From Vatican Insider:
New experiments on Shroud show it’s not medieval
ANDREA TORNIELLI
romENew scientific experiments carried out at the University of Padua have apparently confirmed that the Shroud Turin can be dated back to the 1st century AD. This makes its compatible with the tradition which claims that the cloth with the image of the crucified man imprinted on it is the very one Jesus’ body was wrapped in when he was taken off the cross. The news will be published in a book by Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua’s Engineering Faculty, and journalist Saverio Gaeta, out tomorrow. “Il Mistero della Sindone” (The Mystery of the Shroud) is edited by Rizzoli (240 pp, 18 Euro).
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Read the rest there.
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But Father, the Church hates science!
Wow. I believe its Jesus.
There were too much clues pointing to the Shroud’s authenticity (weaving technique, pollens, blood stains, coins imprints, etc…) while only the carbon dating pointed to a medieval forgery.
I always considered the Shroud to be true and I scheduled some years ago to travel to Turin to visit it and pray. Unfortunately my wife went ill on the eve of leaving. Anyways I am sure I will go nextly, now that everybody agree it is authentic.
Padua? Ridiculous. Only proper British Freemason scientists can be trusted.
Cool! I credit my initial spark of conversion to a documentary on the Shroud when I was a teenager. It hit me for the first time that Jesus is real and that he died for me and that his suffering was more than I could imagine.
Wow! I’ve always been a little skeptical about the shroud. I’m glad to be wrong. Wow again!
Last year I went to a presentation on the Shroud. I was particularly impressed by a hologram made from the image on the Shroud. The presenter explained that you can’t make a hologram from an image made by laying a cloth over a body, say, and transferring pigment somehow. The image would be totally distorted. Nobody knew about holograms back in the day anyhow, so how could they make an image that would produce one?
Awesome! There will be lots of people that still won’t believe it’s real, however.
I am glad. Ever since the C14 debacle, which is why sceptics state that the Shroud must be a medieval forgery, I have been waiting for newer technology to come along. I cannot wait to read the new report.
Dear Fr.
For me, it’s simple.
It’s our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ.
One wonders how it was possible for the previous so-called “Experts” to get it totally, fundamentally, wrong in the earlier “scientific” examination.
Is it possible they had a vested interest ?
Quelle surprise !!!
Surely not !!!
in Domino.
I just watched a week’s worth of specials on this topic on Women of Grace on EWTN, filmed in 2010. The evidence is fascinating and very compelling for the authenticity of the Shroud. The carbon dating was discussed, too, and the point was made that, against international protocol, at the last minute the samples were only taken from the same part of the cloth, instead of in six (or seven) different locations as the scientists decided beforehand would be best (at the last minute, the officials in Turin (I guess) only allowed samples to be taken from one spot). There is good reason to believe that that sample site was the area patched up in the Middle Ages…for one thing, the weave is different there as well as there being cotton all over it, unlike the main part of the Shroud which was linen, if I remember it all correctly.
One fascinating (to me) piece of information — the guest expert said while the image was being formed, the actual body was weightless, ie it was floating above the slab upon which it rested. Oh, and that the man on the shroud had been scourged with 12o lashes; Jewish law only allowed 40, but of course the scourging was conducted by Romans. And, that the crown of thorns was more in a “clump” from the pattern of blood evidence on the back of the head; the expert was saying the Romans probably didn’t sit around taking time to weave together a more symmetrical crown.
What suffering our Lord endured for love of us!
Suggestion: Read “A Doctor at Calvary” by Pierre Barbet, MD.
I’m not sure if it’s real or not (and I also don’t think it matters).
How did the image even supposedly form? Some sort of “energy blast” from the Resurrection imprinting its image?
Sounds pretty out there to me. But hey, maybe the Shroud is the real deal. That would be REALLY cool.
MarcAnthony: Yes, one of the documentaries I saw once had a scientist saying the process by which the image was formed, more than anything else, resembles a burst of radiation.
“The presenter explained that you can’t make a hologram from an image made by laying a cloth over a body, say, and transferring pigment somehow. The image would be totally distorted.”
That’s pretty cool. I certainly could be wrong, but it seems every time a scientist examines the Shroud, some new astounding fact is discovered. (I remember when the pollen evidence was news; that was enough for me.)
happyCatholic: In Dr. Barbet’s book (mentioned by Lepidus) he points out that a crown in Biblical times, rather than being a circlet such as we think of today, was something that covered the entire cranium. So the crown would have been more like a cap of thorns.
Another thing we should remember is that the famed “carbon dating” from 1988 has been shown to be completely invalid because the cloth sample was unwittingly taken from a carefully camouflaged medieval patch weave. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4210369.stm
So this leaves literally all of the scientific evidence weighing in favor of the relic’s authenticity.
I always believed it is the real thing. I believe the crown of thorns at Notre Dame in Paris is really Jesus’ crown too.
Be careful of this one “out of the blue” report. It sounds like “cold fusion” again to me.
“MarcAnthony: Yes, one of the documentaries I saw once had a scientist saying the process by which the image was formed, more than anything else, resembles a burst of radiation.”
Yeah, that’s what I find a bit odd. Jesus’s Resurrection causing a burst of radiation that imprints itself on a foreign object? Seems odd to me.
But hey, I wasn’t there. What do I know?
@happycatholic, the Roman scourge was made up of three thongs attached to one handle, each thong had a weight at the end. So forty lashes would deliver 120 stripes or cuts.
