The Shroud Codex (8 page)

“Where is the Shroud now?” Castle asked.

“The Catholic Church owns the Shroud of Turin,” Morelli explained. “It is kept in the Chapel of the Shroud in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Typically, the Shroud is kept locked away in a controlled-atmosphere vault that the scientists have designed to maximize preservation of the cloth.”

“Does the Catholic Church have an official position on whether the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Christ?” Castle asked.

“The Shroud is one of the Catholic Church’s most treasured ancient relics,” Morelli answered. “Officially, the Church maintains the Shroud is a venerated object, but there is no Church declaration
or judgment that the Shroud is authentic. Officially, the Church’s position is that no relic or object is needed to justify faith in Jesus Christ. Still, many Catholics and non-Catholics believe the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ.”

Before he became an atheist, Castle had been raised an Episcopalian and he was not brought up to put much trust in relics. “I seem to remember reading that there was carbon dating done on the Shroud and that the scientists doing the testing determined that the Shroud came from the medieval period, that it simply did not trace back two thousand years to Jesus.”

“Yes,” Morelli acknowledged. “That’s right, but several more recent studies have challenged the carbon-dating procedures. Whether the Shroud is the burial cloth of Christ is still very much being debated, even within the Church. Archbishop Duncan is arranging for you to meet Father Middagh, one of the Church’s most knowledgeable experts on the Shroud in the world. Let’s save the question of the carbon dating until we meet with Father Middagh. For now, please just take it that the experts you will meet consider the carbon-testing results showing the Shroud to be a medieval fake are now in question. My job here today is to give you enough information about Father Bartholomew to get you to agree to take the case.”

“What is it that the Vatican wants me to conclude?” Castle asked, seriously wanting to get to the point. “Is the Vatican trying to prove that Father Bartholomew is a fake or that he has become Jesus? Is the question whether or not Jesus is somehow taking over the body of Father Bartholomew? You’ve got to level with me, Father Morelli. What does the Vatican believe has happened as a result of Bartholomew’s near-death experience? Does the Vatican believe that Father Bartholomew has become more than a healer, that he has somehow become the crucified Jesus Christ once again reincarnated?”

“Truthfully, the Vatican does not know what is happening with Father Bartholomew,” Morelli said honestly. “The pope asked me the same questions you just posed. I have no answers and neither does the pope. That’s why I am here.”

“Okay, then, let me try to explain to you how I proceed as a psychiatrist,” Castle said slowly, wanting to make sure there were no misunderstandings. “You have to understand that the human subconscious is very strong, strong enough to cause many people to modify their physical appearance based on this or that neurosis. My suspicion from looking at these photos and listening to your story is that Bartholomew has a mental condition that looks maybe like a neurosis, or maybe even a more serious psychosis.”

“I understand,” Morelli said.

“What interests me is that Father Bartholomew’s mental illness involves his religious beliefs. Father Bartholomew’s case is precisely what I write about in my books. What I suspect is that Bartholomew is undergoing what is commonly known as a multiple personality disorder. His mental illness may cause Bartholomew to imitate Christ—even physically—but I cannot believe this man is somehow mystically becoming Jesus Christ, in real life, today, in New York City. If that’s what the Catholic Church wants me to conclude, I’m not your guy.”

“The Catholic Church has centuries of experience of dealing with clergy, and in those hundreds of years some of the clergy have had psychological problems, just like any other group of people over hundreds of years of experience,” Morelli said. “The Catholic Church also has centuries of dealing with mystics and through those centuries many mystics have demonstrated the stigmata.”

“What’s your point?” Castle asked directly.

“My point is that sometimes psychology does not explain all of religious experience,” Morelli answered equally directly.

“That leads me to conclude that you believe the Shroud is indeed the actual burial cloth of the historical Jesus,” Castle said, wanting to make sure he understood Morelli.

“Yes, I do,” Morelli admitted. “I struggled with the evidence for years, but finally I concluded I could not explain by any scientific methods how the Shroud of Turin had been created, regardless of how brilliant the forger might have been.”

“And you also believe Father Bartholomew died and returned to life, much as Jesus Christ himself did,” Castle said, pressing on.

