Should You Forgo the Madness This Year?

Gerald L. Zelizer

Plans for religious pilgrimages, always popular this time of year, are especially intense now as we wind down to the end of the millennium.

The declaration by the pope that this is a Great Jubilee Year, with indulgences granted to Catholics who travel to major shrines, is largely responsible for the record 30 million visitors anticipated to visit Rome. Israel, too, is expecting at least 4 million visitors. Surely, places in the United States such as Marlboro, N.J., and Clearwater, Fla., where apparitions of Mary have been reported, also will receive increased numbers of visitors.

Western pilgrimage destinations are matched by their counterparts in the East. The Ganges River, extending 1,500 miles from the Himalayas to Calcutta, India, is so sacred to Hindus that they wash, shave and bathe in it during their lifetimes, then have their cremated remains deposited in the water when they die.

In secular celebration, too, certain places are elevated to a status that is special and apart. How else to explain the throng of celebrants who will forgo the comfort of their own homes in order to push and shove each other just to be in Times Square on New Year's Eve? Or the wad of ships that will stand so thick at the International Date Line that extra crews may be required just to watch the radar like oceanic traffic cops?

But closer scrutiny might uncover that all of the fuss over religious pilgrimage is not worth the thinner wallets and blistered feet.

First, in many cases, the events that are purported to have occurred at many of these sites are highly doubtful.

In Israel, and especially in Jerusalem, where so much of the millennium madness is focused, it is helpful to recall what Father Jerome Murphy O'Conner, author of a prime archeological guide, warns: "The prudence of reason has little chance against the certitude of piety."

For example, the authenticity of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - vital to Christianity as the site of the crucifixion and tomb of Jesus - is regarded by most scholars as a retroactive estimation of the place. Emperor Constantine, 300 years after Jesus' time, converted to Christianity and designed this site to be on the spot of a former pagan temple. Central to the archeologists' doubt is that ancient Jews buried their dead outside of the city walls, while this church is within the ancient city walls. The Via Dolorosa, the path of Jesus' walk to the Crucifixion, was located differently in the Middle Ages, and the stations where Jesus is said to have stopped originated in the 19th century.

Jewish pilgrims, too, are subject to the same erroneous guesswork regarding their religious shrines. The tomb of King David, where the pious pray for their deliverance, actually was built much later, during the Crusades, and does not contain the remains of David.

As Amos Elon writes, these sacred places are "defined by faith, not science."

In addition, even when events actually did occur at these sites, as believed, many harbor dark sides that detract from their spiritual purpose.

For example, how to explain that the same holy Ganges River, which is regarded as purifying to all who immerse themselves, is inundated daily with raw sewage and industrial waste? Or that Jerusalem, which means "City of Peace," was in 1096 the scene of carnage against Muslims by Christian crusaders, who boasted: "Girls, women, noblemen, pregnant women were killed along with their unborn children. No one was shown mercy, regardless of sex."

Pilgrims to secular shrines also overlook their undersides. The same canals of Venice that lovers cruise in gondolas are so polluted that the grimy film and odor are palpable. And does any Times Square reveler not realize the risks from pickpockets and muggers?

So why do so many of us persist in traveling to these sites, perceiving only the reputation for sacredness and specialness while sublimating the sacrilegious and sordid?

We do so because of the universal need - religious or secular - to establish holy space. Consider, for example, how families often designate the room of a child who has gone off to college, or the chair of a family member who has died as a kind of quasi-shrine, not to be disturbed or shifted, as if the space were only on loan.

The factual truth of holy sites is fairly irrelevant to their deepest meaning. From time to time, I escort Jewish pilgrimages to many of the sacred places in Israel. We review with guides both the literal history as well as the legends surrounding many pilgrim spots. But upon our return to the United States, what ultimately inspires the participants' religious life are the myths of each locale, which motivate them with a religious power that few literal facts could provide.

In the world of pilgrimage, fiction becomes more truthful and valuable than fact.