About 20 years ago I read a book entitled “The Way of the Cross With the Shroud of Turin”. It was both informative and spiritually motivating, and by the end of the book it didn’t matter to me whether the shroud was the real deal or not – it had had its effect in imprinting upon me a deeper appreciation of Christ’s passion and a greater faith. I do believe the shroud is authentic, and I, too, saw the documentary mentioned above suggesting Jesus’ Resurrection caused a burst of radiation resulting in an imprint onto the shroud. Whatever the mechanism, the greater miracle is the imprinting of Christ on our souls. We are the people who follow the Man on the donkey all the way to eternity.
Simple: it’s a photo negative of our Lord’s Shroud. A photo negative couldn’t be made positive until photography was invented in the late 1800’s!
Accepting the authenticity of the Shroud isn’t a matter of faith, in the sense of something revealed by God, but the events of the passion and resurrection are.
On the other score, of course, while science claims (and people claim for science) to move beyond religion, formally and finally debunking it, everywhere we turn we find deeper scientific evidence that the Catholic position is true.
Could I put in a petition for the removal of all resurrexefixes, given that Christ’s reigning from the Cross wasn’t bloodless or suffused with “energy”?
YES! I’ve always personally believed the Shroud was authentic; this, of course, is just one more in a long line of confirmations. While Faith does not and never ought to rest on such transient and fickle things as potential relics, there is nothing more cool than imagining the Resurrection of this crucified Man, for three days dead and in the ground, causing such a massive release of pure energy and light that it literally seared His Image into the cloth.
I also think that it has pretty interesting implications for the Catholic doctrine of images generally, and the practice of iconography specifically. What is the Lord left us this Image as His Divine stamp of approval on Images of Himself and of the members of His Body being produced? What if the early Church knew of the Shroud, and based the practice of iconography off of it in the first place? The possibilities are staggering to contemplate.
Legisperitus
Mar 26 – 8:20 pm
happyCatholic: In Dr. Barbet’s book (mentioned by Lepidus) he points out that a crown in Biblical times, rather than being a circlet such as we think of today, was something that covered the entire cranium. So the crown would have been more like a cap of thorns.
They have a mock up of a cap type crown in the Turin Shroud museum. The thorns are insanely long!
They have a mock up of a cap type crown in the Turin Shroud museum. The thorns are insanely long!
For the first part of my working life, I was a professional photographer. The fact that the Shroud is a photographic negative was all the proof I ever needed. That God decided to use a form of “technology” that we, as humans, would someday stumble across (as if we “invent” anything) and then use to be able to directly witness His sheer brilliance, majesty and love, hundreds of years after the fact continues to amaze me.
There is an old saying, “God is in the details.” It has been proven with the findings on the Shroud. It’s also proven in the research on the Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0447.html
Using 20th century instruments it’s possible to make out the images of some 13 people from a study of Our Lady’s eye!
@Monmir… Notre Dame has the crown of thorns?!! WOW.
This is just fascinating to me. I wish I knew more about the shroud. Does anyone know of a reliable documentary I could watch with my family to learn more?
Also glad it’s not a medieval forgery… so then; it’s a a first century forgery, right, scientists?
It’s not surprising to me that the Shroud has all the evidence of authenticity. From the Tilma, to the Shroud, to Veronica’s Veil, to the Eucharistic Miracles (which show that the blood from the Shroud, Veil, and the Eucharist are the same blood type!), it doesn’t surprise me that as our scientific knowledge has increased, it has opened the way for God to reveal to us exactly how awesome these things really are. We in this age accept them by faith, but to have science explain how it all happened – in language we can now understand – just shows how amazing all of it is. Since Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity, and therefore God, it is not surprising that His Resurrection happened in a way that is scientifically mind-boggling. I know that my understanding of the Resurrection was always rather childish, thinking that He just sat up and the angels unwrapped His burial cloths for Him. To find that it was so much more awesome than that is truly a Gift! It will certainly help to deepen my understanding of what it actually means when we say “I believe… in the Resurrection of the Dead….”
As science advances, we humans will be amazed at how all of God’s miracles are logical. They are “miracles” only to us, because our understanding is so limited, but God is the ultimate Scientist and everything that He has created has been done in an orderly and logical manner. He is not the author of Chaos, so that the more science progresses, the more it is revealed that His creations are systematic, thorough, and logical. I think an “unintended consequence” for atheistic scientists is that the more scientific discoveries they make, the more they will be confronted with the overwhelming scientific existence of God.
Look at the green images near the middle of this page:
http://www.shroudnm.com/docs/SEAM-Turin-Shroud-Presentation7-3D.pdf
It never surprises me when “Science” announces that it has found the true, physical cause of emotions, ethics, spiritual phenomena, etc. Why wouldn’t God have given us a specific set of senses or reactions that made us able to perceive his spiritual works? It’s like proving that the Big Bang occurred. My response is always, “so that’s how he did it!”
Don’t forget the sudarium in Oviedo which is also said to match the shroud.
“Sepulcrum Christi viventis, et gloriam vidi resurgentis
Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes.”
“And the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place.” John 20:7
Our Lord is so beautiful and merciful.
Kristen, EWTN’s on-line gift shop has a DVD about the Shroud (item #20311). *A Man of Pain* documentary (1996) which aired on EWTN this morning seems to be included in that video. The part of the program that I was able to see was very compelling. Sometimes EWTN programs repeat, but I’m not finding this one again in the schedule.