As far as Andrew Sullivan retracting his link, I didn't think for an instant the victim in the picture was Jewish, but then I follow these issues more closely than most. Charles must have assumed the other people who read his blog are likewise as well-read on the subject when that is not the case.

It IS a gruesome spectacle. The way some Muslims believe the bodies of dead terrorists are holy, and the way they pass around chunks of dead people as magical relics is gross. It's a celebration of death. It's a celebration of the culture of death, which is why Palestinian society is so screwed up.

Unfortunately, some people weren't paying attention, and Charles didn't prepare for that--this post is, of course, a follow-up to an earlier post that makes the ethnicity of the victim clear:

"After today’s Israeli missile attack in Gaza against a car carrying Hamas terrorists, once again a huge mob of Palestinians swarmed over the destroyed vehicle—and in a ghoulish, debased display of savagery, reached into the car with their bare hands to pull out ... well, see for yourself."

Put the word out that Arafat has magical powers and wait for the fun to begin.

Millions of Iranians, maybe?

#3 Steven Den Beste

Yeah I was just thinking the same thing. Freudian slip on Charles' part. Still gross, though.

I used to laugh when I saw the "Khomeni blooper reel." I don't anymore.

Am I just jaded, or has some sense of reality kicked in?

Dang, you beat me to it, Den Beste. I was coming right back in to post that.

It should also be noted that Palestinians did the same thing to Jews during the Ramallah lynching (and the media tried not to cover that aspect of the story). So the idea that this only happens to Muslim corpses is wrong.

#3,

I didn't catch the error at first and thought we were playing Jeopardy.

Millions of Iranians, maybe?

What is.. it was a mistake to invite this group to my bar mitzva?

Oops. Thanks for the correction.

Looks like an Iranian Thanksgiving, with the family fighting over the er, turkey.

"It IS a gruesome spectacle. The way some Muslims believe the bodies of dead terrorists are holy, and the way they pass around chunks of dead people as magical relics is gross."

Are you sure they do that? it's news for me. wow. that's shrik btw. (shrik = blasphemous "innovation" that contradicts with the religion)

It's a celebration of death. It's a celebration of the culture of death, which is why Palestinian society is so screwed up."

And as far as "celebration of death" is concerned - As a muslim, you are encouraged to attend funerals and pray for the person who passed away, hence in a muslim country, you will find strangers attending funerals to pay their respect to the dead. However, religion is highly politicalized in palestine and funeral processions become political rallies. But even then, they are not the celebration of death.

Charles,

I have read your blog daily for over a year and this is the first error I recall seeing you make. Incredible, actually. I can't construct a 3 line comment without an errorrr.

Man, it's a good thing Ayatollah Khomeini's not alive to see that horrific display of religious fervor. He would be rolling over in his grave if he saw that ghastly image.

Can you imagine what an entire hand and forearm would go for these days? It would be worth a mint!

...or at least an after dinner mint. Imagine the "magical powers" it would have.

Hey, when I wrote that guy is thinking of putting that hand on his wall, I was joking. Guess reality proves me wrong.
About the pic above, after the revolution, there were also millions who wanted to tear Khomeini limb from limb. Some of them might have infiltrated the funeral and done exactly that... but I'm sure they'd been the minority, if there were any such at all.

"Hey mom, look at the Israeli soldier half liver I brought you! Ain't a a good boy?"

at which mobs of millions (yes, millions) of Iranians stormed the funeral bier and tore Khomeini’s corpse apart in a frenzy to obtain magical relics—i.e., body parts.

*blinks* I hadn't heard about that until now. Wouldn't said relics be heretical?

All that bellyaching going on over the other pic regarding muslims only gathering body parts for burial. Here we had a body on its way to burial and they're still tearing it apart!

I do have a question though, if their body is scattered about due to souvenir hunters, do they still get their virgins or just a piece?

That photo looks like a Caravaggio.

[Link: www.uwrf.edu...]

[Link: www.magdalene.org...]

