The enduring allure of relics.

Relics, whether sacred or secular, engender intrigue. A few months ago John F. Kennedy's children objected to an auction of some things that had once belonged to their father. A few years earlier these same kids engineered an auction of their mother's stuff, which raked in millions more than the most optimistic projections. One wonders why what was good for the goose is not so for the gander. Or, is perhaps only what's profitable for the Kennedy goslings good for America?

The Kennedy relics deeply touched people with especially deep pockets. We shallow-pocketed people collect more modest material artifacts. Heirlooms like great-grandmother's ring, an oil painting of an ancestor, or a creaky oak rocking chair are familial relics. Some people collect things of historical significance. I recently purchased a 1910 Princeton diploma signed by Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States.

Sacred relics are certainly no less intriguing. In Newark, New Jersey in April, a Pennsylvania man pled guilty to smuggling three monstrances, one of them containing bone fragments of Saint Maxellendis, a seventh-century Frank noblewoman. The objects, valued at $130,000, had been stolen from a small rural church in northern France.

The Catholic Church has traditionally classified relics as either "real" or "representative." Real relics are parts of a saint's body or something the saint possessed; representative relics are items touched to real relics. In the sixth century, relics got a real boost when the church ordered martyrs' bones to be embedded in every altar. By the 16th century, however, many reformers took a more than dim view of relics. Martin Luther, for example, condemned them both as a lucrative invention of Catholicism and as contrary to scripture.

At one time several heads of John the Baptist were available for veneration in Europe. Feathers from the Archangel Gabriel graced some relic collections. And although the bodies of both Jesus and Mary were believed to have ascended into heaven, that did not stop medieval enterpreneurs from displaying excess bodily fluids such as Jesus' blood or Mary's milk as well as Jesus' milkteeth and foreskin. It is often said that if all the material purported to be relics of the true cross were collected, they would circle the world. No wonder Martin objected.

The commercial enterprise of supplying Christian relics had an unsavory side. A brisk business developed in order to sate the appetite for relics. Burials were dug up. Some bodies were distributed to monasteries and churches. Other bodies were cut into various-sized pieces and distributed to countless takers. When the supply of recognized saints' bodies diminished, other bodies and body parts filled the bill. No doubt some skullduggery was afoot.

Likewise, today's interest in Kennedy relics has also spawned its share of chicanery. Just two days before the March auction, a person was charged with peddling forged Kennedy papers. Although the bidding at the auction fell short of the frenzy seen two years earlier at the Jackie Onassis event, the JFK pseudo-relics still sold for about $9 million, deeply filling the seller's pockets.

Secular and sacred relics of all sizes, shapes, and sorts survive and thrive. Familial, historical, or religious, they touch people deeply. Relics -- of saints or sinners, expensive or free, authenticated or questionable -- are clearly here to stay.