Joshua who blogs at “No Apologies Allowed” Weekly Apologetics Cartoons offers a different perspective, forcing me to at least reconsider my opinion that associating the shroud with the PITN folks is unfortunate. He writes:
Although skepticism about anything these days is understandable, as someone who has followed Marzulli’s work and guest blogged for him once, I can pretty much guarantee that he’s not addressing the Shroud for money. (For what it’s worth, he rarely mentions it on his broadcasts.) As Mr. Schwortz himself said above, the crowds that will be drawn to the PItN event will be like me — evangelical Christians. Most of us (myself not included) consider the Shroud to be a forgery at worst and a Catholic relic at best. Bringing up the Shroud in such an atmosphere is not going to necessarily endear either speaker to the audience, but, as Mr. Schwortz said, they can let the facts speak to themselves. And that works. It was actually his presentations and defense of the Shroud in radio interviews and debates along with LA’s rare mention of the Shroud which got me back into researching it and brought me to your great blog about a year or so ago.
If Mr. Schwortz sticks to the facts and people willingly donate their own money to maintain them and to explore this most researched and controversial artifact more, I fail to see anything wrong with that.
Anyway, just throwing this out there for everyone’s consideration.
Peace,
Joshua
Fair enough!
See PITN Taking Advantage of the Shroud of Turin in the Shroud of Turin Blog