#1 Michael Levy

Charles' article said "missile strike." No Jews were recently killed by a missile strike, only by a bus bomb and the like. Andrew could have figured that out if he read it more closely.

It's an emotional picture, and thus it would have been better to have a crystal clear explanation.

OT: 3rd straight night of demonstrations in Iran. Let's hope it's a very hot summer there.

[Link: www.nytimes.com...]

Top five slogans for the funeral of the Ayatollah:

5. "I Left My Heart in Tehran"

4. "Ripping Khomeini a new one"

3. "I came, I saw, I grabbed some a--"

2. "Don't touch that -- he needs it for the virgins"

And the number one slogan for the Khomeini funeral:

1. "89 cents a pound"

...Thank you -- I'm here all week...

Picking up the conversation from last night's thread...

The idea of relics of a martyr isn't unique to Muslims. Christians, especially Catholics, find meaning in remnants of a martyr's body. Here in Colorado, once every year or two a relic that purports to be part of the body of the Budda is presented in a Buddhist temple.

What makes the images of Khomeni's funeral or the burned out shell of a Hamas leader's car so shocking is the difference between a martyr that died a thousand years ago and one that died a couple of minutes ago.

wordwarp,

thanks, brilliant Caravaggio's.
i'm an 'art historian' by degree, he was a genius.

fat elvis -

isn't it striking? the chiarochuro, the strong diagonals, the focus on the lighted figure in the middle? wild picture. wonder if he won the pulitzer.

For the record, as a Catholic, the only "relics" of martyrs that I'm familiar with are not body parts, but rather objects. In Europe, especially, there were lots of claims about false relics. Many Churches claimed to have small pieces of wood that were supposedly part of the cross.

Anyway, the point is, I don't know of any Christian relics that consist of body parts. But I did visit the Revolutionary Barracks in Trenton once, and they claim to have a series of George Washington's actual hair. The display of the hair, however, was so tiny that at the time I couldn't see it in the crowd (I was just a kid when I went).

The fallacy in the complaints on the other threads that we are somehow misinterpreting the reverence with which the Muslims gather body parts for burial (/irony)is made clear not only in this situation, but in the multiple pictures we've seen of the creatures parading around with the amputated hands of thieves. And, of course, said amputation is very much part of shariah law. Unlike Halachic law, which prohibits mutilation of the human body, since it is made in God's image.

So, bullshit to those who make equivalence between these creatures ripping at corpses for trophies and ZAKA. And this may explain why they do it.

yes, actually that is the time when Iranians hadn't woke up & though that Khomeini was an angel who had come to earth to help Iranians; They didn't know that he was a criminal & blood thirsty evil who had born to destroy Iran...& now that Iran has nothing else to lose, I bet that all the ones you see in the picture are sorry for those foolish actions.....
Anyway, It's a while that some posts of LGF makes me wonder what is his real idea about Iran & its future!!!

#21
...a thousand years ago...
are you sure it was a thousand years ago?

Sydney Carton #24

Actually, if you go to St. Anthony's Cathedral in Padova you can see, behind the altar, some of Anthony's, uh, organs. I'm Catholic, too; and a fleeting glimpse was all I could take.

On the subject in general in Catholicism, there's a book called The Incorruptables. I have no desire whatsover to read anything having to do with the decomposition (or not) of a corpse and so do not plan on reading it. Just throwing it out there in case anyone's actually interested.

#24 - Blood relics are pretty common--the blood of St. Januarius, for example: [Link: www.cicap.org...]

The Budda relics that have been reported were objects purported to be a tiny chunk of jawbone or tooth, I forget which. (Some less reverent Buddhists have remarked that there are enough relics in circulation to make two of him!)

#25 - mommydoc

Easy there.

I didn't intend any "equivalence" or to make any judgments one way or another. In yesterday's thread and today's, the question came up: why do they do this?

I'll also repeat what I said yesterday: I don't have any special inside knowledge on this topic - I'm guessin'!

