Free Republic

The numbers tell the story. Time magazine wanted to talk theology with Mel Gibson recently on the set of The Passion, his new movie depicting the last hours of Christ. Asked what he thought about the effects of the Second Vatican Council on the Catholic Church, the Braveheart of Catholic traditionalists said, "Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." Gibson's post Vatican II ergo propter Vatican II argument would be enough to drive any high school logic teacher crazy. Is the Council responsible for all the Church's ills, including the priestly sex-abuse crisis, that have arisen since the...

A FRENCH magazine has said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fraud. "A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed...