Renewed Debate Over the Shroud of Turin

Recent findings appear to undermine 15 year old proclamations that the Shroud is fake.

Raymond Rogers is a retired physical chemist and former leader of the explosives research and development group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He proposes that the samples used to date the shroud in 1988 were flawed and the experiment should be repeated. His conclusion is based on a recent chemical analysis of the shroud and previous observations made during a 1978 examination.

Rogers was one of two dozen American scientists who participated in the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP)—an intense five-day scientific investigation of the shroud in Turin, Italy.

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The 1988 carbon dating results satisfied many skeptics that the Shroud of Turin was a clever hoax, and the findings stymied further research.

But some scientists have persisted. In 1999 Avinoam Danin, a botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stated at the 16th International Botanical Congress that he found pollen grains on the shroud from plants that could only be found in and around Jerusalem, placing its origins in the Middle East.

Further comparison of the shroud with another ancient cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo (thought to be the burial face cloth of Jesus), revealed it was embedded with pollen grains from the same species of plant as found on the Shroud of Turin.

The Sudarium even carries the same AB blood type, with bloodstains in a similar pattern. Since the Sudarium has been stored in a cathedral in Spain since the eighth century, the evidence suggests that the Shroud of Turin is at least as old.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

In the case of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it's almost been impossible. However, efforts to break up the most left-leaning and reversed federal appeals court in the country have started up again, and it looks as though it may end up going somewhere.

CNN = Credibility Not Necessary

It's not been a good two weeks for the all "news" network. First, CNN attributed a comment to the White House that it never made about a David Letterman bit, and this past Sunday it wrongly reported that the state of Missouri was considering a bill that would fire any public school teacher who refused to teach alternatives to evolution.

And Yet, Voluntary Abortion is Still Legal

The California State Supreme Court declares that murdering a pregnant woman counts as two homicides even if the accused didn't know the victim was pregnant. Just goes to further prove that recognition of the unborn as legally protected persons ultimately comes down to a matter of will.

New Catholic University in San Diego!

Oddly enough, it's called New Catholic University.

It's Not Like They Were Encouraged to Watch American Pie

A Catholic middle school teacher up near Sacto is terminated for telling students they can earn extra credit by watching the R-rated TPOTC with their parents.

Officially, the school would not comment on why Hathorn was fired from the North Highlands school, saying his termination was a personnel matter. However, Principal Marilyn Fleming said assigning students to watch R-rated movies at the kindergarten through eighth-grade school was against school policy.

Hathorn, 50, who has taught at the school for five years, said the movie "is 100 percent true to the Gospel" and he has seen it with his son, a seventh-grader.

"For some children it is too much," he said. "But for others, in this age with all the violence we see, the violence is not too much."