#26 -iraniangirl

Oops!

That was badly phrased wasn't it? No, the "thousand years" was meant to refer to Christian martyrs for whom relics are in circulation. Not Khomeni.

I wonder who got Khomeni's dick? Did they pickle it? Is it mummified and held in a decorative case? Do they pass it around amongst friends, after dinner parties? Is there a hushed silence as each guest reverently strokes the revered organ, in turn? What magical wonders has the sagacious cleric's penis performed?

OK, last guess and I'm done.

"Waving the bloody shirt" is a phrase that means making a dramatic display to incite outrage.

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "bloody shirt" meaning specifically "a blood-stained shirt exhibited as a symbol of murder or outrage" dates back to 1586"

Bloody shirt to bloody hand is a short, but gruesome jump.

And with that Cliff Claven moment, I'll call it a night.

quaker (#28):

Aw, cripes! How did I forget "San Genna'?" I work in Naples!

Palm, meet forhead... :|

#17 wordwarp: Nope, it most certainly doesn't look like a Caravaggio. Where would you see the similarity?

#21 quakerinbasement: ditto as above, Nope! it most certainly doesn't look like a Catholic relic!

First of all I gotta ask: why, why is it that some people feel the stretch unreal comparisons with things done in "other religions", other cultures, other people, other places - is it intended do somehow diminish the savagery, well why do you feel such need?

Secondly, pedantic part: relics can also be entire bodies indeed, even preserved in displays and such. Or skeletons. Or skulls. There's a church in Otranto, southern Italy, with a crypt on the side where the walls are filled with skulls of martyrs, as the belief goes. Go serach "Otranto martyrs" and see what you get. It looks like those heaps of skulls in Cambodia... Its not pleasant, the whole concept of relics can be offputting or medieval or whatever you wanna consider it.

But please find me an example in the history of Christianity or even just Catholicism where mobs were ripping out body parts of people they believed to be martyrs or saints.

If you can't find it - and you just can't! -, then don't make absurd parallels with absurd intentions please!

Thanks.

OT: Police crush riot in Tehran
3,000-strong rampage: Student-led protest calls for collapse of Islamic government

[Link: www.nationalpost.com...]

Bastards

... first it's: "how is that different to the Israelis retrieving body parts of victims of terrorists?" then it's "how is that different to Buddhist/Hindu/Catholic relics of people believed to be saints and maybe they were not but in any case they didn't kill anyone?" next thing has got to be "how is that different to my neighbour mowing the lawn?" cos you know, that's as much SENSE as those parallels make.

/rant over.

Jewels (#35):

I hope the pseudonymous author of this article and his friends made it through this o.k.

The Burnt Generation

zaza (#34):

I hope you didn't take my post as a comparison between Catholicism's veneration of these things and an Islamic funeral free-for-all. Maybe I should have prefaced or followed what I said by stating the reverence for the human body held by the Church. Even being Catholic, I find that practice a little ghoulish. Maybe I don't get that either.

In any case, sorry, o.k. ? :)

#37 someguy: nah! don't you even dare apologise to me :-) I sure wasn't referring to you, but asking that question to wordwarp and quaker alone, and ranting against the kind of you know "...doesn't that look, like, um, Mexican? ... they're just not as organised as the Israeli teams!" posts in the troll-infested thread!

No need to apologise at all, I totally agree with you. I don't like that display of relics much myself, especially when it involves skeletons, even if 'ghoulish' is maybe too strong, they have a sense and a meaning and a respectful one too, but I still am put off because well I don't enjoy seeing skeletons or dead bodies no matter how well preserved. That said, I know of people of no religious leaning at all who enjoyed visiting the catacombs in Dublin immmensely, hearing all those tales of torture of martyrs and the hand-drawn-quartered thing, but that's a freaky case ;)

Remember the thread on the shi'ites procession in Kerbala, well that I do think has some, albeit still stretched, and totally different in nature and spirit, parallels with some old practices still surviving in some marginal Catholic processions. But not this.

