The Shroud Codex (3 page)

This Thursday, Father Bartholomew was saying Mass at the central altar under the dome of the venerable church. He enjoyed
wearing the vestments, the long formal robes the priest wore when celebrating Mass—the alb, the thin tunic worn by priests since antiquity; the chasuble, the stiff outer mantle with its Latin cross embroidered on front and back, and special colors for each part of the church liturgy. The vestments might seem medieval to the iPod generation, but to Father Bartholomew the formal priestly garments worn to celebrate Mass were essential to conveying the solemnity he felt the Mass was intended to create: a community of worshippers brought together to celebrate Christ’s life, death, and perpetual resurrection.

Always, Father Bartholomew felt moved as he approached the consecration of the bread and wine, the most holy part of the Mass. Ever since being ordained, Bartholomew never got over the awe of the mystical power he had been given to transform the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The memory of having seen with his own eyes Christ’s passion and death continued to haunt him. How great was God’s love for us to have allowed his only Son to die on the cross for our sins? The sight of the nails driven through Christ’s flesh had become the constant theme of his quiet prayer and meditation.

In this era of the Internet and big-screen TVs, the number of true believers in Christianity had diminished, but Bartholomew’s faith had never wavered. Having been given the grace to return among the living after the dreadful accident that had nearly cost him his life, Bartholomew counted every day as a blessing God had personally bestowed upon him.

Slowly, he genuflected and raised the host above his head. “Behold the body of Christ,” he told the assembled congregation.

This he had done hundreds of time, so many he could not count. But today it was different. As he held the host between the thumb and forefingers of each hand and raised the host upward with both his arms elevated, he felt a sudden violent shock pound
at his right wrist. The pain was immediate. Looking up, he saw what he perceived to be blood trickling down his arm.

H
IS MIND SUDDENLY
tripped, ripping him from the here and now of the central altar of St. Joseph’s Church in New York City to a distant time and place. Here, in a distant place separated from New York City by countless miles and what felt like thousands of years, he found himself stripped naked, lying flat on the ground, atop what seemed to be a long board. Though it made no sense at all, a Roman centurion was holding down his right arm with his knee, preparing to pound a nail large enough to be a railroad spike into his wrist. Carefully the centurion placed the nail on his wrist and lifted a mallet high above his head. Almost uncomprehending, Bartholomew realized the centurion was intent on driving the nail through his wrist. With the first crushing blow, the pain was unbearable. Though his mind struggled to grasp whether this was really happening, Bartholomew realized he was being nailed to the cross.

It took a second blow to drive the spike completely through his wrist. The third and fourth blows succeeded in pounding the spike into the wooden crossbeam on which his outstretched right arm was being nailed. The centurion worked methodically, without emotion. The muscles bulged in his arms as the sweat streaked his face. With the fifth and final blow, Bartholomew’s right wrist was pinned so firmly to the wooden crossbeam that he could not imagine prying himself loose. The fingers of his right hand writhed in agony.

Back at the altar, Bartholomew fell to the ground. The host tumbled out of his hands and crashed on the floor. His right wrist had been pierced clear through in a horrible gaping wound and blood from the wound was pouring down his vestments.

Then, in another sudden jolt, he felt his left arm wrenched violently
out to his side. Almost immediately he felt a violent blow pounding in that wrist as well.

Again his mind tripped and a second centurion had pinned Bartholomew’s left arm with his knees as he prepared to nail his outstretched left arm to the crossbeam. He could smell the centurion’s stale breath and he felt panic surge through him in the realization there was no escape.

With the same precision and lack of emotion, the second centurion drove a second spike into his left wrist, following in succession one hammer blow, followed by another—five in total. Again the pain with each blow was excruciating. In desperation, Bartholomew whipped his head from side to side, realizing his outstretched arms were completely pinned to the cross and he was helpless to move or free himself. A cold shiver spread through his whole body. He screamed repeatedly as his mind grasped that he was at Golgotha outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem two thousand years ago and his outstretched arms were now nailed to the cross exactly as the arms of Jesus Christ had been.

