First it is not a relic. It’s an icon. Even the church does not recognize it as “real”.
If it has real blood on it, it is a relic. An icon has to be created by humans. You are trying to obfuscate the question by begging the question. The blood on the Shroud is now only challenged by brain dead skeptics who refuse to accept the evidence. The always go with McCrone’s un-reproducable results. Not one other optical microscope observer has ever seen what McCrone claims to have found. No levels of Red Ocher of any type that rises to visibility in ANY areas on the Shroud, much less specific to image areas. NO PIGMENT. No vermilion. The Shroud has been subjected to both optical and X-ray spectrography, and there just are not the chemicals on the Shroud that McCrone claims are there. . . Multiple, and repeated, tests, of various kinds a falsified McCrone’s claims. If there are no pigments, it is not a painting.
Multiple world class EXPERTS on blood, and blood extracts have identified the stains as blood and they cannot be mistaken. Not only are these stains blood, they are human blood. The only ones making the claim they are not are people working OUTSIDE their fields of expertise. . . Such as a geologist who claims they are tempera paint (iron oxide) and vermilion (Mercury Sulfide), and a fellow with a degree in English Literature. On the other side are medical doctors and PhDs in Chemistry and Physics, including Drs. Adler, Heller, Cameron (double doctorate specializing in hemoglobin and its antecedents and descendent chemistry), and Rogers, all of who have identified blood and its resultant chemistry, not red ocher. Immunological assays first showed the blood on the Shroud was of Primate, then later, when more definitive tests were available, Human, nature. Incidentally, before you claim that these scientists were bias Catholics or Christians, Drs. Heller and Adler, were both Jewish.
Meanwhile, the skeptics claimed without evidence or counter testing, the immunological results were because the immunology experts were getting false positives due to the presence of chicken egg albumin proteins used in tempera binding, from their scant absurd understanding of immunology. This is called grasping at desperately biased straws.
“Even the church does not recognize it as real.”
False:
Pope Pius XI (1922-1939): “… certainly not the work of any human hand.”
Pope Pius XII (1939-1958): “The linen in which Joseph of Arimathea enveloped the sacred remains of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Pope John XXIII (1958-63): “This can only be the Lord’s own doing.”
Pope Paul VI (1963-78): “…The image from the Holy Shroud reveals to us the human and divine personality of Christ.”
Pope John Paul II (1978-2005):“The Holy Shroud is the most
splendid relic of the Passion and Resurrection.”
Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013): “…should be seen as a
photographic document of the darkest mystery of faith — that of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection.”
Pope Francis I (2013- ): “By means of the Holy Shroud, the unique and supreme Word of God comes to us.”