«The image of the Roman Inquisition as a reign of torture and of evil has taken on a life of its own by now, ending up resembling those fake news about which many people talk today». Thus the Jewish historian Anna Foa, Professor of Modern History at the Sapienza University of Rome. Another specialist against the black legend, that is a false anti-Catholic vulgate created by Enlightenment thinkers and Protestants.

The mediatic mainstream, reflected Anna Foa, has erroneously thought that, with the opening of the central archives of the ex Holy Office in 1998, the Catholic Church would have finally recognised the allegedly abominable and bloody nature of the Inquisition, which still represents in the collective imagination «the armed wing of the Church against heresy, free thought, freedom of conscience. To the eyes of the media and of the so-called historiographical common sense, the Inquisition was the enemy par excellence of the modern thought».

None of all this, obviously. A disappointment for journalists and anticlericals, of course not for specialists. Also because, continued the Jewish historian: «during the two last decade there had already been a historiographical revisitation in this field, which, nevertheless, evolved, rather than in the direction of a plea for forgiveness, in the direction of a revision of the so-called black image of the Inquisition, through studies that, above-all concerning the Inquisition, had rather questioned the number of its victims and its role in the persecution». Even recently, in defence of the Inquisition, historical volumes have been published, although completely ignored by the main newspapers (except for Paolo Mieli, on italian newspaper Il Corriere). Amongst those in the Italian language, as we reported on UCCR: Storia dell’Inquisizione in Italia. Tribunali, eretici, censura (Carocci 2013) by Christopher Black, historian at the University of Glasgow; Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori e missionari by the lay historian Adriano Prosperi, from the Scuola Normale of Pisa; Caccia alle streghe by the historian Marina Montesano, from the University of Genova; L’Inquisizione in Italia, by Andrea Del Col, from the University of Trieste; L’inquisizione: atti del simposio internazionale, by historian Agostino Borromeo.

Unfortunately, regretted Anna Foa, nor the opening of the archives nor the contribution of these historians has contributed to make the truth become part of «the common knowledge and not even of the divulgative activity of the media, more directed to sensationalism than to the accuracy of the data. In this way, the gap between the scientific studies and the common knowledge increased, and very little of the most recent discoveries by historiography has ended up becoming part of the diffused image of the terrible tribunal of the Inquisition. It suffices to surf the Web, to read the titles of the last books released, in order to realise that. The phenomenon appears even more macroscopic if one analyses the vulgate of certain particularly hot topics about the Inquistion, like the witch hunt, the trial of Giordano Bruno, Galilei’s abjuration. The gap between the rational thought – result of reflections, historical approaches, of documentary analysis – and the mythological one is insormountable».

So, concluded with little hope the Jewish historian: «people write and claim that the Inquisition caused millions of deaths for witchcraft with the same arrogance with which they claim that vaccins cause autism. But did we really hope that the opening of the archives, the increase in the materials available to historians, their specialistic knowledge, their distinctions could impinge on the world reign of myth, of non-knowledge, of prejudice? But why should it have gone that way? The last twenty years, which are those passed since the opening of the archives, are also those that saw the growth of the mythological factory in the whole society, the affirmation of instruments more useful for its consolidation than paper and than images too, the breaking down of the barriers between true and false, between knowledge and non-knowledge, between reality and fiction. Passions and prejudices prevail over knowledge and wisdom. They scream louder. No archive – we should know it; we should have learnt it from the past centuries – can have the upper hand over them, no document can refute a consolidated prejudice, undermine a stereotype».

On our part, we are not as pessimistic as Anna Foa: the – even few – people who are really interested have in fact always more informational instruments to access what specialists have known since some time. The very fact that a historian with her likes, belonging to another religion (Judaism), has perceived the ignorance and the rampant bad faith on these topics is a good reason to have good hopes for the future.

The Editorial staff

The four Gospels are unreliable having been written many years after the facts they want to narrate. This is often heard, but it is a false affirmation. Let us see why.

First of all, we have several times pointed out that the pieces of information concerning Jesus of Nazareth are more numerous and closer to the narrated historical facts, as compared to many other historical characters, like Julius Caesar, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Flavius Josephus, Socrates, Alexander the Great, etc. So much so that famous scholar John Robinson commented: «The wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world» (J. Robinson, Can we Trust the New Testament?, Grand Rapids 1977, p. 36).

Secondly, the Evangelists got most of their information from pre-synoptic sources (oral and written), already circulating few years after Jesus’ death. «Some disciples of Jesus» – added the main living biblist, J.P. Meier: «may have begun to collect and arrange sayings of Jesus even before his death» (Un ebreo marginale [A Marginal Jew], Vol. 1, Queriniana 2006, p. 157).

