Damien F. Mackey
Reading through, this Lent and Easter,
the second volume of “Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,
I was struck by his marvellous discussion of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ –
“a divine action in history and nature that changed history and nature in a radical way”.
“What we have here is probably a new branch of quantum physics
that will tell us new findings about our universe.”
It reminded me, too, of the startling reality of the Shroud of Turin, that believers think is an actual testimony to the Resurrection, and that some scientifically-minded scholars have argued has so seriously challenged the boundaries of conventional science as to demand new scientific paradigms. Like the Resurrection, that has, in the words of Benedict, “changed history and nature in a radical way”. One of these scientists is Dame Isabel Piczek, a particle physicist and monumental artist of international repute. Whilst she believes that: “As a spiritual phenomenon the Shroud should be left to theology to discuss,” she will go on to say: “But the bodily resurrection, the Shroud of Turin and the whole circumstance of the image on the Shroud involves matter, although matter seen in a startlingly different way. What we have here is probably a new branch of quantum physics that will tell us new findings about our universe.” (http://www.northernway.org/weblog/?p=32 emphasis added).
The article continues:
Dame Piczek thinks that the Shroud image was created in an infinitesimally small fraction of a second. But, she says, the image may have been created by a complex process arising as Christ’s body passed from one form of existence into another. She notes that it may be “Something akin to the Big Bang, but at the opposite end of the creation continuum — a portal opens into a new science and eventually into a new form of human existence.”
[End of quote]
As one commentator remarked: “… the door between science and faith is not closed …”.
I also recommend a terrific book on the Shroud by Jerome Corsi, “The Shroud Codex”. It is fiction, but it explores the idea that cutting edge quantum physics may be pointing in the direction of such a new dimension as argued by Dame Piczek and by Pope Benedict, who in turn has written in Jesus of Nazareth: “Christ’s Resurrection . . . is a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it. Perhaps we may draw upon analogical language here . . . [and think of] the Resurrection as something akin to a radical “evolutionary leap,” in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality”.
We read in a review of Corsi’s book (http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/142581/#yvJbrDEHF7l):
There’s just one problem with Dan Brown’s mega-blockbusters “Angels and Demons” and especially “The Da Vinci Code.” Though they’re entertaining, superbly crafted stories, underneath it all there’s always this not-so-subtle intent to inject doubt into believers and nudge them toward the soulless, cynical sophistication of modernity.
Now here comes No. 1 New York Times best-selling author Jerome Corsi with a novel – his first fiction effort – that combines the Vatican, particle physics, atheism, the Shroud of Turin, what appear to be dramatic supernatural events and much more, all into a stunning mystery of science and faith.
…. But the difference is that Corsi is taking the reader in the opposite direction than Dan Brown – toward faith, rather than away from it”.
[End of quote]
Now, thanks to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our own immortal soul “can find its “space,” its “bodiliness”,” Benedict continues:
The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs to the sphere of the divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, “spirit and blood” have a place within God. . . . Even if man by his nature is created for immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul can find its “space,” its “bodiliness,” in which immortality takes on its meaning as communion with God and 