I just am frustrated with how many excuses people are soo willing to find for that kind of mob behaviour and disrespect for both life and death.

I find it sooo beyond absurd that they would even call it "retrieving". I find it beyond offensive to make ANY comparisons with what people in Israel have to put up with after a terrorist attack. I don't know how they manage, and then to hear morons debase their suffering by such parallels with this madness...

Someguy: you are one wonderfully sensible person, I don't think I would ever find anything to rant against you. My own apologies for giving that impression.

ps - someguy: isn't it funny, after that thread on the Vatican, if now you were the one going "catholic-basher" and I was the one going "catholic-ultras-defense" ;-))

#25 mommydoc: I too was wondering why the photographers don't rush to the scene when the clerics are amputating hands and legs in Saudi Arabia... wonder if they wave those around too for the cameras?

----

Back on topic, looky here, please note location and date:

[Link: www.iranian.com...]

zaza (#38):

Thanks. I see what you're talking about, now. Come to think of it, comparing that photo of mob vampirism with the work of Caravaggio (as wordwarp did) is not only tasteless, but almost beyond the pale.

ranting against the kind of you know "...doesn't that look, like, um, Mexican? ... they're just not as organised as the Israeli teams!" posts in the troll-infested thread!

Remember, zaza, the tu quoque strategy is the ace in the hole for the debater standing on a defenseless position. Nuff said.

Another cute cute one:

[Link: www.iranian.com...]

zaza (#41):

Khomeni is smiling just a little too much there, isn't he? He must have been getting some serious tongue there! Well, that's what a little Jontue and some candlelight will do to an animal like the Arafish.

someguy: isn't it funny, after that thread on the Vatican, if now you were the one going "catholic-basher" and I was the one going "catholic-ultras-defense" ;-))

Let's face it, zaza--we're a bunch of weirdos. With people like Jack Kerouac, Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde (converted on his deathbed) it's no wonder James Joyce called us "Here Comes Everybody." :)

Someguy: yeah, it just doesn't make sense, besides, the chiaroscuro is not an exclusive to Caravaggio. He never painted such huge crowds. This looks a lot more like those old Soviet propaganda posters or North Korean massive paintings of soldiers ready to slaughter Americans... (they do have such "art" in the presidential palace).

I'd never realised they tore the Ayatolla to bits when they had his state funeral, I remember Aunty Beeb reporting the spontaneous outpouring of grief, but
they didnt mention the rush for relics of the old relic...

Cardiff City football had a tradition for sometime afterwards; "Do the Ayatollah", to be shouted at the opposing fans whilst slapping ones-self on the head to indicate that said fans (or their teams chances) were dead...

PHil

#42 someguy: LOL! bleeurgh, that little Khomeini-Arafish lovefest makes me positively sick. Even more than the arm-grabbing mobs.

Arafat must be missing his comrade so much. Surely such a great legend deserves to be reunited to his one true love. Imagine a repeat of the Ayatollah's Funeral, it would be so charming...

Let's face it, zaza--we're a bunch of weirdos

Oh well, all religions are strictly for weirdos ;)

(yes, that's me trying out the "tu quoque" strategy and failing...)

And of course, it's not just religion. While we're on the subject, I thought I'd mention the "holy relics" of Communism's state atheism:

Vladimir Lenin's mummified body

Mao Zedong's mummified body on display here (They don't allow cameras. When I was in Beijing, I didn't go into the building, just out of principle --and besides, there was a huge line).

Ho Chi Minh's mummified body on display here (except when it is flown to Moscow annually for "maintainance").

Kim Jong Il's mummified body

Damn. I could at least speel my own naem right...

Dar ul Harb(#47):

Musta been that last Korean entry that threw your spelling off... :p

#30 quakerinabasement

Ok, I'm sorry :(

I don't see why Andrew Sullivan would delete the link. Is tearing apart the body of a muslim less ghastly than tearing apart the body of a jew? The picture shows the barbarity of the culture no matter who the shreddee might be.

