I have just returned from the international symposium on the Holy Shroud, held at a retreat center in rural Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. It was three straight days of intellectual overload. Everyone who attended it said the same thing – it was going to take all of us a few good nights of sleep to integrate everything that was explained.
From 7 a.m. until 9 p.m., there were three simultaneous lectures available in different campus locations. They were for beginner, intermediate and advanced audiences, which numbered about 450 people. They came from Europe, Latin and North America. The presenters were from the U.S., Italy, France, Spain and the UK. Among them were both Catholics and non-Catholics. They were all professors with PhDs in physics, medicine and history. Every one of them basically said, “This is the most important artifact in the world and needs to be announced as such.”
As an amateur presenter for many years now, in possession of a few life-sized replicas that always, on their own, bowl over the audience, I could only agree. The recent interview of Dr. Jeremiah Johnson with Tucker Carlson was an enormously important event and should be seen.
It is important to immediately state that anything that can possibly discredit the Catholic Church, Christians in general or the Holy Shroud, is always pounced upon by the secular media. Thus, the 1988 carbon 14 tests, which erroneously dated the Shroud as a medieval hoax, is still trotted out as “proof” – even while honest scientists, who at first defended the data, have since disowned the C-14 results. However, news of the Shroud’s amazing properties does make it to the surface, eventually, but usually a year or two after Shroud devotees knew about it.
Right now, the Shroud is at an all-time high point of respect. This happened once before, between 1978 and 1988, when rocket scientists from NASA, the AF Academy, the JPL and Los Alamos National Laboratory, announced that the data they collected could positively declare what the Shroud was not:
It is not a painting.
It is not a scorch.
It was not made by human hands.
They further declared that it is anatomically flawless, there is real blood on it, and the photographic negative effect could not be explained. Since then, the absurdity of the 1988 C-14 result has taken over 30 years to debunk, and many mainstream media sources have finally come to understand that. Like the Piltdown Hoax of the 1920s, the 1988 C-14 results will become a necessarily forgotten blunder of scientific history. The reasons are multiple, and the reader can find out why, online, at www.shroud.com.
Don’t think for one minute that Shroud researchers fully agree on all the details. Some physicists believe that the resurrection of Jesus created an entirely new set of the laws of physics, others stick with a naturalistic explanation. Some believe the Passion occurred in 30, others in 33 AD. Some think that the Edessa Cloth and the Shroud are one in the same thing, others do not. The Veronica Veil is also sometimes matched-up with the facial portion of the Shroud, others think that would be a mistake. The debates are not seen as a threat, but as a welcome necessity to discover truth.
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Art historians also play an important part, for depictions of Jesus changed when the cloth emerged in the mid-500s. Details unique to the Shroud have actually been portrayed on the face of Jesus in Byzantine coins in the 600s. Efforts at portraying the Shroud by the world’s best Renaissance artists, such as Albrecht Durer, cannot come anywhere close to the real McCoy. These copies were used to allow Christians, who would never lay eyes on it, to get a rough idea of what it looks like.
Had anyone really believed the C-14 results, art historians would have gone on a worldwide hunt to find the genius who could figure out all the details, from pollen spores to limestone dust, and who would have had to daub human blood onto the cloth before the body image was painted on it. He would have had to know ancient stitching styles and techniques, as well as the particular weeds and flowers unique to the environs of Jerusalem. Such an artist would have been several light years ahead of Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Rembrandt.
Well, there was one. It is the same Artist who gave us beautifully plumed birds and flowers adorned more splendid than Solomon, “purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain.” The same One who devised the self-contained anatomy of humans and animals and gave man free will and an intellect to worship, not science, not creation, and certainly not himself – but rather the Creator.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
10 Comments
“ The debates are not seen as a threat, but as a welcome necessity to discover truth.” That’s also called the scientific method which religionists never use. No fair Bird, you don’t get to apply evidence based reasoning for the shroud but dismiss it for other biblical claims like virgin birth and talking snakes.
Not fair, Manny. It is not religion or the Catholic Church that is declaring the Shroud as proof of the resurrection.
It’s science.
Did you read the article?
Since when do you use science to corroborate your religious claims? Virgin birth, the flood, dead man comes alive – these and many other beliefs wilt under the heat of the scientific method.
Haha… sure Bob. Relics have been promoted for the last couple thousand years as being real, just like the shroud.
Closer to the truth would be Catholic church’s handling of science. Pope Urban VIII told Galileo that if Galileo preferred the Pope would make it sacrilege to not believe in Galileo’s theory of heliocentrism (the sun being the center of our universe with earth and other planets orbiting around, etc.). The church is far from a reliable proponent of the scientific method. Ask the Pope on what day did God create the fossils and settle in to hear some serious flawed logic and made up nonsense slung about.
Amen
The reality is just the opposite, dear Proud and the Many similarly confused: The Church confirms miracles by means of the scientific method! For example, the many purported miracles of Lourdes are subjected to strict scientific scrutiny by a board of physicians composed of any who wish who are in good standing – non-believers welcome! They are asked to ascertain only what really happened and whether there is a natural explanation for it – or not. Persons claiming a miracle are followed to the day of their death, in order to confirm the conclusion of the board in the case of no natural explanation, to make sure none emerges over the lifetime of anyone experiencing a cure.
Science is the handmaid of Revelation, not Her enemy! Likewise for true scientifically-corroborated miracles, which constitute lower-case revelations to anyone not prejudiced against them. Albert Einstein spoke for all true scientists when he famously stated: “I want to know how God created this world.”
By definition, there can be no scientifically corroborated miracles. A miracle is a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency
Did you know that the Galileo Affair was over him teaching it as a theory — not a proven fact? Did you know that he also had an utterly false theory that the tides were caused by the centrifugal force of the earth’s rotation? Theories are great, and need time to be proven. So — the heliocentric theory has been proven, but the tidal theory is, as always, conveniently ignored by the Church’s critics. I wonder why they do that?
There’s a solid primary difference, Bob. Science comes up w/ a theory and encourages every other science minded individual to disprove it whereas the church comes up w/ a crazy story and props it up w/ a logical dysphoria and when questioned their retort is that you must have faith.
For every scientific fact there are several disproven theories. That’s the way it works and it would not be the case if science had the equivalent of a faith dictum.
Did you know that the better minds of the modern era hold Galileo in high esteem and consider the Pope to be a charlatan? Pick from a broad offering… Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and a ton more. On the other side of the coin you’ve got the faith aspect which promotes a “God’s own people” version of race baiting goy slop.
Ride that gravy train, brother. In the fullness of time history’s most divisive teachings will die and they’re being abandoned in droves now. On a personal note it is funny to many that God’s own people apparently weren’t saved during the events of the 1940’s and many others as well. Neitzsche was closer to right than the Pope ever had been. Bilk partitioners while you’re still able.
It’s a crock of bad potatoes. No God, no miracles, just life.