The Shroud, Dr. Pangloss and Sammy Glick.

 Norman Mailer first came to the attention of the publishing world when as a young author he wrote a piece called “Advertisements for Myself.” I am no Norman Mailer (only one wife and I never attended a cocktail party sans pants) but I started a comment on a piece published today on Dan Porter’s blog that went too far astray from the Dan's specific topic but says some things that have bothering me for awhile, maybe  four  decades or so. For the Dan's  "pig" posting see: http://shroudstory.com/2013/05/21/the-pig-experiment-was-not-barries-experiment/

There is a controversy brewing about a Smithsonian Channel documentary about the Shroud of Turin. It sounds like another attempt by the Main Stream Scientific Community (the “MSSC”) to debunk the Shroud. The most interesting thing about this controversy seems to be the FACT that the militant atheists can't escape the Shroud and so must destroy its authenticity. They can not accept a world (or existence) in which the Shroud of Turin proves not only that Christ existed, but that in three days his body parted company with his burial cloth. 

I come to this controversy as a lawyer who has had a life long interest in science and, alas, politics. I have ridden too many horses going-off in too many different directions. I also write and did win an honorable mention award from New York Press Association for –In-Depth Reporting. That piece was about corruption in the appointment of mortgage foreclosure receivers and was a least one cause of reform in the appointment of receivers in the New York State. I also remember someone remarking that one of my briefs read like a novel (it was meant as a compliment – I think.).

The late New York Supreme Justice Theodore Roosevelt Kuperfman described one article I wrote as “the best piece of political reporting I have ever read.” When I once wrote in another piece as an aside that white politicians supported corrupt minority politicians in the inner-city much as the United States beginning with Theordore Roosevelt supported tin-pot dictators in Latin America, I received a critical message from Justice Kupperfman objecting that Teddy Roosevelt never supported “tin-pot dictators. It was signed T.R. Kupferman with the T.R. underscored.

Years ago before the Internet, there was a radio advertisement in New York for Vantage Press which published books for writers who couldn’t find a publishers. It began with a stentorian voice asking the question: “Are you an unpublished author?” I thought that was a hoot, a contradiction in terms (a classical oxymoron). I longed for the opportunity to use it at a cocktail party when asked: “What do you do?” “I am an unpublished author.” And wait for the reply: “What did you unpublish?”

Of course I was published but not as a trade book or novel. I was for awhile a contributing editor to the now defunct East Side Express thus the N.Y. Press award. Sometimes my Op-Ed pieces were noticed. In 1993, one of them on the 30^th anniversary of the JFK assassination  caught the eye of the “Oswald was not a lone gunman crowd.” It was published in Newsday and was two pages with an artistic rendition commissioned by the publisher.  (It was Kennedy in the limousine with a bull's eye superimposed that was the CBS logo). It was referred to by one of the senior members of that crowd as the best summary of their position he/she  had ever seen. You find it here: http://www.johnklotz.com/new-jfk.htm The piece wound up on the then Washington Post/ LA Times news wire although it didn’t make it to the Washington Post proper. (Today it might have might have made a blog or two and received much wider circulation.)

I have always been struck by a rough analogy between the way the Sarah Palin’s dreaded Main Stream Media (MSM) treats the Kennedy assassination and how the MSSC treats the  Shroud. There are established truths (Oswald was a lone nut and the Shroud of Turin is a forgery) that when you challenge them you get  pushed aside: “One those nuts.” I was surprised to discover that one of the leading Shroud authenticity advocates (not Barrie Schwartz nor Dan Porter) turned out to be strongly interested in the Kennedy Assassination.

Incidentally, as a Republican Member of Congress from Manhattan’s silk stocking district, Kupperfman was a sponsor of the Freedom of Information Act, inspired by his dissatisfaction with the Warren report and friendship with Mark Lane.

The analogy is not perfect. The Kennedy Assassination remains for many a forbidden topic and those who challenge the convention wisdom are savagely marginalized even though a majority of the American population do not accept Oswald’s lone guilt. There are more MSSCs open to the possibility of the authenticity of the Shroud. But the militant atheists and their agnostic fellow travelers can not tolerate it because they know that lurking behind the issue of authenticity of the Shroud is the issue of the Resurrection. The implications of that are far too devastating for those who can not deal with the reality of Jesus Christ.

