The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [26]
“There’s one problem with your theory, Dr. Castle, as good and as interesting as I have to admit it is.”
“What’s that?”
“I died after that accident and I saw with my own eyes Jesus crucified. I stood there with my mother at Golgotha and I watched Jesus die.”
“And I’m told you see Jesus in the confessional and that he tells you how to heal people. Is that correct, or did I get the wrong information.”
“You have the right information,” the priest said without showing emotion.
Then a thought occurred to Castle. “Do you see Jesus now?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he, then?”
“He’s with us right now, sitting right over there on your couch.”
“I don’t see him. How come you can see Jesus when I can’t?”
“I can’t answer that question,” Bartholomew said. “But there’s something I need to say to you.”
Castle sat back in his chair. “What’s that? Is it a message from Jesus?”
“I will let you decide that for yourself,” Bartholomew said. “The only thing I want you to know is that you were not responsible for the death of your wife.”
This took Castle by surprise. He rarely talked about his wife. He had loved Elizabeth since they were teenage sweethearts in high school. They married just as he entered medical school and she worked in an office as a legal secretary to support his medical education. He was in the operating room, in the middle of a very complicated heart surgery, when Elizabeth died. He learned after the operation that she had a brain aneurism that nobody realized she had.
Castle never forgave himself. If only he had listened when Elizabeth complained of headaches. He should have insisted Elizabeth get more thorough diagnostic checkups. If he had been more loving and attentive, the aneurism that killed his wife might have been discovered in time and her life could have been saved. He never would have gotten through medical school without her. Castle, for all his brilliance as a heart surgeon and psychiatrist, never got over the guilt that there was nothing he did to save his young wife’s life.
Still, Castle was not impressed. “You’re good, Paul. I will have to admit that. But it is no secret my wife died early in my career. You’re an intelligent man and you could easily have surmised I felt guilty. It may surprise you but a lot of my patients are very intuitive. Sometimes I think the more psychologically disturbed my patients are, the more intuitive they become. You’re not the first patient to try to intimidate me or throw me off the track by trying to turn the tables with imagined insights you think you have gleaned from my past.”
“You never remarried.” Bartholomew persisted, ignoring what Castle had said. “Was that because you still feel guilty? Or, do you worry you would kill another woman by marrying her and neglecting her, too, just as you did with Elizabeth?”
“We’re not here to psychoanalyze me,” Castle said firmly. “And I’m not impressed with your little guessing game, or with you calling me Dr. Freud. I don’t believe for a minute that Jesus is here in this room with you, or that you have any secret friend who squirrels away insights to you about people’s lives. A lot of people have imaginary friends as children. It’s time, Paul, for you to grow up.”
Bartholomew listened silently, not seeing any point in responding. He felt he had nothing to prove to Dr. Castle.
“So far all you are accomplishing is to confirm my suspicion you have a form of multiple personality disorder,” Castle continued. “That Jesus you imagine you see sitting on my couches is nothing more than your manifestation of your subconscious.”
“That’s where there’s a big difference between you and me, Dr. Castle.”
“What’s that?”
“Simple. Jesus showed me your soul and you obviously