The Shroud Codex

by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph. D

  This Monday morning at 8:00 A.M., as expected, Dr. Castle found Father Morelli comfortably seated in his waiting room, ready for the appointment Archbishop Duncan had scheduled over the phone on Friday.

  Seeing the priest for the first time, Castle judged him to be in his early forties. Observing Morelli’s wire-frame glasses and frail build, Castle concluded he was most likely the scholarly type who had never excelled in athletics. Still, Duncan said Morelli was a Jesuit, so Castle knew not only that he was smart, but also that he was political—both of which made sense to Castle, especially since Duncan had told him that Morelli was one of the pope’s most trusted advisors.

  Castle also noted that Morelli dressed modestly, in his black priest’s suit and Roman collar. Yet there were signs Father Morelli had money and enjoyed fine things. Without being ostentatious, Morelli wore handmade Italian leather shoes and he carried under his arm an elegant soft leather briefcase that Castle guessed had been handmade in Florence. Today, the briefcase looked like it was bulging with papers that Castle guessed were meant for him.

  “Archbishop Duncan said you have come from Rome to discuss with me Father Bartholomew,” Castle began, as he settled into his chair opposite Morelli in the treatment room. “What’s the problem?”

  “Va bene,” Morelli began instinctively in Italian, reminding himself instantly to switch into English. Proceeding with a heavy Italian accent, Morelli explained in grammatically perfect and fluent English that Father Paul Bartholomew’s problems began when he was in a massive car accident that should have killed him.

  “Archbishop Duncan mentioned to me the car accident,” Castle commented, “but he did not give me any details other than to suggest that Father Bartholomew revived from a near-death experience.”

  “Technically, Father Bartholomew did die,” Morelli stressed, making sure the psychiatrist was prepared to understand that as far as the Church was concerned, the experience was more than just near death. “Father Bartholomew’s heart actually stopped on the operating table. The doctors worked on him frantically and it was a miracle, but his heart started beating again and he came back to life.”

  “How long was he considered dead?” Castle asked.

  From his briefcase, Morelli handed Castle a thick medical file.

  “Maybe as long as ten minutes,” Morelli answered. “You can read all the medical details here. I’m not a medical doctor, but from what I’ve read in that file, Father Bartholomew’s heart had stopped long enough for the doctors and nurses in the operating room to be startled when the monitors jumped back to life and started registering a pulse.”

  Castle took in the information, but from what he was reading in the medical file, the case was not remarkable. Father Bartholomew had been revived after the doctors in the operating room applied cardiac electric shock procedures. A lot of people die for a while on the operating table and revive back to life, Castle thought. So what? That Morelli thought otherwise was all Castle needed to hear to understand not only that Morelli had no professional medical training, but also that Morelli had very little understanding of medicine.

  “You might not realize it, Father Morelli, but it’s not all that unusual for a patient’s heart to come back like that,” Castle said as he calmly perused the medical file. “For many patients, the cardiac electric shock works. That’s why the doctors in the operating room applied the procedure.”

  “I understand,” Morelli said, undeterred. “But there’s more. Father Bartholomew reported to his religious superiors in the archdiocese that he experienced an out-of-body experience on the operating table. When he was aware his heart had stopped, he felt himself lifting out of his body and hovering above the scene of the doctors below working frantically to revive him. Next, he says, a brilliant light surrounded him and he went through a tunnel he saw suspended high in the air above him. At the end of the tunnel, he recognized many friends and relatives who had died years before. Finally, he was reunited with his mother, who had died only a few years earlier, after a long illness.”

  Again Bartholomew was not sure there was anything remarkable about this. In the medical profession, these were considered “near-death” experiences, not “after-life” experiences, despite how much Father Morelli or the Catholic Church might protest the difference. As far as Dr. Castle was concerned, in his professional medical judgment, people who are truly dead do not return to life. People who are near death may have experiences that they interpret as if they had died and returned to life. But to Castle, this important distinction needed to be made. Just because some people reported this experience did not mean the experience of dying and returning to life happened as they thought. As far as the psychiatrist was concerned, no truly dead person had ever returned to life to report on what happens after we die.

  “People who go through near-death experiences commonly report seeing brilliant lights or going through tunnels at the end of which are waiting long-deceased friends and relatives,” Castle explained. “All this is explainable from natural causes, from the physiology of how the brain dies. It doesn’t mean a person going through a near-death experience is really floating as a disconnected spirit that hovers above their body lying dead below, or that they actually enter a tunnel where they meet long-lost acquaintances. Near-death experiences do not prove the continued existence of the soul after death, nor do they confirm the existence of Heaven. Medically speaking, near-death experiences do not prove the person has actually died, even if the person thinks that is the case. More precisely, near-death experiences tell us how the brain shuts down right before the brain dies.”

  Morelli seemed to get the point, so Castle continued.

  “That seems to be what happened to Father Bartholomew. In the cases where people appear to come back to life, maybe the heart has stopped, but the brain doesn’t die. I will admit that medical science does not understand the phenomenon completely. But a patient who revives from a near-death experience did not actually die. That must be accepted. Again, we don’t always understand why, but some patients can be technically dead for several minutes, even longer, yet for some reason or other, when their vital functions come back to life, there is no permanent damage. Sometimes, as seems to be the case with Father Bartholomew, the patient has a memory of what happened in their minds when their hearts stopped.”