Whakko(#50):

It's more ghastly because Jews don't do that to their dead for the reason mommydoc(#25) stated above. If you hang around here (or look through Charles' archives), this is by no means the first time he's published photos of this ghoulish muslim tomfoolery.

I have no idea what Andrew Sullivan is talking about or what he may have written to or about Charles. But neither Christians nor Jews treat their dead this way.

The truth is here, just check it out at [Link: www.cat2002.org...]

At the risk of invoking ire from the participants, I must say I don't remember hearing that the people at the funeral tore apart the body. The account I read said that they were grabbing at the shroud for relics, and eventually knocked down the body. The authorities had to postpone the funeral because they couldn't get the body to the grave. Bad enough.

An Open Letter to Charles Johnson,

Dear Charles,

The last few days have very grim. But publishing this picture today brings back one of my happiest memories. I laughed and howled with glee when Khomeini's body fell out of the box.

Thanks, you brought back my smile with this pic.

AG

Errr... you are aware that it is the custom of the Ferengi that a dead person's body parts are sliced up and sold.

nerd alert(#55):

I'm as big a TNG fan as anyone, but that seems like a pretty tasteless joke for this context.

Who got the ding dong?

The article I linked covering the Khomeini funeral on the earlier "Give Me a Hand" thread was written by Daniel Pipes in 1989.

He really has been watching the region for a while.

I might be wrong, but I don't recall hearing or reading that the crowd at Khomeini's funeral tore the corpse apart. I remember that they rushed the bier and knocked the casket over, spilling the corpse onto the ground; as David Letterman commented, "fortunately, the Ayatollah was not injured." But I don't recall anything about the corpse being torn apart.

Meanwhile, big doings in Iran:

[Link: www.nytimes.com...]

I hope this is the beginning of a Ceacescu scenario, rather than the beginning of a Tianamen scenario.

they don't seem able to contain their emotions and impulses for example when someone is saying somthing to me that i don't like i may get the impulse to hit them but i will stop myself for many reasons 1. i will get into trouble 2. people should be able to speak with out fear of being harmed because one day i may be in the same situation as the person talking to me is in and i certainly would not want them to hit me. But with muslims when ever someone says somthing that offends them they get the impulse to hurt them or shut them up and they act on it. the most recent example of this was the riots because of the beauty contest in nigeria

Dammit, make that "Ceaucescu"... coffee hasn't kicked in yet...

#46 Dae ul Harb 6/13/2003 03:07AM PST

"And of course, it's not just religion. While we're on the subject, I thought I'd mention the "holy relics" of Communism's state atheism.."

Communist religion = politics. Its pretty well established now. Once you think about it that way, the cultishnes and dangerousness of it is amplified 1000 fold.

These are religious artifacts, just like the rest.

Good call on that one by the way - now we have 2 evils, a few devils, and some shadowmen inspiring their followers to save/preserve/rip their flesh from their bodies for powers sake.

1 good guy, and a cross.

thats not such a good ratio, but at least we can be settled on the fact that its zealotry, and not intent that decides if this happens in a group/culture/etc... its just so ghoulish for this century..

Mummys anyone?

.....what did Andrew Sullivan delete.?

(I miss everything...:-()

#60

this is actually a good thing

during iraq, they used loudspeakers to broadcast insults,
and then hosed 'em down when they came running at the armoured vehicles

it will probably work again until they are all gone

#63 ploome: Sullivan deleted the link to the "These aren't savages?" thread, his link was saying "Palestinian savagery: who would make peace with these people?" and now he's got:

[Link: www.andrewsullivan.com...]

AN APOLOGY: I linked to a photograph yesterday of Palestinians retrieving body parts from a bombed car. I thought it was horrifying because I thought that the body parts were of murdered Jews. They weren't. I should have read the caption that the AP ran with it (it wasn't on the site I linked to) and double-checked the context. I deeply regret the posting, and apologize for the link. I deleted the item.