But there is another argument on which we should like to dwell in greater detail: Saint Paul’s epistles, written, as everybody knows, before the Gospels. In particular, the First Letter to the Corinthians was composed between 50-55 A.D., therefore approximately only twenty years after Christ’s crucifixion. Therein all the “salient data of Christianity” are already present: he died for our sins; he was buried and resurrected on the third day; he appeared to Peter and then to the Twelve; he appeared to more than five hundred brothers; he appeared to James and then to all the Apostles; last, he appeared to Paul himself.

In this letter Paul says he wants to transmit to the readers what he himself has received (παραλαμβάνω) directly from the Apostles. The late Orthodox Jew Pinchas Lapide was so impressed with this letter (chapter 15, in particular), which he defined as «a formula of faith that may be considered as a statement of eyewitnesses» (P. Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, Ausburg 1983, p. 98-99). Biblist Richard Bauckham, from the University of Leeds, stressed that the term “eyewitness testimony” «does not have a forensic meaning, but simply means firsthand observers of those events». That is, Paul got in touch with «informants who could speak from first-hand knowledge» (R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2006).

Even the most critical scholars agree that what Paul is transmitting was learnt short after the described facts. Non-believing scholar Gerd Lüdemann stated: «the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus, not later than three years. The formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in 1 Cor. 15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 C.E.»  (G. Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A Historical Inquiry, Promethus 2004, p. 38). Agnostic Barth D. Ehrman wrote: «Paul must have met Cephas and James three years after his conversion, receiving the traditions he reported in his letters, around the half of the 30s, let us say in 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited were, obviously, older and dated probably to more or less a couple of years after Jesus’s death. This proves in a clear way how much it was public knowledge, immediately after the traditional date of his death or nearly, that Jesus had lived and died» (B.D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, HarperCollins Publishers 2012, p. 132). The same is claimed by scholars like John Dominic Crossan, EP Sanders, Gary Habermas, Ulrich Wilckens, Joachim Jeremias, Robert Funk («The conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead was already rooted when Paul converted around 33 AD. Since Jesus died around 30 AD, the time for its development was then of two or at most three years, in What Did Jesus Really Do?, Polebridge Press 1996).

All this attests a simple truth: the content of the Gospels (including passion, death, and resurrection of Christ) was already known, spread, and discussed right after the death of Jesus on the cross. When all the eyewitnesses (friends and enemies of the Apostles) were still alive and could belie these accounts, if they had been false or altered. The Synedrion and the enemies of Christ, had they wanted, could have silenced his followers… but no Jewish or Roman source reports anything like that. On the contrary, non-Christian sources like Flavius Josephus confirm the evangelical contents.

Let us leave the conclusion to the above-mentioned non-believer, Bart D. Ehrman, researcher at the University of North Carolina: «We do not have to wait for the Gospel of Mark, dated around 70, to hear talk about the historical Jesus. The evidence, which we draw from the writings of Paul, perfectly coincides with the data provided by the evangelical traditions, whose oral sources almost certainly date back to the Roman Palestine of the Thirties of the I Century. Paul demonstrates that, few years after the period in which Jesus had lived, his disciples talked about what the Palestinian Jewish teacher who had been crucified by the Romans at the istigation of Jewish authorities. It is an extraordinary coincidence of proofs: the evangelical sources and the accounts of the first Christian writer. It is difficult to explain this convergence if not by recognising the existence of Jesus as certain» (B.D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? HarperCollins Publishers 2012, p. 132, 133).

The Editorial staff

«I think about Blessed Paul VI. He had the strength to defend openness to life inside the family at a time when many people were worried about population growth. He was not antiquated, close-minded. No, he was a prophet, No, he was a prophet who, with this, told us to beware of Neo-Malthusianism, which is coming». It is a pity that nobody is remembering these clear judgments of Pope Francis on the Pope of Humanae Vitae, the Encyclical that – among other things, because it must not be reduced to that – restated the rejection of chemical contraception by the Church.

It is an issue having become again topical thanks to the study of Msgr. Gilfredo Marengo, Professor at the Pontifical Theological Institute John Paul II and author of the book, The Birth of an Encyclical: ‘Humanae Vitae’ in the Light of the Vatican Archives (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2018). It emerged that Paul VI, on October 1967, asked for the opinions of the Synodal Fathers on contraception in view of the publication of the encyclical: Only 26 of the 200 bishops present produced a written response. The majority of them said they were in favour of some opening to the pill, while 7 were against. However, the despite the favourable opinion of the Bishops and of the consulted theologians, Montini considered it inappropriate to change the position of his predecessors and promulgated the famous encyclical (albeit without the charism of infallibility).

Amongst the seven dissenting Bishops, there was also Krakow’s, Karol Wojtyla, future John Paul II, through the so-called Memorial of Krakow. Many exponents of the Church who took a favourable view of the admissibility of the pill, instead, considered it a «means by which the aim to avoid a new conception was reached while respecting the needs of conjugal love and the dignity of the spouse» – writes Msgr. Marengo. But Montini «did not judge this thesis acceptable», above-all because the diffusion of chemical contraception had already paved the way for «disquieting anti-natalist policies in many parts of the world, especially the poorer and the underdeveloped». The fact that the worry about antinatalist policies was crucial in the decision was also reminded by Pope Francis, who (of course not for this reason!) has wanted to canonise Paul VI.

