Sidetract

A Fortnightly Column
Greatest danger of fence-sitting
WE ARE TOLD that there are capitalists and communists, radicals and reactionaries, papists and proddies, puritans and profligates, and we accept it.
Why, I do not know, when it is obvious that usually they are just labels, stuck on people for convenience and with the main aim of digging a purgatory-sized ditch between the goodies and the baddies.
That warning. as you have probably guessed, is of the cigarette packet type, designed to absolve my conscience before encouraging further indulgence in the crime.
Just look at Christians and the way they use the Bible. There are, broadly speaking, literalists and liberals, the first being those who say "Thc Bible says it — it must be true", and the second those who ask "The Bible says — is it true?" (They may not actually say it, but that is what they mean.)
But there is also a third group, in some ways far more maddening than either of those, whose line is: "The Bible says it, and it is true ...depending of course on what you mean by truth." the enemies of this group impatiently condemn their approach as sitting on the fence. Curiously, I have noticed that in fact they are the least prone to what is said to be the greatest danger of fence-sitting, namely that if you do it for too long the iron enters into your soul.
• • • instruction to uncover a miracle.'
The story that follows is for the impatient ones.
Almost exactly a year ago I was sent to a Gloucestershire hospital with the somewhat frantic instruction to uncover a miracle.
Given the nature of the mission, the prospects seemed pretty good: a 33-year-old woman who, according to medical experts should have died about 25 years before, but who survived after firat hearing about the Turin Shroud and then touching it.
Surely she would give us a headline along the lines of "Miracle cure for dying girl", which as everyone knows is the sort of thing that newspapers live on.
Josie Jones didn't. In fact she stubbornly refused to say any such thing. Yes, something strange happened; yes, the doctors had given up hope: yes, the Shroud gave her new hope and courage; but no, you
shouldn't shout about miracles in her case.
At one stage. I am told, the • Daily Mirror was planning a major feature about Josie, and had even got to the stage of setting it all up, on the page before a hard-bitten editor arrived on the scene. That was the end of it: "That's not a miracle", he said. Which of course all depends on what you mean by a miracle.
Then, a couple of months ago I was contacted by someone working on a radio documentary on the Shroud. Ile too had interviewed Josie, and the interview made "Great radio" and was fascinating and all that but ... it wasn't a miracle.
Which depends ...
In fact the Shroud has become the relic to top all relics.
Now, if some commentators are to be believed, the proof of its authenticity as the burial garment of Jesus will prove the truth of the Christian gospel.
The argument runs something like this: tests can prove.that this was the cloth in which Jesus was laid; tests can prove that the marks can only have been made by the release of radioactive-type rays; the release of such rays proves the Resurrection; the
Resurrection proves Jesus' divinity; Jesus' divinity proves .Christianity is true.
The trouble is that proving that the Resurrection happened 2,000 odd years ago and proving that Christianity is relevant to people's lives now are two quite different things.
Ah, say the Shroudites, but if you can prove that the Shroud cures people, that would show Christ's power today. Hence the Search for more compliant Josies.
But even if you find one — which is perfectly possible — all that you have established is the connection of the Shroud, and hence of Jesus, with the cure of physical ailments.
And that, in the light of the full Christian claim, is a pretty narrow definition of the Gospel. What about healthy people: What about Mrs Gallagher and her search for the right lifestyle? What about strikes or arms sales Or capitalism or detente?
Shroud or no Shroud, you're still going to need faith to travel along the pilgrim road: isn't that what Holy Week and Easter are all about? Perhaps not: I suppose it depends on what you mean by faith.
John Carey