c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ I am often asked these days what I think of the Shroud of Turin, the linen cloth many believe used to wrap the body of Jesus. The answer: I don’t think much about it.

Maybe it’s real, though I am ready to trust the scientific carbon tests dating it much later than the time of Jesus. Maybe it’s not real. But the real question is what difference does it make? What kind of religious devotion fixates on the issue of the burial cloth of Jesus and is uninterested in the preaching of the living Jesus?

I know that there is a strain in Catholicism which fixates on relics. I am willing to tolerate such devotions, though they’re not my cup of tea.

But in truth I’m less interested in relics of the true cross than I am in words of Jesus on the cross _ words of compassion and forgiveness.

Catholicism accepts and, indeed, encourages popular devotions so long as they don’t interfere with the main message of the Christian faith _ God’s forgiving love. But it often seems to me those most enthused about the Shroud of Turin or the various alleged apparitions of the Mother of Jesus are the very ones who are most eager to support the death penalty or be prejudiced against immigrants, Jews, blacks and homosexuals.

They have missed the point altogether.

And they are dangerously close to being idolaters. They worship the icon itself and do not hear the symbolism lurking in the icon.

Jesus died for those sentenced to death _ for immigrants, for the poor, the rejected and the despised. He loves them as much as he loves us. They are part of God’s people as much as we are. We must be compassionate to them just as God is compassionate to us.

I don’t know whether the woman columnist who recently wrote that immigrants are ruining the environment would claim to be a Christian. However, if she does, she simply doesn’t get it. To be concerned about the environment and not to be concerned about people is perhaps virtuous but it is pagan virtue.

Those Catholics who dote on the shroud and rush off to the site of the latest alleged Marian apparition yet resist the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, don’t get it either. For them, private devotions are a substitute for the church and for Jesus.

No, as the Irish would say, they don’t get it at all, at all.

The Mother of Jesus is not a screamer and a shouter. Nor is her son. Where did Jesus learn about the human side of compassion, save from her?

When I write columns about the compassion of Jesus, I receive e-mail from people who want to put limitations on God’s forgiveness. They feel, it seems, that if we make God too compassionate people will keep right on sinning. God only forgives, they insist, those who are sorry.

Well, yes. But God will not be turned away by human stubbornness. What do we know about how long God forgives? God forgives because it is in his nature to forgive. God cannot help but forgive.

That’s the truth the living Jesus teaches in the gospel. That’s where our attention should be, not on the remnants of the dead Jesus. Can we do both? Of course we can, so long as we realize which is more important.

If you hate immigrants or gays, if you rejoice every time someone is executed, if you celebrate every denunciation coming from church leaders and ignore them on the rare occasion they speak compassionately, then maybe you should consider whether the shroud of the dead Jesus gets in the way of your vision of the living Jesus.

The Jesus of the New Testament is a disturbing, challenging and troubling person. We try to pin him down, to make him our vice president in charge of morale, but he slips away. Once we think we understand Jesus perfectly _ whoever it is we understand and however interesting he may be _ it’s not Jesus. When we have a Jesus who is on the side of our prejudices, our self-interests, our political agenda, our need to beat up others, that Jesus is a hollow and dead icon. Once Jesus ceases to startle us, he’s not Jesus any more.

DEA END GREELEY