Nevertheless, the anti-papist galaxy believed the fake news by journalist Marco Tosatti – which Roberto De Mattei of Corrispondenza Romana immediately believed, accusing the Pope of being willing to destroy also (beside what?) Humanae Vitae –, who wrote that «at the Vatican reliable indiscretions reveal that the Pontiff would have been about to nominate – or would have even already nominated – a secret commission to examine and possibly study modifications of the position of the Church on contraception, as fixed in 1968 by Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae». That Tosatti’s sources do not exist or are, anyway, made-up has been demonstrated by Prof. Marengo, who indirectly answered these inexplicable and continuous fake-news against the Church: «Humanae Vitae is an authoritative document of the pontifical Magisterium that we are called to welcome, through an intelligent pastoral exercise. There is no need to update Humanae Vitae».

Indeed, on several occasions, Francis – unlike Card. Carlo Maria Martini, for example – praised the courage of Paul VI to take this decision: «Paul VI’s rejection» – declared he, for example, in 2015: «was watching the universal Neo-Malthusianism that was in progress». In 2014, instead, Bergoglio commented: «His genius was prophetic: he had the courage to stand against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to exercise a cultural ‘brake,’ to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism». And again: «He knew the difficulties that are there in every family, and so in his Encyclical he was very merciful towards particular cases, and he asked confessors to be very merciful and understanding in dealing with particular cases. But he also had a broader vision: he looked at the peoples of the earth and he saw this threat of families being destroyed for lack of children. Paul VI was courageous; he was a good pastor and he warned his flock of the wolves who were coming. From his place in heaven, may he bless this evening!».

Thus Francis recalls Paul VI’s justified fears about contraception – albeit inside the family – as an obstacle to the welcoming of the gift of life and to making a total gift of oneself in the sexual act; obstacle allied with the birth rate fall. In a historical period in which almost everybody believed in the unreal demographic bomb, now we know how it tragically went, and today it is up to the Italian Chicco’s spot to remind us of the demographic winter and of the urgent necessity to give birth to children.

On those occasions, Francis also observed that the Church, despite opposing contraception, has never promoted an “unlimited fecundation”, a sexuality related only to conception. Recalling the words of John Paul II against “unfettered fecundity”, Pope Bergoglio, indeed, mentioned «many, many licit escapes that helped with this». That is to say the natural methods for the regulation of fertility, which the Catholic Church teaches to use (in premarital courses, for instance) as effective alternatives and in harmony with the openness to life and with the total gift of oneself to the other. The Church does not limit herself to say no, but always proposes a number of yes to alternatives that she deems more respectful of human dignity.

The Editorial staff

According to a recent survey, Protestantism is literally collapsing in the USA, thereby leaving the field to those who define themselves “without religion”. The number of Catholics, on the contrary, remains stable. A strong signal to Catholic progressism, which would like to be more open to the world by following the example of the Protestant confessions.

The 14-point drop of American Protestantism in 12 years has been measured by ABC/WashingtonPost and corresponds to a rise 9-point rise in the number of those who profess no religion, as well as to Catholics remaining stable around 22%. Indeed, according to other reports, the number of US citizens who define themselves Catholic is constantly increasing: from from 48.5 million to 76.7 million between 1965 and 2014.

For sure, these figures owe much to the Hispanic influence, as far as Catholicism is concerned. However, if we look into details, also amongst the non-Hispanic US citizens the percentage of Catholics has remained nearly constant in the last 12 years: 22% in 2013 and 20% in 2018.

In 2014, commenting the ideas of the spiritual child of Card. Carlo Maria Martini, that is theologian Vito Mancuso (“The Church is backward; she has to conform to the world!”), we explained how the Protestant brothers – since they got emancipated from Apostolic succession – have been trying to conform to the secular world by watering down the Christian doctrine to make it more acceptable to modern men. It was a destructive choice, not only for the defections but also for the proliferation of hundreds of many other Protestantisms, separated from each other. Even in 2015, we recalled this truth, by observing that it is the man desirous of a true life who is called to change, embracing coherently the Christian proposal. The Church, on the contrary, remains herself and makes her best efforts to find a new language (as asks today’s Pontiff) to communicate the same doctrine.

The comment of American Bishop Thomas J. Tobin was interesting: «Some say the Catholic Church has to become more like Protestants (e.g., married priests, women priests, abortion, gay marriage) to survive. A new ABC Poll shows that Protestant membership has declined 14% in the last 15 years! We Catholics had better look before we leap».