“I’m not as sure of that,” Morelli admitted. “I didn’t get to be an advisor to the pope, especially not this pope, by giving him easy answers. My training is to question everything. The Vatican and I believe we need your expertise to get to the bottom of what is really going on with Father Bartholomew.”

Castle was beginning to feel more comfortable about the assignment, but there was still something he had to be clear about.

“One more thing,” he stressed. “I can’t promise you I can cure Father Bartholomew of whatever is going on. Father Bartholomew could spend years with me in therapy and I still can’t promise you I could cure him. Years from now, he might be much worse than he is today.”

“I understand.”

“Okay, then,” Dr. Castle said, having made up his mind. “I will take the case, but it will cost the Catholic Church a lot of money for me to do so.”

“The Vatican is prepared to pay your fees.”

“And I reserve the right to publish a book on my findings, with or without the approval of the Catholic Church.”

“The pope is prepared to agree to that as well.”

“One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to speak with the pope myself. I spoke to him when he
was Cardinal Vicente and I want to talk with him again before I take on this assignment.”

“The pope wants to talk with you, too, but he wants to talk with you after you meet with Father Bartholomew.”

“Okay.” Castle agreed. “I will do that. But I have one last concern.”

“What’s that?”

“You are sure the pope doesn’t want to have it both ways?” Castle asked cynically.

“What do you mean?”

“If I conclude Bartholomew has a mental illness, the Vatican could always just say, ‘Castle is not a Catholic and he doesn’t believe in God. What did you expect him to find?’”

“In the final analysis,” Morelli said seriously, “you’re the doctor and the public will believe you, regardless of what the archbishop, the pope, or me—the used-to-be devil’s advocate, as you put it—has to say.”

“Okay, then. I will agree to see Father Bartholomew as a patient.”

“Thank you,” Morelli said in conclusion, reaching out to shake Dr. Castle’s hand. “I look forward to working with you.”

Tuesday

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

Day 6

Morelli brought Father Bartholomew to Dr. Castle’s office in a wheelchair. The priest was dressed in a full-length hospital robe, not his black priest’s suit and black shirt with its Roman collar.

Scrutinizing Bartholomew carefully, Castle realized how deceptive were the wheelchair, the hospital robe, and the heavy bandages on the priest’s arms. Far from being weak, Bartholomew had an athletic build.

Judging the priest to be less than six feet tall, Castle could see that Bartholomew, a mature man in his early forties, was still very strong, fully muscled in the upper body and shoulders. Though he was sitting in the wheelchair, the hospital robe appeared to cover well-exercised legs. If Bartholomew had ever played football, Castle was sure he had been a guard or a tackle, not the quarterback. Castle guessed the priest was no stranger to the gymnasium and he wondered if the priest had a history of weight lifting. Castle immediately suspected Bartholomew’s physical strength and
stamina had been critical to his ability to survive the violent car accident that had nearly killed him, as well as the stigmata that were afflicting him now.

After Morelli excused himself to the waiting room, Castle settled into his chair. “I assume you know why you are here, Father Bartholomew,” Castle said.

“Archbishop Duncan asked me to see you,” he replied, “and you can call me by my first name, Paul, since I assume we are going to get to know one another pretty well.”

“Very well, Paul,” Castle began, taking Bartholomew’s file from the coffee table and paging through his notes. “You can call me Dr. Castle.”

Castle was not interested in his patients becoming his friends. Besides, he knew from decades of experience that the process psychiatrists call “transference” would begin almost immediately. Once transference began, most patients would begin imagining the psychiatrist understood their inner thoughts and feelings, believing the psychiatrist was the only person in the world who could truly understand them and help them.

Both Bartholomew’s forearms were heavily bandaged. Long white gloves with the fingers cut out had been drawn over his hands to help mask the sight of the bandages that reached from the fingers of both hands up the forearms to his elbows.

