The Ultimate Game of Shirts Vs Skins

(TIL) Today I learned that Jesus' Foreskin is missing!!!

what, what WHAT?!?

I mean, of course it's "missing." Eight days after he was born it was removed ala Jewish custom, thus it went "missing" from his body. But I mean, it's been stolen!

Let's rewind...about 2000 years.

According to About.com:

Rome's churches are filled with countless religious relics. In the Middle Ages, relic veneration became obligatory and every church in Christendom was required to have a holy relic. Relics can include anything from the body parts of a saint to shards of the True Cross to pieces of cloth that have rubbed against a saint's tomb.

That means, not only does Jesus foreskin count (creepy!) but so does the Shroud of Turin! Which, NOT very surprisingly, resides in the Cathedral of John the Baptist in Turin. So if the Catholic Church was to host a softball game between the Cathedral of John the Baptist in Turin and the Church of Calcata in Rome, where Jesus' prepuce resides, it would be the ultimate game of Skirts vs Skins.

But alas, this Holiest of Holy Relics has been stolen!!!

ALERT the Holy Authorities!

Two quick questions:
1. Who do you call when someone's foreskin goes missing?
2. And, possibly more importantly, who do you call when that someone is JESUS?

Is there a Missing Foreskins Dept? Or a lost & found that we can check? We must find it before the trail goes cold. When did it go missing?

1983.

Come again?

Nineteen eighty, fucking three!

So apparently, Jesus' foreskin went missing over 30 years ago! And I'm just getting around to hearing this today?!?

Wait! Before you go think I am behind this, it should be known that I was only eight in 1983.
*This is probably as good a place as any to remind my readers that I am a terrible speller. And from time to time I will use "to" instead of "too" or even on more than one occasion, "two." In this particular situation however, I would like full credit for spelling "eight" and NOT "ate" giving you, dear reader, a horrific thought regarding what could have happened to the previously mentioned foreskin.  Feel free to read about that possibility at this WEIRDO blog:

8 vs ATE

How did the culprit, or more likely army of culprits, overthrow the armed militia protecting this most sacred of artifacts?

Justin Bieber gets more security at his concerts...and he's a dick too!

(umm, it...it wasn't being guarded)

WHAT?!? This is, as Christians believe, the only remaining body part of the Lord Jesus Christ, that resides here on earth! How the heck-fire could it NOT be guarded? Even the Shroud of Turin, which was merely a sweat rag was hidden for decades by the Knights Templar and even now is protected around the clock by armed guards.

To put it in layman terms, it would be like a sports fan who has acquired some sports memorabilia, including the famous towel Mean Joe Green throws to the little kid in the Coca-cola ad from the eighties. And he takes better care of that than the other piece of memorabilia in his collection, Mean Joe Green's FUCKING dick!

You know you want to photoshop that bottle

But, I'm sure that the Church was equipped with a state of the art security system that was somehow thwarted by the scoundrels who stole this most blessed of body parts.

(nope)

REALLY?!?

(if was in the home of a local priest)

What, like hidden in a floor board of something?

(uhhh...no. It was in his closet. In a shoebox.)

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!? IT WAS AS WELL GUARDED AS MY 1983 TOPPS BASEBALL CARD COMPLETE SET (minus Ricky Henderson, which I think my brother stole)?!?!?

I was eight, but I did "ate" the gum that came with the cards...and by "ate" I mean "swallowed."

8 vs ATE

Jesus.

All of this, hubbub, has been brought to my attention because of an article by The Daily Beast yesterday. Apparently John Paul II's blood has been stolen from a Church in Abruzzo. (Doesn't anyone steal money or jewels anymore? --- "Family Jewels" notwithstanding.)

Apparently relic theft is not an uncommon practice. In the case of the missing foreskin the suspect list included Dario Magnoni (the priest himself), thieves looking to sell it on the black market, Satanists, neo-Nazis and even...drum roll...the Vatican itself!

Why would the Vatican want to steal it you might ask?

According to Slate.com, the answer might be "Protestant doubt." Along with the idea that "scientific revolution...changed our thinking from superstitious to skeptical." In short, it was a fear of science proving this was fake.

But I don't know. I know the Church has been waging a war against Science for all of my life, but something doesn't seem right here. Though I don't doubt Religion vs Science was the Church's motivation.

Hmmm, what else was happening in 1983?

According to The Smithsonian Institute, Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis perfected the PCR technique. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technique allows scientists to make millions of copies of DNA.

Wait.

The prepuce.

JP2's blood.

My Ricky Henderson card.

Oh. My. GAWD! Someone is trying to clone Jesus to make a FrankenCHRIST who can steal the fuck out of bases!
(*I already have the copyright on this, so don't even try it)

I wonder what he'd look like...

I'm fucking in!

Sources cited in the BLOG above:

The Daily Beast

Slate

Smithsonian Institute

8 vs ATE - This fucking story again