Msgr. Tobin is in line with what Pope Francis very often says, particularly in his morning homilies: «We put our identity card up for auction; we are the same as everyone. Worldliness leads you to singular thinking and to apostasy» – denounced Bergoglio: «This is is the deceit of worldliness. And this is why, at the Last Supper, Jesus prayed to the Father: “I ask not that you remove them from the world but that you protect them from the world”, from this mentality, from this humanism, which comes to take the place of the true man, Jesus Christ, and to take from us our Christian identity and lead us to singular thinking: “Everyone does this, why don’t we?” May the Church always have the identity that Jesus Christ commanded; may we all have the identity received in baptism, and may this identity not be thrown away out of wanting to be like everyone, for reasons of ‘normalcy’. May the Lord give us the grace to keep and protect our Christian identity against the spirit of worldliness that always grows, justifies itself and infects».

The Editorial staff

The bloodstains imprinted on the Sacred Shroud would have been incompatible with those of a crucifixion. The claim to have proved it comes from two researchers notorious for their numerous attempts to discredit the authenticity of the relic. Luigi Garlaschelli (retired chemist) and Matteo Borrini (University of Liverpool). However, their experiment was flawed by enormous ingenuities and mistakes that we have duly listed in our immediate response.

A well-documented criticism also arrived from Doctor Paolo Di Lazzaro, research manager of the Aeneas of Frascati and Vice Director of the International Centre of Sindonology. Anyway, on the media other replies appeared, but none of them goes so much into details.

Beside the words of the Archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, we read (and listened to) the speech by Pierluigi Baima Bollone, full professor of forensic medicine at the University of Turin, who pointed out that «the job is based on a system called BPA, widely criticised at the scientific level. From the look of the blood stains, you deduce how they were procured with often questionable results. This method has created not few problems and has been disproved in many judicial cases in which it was used». Emanuela Marinelli, interviewed on Vatican News, criticised, in her turn, the not too scientific method of Borrini&Garlaschelli: «Does it seem like a scientific criterion to take a mannequin — like the ones used to display clothes in a store window — and a sponge soaked in fake blood attached to a piece wood that is pressed on the right side of a dummy to see where the streams of blood fall? There is nothing scientific».

It has thus been easy for Garlaschelli and Borrini to overlook and ignore the more technical criticisms – made by Professor Di Lazzaro (and by our website) – while preferring to reply only to Professor Marinelli, who also hypothesised that the study was funded by atheist communities and that Garlaschelli worked following his funder’s spirit. The CICAP’s chemist replied writing that the research is independent and that he «does not prostitute his scientific integrity». Also Matteo Borrini ignored the most decisive objections, by limiting himself to denying the alleged atheist subventions and qualifying himself as a “Catholic scientist”, restating, however, his conviction of the falsity of the Shroud and that the faith – here he is right – does not need that relic.

Too easy, in this way. If the two researchers have read the interview with Emanuela Marinelli, it means that they paid attention to the mediatic feedback of their job (indeed, they looked for it at all costs, by committing to uncountable press releases): therefore, they cannot have missed the more detailed and technical rebuttals published on UCCR and on Vatican Insider (Paolo Di Lazzaro). Despite this, no counterreply to these objections has arrived, thereby raising the suspicion that they have understood the huge limitedness and incorrectness of their experiment and do not know how to reply or do not like the idea of giving visibility to criticisms that, indeed, invalidate their study.

Three are the pertinent objections Garlaschelli and Borrini would have to answer. We summarise them:
1) The authors of the study evaluated the blood dripping by comparing two completely different surfaces. The one of the plastic mannequin, smooth, clean, and intact, and the cutaneous one, dirty, swollen, and lacerated of the Shroud’s Man. It is obvious that the direction of the blood flow is different; the opposite would have been impossible.

2) The authors of the study put in comparison two different substances. On the plastic mannequin they poured a bag of blood added with an anticoagulant, which made the liquid more fluid than normal, similar to water (this can be clearly seen in the video they published). The blood come out of the Shroud’s Man, instead, outflew from wounds and had not been prepared in a lab, which is why it presented itself as viscous, also in consideration of the traumatic stress he had undergone (the shroud image shows the signs of the torture suffered by the man). Even in this case, it is a foreseeable banality that some fluidified and some more viscous blood may respectively take very different directions. A comparison between two different situations.

3) The authors of the study ignored numerous variables which are very influential on the bloodstains. Beside not knowing the data of the speed at which the blood comes out of the wounds as opposed to the one at which the blood is poured on the mannequin in the lab, they did not consider that the corpse of the Shroud’s Man has been certainly touched after his death, came into contact with the very linen cloth in which the Man’s image was mysteriously imprinted like a photographic negative (by colouring, inexplicably, only the superficial fibrils). Furthermore, the Man certainly had spasms and foreseeably moved because of pain whilst wounds were inflicted. These variables have certainly deviated, obstructed, or interrupted the “normal” dripping or pathway of the blood on his body. None of this was considered by the two researchers.

