The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [15]
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