  But Morelli was not convinced Castle was right. “What if,” he asked Castle, “your medical theory is just a convenient explanation to avoid having to deal with messy religious concepts, like the soul or the afterlife? How do we know that these near-death experiences aren’t just the first part of what everybody who dies actually experiences?”

  “Truthfully, we don’t,” Castle admitted. “Until we cross over, none of us may know what death is. But what we do know is that people reporting near-death experiences tend to revive relatively quickly. We don’t have anybody who has been dead for years coming back to life to tell us what the other side looked like.”

  “Ah,” Morelli exclaimed, “but in this case, despite what may be the reality of what happened, Father Bartholomew insists he experienced everything I just described, including dying and going to Heaven. He reports having had a meeting with an ancient wise man he took to be God. You have to admit that, for Father Bartholomew, this description of an after-life experience is his actual current psychological reality.”

  Castle had to agree. “That’s why you called me. I’m a psychiatrist and I spend much of my life dealing with people’s psychological interpretation of reality, whether or not their personal interpretations of what is happening have anything to do with what is really happening, outside that personal psychological reality.”

  “Let me continue,” Morelli said, wanting to make sure Castle heard the whole story. “Bartholomew says he was reunited with his mother and he felt an inner peace and an acceptance from this wise figure that he took to be God. He felt completely at home there and he says God gave him a choice to stay there in Heaven with his mother, or return back t
o earth. If he decided to return to earth, Father Bartholomew says, God said he could not promise him an easy life, but he would give Father Bartholomew a gift he would need to accomplish his mission.”

  None of this altered Castle’s preliminary diagnostic hypothesis, namely, that Bartholomew was experiencing some disturbed psychological reaction in which he was hallucinating. How severe was the brain damage Bartholomew suffered in his near-death experience? Castle wrote in the margin of the medical file.

  “What gifts does Father Bartholomew claim to have brought with him back to earth?” Castle asked.

  “One gift Bartholomew came back with appears to be the ability to heal people.”

  Castle was still skeptical. “I appreciate immediately how a priest claiming healing powers could potentially create a lot of publicity in the news media. If Father Bartholomew is successful in generating a group hysteria, in which masses of people came to believe he has supernatural healing powers that came from an after-life encounter with God, the Church could be inundated with millions of people demanding to see the priest in order to be healed.”

  “Yes, that is a problem,” Morelli agreed. “This priest is only one person, but if his healing abilities become widely believed, Father Bartholomew, like Padre Pio before him, could well be on the way to becoming an international celebrity.”

  “Can you tell me more about these healing abilities?” Castle asked, framing once again an open-ended question designed to encourage Morelli to tell him what he knew, regardless of where Morelli might begin or end up in the explanation.

  “It started in the confessional,” Morelli answered. “Father Bartholomew hears confessions twice a week at St. Joseph’s. Before the accident, Father Bartholomew’s time at St. Joseph’s was pretty much normal. He did his work just as Archbishop Duncan and the archdiocese expected. He celebrated Mass without incident. He heard confessions and gave people absolution, just like any priest would. Generally, he was a very good priest who did his job quietly and competently. Father Bartholomew was successful as a parish priest. He had a growing congregation and was well liked by his parishioners. But now that he is back at St. Joseph’s, everything is changed.”

  “How so?”

  “In the first weeks after Father Bartholomew was back at St. Joseph’s after the accident, we began getting reports from parishioners that he had begun telling some of those in the confessional that they had a particular illness that Father Bartholomew had no way of knowing they had. Then, Father Bartholomew went further. He began recommending to these people in the confessional what they should do to get healed. Others he told not to have an operation or to wait a few days before they did anything. Many of the people didn’t know they were sick.”

  “Is Father Bartholomew medically trained?”

  “Not that I know. In the past few weeks, the archdiocese began to get reports that Father Bartholomew was performing miracles. Parishioners who went to confession with Father Bartholomew began calling Archbishop Duncan’s office to tell him they could hear Bartholomew talking with Jesus in the confessional.”

  “How did people know it was Jesus that Bartholomew was speaking to?”

  “Truly, they didn’t. What people could hear was a second voice in the confessional and they knew the second voice was not Bartholomew’s. They began to assume Bartholomew was talking to Jesus, because when Bartholomew discussed their illnesses, he told them things about their lives that Bartholomew had no way of knowing. Then, when Bartholomew told them what to do about their illnesses, they were healed, if they followed his instructions. So the word spread that Father Bartholomew was consulting with Jesus in the confessional.”

  “And what does Bartholomew say about all this? Does Bartholomew say Jesus is there with him in the confessional?”

  “Yes. He says Jesus sits in the box next to him in the confessional, where the person who is waiting to go to confession next usually kneels and waits their turn. Bartholomew has begun locking off that side of the confessional, allowing people to enter the confessional only from one side. He says that once people say, ‘Bless me, Father; it has been three weeks, or whatever, since my last confession,’ Jesus begins talking to him about the person making the confession.”