He knew that next the cross would be lifted to an upright position and he would be hung to die. His feet would be nailed to the body beam of the cross and he would be completely immobilized. Even now, lying with his back against the wooden crossbeam on the hard, cold ground, every slight movement of his outstretched arms sent a new spasm of agony though his body as the nails driven through his wrists rubbed hard against his bones. He couldn’t begin to contemplate the agony he would be in when the soldiers lifted the crossbeam to set it into the slot that waited on top of the vertical pole of the cross permanently fixed here, in this desperate place of execution. The final agony would come when his feet were placed one on top of the other so they too could be nailed to the cross, fixing him to this tree like a butterfly pinned to a display.

• • •

A
T THE ALTAR,
Bartholomew saw that the second wound had pierced through his left wrist. Blood poured forth from both wrists, soaking his vestments red.

His screams of agony filled the interior of the church as the parishioners at Mass stood in fear, trying to comprehend what was going on. Blood was pouring from wounds that had developed on Father Bartholomew’s wrists seemingly from nowhere. Several in the church began gasping in shock and screaming in horror. Thinking quickly, several took their cell phones and dialed 911 as fast as they could. Others took their cell phones and filmed the event, thinking to email what they were seeing to friends or to post the videos on the Internet.

Holding his wounded wrists in front of his face so he could inspect the wounds more precisely, Bartholomew’s mind spun out of control. He lost consciousness and collapsed on the church floor in front of the altar.

Friday

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

Day 2

What does the Vatican want with me? Dr. Stephen Castle had wondered when Archbishop Carl Duncan, an old friend, had called him from his office at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, asking for some of his time.

“His Holiness Pope John-Paul Peter I is sending a special envoy to New York and I’m recommending you are the man to see him,” Duncan had explained over the telephone on Friday. “This is an important case involving a priest in the archdiocese and we need to deal with it immediately.”

“What’s so important that the pope is sending an envoy from Rome, and why me, of all people?” Castle protested. “Surely you’ve got plenty of psychiatrists in Rome. Why not send the priest to Rome and have him analyzed out of the country, where the publicity about the case could be more easily controlled?”

Duncan sensed Castle’s hesitation. “We’ve worked together before and I need your help again,” he said, getting straight to
why he called Castle this morning. “The pope trusts you and so do I.”

Castle appreciated what Duncan was saying. Castle liked Duncan personally, even though much of Castle’s international reputation was built on his atheism and his criticism of religion as a dangerous mass delusion that caused human beings to wage war and kill each other as infidels, just because their beliefs in God happened to be different. When Castle walked past St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City he frequently thought of the Crusades and wondered how anyone could ever kill another human being in the name of God. As Castle had argued in books and in interviews, religious wars were all the proof he needed that man had invented God, rather than the other way around.

Castle’s professional reputation went global after he wrote
The God Illusion
five years ago. In
The God Illusion,
Castle had taken Freud’s argument that religion was nothing more than a popular delusion that societies through time have created. But he asked why. Was it because societies need to give human beings an explanation for what has always been fundamentally unknowable about the human condition? Was it to answer the questions of where we human beings come from and where we are headed after death?

As Freud had done in
Civilization and Its Discontents,
Castle saw religion as nothing more than a mass neurosis imposed on people by society to control their otherwise disorderly sexual impulses. The problem to Freud was that religion imposes moral constraints of “right and wrong” in order to restrain artificially human impulses that are considered embarrassing or unattractive, such as sex. But Castle went one step further: in his book, he argued that religion not only produces sexual neuroses, it also divides people and causes wars, thereby producing additional neuroses and mass hatred. What is the point, he asked, of holy wars
fought over the true God when the whole idea of God itself may be nothing more than a fiction people made up in the first place?

