The Shroud Codex (5 page)

Senators traveled from the nation’s capital to see him here, as did top investment bankers and CEOs from Wall Street. When coming for medical advice, the rich and the prominent could just as easily be visiting friends. Limousines were nothing out of the ordinary in this neighborhood. Yet, with its address and entrance on the cross street, this building was particularly appropriate for his psychiatric practice. Since visitors did not have to enter the building on Fifth Avenue, Castle’s patients could more easily stay out of view from the public and the press, even when their limousines dropped them off at Castle’s front door.

Castle loved his perch on the top two floors, complete with a penthouse roof garden that made a lovely setting for a catered late evening dinner in the summer. It was hard to beat the backdrop of Central Park with its changing beauty through every different season of the year—the lush green of the summer, the array of colors as the trees changed in the fall, the stark beauty of the bare trees in the winter, the promise of spring with the first light green as the trees budded anew. In the judgment of many New York social scene reporters, there was no better apartment in New York to hold a cocktail party for the rich and famous.

When he descended from his living quarters to his sumptuous office space on the floor below, Castle entered his massive, mahogany-lined library. His thousand volumes encompassed one of the world’s most impressive collections of psychiatric literature in private hands, including signed first editions by nearly every giant in the field. He was most pleased with his collection of Sigmund Freud first editions originally published in German and
inscribed by the psychiatrist himself. The library opened onto his treatment room, which filled most of the floor.

Every detail of Castle’s treatment room had been carefully calculated for effect. His chair was centrally positioned in the room, with windows onto Central Park to his back. The buildings lining Central Park South and Central Park West provided a bigger-than-life backdrop, which the psychiatrist felt underscored his important role.

The patient’s chair, a little less sumptuous and a lot less comfortable, was positioned directly opposite him, across from a small coffee table. From the patient’s perspective, Castle was backlit, making it difficult to see all the details of the psychiatrist’s face. In contrast, the light from the spacious windows pouring onto the patient gave Castle the advantage of being able to scrutinize every reaction of his patient in nicely lighted detail. Keeping the light to his back was an unfair advantage in the psychiatric setting and Castle liked unfair advantages when they played to his favor.

Around the perimeter of the room behind Castle were comfortable, overstuffed connecting couches, generously punctuated with pillows and positioned for the occasional group meetings Castle hosted in his office.

Entering the treatment room, Castle stopped to allow himself to soak in fully the dazzling beauty as the morning sun danced across the rich yellow and red leaves of Central Park’s changing fall trees.

Castle worked alone, without a secretary or appointments clerk. That too was a step he took to protect the privacy of his patients. Regardless of how trusted an assistant might be, a second person in the practice necessarily risked a breach of confidentiality, especially when the clients were well-known. When he was expecting patients, Castle simply left the outside door to his waiting room open.

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 to 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.”