  Castle took notes. “And what does this Jesus say?”

  “According to Father Bartholomew, Jesus tells him intimate secrets that no one else knows about the lives of the people who come to confess their sins. Father Bartholomew seems to know if the confessors have been faithful to their spouses, or if they have committed crimes or other offenses they have kept successfully hidden for years. Father Bartholomew then tells them that Jesus wants those Father Bartholomew has absolved of their sins in the confessional to know they are forgiven. People are impressed because the sins and trespasses that Father Bartholomew seems to know without being told often involve offenses those in the confessional may have kept hidden as secrets or lies, sometimes for as long as decades.”

  Hearing this, Castle refined his diagnostic hypothesis to include the observation that Father Bartholomew’s neurosis evidently permitted him to manifest a second voice, as if he were communicating with another secret person sitting unseen in the confession box next to him. Castle made another marginal note: Does Father Bartholomew have multiple personality disorder?

  “Sometimes Father Bartholomew gives very personal advice,” Morelli continued, “like telling a person they must stop an extramarital affair, or that they must admit to their spouses or children various lies or secrets they have held for years. The problem for the Vatican is that confession is not supposed to be about medical healing. Confession is about absolution of sins. The Vatican has a problem when one person going to confession with Father Bartholomew claims to be cured of cancer, and then another claims to be cured of heart disease. The word is spreading fast. Now Father Bartholomew has people lined up around the block to go to confession.”

  “How about in the hospital? Is Bartholomew beginning to cure people there, too?”

  “Yes,” Morelli admitted. “It’s beginning to happen even in the hospital. Father Bartholomew has had to be restrained from walking on the hospital floor and offering to hear the confessions of the other patients on the floor. The doctors and nurses are concerned Father Bartholomew appears to be giving out medical advice, where he isn’t qualified.”

  “I can appreciate the problem,” Castle acknowledged. He also realized how little Archbishop Duncan would like seeing the New York media turn Father Bartholomew into a freak sideshow that would draw a circus crowd. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before some smart lawyer caught on and convinced a patient to file a suit against the archdiocese for allowing a priest to give medical advice without possessing a license to practice medicine.

  “But there’s more,” Morelli continued. “Father Bartholomew has begun to experience flashbacks.”

  “What type of flashbacks?”

  “Bartholomew reports that part of his after-life experience, or near-death experience, as you put it, was an instant where he felt he was actually standing at Golgotha with his mother, on the day Christ died.”

  Listening, Castle showed no emotion. He calmly made additional notes in Bartholomew’s medical file.

  “Archbishop Duncan told me Father Bartholomew has begun to manifest the stigmata,” Castle pressed forward. “What can you tell me about this?”

  “The stigmata first appeared last Thursday, when Father Bartholomew was saying Mass,” Morelli explained. “I brought with me a few photographs that were taken at the hospital. The photos show the wounds Bartholomew suffered while saying Mass. The wounds bled quite heavily and Father Bartholomew collapsed unconscious at the altar.”

  Castle sorted through the photographs of Bartholomew at the hospital. The wounds on his wrist were severe. Both wrists appeared to have been complete punctures, all the way through.

  “The Catholic Church has had centuries of experience with people experiencing the stigmata,” Morelli explained. “The first w
as St. Francis of Assisi in La Verna, Italy, in 1224. Since then, we have documented maybe a thousand authentic cases. The most common wounds of Christ’s passion and death that manifest in Christian mystics are the nail wounds in the wrists from the crucifixion.”

  Right,” Castle mused. “As I recall, Christ suffered five wounds on the cross—nail wounds on both wrists, both feet, and a spear wound in the side.”

  “Yes,” Morelli affirmed. “In addition, there were the wounds from the scourging at the pillar and the crowning with thorns. These wounds rarely appear as stigmata.”

  “Where does the word stigmata come from?”

  “It dates back to St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in the Acts of the Apostles,” Morelli answered. “St. Paul wrote, ‘I bear on my body the stigmata of Jesus.’ Stigmata is the plural of the Greek word stigma, which is translated as ‘mark’ or ‘brand,’ like one you might place on an animal, like cowboys brand cows.”

  “Isn’t Father Bartholomew’s first name Paul?” Castle asked, sure he was right.

  “Yes, it is,” Morelli noted. “St. Paul was a Jew who was also a Roman citizen. As a young man, he despised Christianity. He worked for the Romans and was known for brutally persecuting Christians prior to his conversion. His conversion came when he was blinded on the road to Damascus by a burst of light and a vision of the resurrected Jesus. As I’m sure you know, St. Paul is considered perhaps the most important early Christian missionary, credited with bringing Christianity to the Gentiles, even to Rome. According to tradition, he was beheaded by the emperor Nero after being imprisoned in Rome.”

  “How about Bartholomew? Wasn’t Bartholomew one of the disciples of Jesus?”

  “Yes, he was. He is counted among the twelve apostles of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He is also credited with having been present at the ascension of Jesus into Heaven following the resurrection. Tradition holds that Bartholomew traveled to India, where he took up a mission of preaching about Jesus.”