Kathryn M. Cunningham writes over at Catholic.net:
I am fascinated by relics, the tangible remnant of people and situations that were holy. These are objects that actually touched or were part of miraculous situations and/or people, literally. One of my favorite relics to contemplate is the Shroud of Turin. Argument rages about whether the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of Christ, the sheet that actually wrapped His broken body when He was laid in the tomb. I have not the slightest doubt that it is real and part of that is because of my background as a person of science. I taught science for thirty-five years and loved it for longer than that. The whole “proof” for me lies in the information about the image; it is not paint, it is not dye, it does not soak through the cloth, it is not solid, it is made up of each of millions of individual fibers which are singed on their very tips with no other damage visible to the fiber itself. One expert, after receiving this information, pondered that this kind of image could have only been formed by an intense flash so fast and strong that would have equaled the atomic bomb! Boom, resurrection in a blinding light, that’s how the image was formed, my heart knows it’s real. My science teacher’s mind says; perfectly logical.
I may not have taught science, but I have a problem with this. To me it seems perfectly logical that anything so fast and strong the would have equaled the atomic bomb would have wiped out Jerusalem and any evidence of the Resurrection. Moreover, the information about the image does not mandate such an explanation. It could have been chemical.
I am fascinated by relics, the tangible remnant of people and situations that were holy. These are objects that actually touched or were part of miraculous situations and/or people, literally. One of my favorite relics to contemplate is the Shroud of Turin. Argument rages about whether the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of Christ, the sheet that actually wrapped His broken body when He was laid in the tomb. I have not the slightest doubt that it is real and part of that is because of my background as a person of science. I taught science for thirty-five years and loved it for longer than that. The whole “proof” for me lies in the information about the image; it is not paint, it is not dye, it does not soak through the cloth, it is not solid, it is made up of each of millions of individual fibers which are singed on their very tips with no other damage visible to the fiber itself. One expert, after receiving this information, pondered that this kind of image could have only been formed by an intense flash so fast and strong that would have equaled the atomic bomb! Boom, resurrection in a blinding light, that’s how the image was formed, my heart knows it’s real. My science teacher’s mind says; perfectly logical.
