleon I, and the Empire of Napoleon III, not to the French Republic. The diocese was not an integral part of the political structure of the French state].
- "Do not rewrite history. Flags should not be used to misrepresent the nationality of a historical figure, event, object, etc. Political boundaries change, often over the span of a biographical article subject's lifetime [which includes details about individual bishops]. Where ambiguity or confusion could result, it is better not to use a flag at all, and where one is genuinely needed, use the historically accurate flag."
I might point out that, under the flag of the French Republic, the French government twice repudiated the diocese of Laval, once at the time of the Revolution, when it suppressed the diocese and all religion in the name of Reason; and the second in 1905 when it decreed the absolute separation between churches and state. The diocese of Laval was an organ of the Roman Catholic Church, not the French State.