The Turin Shroud just won’t go away. The Telegraph has two articles (at least presenting different sides of the issue, which you would never read in an Italian newspaper) about a group of Italian scientists who claim the shroud is “authentic”. Funny word, that. Authentic what? Authentic fake, or authentic burial shroud of a man who lived around the beginning of the Common Era?
Whenever I read of scientists confirming miracle stories, I begin thinking either they aren’t very serious about science or they’ve been duped by personal faith. One thing you almost never hear about Jesus iconography is that no one has anything other than a speculative idea of what he may have looked like. There are no contemporary headshots of him. So, even if this were indeed Jesus’ actual burial shroud, how could we ever know such a thing? What evidence could possibly corroborate such a hunch? None. None at all.
Yet the Turin Shroud won’t die. Thankfully, it inspired a tweet I am proud to have tapped:
Here is a suggestive photo I took this morning of the sunrise. I suppose it might look like a nuclear explosion or an alien attack (or the second coming), but it’s just the effect of light and cloud filtered through a not-so-powerful Samsung camera.
Here’s a positively Orwellian church in Umbria. I’d be totally creeped out if I were a kid growing up here and every day had to pass this staring visage. I suppose that’s the point: good old time thought police. Check out the scrap metal crucifix on the lawn outside.
I wanted to share this wonderful (and disheartening) cartoon. Anyone who has ever been to Italy has noticed that Catholic churches are far grander than any other structures. It’s no mystery that immense amounts of public money are funneled directly to the Vatican through various fiscal mechanisms such as the 8 per mille tax when they aren’t forked over directly for maintenance and the construction of new churches. Churches which are getting emptier every year, one might add. In these hard economic times, the grand old churches which make Italy such a quaint country-sized museum are beginning to look rather suspect.
"Italian towns"
Here’s Mark Twain on the Milan Cathedral (from The Innocents Abroad):
Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived.
The building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high. It has 7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more when it is finished. In addition it has one thousand five hundred bas-reliefs. It has one hundred and thirty-six spires—twenty-one more are to be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and all from the same quarry; it was bequeathed to the Archbishopric for this purpose centuries ago. So nothing but the mere workmanship costs; still that is expensive—the bill foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of francs thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from being so. We saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn them. Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the builders. He is dead now. The building was begun a little less than five hundred years ago, and the third generation hence will not see it completed.
Now doesn’t that sound like a colossal waste of resources to you?
Here’s the latest video from the Thinking Atheist. I almost take it for granted that Christmas is – like the Bible and most everything else in Christianity – a mishmash of earlier, mostly forgotten (and suppressed) traditions.
The Vatican isn’t an actual country. It just plays one on television. Here you can see about 60% of it. The rest is the garden in the back. Average annual earnings of its citizens circa 400.000 euro. Enjoy your day.
We watched “Barney’s Version” last night. It didn’t really render the uproarious nature of Richler’s novel and it was a bit sentimental. Much sadder than the book. And where in the novel Barney married his first wife in Paris, in the movie it happened in Rome. Here’s the scene, which is hilarious for Clara’s shiksa spiel.
(Two generations of my family were married in that same red room on the Campidoglio!)
Well, it seems the new government expects everyone to do their part in getting Italy out of its current economic straits – except, you guessed it, the Catholic Church. When asked a direct question on the subject, PM Mario Monti reportedly answerd that “he hadn’t yet considered” making the outlandishly privileged Church pay tax on its commercial assets (an estimated 1 out of 5 properties in Italy are in Church hands). Which is outrageous. Really, the list of offenses just gets longer and longer. Why should anyone be this privileged – above all the richest (and arguably most corrupt and morally bankrupt) country – yes, it’s another fucking country! – on Earth? Can anyone explain to me why those of us who oppose such privileges haven’t yet reached a critical mass?
There’s a new website (icostidellachiesa.it) detailing the actual cost of the Catholic Church. It’s a frightening read. And since most Italians have absolutely no idea how they are financing this freeloading institution, the time has come to educate them. This is the elephant in the room, Italy.
Whenever I read of scientists confirming miracle stories, I begin thinking either they aren’t very serious about science or they’ve been duped by personal faith. One thing you almost never hear about Jesus iconography is that no one has anything other than a speculative idea of what he may have looked like. There are no contemporary headshots of him. So, even if this were indeed Jesus’ actual burial shroud, how could we ever know such a thing? What evidence could possibly corroborate such a hunch? None. None at all.
Marc Di Martino 