I once published an only slightly tongue in cheek piece on my blog (it’s expanded to Chapter One of  my manuscript in prgress) called  “The Shroud of Turin, the Resurrection and Joe Kennedy.” http://johnklotz.blogspot.com/2011/06/shroud-of-turin-resurrection-and-joe.html The working title of the chapter is “Rules of the Game.” I will make a dreaded lawyer-like statement (which has also been stated by others):  By the standards of proof we use in both civil and criminal courts in the United States, the authenticity of the Shroud is a proven fact. In a civil case, it would be a directed verdict, perhaps.

I am up to Chapter 10 of my manuscript titled “The Carbon Dating Fiasco.”  It opens with a quote from Thomas de Wesellow:

"The carbon dating of the Shroud will probably go down in history as one of the greatest fiascos in the history of science. It would make an excellent case study for any sociologist interested in exploring the ways in which science is affected by professional biases, prejudices and ambitions, not to mention religious (and irreligious) beliefs."

Right now I am dealing with whom I regard as the two principal villains in the fiasco: Harry Gove and the Rev. H. David Sox. Harry Gove is long deceased. If H. David wants to contact me, I will give him a chance to comment when I finish the Chapter. In my opinion, his position is either that of Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s “Candide” or Sammy Glick in Budd Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?”

I have been involved in preparing for a trial in a case which has been pending for seven years. In the meantime I have two of Sox’s books on the Shroud and was able to order a used copy of his first: “The File on the Shroud” from Timbuktu or somewhere which is being delivered by a piggy back express  or something. Just think, for under fifteen dollars, I will have collected the complete published works by H. David Sox on the Shroud including a 1998 article in The Tablet. Gove's memoir I received via Amazon Kindle.

The Internet continues to amaze. Two days ago I ordered a copy of an autobiographical memoir by someone one who is definitely not a villain: the late Sue Benford. It’s been mailed to me by Priority Mail. Sue is worth it.

Still plugging away.

Behold the signs of the times.

How wondrous are the mysterious ways of God!

Maybe there was a reason for the flawed carbon dating that calls to mind something I have already written: The issue is not provenance but providence. Could it be that the erroneous carbon dating was a way of pushing the ball down the court to give science a time to catch-up with the “sign” of the Shroud and insure the controversy which would allow it to be again a center of attention?

And who should emerge as the preeminent spokesman for the Shroud but Barrie Schwortz, a man who in 1978 was a gangly young photographer and in the interim has now aged, and created the number one Shroud source on the web:  shroud.com And when it comes to providence, how is it that Barrie was first to register that name?

I kidded Barrie that his April sojourn  was like a missionary trek of St. Paul. But the astounding coverage given his interview with the Catholic New Service and other media outlets on his missionary journey has raised interest in the Shroud. Certainly his perspective, as one raised in a Jewish family who was reluctant to get involved, provides power to his message.

And now America, the Jesuit Magazine that Fr. Peter Rinaldi avoided in 1934 because of the sway of Shroud critic Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J.,  reports on his views.  http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/mystery-shroud

Behold the signs of the time! He is coming, but He  is coming not on a cloud but through science and the Internet.

Alleluia!

The Shroud of Turin: Henrietta Lacks and ASM carbon dating

It may seem stretch but there is a connection between the saga of Henrietta Lacks and ASM carbon testing. It’s simply this: greed. 

I had a conversation with someone well versed in the Shroud from way back. I spoke with him about trying to get the three labs to open up on their samples to see if they have a relationship to Ray Rogers findings. He said it would never happen because ASM carbon testing is now a billion dollar industry and the labs could never admit they were wrong because the financial repercussions would be horrendous. I immediately thought of Henrietta Lacks.

Here’s why.

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Baltimore who died of cancer several decades ago. The Hospital preserved some of her stem cells and they were replicated and became the source of a billions of dollars industry. Her stem cells have built sky scrappers.

What did the estate of Henrietta Lacks get out of this: na da, nothing.

The C-14 testing of the Shroud was an entirely different procedure and industry. However, we are being naive (as I was) in thinking the labs would ever take any steps to jeopardize the validity of their most famous case – the Shroud of Turin. There is too much money at stake.

I am reminded in the story in the Gospel where Christ cured a women of possession but that the demons then went out an possessed a heard of swine which became enraged and stampeded over a cliff. The pig herders then drove Christ away. Salvation could wait, the money mattered more.

I think that enormous progress has been made but the C-14 tests have not yet made it to the dust bin of history. You can not serve God and Mammon. The scientists who stand-by the C-14 testing knowing it was flawed, have made a choice. So did the scientists who exploited Henrietta Lacks’ stem cells and never paid her heirs a dime.