The editorial staff

Now they will have no more alibis. Or maybe yes? How will the critics of Pope Francis, who accuse him of speaking only about migrants and of not dealing with other issues important to Christians, and the false adulators, who use his name to justify conducts contrary to his thought, react to the words he said yesterday? «Today we speak of different types of family» – said Francis – «but the human family as the image of God, man and woman is one alone. It is one alone».

For those who follow the speeches of the Holy Father, there is nothing new: he obviously repeated these same things many times (see the images below). The real novelty is that this time all the main newspapers have recalled, since the title, his words:  The Irish Times ,  Advocate ,  CNBnews ,  The Wall Street Journal ecc.

Meeting the Forum of Family Associations, the Pontiff reflected on the image of the family, by observing that today «the word ‘family’ is an analogical term, because it refers to the ‘family’ of stars, to ‘families’ of trees, to ‘families’ of animals … it is an analogical term». But «the human family as the image of God, man and woman, is one alone. It is one alone. It may be that a man and a woman are not believers: but if they love each other and become joined in marriage, they are the image and likeness of God, even though they do not believe.» Therefore, no, not even for Pope Francis (just as for the Italian Constitution and Civil Code) do the self-styled “Rainbow families” exist, according to the famous and impeccable statement of Minister of Family, Lorenzo Fontana.

In another passage, Pope Francis dwelled on the abortion of disabled children: «I have heard that it is in fashion — or at least customary — in the first months of pregnancy to have certain exams, to see whether the baby is not well, or has some problems…. The first proposal in that case is: “Shall we do away with it?”. The murder of children. And to have a nice life, they do away with an innocent. When I was a boy» – added Pope Francis – «the teacher was teaching us history and told us what the Spartans did when a baby was born with deformities: they carried it up the mountain and cast it down, to maintain “the purity of the race”. It was an atrocity. Today we do the same thing.» Rarely do you see disabled people on the street, because the protocol of many doctors is to ask the question: “Will it have problems?”. In the last century the entire world was scandalized over what the Nazis were doing to maintain the purity of the race. Today we do the same thing, but with white gloves».

An incisive double statement (family, abortion), which – this time – soon spread worldwide. However, polemicists and false adulators are already reacting, maintaining that this is the first time Pope Francis addresses such topics, that he “finally awoke”, that “now he is our Pope” (is the Catholic faith limited to the “no” to gay marriages??), that it has been exception, etc. But in our specific dossier we collected all his speeches, including those on abortion and family, showing that such affirmations are constant in his pontificate.

Here below are some examples of how there is nothing new in the words of Francis.

19/06/2018 UPDATE
The director of a Italian newspaper Il Foglio, Claudio Cerasa, has recently ironised on the stupor of the progressist world: «The Pope acted as the Pope and said what he had already said on many other occasions, often in the amplifying silence of the media, so ready instead to point out every gesture or word that may seem explosive, pop, new compared to the so-called “backwardness of the Church”».

The editorial staff

Exactly 40 years ago, in 1978, the Shroud of Turin was deemed “fake” because researcher Walter McCrone affirmed (erroneously) that there were no traces of blood on the linen cloth, but a mixture of iron oxide and vermilion pigments. Yesterday, after bitterly swallowing that, yes, there is human blood, two notorious sceptics of the authenticity of the Shroud concluded, though, that the stains were unrealistic as compared to the position of a crucified person.

In the last hours, we have been overwhelmed with requests to answer and refute this new study, published on the Journal of Forensic Sciences. However, in principle, all researches should be welcomed, both in favour or against the authenticity of the Shroud (which nobody, not even the Church, obliges to consider authentic). Of course, when all the mediatic apparatus talks in perfect synchrony about the “falsity” of the Shroud without this conclusion being even held by the study (where we only read “unrealistic bleeding”), and when we read that the author is, as usual, the chemist of Pavia Luigi Garlaschelli (scientific director of the CICAP, the Italian Committee for the investigation of claims by the pseudosciences), who has already failed similar experiments on the Shroud, then the suspicion of hoax begins to arise.

Analysing the research with accuracy and objectivity, we read that the two researchers used a mannequin by pouring – through a cannula – some blood imbued added with an anticoagulant to observe the direction of the blood flow and comparing its pathway with the one observable on the Shroud image. Garlaschelli himself, afterwards, poured some blood – always added with the anticoagulant – on his wrist. To obtain stains similar to the Shroud’s, they concluded, the arms should have been in an almost vertical position, which is why the media deduced the “hoax of the Shroud”.

What clearly makes the experiment unreliable is the persistent mistake by Garlaschelli of comparing two “objects” with different characteristics. If we compare different situations, it is obvious and logical that the results will be different; it would be – really, this time – unrealistic to expect them to be identical. Even physicist Paolo di Lazzaro, research manager of the Frascati Center of Research and Vice Director of the International Centre of Sindonology, claimed so: «You can see it well in the film that accompanies the research: the blood from the cannula flows on the arm in a very fluid way, to the point that it almost looks like colored water. This is due to the presence of anticoagulant, which is essential to preserve the fluid blood in the bag. But this fluidity of the blood used for the experiment has nothing to do with the situation of the crucified man of the Shroud. The man of the Shroud had been subjected to stress», to repeated traumas observable from the very Shroud image. «As a result, this person’s blood had to be more viscous than normal and therefore the pathways of the streams coming out of the wounds may have taken very different directions from those of the fluidized blood used in this experiment».