#59

I hope this is the beginning of a Ceacescu scenario, rather than the beginning of a Tianamen scenario.

I think this is wishful thinking for 'another' country sitting on a sea of oil.

I'd like to see some research or statistics on how many times actual thugs have been overthrown 'by the people'. I think waiting on the people is a delusional waste of time, waste of history, ala the cold war.

Good people, people who genuinely understand the concept that a man has a right to his life, should be more active. It makes for a better planet.

But today, the better planet people are worried about litter, as if that were a problem.

Throughout history many meteorite-worshiping cultures have considered body parts holy. /sarcasm(?)

#66:

Good people, people who genuinely understand the concept that a man has a right to his life, should be more active.

Point taken. I'll parachute into Tehran this afternoon and see what I can do...

I agree with your general point, that thuggish regimes can generally resist popular discontent for a long, long time. Repression usually works, unfortunately. Yet in the case of Iran, there is reason to have realistic hope that the opposition has reached such a critical mass that there can, indeed, be an revolution from within. Interestingly, not even Michael Ledeen is calling for direct US military intervention in Iran, rather for increased logistical support for Iranian opposition groups, increased VOA-style Persian language broadcasting, that sort of thing.

As a Catholic, I sometimes find somethings maybe go a little too far, perhaps as a result of incorporating the traditions of pagans that converted.
For example, I have no problem with people saying the Hail Mary, ( which consists of praise given by the angel Gabriel, and her cousin Elizabeth ( mother of John the Baptist), and which asks her to pray to God for us, but when some people start treating her like a 4th member of the Trinity, I fear they approach the slippery slope of idolatry. Ditto, I think it is ok to ask saints to pray for us to God, but it is clearly a form of polytheism to pray directly to saints asking for favors.
Relics, statues, etc., if they help us focus when praying, fine, but I believe Catholics who subscribe magic powers to inanimate objects ( pieces of wood, bones, statues, etc). are deviating from true Christianity.

True, Christians have organized things like the Inquisition, but no where in the teachings of Jesus did He ever say to threaten, torture, or kill unbelievers. Quite the contrary, when rejected by a community, the apostles were to shake the dust of the town from their sandals, and leave.

Thus the difference, The Inquisitors were violating the teachings of Christ, the terrorists are following the teachings of Muhammad, who was a warrior with a thing for 8 year old girls.

The ripping apart of Muslim corpses, and the ripping apart of infidel corpses, occur for different reasons. Infidel corpses are torn apart to show lack of respect for them, whereas martyr corpses are ripped apart in the belief that their fragments contain holy powers.

However, both are rooted in a complete, institutionalized disrespect for life.

Oh, and it's futile to point out the contradiction of treating both Israeli and shahid corpses the same way. Remember, these are people who will declare that, "The Holocaust never happened, and Hitler should have finished the job," and honestly see no contradiction at all in that.

It's an entire society of people who can believe wholeheartedly that two plus two equals five, while operating in a world where two plus two equals four.

#24 Sydney Carton
#27 someguy

You can see St. Peter's hand in Budapest . . . at least they said it was St. Peter's hand. Could have been Khomeni's for all I know.

re: various relic posts.

Yes, I've heard about the Christian relics. I'm not questioning the concept of relics. But wouldn't Islam decry the veneration of such objects as heresy, since only Allah can be worshipped or prayed to?

Quaker et al seem to have beaten me to it, but lest we forget it's not just the brown people who go around worshipping flesh relics...every damn thread on this site quickly turns into some "god is on our side" "no more arabs" bullshit...for people so quick to jump on anti-semitism (i agree with you there), you'd think you'd be more hesitant to engage in this sort of thing. hypocrites.

#73 Kylear, yes, veneration of relics would be "shirk" (idolatry) under Sunni Islam. But the Iranians are Shiites, and the Shiites indulge in many practices that the Sunnis, especially the Wahabbis, would consider shirk.

