Sunday, May 11, 2008
A one-man crusade against online relic sales is met with unholy indifference.
Feb 20, 2001 | There's a story Thomas Serafin enjoys: During the Middle Ages, a traveling monk hoping to purchase a saint's relic for his monastery found little success and returned home disappointed. Luckily, he soon encountered a merchant who offered to sell him the skull of John the Baptist. The monk was dumbfounded. Hadn't he just seen the skull of St. John in a church during a recent visit to France? "That was the skull of St. John when he was a child," explained the merchant. "This is his skull when he was an adult."
To Serafin, a professional photographer and founder of the International Crusade for Holy Relics in Los Angeles, this little parable is a reminder that some things never change. Aided by some 200 members -- primarily Roman Catholics but also members of the Russian Orthodox, Byzantine and Anglican churches -- Serafin is on a mission to identify sellers of saints' relics and convince them of the error of their ways, or shut them down. But he's not roaming the lonely cloisters or muddy market squares of Europe; instead Serafin keeps a suspicious eye on the Internet's highly successful auction houses, which have revived the market for the earthly remains of saints -- and sparked a conflict between an ancient religious tradition and the free-market ideals of the Internet.
Relics challenge our sensibilities in a skeptical age, but the modern world hardly lacks grotesque secular equivalents: Think of screaming fans flailing to catch Elvis Presley's sweat-drenched hankie or Michael Jackson coveting the bones of the Elephant Man. Saints' relics occupy a decidedly more solemn tradition: They're venerated as reminders of Christian virtue, and miracles are believed to occur in their presence. First-class relics -- pieces of a saint's bone or flesh -- are the most sacred. Second-class relics -- objects a holy person wore or owned -- are also highly valued. (Items that have touched other relics are known as third-class relics and can be found in many church gift shops.)
Although relic veneration is as old as Christianity, abuse and fraud connected with relics peaked during the Middle Ages, prompting Chaucer to make his most memorably despicable "Canterbury Tales" character a corrupt preacher who hawks pigs' bones to gullible peasants. Later, an abiding interest in relics starkly separated Catholics from Protestants, and John Calvin railed venomously against them as evidence of corruption. In the 16th century, dozens of nails were said to be relics of Christ's crucifixion, more bones of Peter and Paul existed than either saint ever could have packed into his body and John the Baptist kept rearing his many problematic heads.
The modern canon law of the Roman Catholic Church strictly forbids the sale of first-class relics. But even though the law was reaffirmed as recently as 1983, relics still aren't the most popular subject among modern Catholics; to some clergy, they're unpleasant reminders of medieval superstitions and stereotypes. "I don't know anything at all about relics," sniffed one priest and canon lawyer in Washington. "I don't know anyone around here who would, either." In a modern church grappling with pressing social issues, it's even more rare to find anyone willing to blow the cobwebs of archaism off the concept of simony -- the sin of selling spiritual items and religious offices, named for New Testament heretic Simon Magus.
But electronic simony is on the rise; just ask Serafin, who sells his luridly titled report on the subject, "nEw JUDA$: Electronic Simony Exposed," on the ICHR Web site. The report documents the organization's clashes with some of the online auction community's inveterate relic dealers. Like most Internet-based correspondence, the e-mail ranges from righteous and determined to petulant and crude. One grumpy relic seller mocks Serafin's knightly title "Chevalier," bestowed by the relic-friendly royalty of Portugal, as "French for the posterior of a horse." Others accuse the ICHR of entirely unwholesome motives. "Since you're so busy exploring the 'bad sins' of others," writes a relic dealer in response to an ICHR scolding, "just between you and me, buddy, what's YOUR 'bad sin'??? With most right-wing nut cases like you I've met, it's usually something NASTY that has to do with the 6th or 9th commandments. See you at Confession. You poor, sick thing."
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