A second variable that modifies the blood pathway is the difference in the speed at which a liquid is introduced into the cannula coursing on Garlaschelli’s arm as opposed to the one at which the blood comes out of the wounds of a crucified man or, alternatively, is poured, more or less resolutely, on the cloth, in the hypothesis of subsequent additions by a forger. This is a data that is unknown and, for this reason, cannot be reproduced in an experiment. «Does it seem like a scientific criterion to take a mannequin — like the ones used to display clothes in a store window — and a sponge soaked in fake blood attached to a piece wood that is pressed on the right side of a dummy to see where the streams of blood fall?» – commented Emanuela Marinelli, a famous Italian expert, surprised with the lack of professionalism. «It suffices to pay, and researches are done» – explained Marinelli – «and you also find someone who publishes them».

It is not over. The third huge mistake is to have compared the smooth skin of Garlaschelli and the plastic mannequin with the one of the Shroud’s Man. The latter, as always shown by the Shroud image, presents a cutaneous surface full of dirt, encrustations, lacerations, contusions, scratches, and wounds. It is normal, therefore, that the blood flow behaves differently and takes different directions. Always Di Lazzaro rightly observed: «One thing is the clean and intact skin of Professor Garlaschelli, who lent his body for the experiment, another is the swollen skin of a tortured and dehydrated man. On the Shroud, we found traces of soil, to testify that the skin of the man of the Shroud was dirty due to repeated falls. The skin of the crucified one had to be sweated, dirty with soil, swollen with hematomas and encrusted with blood from the whip-inflicted wounds». Once again: the blood flows being identical would have been unrealistic – not their being different.

Thus, concluded Di Lazzaro, «before drawing any conclusions, a serious scientist must take into account the experimental limits, the unknown parameters», and the differences between reality and what he wants to reproduce in an aseptic lab. «We cannot say that the Shroud‘s blood flows are not congruent with the position of a crucified man if we do not take into account the conditions of the dehydrated sindonic man, with the viscous blood and the swollen, dirty and sweaty skin. For this reason, I believe that the results of this research should be considered as less than preliminary, waiting for an experiment that attempts to reproduce the spots visible on the Shroud using parameters of blood and skin closer to those that they want to reproduce. In fact, this article by Borrelli and Garlaschelli does not answer (and indeed reinforces) the concerns already raised by experts in 2014.» Yes, because, among other things, the study dates back to four years ago, when it was presented, without being published, to a Conference on Forensic Medicine in the USA: «Even then» – says the physicist of Aeneas – «there were considerable concerns from doctors about the validity of the results. Now that same study, with the addition of some new experiment, has been published».

In 2014, the couple Garlaschelli&Borrini had altready attempted to take the long shot by saying that Jesus would have been crucified with the arms behind his head in a “Y” shape and not in a “T” one, so as to conclude that the imprint of the body present on the Shroud did not correspond to the classical representations of the crucifixion used traditionally in the time of Jesus. In 2009, the always indomitable Garlaschelli was lavishly financed by the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) to create a “second” Shroud by using pigments, chemical paints, and acids available to the hypothetical medieval forger. The result was so disappointing and different from the original, that even atheist mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi (honorary president of the UAAR, by the way) distanced himself from it; the chemist of the CICAP was so much criticised by the experts (here an example), that the experiment sunk into oblivion.

In conclusion, the authors of the study have not talked about “false bloodstains” as reported by the news agencies (and then, copying from each other, by the main newspapers), but at the most about an unrealistic bleeding on the Shroud as compared to what happened in their lab experiment. And it is an obvious and foreseeable conclusion, since the experiment was not ethically correct and is methdologically flawed: it put in comparison two different substances (blood added with an anticoagulant, in a lab), two different surfaces for the dripping (a clean body, devoid of tumefactions, wounds, and lacerations, in a lab) while overlooking important variables that may have altered the blood direction, like the outflow speed, people having touched the body of the Shroud’s Man after his death, his being wrapped in the same linen cloth, his foreseeable jerky movements during the suffered tortures, etc. Studies of professional researchers are really welcome, whether sceptical or not. But, please, next time let Garlaschelli work only as mannequin.

Editorial staff

They also want to destroy the sport. The Lgbt lobby is defending the precence of trans people in women’s volleyballs, but the female players preparing a class action. The sporting ethics is in danger, said Italian luminary Arsenio Veicsteinas, tenured Professor of Physiology at the State University of Milan.