Can anyone be bothered to explain some blindingly obvious thingies to #74? oh well, me neither.

I remember watching the Ayatollah's funeral on TV way back then, the crowd pushing and raging at the body so much that the coffin tipped and the old man's body was dragged along in the dirt for awhile before the show got going again.

I distinctly recall thinking that if ever there was a sign from God, this was one for sure.

As I said, the left are seething that Rachel Corrie was not given the same glorious palistinian death treatment.

Christian veneration of the relics of the martyrs:

I got interested in this when I was reading about the alleged ossuary (bone box) for James, the brother of Jesus. At the time when I was reading about the funeral practice that apparently was common to all Jews of that era (the flesh was left to decay for about a year in a cavernous tomb, then the bones were collected and placed in an ossuary), I was struck by the parallels to the Christian treatment of the relics of the saints. The saints were entombed, and then after the flesh decayed the bones were "translated" (moved above ground) to a reliquary (kind of like an ossuary), and I started to wonder if this is where this practice got its start.

Probably the background information most important to keep in mind is that the many reference in the New Testament to the body being a "vessel" or "temple" of the Holy Spirit remains true after death -- that even though the soul departs from the body at the time of death the Holy Spirit continues to dwell within the earthly remains of the saint, and that the relics are venerated because they are vessels of such grace. Similarly just as the Eucharist is divided for the benefit of many recipients, but each piece of the Eucharist is a vehicle of God's entire grace (i.e. it is not diminished by breaking it into pieces), the same is true of the saint's relics. Or to put it in somewhat more vulgar terms, it's okay to distribute the remains of the one saint to various geographical regions, for the grace embodied therein is not diminished thereby.

Anyway when I started reading up about it, here's what I found out. It is apparently an ancient practice. The first recorded veneration of a Christian martyr's relics was that of Polycarp (a disciple of John, the disciple of Jesus). According to The Catholic Encyclopedia after his martyrdom his disciples (the Smyreans) say in a letter which has been preserved:

we took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom

Gregory of Nyssa, a Father of the Church who contributed to the theology of the Trinity in the fourth century had this to say about venerating the relics of the saints:

believing that to touch [the place where the relic is entombed] is itself a sanctification and a blessing and if it be permitted to carry off any of the dust which has settled upon the martyr's resting place, the dust is accounted as a great gift and the mould as a precious treasure. And as for touching the relics themselves, if that should ever be our happiness, only those who have experienced it and who have had their wish gratified can know how much this is desirable and how worthy a recompense it is of aspiring prayer

There's a nice discussion of the history of the practice at
Saint's Alive. The practice has been abused. According to Saints Alive

Vanentinian III spoke of bishops and clergy who were guilty of robbing the martyrs' graves to obtain their relics

However according the same page:

The universal approval of the relic/martyr cult was enacted in the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 787 AD. The document states: If any church has been consecrated without the sacred relics of martyrs, relics are now to be placed therein with the customary prayers. A bishop who henceforth consecrates a church without Holy Relics is to be deposed as a transgressor of ecclesiastical tradition. The Synod in Mainz in 888 AD (Canon 5) ratified the placernent of relics given at Nicea, and demanded that relics should hereafter be deposited in every altar.

I read elsewhere that Vatican II has downplayed this practice.

Interesting oddments: I've read in numerous places, such as this one, that the late Generalismo Franco of Spain kept the "incorruptiple", severed hand of St. Teresa of Avila by his bedside. And speaking of incorruptible, it was discovered that numeous saints were not decomposing. Basically the idea was to dig up their bones after a decent period to put them in a reliquary, but to everyone's shock it was discovered that a certain portion of the saint's never decayed to the point of becoming just bones. (Hence the fact that poor Teresa's hand ended up being a dictator's personal talisman). In some cases, like St. John of the Cross, when the people digging him up found out he wasn't decaying properly, they dumped lime all over his remains, waited a year and tried again, all to no avail -- he was just as fleshy as he had ever been.

Deb