James BeauSeigneur: In His Image James

"Hello."

"Decker Hawthorne?" responded the voice from the other end of the phone.

"Yes," Decker answered.

"This is Harry Goodman. I have something you'll want to see." Goodman's voice was excited but controlled. "It's a story for your newspaper. Can you come to Los Angeles right away?"

"Professor?" Decker said, a little dumbfounded and not yet fully awake. "This is quite a surprise. It's been… " Decker paused to count the years, "seven or eight years. How are you?"

"I'm fine," Goodman answered hastily, not the least bit interested in small talk. "Can you come to Los Angeles?" he asked again, insistently.

"I don't know, Professor. What exactly is the story about?"

"If I tell you over the phone you'll think I'm crazy."

"Maybe not. Try me."

"I can't. Not over the phone. All I can say is it has to do with the Shroud."

"The Shroud?" Decker asked in surprise. "… of Turin?"

''Of course, the Shroud of Turin."

"Uh… Professor, I hate to bring this up, but I'm afraid the Shroud is old news. They did carbon 14 dating of the Shroud and found out it wasn't old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ. Didn't you read about it in the newspapers last month? It was on the front page of The New York Times. " 7

"You think I live in a shell or something? I know all about the carbon 14 dating," Goodman said, not pleased at having to explain himself.

"Well, so what more is there to say about it?"

"I really don't think I can talk about this on the phone. Decker, this may be the most important discovery since Columbus discovered the New World. Please, just trust me on this one. I promise you won't be disappointed."

Decker knew that Goodman was not given to gross exaggeration. Obviously whatever it was must be something pretty important. He did a quick mental check of his schedule and agreed to fly to Los Angeles two days later.

"Who was that?" Elizabeth asked. "Professor Goodman," Decker answered. Elizabeth gave Decker a puzzled look. "Goodman?" she asked. "Henry Goodman, your old professor, the one you went with to Italy?"

7Roberta Suro, "Church Says Shroud of Turin Isn't Authentic." The New York Times, October 14, 1988, section 1, p. 1.

"Yeah," said Decker without much enthusiasm. "Only it's Harry, not Henry. I'm afraid I'm going to have to skip the drive up to Cade's Cove on Saturday. I have to fly out to Los Angeles to see him about a story."

Elizabeth's disappointment showed on her face but she didn't say anything.

That night Decker and Elizabeth lay in bed talking about what it could be that Goodman had found. Decker had not even talked to Goodman since the fall of 1981 when the Shroud team had formalized the findings of their 140,000 hours of work in a published report. In short, the report said that the image on the Shroud is clearly not the result of a painting or any other known method of image transfer. Based on thirteen different test measures and procedures, the scourge marks and blood around the nail holes and side wound are, indeed, the result of human blood. Fibrils beneath the blood show no evidence of oxidation, indicating that the blood was on the cloth prior to whatever process caused the image. Finally, the report said that while the material of the Shroud may be old enough to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, it is impossible to even guess at its age without carbon 14 dating, and that could not be done without destroying a large portion of the cloth.

But that was in 1981. By 1987 six labs around the world had equipment that could perform accurate carbon 14 dating using a sample the size of a postage stamp. And in early 1988 the Catholic Church announced that Pope John Paul II would permit the Shroud to be carbon 14 dated by three laboratories. In October 1988 the Church announced the findings. The labs found that, with a combined certainty of 95%, the Shroud was made of flax grown sometime between 1260 and 1390, and therefore, the cloth is simply not old enough to have been the burial cloth of Christ.

"What was it that Professor Goodman said?" Elizabeth asked. "That it was the most important discovery since Columbus discovered America?"

"Yeah," Decker responded, shaking his head.

"Well, if the Shroud has been proven a forgery, what else could he be talking about?"

"I don't know," Decker shrugged. "The only thing I can think of is that Goodman has discovered how the image was made. After all, even though we know it's a forgery we still have no idea how the image was transferred to the cloth," Decker explained. "But if that's all he's found, he's blowing this way out of proportion. It could hardly be compared with Columbus discovering America."

"Well, then he must have discovered some way to prove that it's real," Elizabeth concluded.

Decker shook his head. "No, that's crazy," he concluded. "The carbon 14 dating was conclusive, and besides, it's axiomatic that you can't prove the existence of God in the laboratory. So even if the dating was wrong, how could Goodman prove the authenticity of the Shroud? Proving the Shroud is a forgery is something science can do, but trying to prove it's authentic would be nuts." Decker paused and then added, "Not to mention totally out of character for someone like Goodman who's not even sure of his own existence, much less the existence of God." Elizabeth and Decker laughed, kissed, and ended their conversation for the night.

Los Angeles, California

Harry Goodman met Decker at the Los Angeles airport. Once they reached his car, Goodman wasted no time getting to the subject at hand. "You remember, no doubt," Goodman said, "the effect it had on me when we discovered the minute particles of dirt in the heel area of the Shroud image." Goodman presumed too much; ten years had passed since Turin, but Decker politely nodded recollection. "It made no sense," Goodman continued. "No medieval forger would have gone to the trouble of rubbing dirt into the Shroud unless it could be seen by the naked eye. It was then that I began to question my assumption that the Shroud was a forgery."

Decker shook his head, certain he must have misunderstood. Could Goodman really be suggesting he thought the Shroud was real?

"You, of course, recall that some of the most conclusive work on the Shroud was done by Dr. John Heller using the samples gathered on the strips of Mylar tape." Decker did recall. Heller and Dr. Allan Adler had proven that the stains were human blood and had also determined that the images were the result of oxidation. 8

8Dr. John H. Heller, Report on the Shroud of Turin, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983).

"Yeah," Decker replied. "But how can any of that matter now that we know the Shroud's not old enough to be authentic?"

"I wanted to examine the tape samples taken from the heel and foot area more closely," Goodman continued, ignoring Decker's question, "so I arranged to get the samples sent here. You will recall that the samples were placed in a specially built case, and they took great care to guarantee that no foreign materials got onto the samples. Each sample was catalogued by where it had come from on the Shroud and then the case was sealed hermetically for shipping. Unfortunately, that was like closing the gate after the horses have already gone.

"In Turin, I personally counted more than a dozen different contaminated articles that came in contact with the Shroud. At least two team members and three priests kissed it. Hell, as far as kissing and touching the thing, it seems that's been going on for as long as it's been around. And don't forget the rust stains from those old thumbtacks. Even our procedures to prevent contamination introduced some contaminants. The cotton gloves we wore surely carried American pollen that, no doubt, got onto the Shroud material. And while we're talking about other materials, let's not forget the plywood, or the backing material, or the red silk covering.