In person, the impression that Bartholomew looked remarkably like images of Jesus Christ was unavoidable. Bartholomew’s long brown hair and thick reddish beard framed a long, thin face with prominent cheekbones. The beard ended with a double-pointed fork at the chin, just as Father Morelli pointed out with the man in the Shroud. Bartholomew’s mouth was well defined by a neatly trimmed mustache. His hair was twisted in a braid that trailed down his back to beyond his waist. Bartholomew’s soft brown eyes looked out from beneath bushy eyebrows that
also appeared to need a serious trimming. In the two thousand years since the death of Christ, the image of Jesus had become an icon. Now something resembling that icon was sitting across from Castle as a patient in his treatment room.

Bartholomew may have felt this change in his appearance had come upon him as a result of his mystical experience on the operating table. But Castle knew better.

From decades of clinical practice, Castle knew without doubt that the priest’s exterior impression reflected his inner psychological realities. Castle speculated that Bartholomew, now in the grips of his mental illness, was becoming his mental image of what Christ had looked like in life. As an accomplished psychiatrist, Dr. Castle did not believe he was looking at the physical manifestation of the historical Jesus Christ in modern-day New York. He was simply looking at Father Paul Bartholomew’s idea of what he imagined Jesus Christ looked like, perhaps heavily influenced by the Shroud. Castle made a note on Bartholomew’s file to remind him to find out when Bartholomew had first seen the Shroud and to inquire about what impact the Shroud had had on the priest.

“So do you think you can cure me, Dr. Castle?” Bartholomew asked.

“Do you want to be cured?” Castle asked.

“I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with me.”

“Look at you, Paul. Do you think there’s anything about you that’s normal?”

“Let me return the favor,” Bartholomew said wryly. “So you don’t think that your trimmed beard and nicely tailored clothes make you look like Sigmund Freud? All you need is the cigar.”

“Touché,” Castle laughed, appreciating the priest’s intelligence and his wit. “So that’s how you see it? Christ meets Sigmund Freud.”

Bartholomew enjoyed the joke as well. “So, tell me, Dr. Freud, are you sure you don’t want me to help cure you of this delusion? You must have heard by now that I have exceptional healing powers—maybe not as great as yours, but I’m told they’re pretty considerable, just the same. If you let me take you into my own form of analysis, I am sure I could convince you not only that Sigmund Freud died a long time ago but also that there is a God who is very much alive.”

Castle appreciated that Bartholomew was highly intelligent, smart enough to be a particle physicist invited to join the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton at a young age. Einstein had ended his career at the institute and Bartholomew in his years as a physicist had aspired to solve the problems of a unified field theory that Einstein himself had failed to solve.

“But I’ve got to ask you a question,” Castle said, wanting to get serious.

“I’m here to answer your questions,” Bartholomew acknowledged. “Ask away.”

“Why don’t you cut your hair and trim the beard? Maybe if you looked a little less like Jesus Christ, you wouldn’t be seeing a psychiatrist.”

“That’s possible,” Bartholomew answered honestly, “but even if I could return to having short hair and being clean-shaven, I still have the stigmata.”

“Are you telling me there is nothing you can do about your hair?”

“Every time I cut my hair and shave the beard, within a day or two the long hair and beard are back. I’ve tried cutting my hair and trimming my beard three or four times a day, so they don’t get a running start. But even that doesn’t seem to work. If you want to prove it for yourself, we can head to the barber shop right now.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Castle said, taking off his reading glasses so he could look Bartholomew directly in the eye. “I’m sure you know I’m an atheist.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’m not even certain that Jesus Christ ever really existed. The events happened two thousand years ago. That’s a long time ago. You’re familiar with the Dead Sea scrolls, I assume.”

“Of course.”

“Then it’s quite possible the whole story of Jesus Christ had been made up, out of a misunderstanding about the Essenes, the splinter religious sect that wrote the Dead Sea scrolls, or—who knows?—maybe by some other splinter Jewish religious sect wandering around in the desert of ancient Israel. Who knows if Christianity was invented simply to meet psychological needs these dissident religious groups faced in coping with their occupying captors from Imperial Rome. Besides, the Romans crucified countless thousands of people all over the ancient world. What was so significant about this one particular Jew? If there was a historical Christ and the ancient Romans did crucify him, I’m quite sure it was just another day’s hard work for the centurions in Jerusalem unlucky enough not to be home in Rome. Instead they got the thankless job of nailing yet another unlucky Jew to boards and watching him die.”