All-out war against women: gay Senator Sergio Lo Giudice – who has purchased a child and taken him away from his biological mother – wants teach the meaning of motherhood to the Italian women; from the USA we heard of the testimony to basketball player Candice Wiggins, who withdrew because she was discriminated and bullied as heterosexual; the gay community denies entry to women, as if they were animals. Today, a transsexsual man wants to play against female players. And feminists? They are silent.

The case has arisen with Tiffany (Rodrigo) Pereira, a Brazilian trans who plays for Golem Palmi, a volleyball team in Italian A2 Female League. Other teams feel disadvantaged and sport is in danger because a “rush to transgender players” may occur. The Millenium team’s president said: «What happens if we go to Brazil, hire three transsexuals and bring them to play in the female A2 championship? We win the championship, but that’s not fair». «They’re cheating, they make a man play instead of a woman against other women», wrote Teresa Moro. Rodrigo «knows he has a male body: he has the muscle tone, bone density and physical strength of a person with XY genetic heritage. I’m a woman and I say: it is not chivalrous for a man to spike the ball on a woman. It’s cowardly».

Those who defend Rodrigo claimed that he is weakened by the hormone treatment. But this is not the issue.  Is it is enough to be physically weak to be called “woman”? Is the woman just a man with long hair and small muscles? Is a hormonal question the only difference between men and woman? Is it enough to wear a mask to be really Harlequin? The answer is “no”! In the name of respect for women and men, the opposite should happen: but no woman, even disguised as and exteriorly resembling a man, will ever consider playing in the professional volleyball male team and receive smashes at 50 km/h by Ivan Zaytsev.

A important luminary of human physiology, Dr. Arsenio Veicsteinas, from the State University of Milan and Dean of Science of movement Department, said: «The etichs of sport is to compete on equal terms. Who is born male has male anatomical features. If you choose to change your sex, you always keep your DNA, despite the hormone treatment. All this seems to me so superficial and demagogic, descending from a mistaken tendency of our day to open everything to everyone. Fair play is being undermined especially for a man who turns into a woman: in the face of the protests of a woman, how can we say that the game was played on equal terms?».

Yet, the confused modern man is manipulated like a puppet by major powers (and the gay power is one of the main ones), and struggles even to understand the most obvious facts. «Each of us can become what he wants», said transsexual Vladimiro Guadagno (aka Luxuria). «This must be said seen the beginning, by acting on children, not to find ourselves tomorrow with sexist and chauvinist adults». Tricking the children, getting into the schools, destroying the sporting ethics in the name of a «ideological colonisation», as Pope Francis has called it.

«“Sex change” is biologically impossible», explained Paul R. McHugh, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at theJohns Hopkins University School of Medicine. «People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminised men or masculinised women». Nobody is born in a “wrong body”, even volleyball player Rodrigo. We hope that the class action will go on, in the name of respect of sport and of womanhood.

The Editorial Staff

How can we reconcile the Trinity with monotheism? «It is no more impossible to bring all the sea into this hole than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence». St. Augustine heard this while he reflected on the mistery of the one and triune God.

If a mental giant received such a reprimand by the Lord, it is not surprising how little one of the greatest mistery of the Christian faith can be understood by us. The Christian theology seems sometimes complicated in the eyes of the world, less simple than Islamic monotheism. Yet, in my opinion, it is exactly this inconceivability to prove its truth.

Despite some attempts, some better than others, the Trinity remains a mystery. However, theology did not keep silent about this issue: from Irenaeus to Augustine, from John Scotus Eriugena to Thomas Aquinas, all the main Christian thinkers have addressed it, everybody giving a decisive and insuperable contribution. Some doubts may be clarified, also taking the cue from what is written by popular philosopher William Lane Craig in reply to the questions by a Muslim.

1) How can you philosophically reconcile the Trinity with monotheism?
The answer was already searched during the first centuries of the Christian Era, during the great councils of the Church: the persons of the Trinity are not three different divinities; since the first council, it has been affirmed that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three divine persons of the same divine essence. The divine essence, that is his nature, is considered one and indivisible, but “in” it there are three persons, equal in all things, consubstantial (omoousioi, in Greek), distinct only as far as the relations amongst them are concerned. Just as from a flame may three different and separate flames may derive (but still originating from the same source), so the Trinity. Only the use of analogy can come close to the divine Mistery, because his essence exceeds us as much as the sky is distant from the sea, and even more.

2) Are the arguments on which the doctrine of Trinity is based philosophical or scriptural (that is based on Scripture)?
The answer is unambiguous: every argument for the Trinity is taken from Scripture and all the attempts to demonstrate rationally the Trinity, like that of Anselm of Canterbury, are unable to explain it properly. About the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, there are a lot of evangelical words, as much as the Old Testament prophecies. Not only during the Baptim of Jesus does an extraordinary manifestation of the Trinity take place, with the Spirit descending on the Son, but also Christ himself talks about it in many speeches (during the dialogue of the Last Supper, for example, in the John’s Gospel). Scripture expresses the idea of the indissoluble unity amongst the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit; the latter is the seal of the deep communion amongst the divine persons. If the whole New Testament should not suffice, the dissertations by the Fathers of the Church will be able to answer any question.

