The Catholic Church does itself no favors with this kind of attitude where it concedes the thing is a fake, and then encourages its followers to continue to look upon this fake as some kind of holy thing.
It is symptomatic of the church's attitude to TRUTH and of course a measure of their regard for the intelligence of its followers.
Look at the way the Catholic Church dealt with Galileo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
What a disgrace. And that is but one example. God only knows how the church would have acted were he to have cast doubts upon the Shroud......or was it around then? LOL
The sun revolving around the earth, being the center of the universe is one thing, continuing to encourage its followers to "worship" a piece of cloth fraud is another.
