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#8603
Anonymous
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[quote:2kys0td4]Hmmmm…I feel a bit uneasy about certain relics of saints.

Seems like we should leave the dead buried in peace. [/quote:2kys0td4]

It is repugnant to our modern day sensibilites, just as it was in the early Church. There where cases in the earlly church where Eastern Bishops wrote to Rome asking for parts of the bodies of saints to be sent to them. The Pope wrote back, saying that to the Western mind the removal of parts of the bodies was repugnant and he sent cloths laid on the bodies instead. Later with the rapid growth of the Church the decision came to be made that portions of the bodies of saints could be sent to keep the practice of offering Holy Mass on the tombs of the saints. It was not popular everywhere at first, but it is the Church that has the authority to allow such things, and not personal taste. While many of the modernist bishops and priests want to do away with the veneration of relics, and the distribution of them, it is a long standing practice of the Church.

This brings up the authentication of relics. Any relic that does not have a document (called in english and Authentic) which describes the relic the theca (or case) that it is in, and have the seal of one authorized to issue it on the papers, and (usually attached by red thread or ribbon) a wax or lead seal affixed to the relic, cannot be held as an authentic relic (first class relics only) and may not be venerated in public. There have in history been many relics that have been forged. Take for example in the 1970’s when someone got hold of the papers for the relics of then Blessed John Neumann of Philidelphia. Someone obtained a seal that looked like the seal of Nicolas Ferrante, the postulator of (now) St. John Neumann and was able to fabricate relics issuing false papers and began trafficing in false relics, sometimes selling them for ten to twenty times more than the donation asked for the theca (case) that the relic is enclosed in by those who are authorized to distribute relics. Any relic or alleged relic of Ferrante is at least suspect if not absolutly false except those that are printed on authentics of superior quality, (the fakes are poorly copied and are not printed on the quality of card stock paper that is trimmed and nicely produced) and if it is a relic of anyone other than Blessed (now saint) John Neumann. As Nicolas Ferrante did not ever authenticate relics of anyone else, nor of St. John Neumann after he was canonized a saint, any other relics cannot be trusted to be anything other than fakes.