Saving Relics

Holy Jesus! The Christian theologians of America have a suddenly sinking sensation—as James Cameron, the man who gave us “The Titanic”, promotes his new “Discovery Channel” documentary on ossuaries found at a Jerusalem construction site. He contends these two stone “coffins” contain the “human” remains of not only an unresurrected Jesus, but also his stand-in father, Joseph, his mother Mary, his wife Mary Magdelene, and their only begotten son.

You can’t get more contentious than that. O.K., no DNA. The names on the tombs are as common in Jerusalem of that era as Tom, Dick, and Harry were—before status happy American parents starting naming their offspringlings after movie stars. A statistician asserts that at best it’s still a 600 to 1 shot that they are the almost Holy Family and related add-ons. At worst, a zillion to one. But what is embarrassing—aside from the huffy puffy bombast of suddenly incredulous and sneerful theologians—are the astonishing details this fuss has flung up from the dustbins of Christian history.

Take Jesus’s foreskin. (Carefully.) Would it surprise you to learn that during the High Middle Ages no fewer than fourteen churches in Europe claimed to have this idiosyncratic one of a kind relic. (It did this ex-Altar Boy.) When one such “copy” was offered to Pope Innocent the III as a pious gift, he flinched and changed the subject. Indeed the whole range of relics were multiplying at so exponential a rate that the Council of Trent blew its theological whistle at what it called the relics of pagan superstitions and excoriated the scramble for filthy lucre this dingy business had generated.

In the wake of the foreskin as relics were Veronica’s Veil that wiped the suffering brow of Jesus during his Passion, the Holy Sponge with which he was offered vinegar and water, the Lance that pierced the heart of the Crucified Saviour, the Tears of Jesus during the Passion,the Holy Umbilical Cord, and (God Save Us!) Jesus’s Milk Teeth. Once you start collecting relics, there’s no stopping the imaginatively greedy. And the Council of Trent ukases didn’t keep King Henri V in 1421 from seeking out one edition of the foreskin from a church in Colombs to ensure that his wife, Catherine of Valois, would have a safe birth. (Heh, who would have thought that a foreskin could be a perk?) Custom has it to bury the aforesaid skin in the ultimate ossuary of the mother. (The word “relic” derives from the Latin verb, “relinquere”, to leave behind.)

It was such wholly foolishness that prompted Martin Luther to nail his theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Erasmus of Rotterdam used wit as his weapon against this “miraculous” multiplication of fig leafs and fishy customs: he reckoned there were so many slivers of the Cross Christ was crucified on that he must have been hung by an entire forest. Saint Catherine of Siena claimed to have an orgasmic experience with her copy, and the 17th century Renaissance pundit Leo Allatius claimed that at least that part of the sacred member had ascended into Heaven--where it became the rings of Saturn. Medieval superstitions were burning out as vaudeville jokes.

Why fuss over such arcane trivia. Well, one recent reason is the sudden re-release of such Sacred Nonsense by Islam. Our Christian traditions grew out of similar absurdities, although the Dover PA hassle over intelligent design and evolution shows how close we remain to our pagan beginnings. Recidivism is the Original Sin. Islam kills people for violating the strictures of Sharia Law. A poor soul in Afghanistan was killed for converting to Christianity. During the Inquisition we burned people to death for esoteric unbeliefs.

Seculars must defend to the death the right of theologically hypersensitive people to believe whatever, as long as they don’t harm or kill people who disagree. Who would have thought before 9/11 that we’d be staying awake nights trying to figure out what to do over fatwahs. Heh, I studied Scholastic philosophy under the Jesuits, and still concede it stretched my brain. But in graduate school, logical positivism simply erased its credibility for me. Transubstantiation to me is doing philosophical back flips off the Low Board: dazzling but useless.

The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount remain to counsel all, religiously orthodox and unbelievers alike. But it is helpful to study the “evolution” of superstitions enough be able to hold your own Council of Trent. Pagan traditions and peddling lucrative fantasies are unworthy of the brain God gave each of us, to use as we see fitting, i.e., freedom of the will.

Forethoughts not foreskins make a world more civilized. As my secular saint, Eugene Victor Debs once proclaimed as his motto in life: “Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.”