Spokesperson Blows Another Spoke
Catholic League President William Donohue, the loose cannon with the loose canon, has another howler today. He's unhappy with NBC's coverage of the winter Olympics. Why? Because it's in Turin and so far no one's mentioned the Shroud of Turin.
The Shroud, for those of you not up on venerated religious artifacts, is allegedly the one Jesus was buried in. Clear-eyed analysis (which is too rare) strongly suggests the shroud is fraudulent--does Donohue want that included in the report? The Church itself has never officially recognized it as authentic.
In any case, I wasn't aware that Olympics coverage was supposed to include travelogues.
With spokespeople like Donohue, who needs enemies.
posted by LAGuy @ 3:09 PM
4 Comments:
Clear-eyed analysis (which is too rare) strongly suggests the shroud is fraudulent....
Clear-eyed is the eye of the beholder, I guess. The article you linked to clearly has an agenda and is on a website that has an agenda.
For a much more balanced article, see Shroud of Turin at Wikipedia. A fair reading of all the evidence, such as is done here, suggests that more evidence points to the shroud's inauthenticity than to its authenticity, but that it's certainly not a clear-cut case.
Your post makes three other claims, however:
1. Donahue is a loose cannnon and a poor spokesman for the Catholic Church.
That's probably true.
2. Criticizing NBC for not mentioning the Shroud is silly.
I disagree. Remember the endless discussion of Mormonism when the Olympics were in Salt Lake City? And until last year, if you asked an American "what do you know about the city Turin" the Shroud would almost certainly have been mentioned.
Therefore, if indeed NBC has never mentioned the Shroud during its coverage, it seems very likely to me that this is due to some kind of political correctness. Or maybe it's due to the Mohammed cartoons -- remember, Muslims consider images of Jesus to be blasphemy too!
3. The Catholic Church has never recognized the Shroud as authentic.
This is of course correct. To quote the Wikipedia article: Pope John Paul II stated in 1998, "Since we're not dealing with a matter of faith, the church can't pronounce itself on such questions. It entrusts to scientists the tasks of continuing to investigate, to reach adequate answers to the questions connected to this shroud."
I've read a lot more than the website I linked to on this subject, and I would still say the evidence is pretty clear the shroud is a fraud. I invite people to read the Wikipedia entry, which is pretty-well done (you can't always say that for the Wikipedia), but I would still stand by the more "skeptical" website I linked. That entry, I felt, fairly discussed the evidence for the shroud--it does happen to be very weak (especially compared to the counter-evidence).
I do wish the Church would send out small bits of the shroud for 100 more double-blind, carbon-dating tests--I have complete confidence they'd show the sheet dates from around the 1400s. I also doubt that this would have much effect on true believers, who always seem to find some reason to support their fantastic claims.
By the way, I haven't watched the winter Olympics since Nancy Kerrigan got beat up, so I'll take your word on their coverage of Mormons. (Though, let's face it, SLC is the Mormon HQ, while Turin, as famous as the Shroud is, ain't exactly Jersualem, Rome or Mecca.) The coverage continues, so maybe Donohue was premature, in any case. I do watch the summer Olympics and can't recall lengthy bits about the local color, though that may be because that's what they make remote controls for.
Interesting... I have also noticed that even though NBC uses the name"Torino" in its Olympic promotion, it doesn't mention one of Detroit's super-bitchin' 1970s cars, the Gran Torino. Once again, anti-US carmaker bias shows its ugly head in the mainstream sports media
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