A travel-writing friend of mine told me over coffee a while back that he was undertaking a secret quest (OK, not THAT secret…we actually blogged about it a while back). He was packing his bags and heading to a small town in Italy in search of a most holy relic. But this was not your ordinary holy relic…not a splinter of the cross, an amulet from a long-dead disciple or even a cupcake with the Virgin’s countenance in the dessert’s creamy frosting. No, he was in search of Jesus’ foreskin.
Yes, this sounds like a Monty Python skit, but I assure you the writer, David Farley, was dead serious about his adventure. And like any true journalist, Farley has spent the last half year or so in the Italian village of Calcata uncovering this deep, shriveled mystery.
While his efforts have so far not reached um, shall we say, full tumescence, he has a lot of fertile research to show for his efforts. As this piece in Slate Magazine reveals, Farley has been hard at work, probing the deep mysteries behind the Holy Foreskin. We learn, for example, that the mystery has taken odd turns and twists worthy of the Da Vinci Code, and that the foreskin’s disappearance and/or theft may implicate an institution no less grand than the Vatican itself.
Personally, I can think of no quest more worthy of further, dogged investigation than this one, heralding as it might new revelations into the fate of our savior and giving new meaning (to steal David’s own joke) to “the Second Coming”.