3) If the arguments for the Trinity are based on Scripture, why should you not doubt the Bible infallibility, like with other issues like dates, numbers etc.?
In this case it is necessary to make very precise distinctions. The Second Vatican council teaches that the author of  the Holy Bible is God himself and that He inspired some men (cf. Dv n.11). These authors were not brushes in the hand of God Most High, but, in full possession of their faculties, they wrote as men of their time, with the mentality and the understanding of reality typical of the their day. For this, inside the Old Testament we find statements, accounts and descriptions that today cause much scandal. For the New Testament the reasoning is different: authors describe the life of the Messiah, reporting what the apostles heard from his very lips. They are reliable accounts of what Jesus himself taught, as claim the main scholars who investigated their historical authenticity.

I propose a reflection to those who consider the Trinity an invention of early Christianity: the purpose of all religions and of their holy books, including the Christian ones, is to give a satisfactory answer to the need for God which is present in the human heart. However, in the Gospels, you find an unprecedented factor: the “founder” of this religion and the leaders of the first community are put in a bad light. Not only do the apostles flee disappointed at the moment of the arrest of Jesus and deny him, but Jesus himself – the Messiah annunced by all the Prophets, the descendant of David, the future King of kings – gets condemned and put on death! A really bad publicity, we would say. Yet, this was the Revelation that God decided deliver to men.

Why, then, should the apostles and disciples have included in their sacred texts such a theological complication as a God subsisting in three persons? Were the problems they encountered not enough? Finally, how could these fishermen, devoid of any theological education, invent something like that, if it is so complicated to conceive such truth also for us, contemporary men full of every theological knowledge? The best explanation is that the mistery of Trinitiy – for those who believe – is one of the teachings that God himself wanted to give men to help them better understand His person.

Luca Bernardi

«Stars have always referred to man’s destiny. Also for Van Gogh, till the end, they remained a sign of a last possible hope. He confided: “Hope is in the stars”, and his many nocturn paintings stem from a “tremendous need for – I will use this word – religion, so I go outside at night to paint the stars”». These are the words of eminent Italian astrophysicist Marco Bersanelli, able to combine science, art and philosophy masterfully, which makes him – at least in our eyes – one of the most interesting Italian scientists.

He is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Milan, where he is also Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Physics, Astrophysics and Applied Physics. Dr. Bersanelli is member of the Planck Science Team and is amongst the scientific supervisors of ESA’s Planck mission and also author of about 300 scientific publications. Recently, he has published the book “Il grande spettacolo del cielo” (Sperling & Kupfer 2016), in which collected personal reflections and quotes of colleagues of his’, poets and artists who let themselves be seduced by the beauty of the cosmos.

«It is paradoxical», he has explained in a recent interview, «today technology allows us to look at the depth of the Universe at a level which was unthinkable even few decades ago, yet this is the first generation who lost the habit to wonder to beauty of starry sky. We don’t marvel anymore at our surroundings». Undoubtedly, the skeptical and materialistic culture from which we all descend has hugely contributed to the disillusionment with which we approach life and to the disinterest in the ultimate questions, in the taste of the Good and the Thruth. The starry sky, for example, which not many people see living in bright and wealthy Western towns, rarely raises any question on the meaning of existence.

Yet unforgettable are the pages by Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, who «only at the age of fifteen wrote a treatise on the history of astronomy, “the most sublime, the noblest amongst physical sciences”», explained Bersanelli. «In the cosmos, for him, man’s ultimate question about the meaning of his life and of the world is reflected, like in the poem “Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia”. Moreover, Leopardi realized that in the human being there is something bigger than the entire universe, which cannot be reduced to any measure. Reason recognises there are events that numbers cannot explain, like childbirth. In the face of this event also a billion light years will always be just a number». In addition, the astrophysicist continued, «the engine that drives the passion with which scientists act in this field is the possibility of revealing something about a given order, which we have not made and exists before us. It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church has actively supported astronomy, so much so that the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest in the world. In the Christian tradition, the beauty of nature and the sky in particular is the sign par excellence of the Creator’s magnitude».

The Italian scientist also seized the opportunity to reduce recently excitement about the discovery of seven little planets “similar” to Earth, news that is without fail published every year on newspapers. «There has been an excessive mediatic clamour. Some planets were already known and it is false that they are comparable to Earth; they only have some similar characteristics. The presence of water is insufficient to conclude that they are “inhabitable”. Thousands of extrasolar planets of this kind have already been classified . However, at least this discovery has helped many people wonder about the big mystery of the universe. Also fom the educational point of view, it is vital to learn and let oneself be surprised by reality, even just by a sickle of moonlight».

Robert Boyle, great chemist and physicist, went so far as to write: «When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets; when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chymical furnaces, I study the book of nature, I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! in wisdom hast Thou made them all!»

The Editorial Staff