The psychiatrist had first worked with Duncan ten years earlier, when Duncan had been newly appointed archbishop. Castle and Duncan had met socially, at an Upper East Side cocktail party held by a wealthy Catholic donor to the church who was also one of Castle’s patients at the time. When the archdiocese was sued over alleged sexual abuses committed several decades ago by a few renegade priests, Duncan called Castle.

“Yes, I understand some of your priests have a fondness for boys,” Castle had told Duncan in their first private conference ten years ago. “What do you expect? The Catholic Church does not allow the clergy to marry. Yet the Church gives priests privileged access to advise boys and young men. Boys come to the priest’s attention every day when they serve as altar boys. You’ve got to understand that for a pedophile attracted to young boys, meeting a prepubescent altar boy for the first time is a lot like a heterosexual man being introduced to Megan Fox. Pedophiles get the point that the Catholic Church is advertising ‘pedophiles, apply here.’”

Duncan listened quietly, not disagreeing. “I understand what you’re saying, but the case I am asking you to take is complicated. It involves a priest I believe was abused sexually when he was a child.”

Castle’s psychoanalysis revealed the priest’s history of abuse had led to a neurosis that was more complicated than simply his own wrongdoing. As a result, the archdiocese was able to settle the case in a way that was financially acceptable to those who had been offended, as well as fair to the priest. Moreover, Castle was able to recommend to Archbishop Duncan the type of psychological assistance the church might offer to the victims involved and to the priests currently under his direction.

When the final lawsuit was settled, Cardinal Marco Vicente called Dr. Castle from Rome.

“The Catholic Church is deeply appreciative of what you have done for us,” Cardinal Vicente had said over the telephone.

“I did my job,” Castle said modestly.

“You did more than your job. You provided Archbishop Duncan with sound advice. Here in the Vatican, I did not initially appreciate your judgment about the psychological implications of a celibate priesthood, but I have come to see that you offered your views to be constructive.”

“You have to know that I’m an atheist and that I don’t support the Catholic Church, or any other church, for that matter.”

“I understand,” Vicente answered quietly. “But it seems to me that you are our atheist. It’s ironic that sometimes the Catholic Church’s greatest critics end up being our greatest allies. God works in wondrous ways.”

“You paid my bills and I did my job,” Castle said in agreement.

Castle appreciated the phone call from the Vatican at the time and was especially amused after Cardinal Vicente was subsequently elected pope. “Not a bad connection for a devout atheist,” he said to friends.

So, when the crisis with Father Bartholomew developed, Castle was the first person whom Cardinal Vicente, now Pope John-Paul Peter I, wanted Archbishop Duncan to call for help.

Duncan did so.

“I’ve got another crisis on my hands that I have to deal with immediately,” Archbishop Duncan explained to Castle on the phone.

“What’s the problem this time?”

“It involves a parish priest at St. Joseph’s Church, a few blocks away from you,” Duncan explained. “A few years ago, Father Bartholomew
had a car accident. Technically he died after his heart stopped on the operating table. But then he revived.”

“Happens all the time,” Castle responded.

“But there is an urgency here,” the archbishop continued. “This case could be as threatening to the Church as the priest crisis had been. Otherwise we never would have come to you.”

Castle knew St. Joseph’s well. It was an old parish, tracing its origins back to the 1870s.

“So, what are the medical aspects of this case?”

“It’s more than just the case of a priest who may have psychological problems, which is what I’m sure you are going to suspect. Father Bartholomew had an after-life experience in which he thought he had died and he saw God. He says God gave him the choice of staying in Heaven or returning to earth. Obviously, he chose coming back to earth. But what Father Bartholomew says is that God told him he would have a mission if he came back to earth, that he would have certain gifts but that his life back on earth would not be easy.”

“What gifts?” Castle wondered.

“His parishioners are beginning to say he is not just absolving their sins but that he is also healing their physical illnesses in the confessional,” Archbishop Duncan explained. “Then yesterday at Mass, Father Bartholomew began to, shall we say, manifest Christ’s wounds of crucifixion.”