The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [28]
“Yes,” Castle affirmed.
“All right, then,” Bartholomew continued. “What I am going to tell you is the truth, whether you can accept it or not. God asked me to return to earth to interpret to the world the Shroud codex.”
“But a codex is a book, an ancient manuscript,” Castle objected. “An image of a crucified man on a burial cloth is not a book. When you say the Shroud is a codex, what do you mean?”
“Learning to read the Shroud is like learning to read an ancient manuscript written in a language you can no longer decipher.” Bartholomew tried to explain as clearly as he could. “You may think I have stopped being a physicist. But that isn’t the case. I’ve never stopped being a physicist. Deciphering the meaning of the Shroud is like solving the most challenging equation physics has yet to solve. I will decipher the Shroud codex for the world, and when I understand the message of the Shroud and when I communicate that message to the world, the world will understand. When I had the experience of dying, after the car accident, God assured me that I would be able to communicate the message Jesus embedded in the Shroud. When I finally break through, you will be there to experience it firsthand. I’m confident you are the psychiatrist God meant me to see. Otherwise we would not be here together this day.”
Castle’s first reaction was that everything Bartholomew had just explained was delusional. “Is this why you are manifesting Jesus, with the long hair and the beard, and now with the stigmata?”
“Yes,” Bartholomew answered. “I am manifesting Jesus. It started with my physical appearance and now I am beginning to manifest the wounds Jesus experienced in his passion and death.”
Castle decided to get to his core question right away. “Are you Jesus Christ? Is that what you want me to believe?”
“No,” Bartholomew said emphatically. “I am not Jesus Christ. I am manifesting Jesus Christ.”
“Are you manifesting Jesus Christ, or your idea of Jesus Christ?” Castle asked sharply. “This is an important distinction. How do you know what Jesus Christ looked like? He’s been dead two thousand years and there’s no photographs.”
Bartholomew sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. He began slowly. “I know you don’t believe me, but when I was dead I traveled to Golgotha and I saw Jesus on the cross dying. I was there with my mother. I know I look like Jesus because I saw Jesus with my own eyes. Whether you believe it or not, the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. God told me that was true and I saw with my own eyes that the physical Jesus who lived and died two thousand years ago is the crucified man you see today in the Shroud of Turin.”
Hearing this, Castle no longer had any doubt that Bartholomew believed his delusion was reality. Still, he knew Bartholomew was highly intelligent and he wondered how the priest would react to Castle’s hypothesis that his subconscious was manifesting the physical characteristics of the man in the Shroud because Bartholomew wanted to believe that man was Jesus. “When was the first time you saw the Shroud of Turin?” he asked.
“I was in high school. We had a weekend retreat and one of the priests showed us photographs of the Shroud of Turin as one of our meditations.”
“What impact did the Shroud of Turin make on you?”
“Profound. I had never heard about the Shroud before and I was overwhelmed to learn how precisely the image of the man in the Shroud matched the passion and death of Jesus.”
“Did you study the Shroud after that?”
“Yes, I have never stopped studying the Shroud.”
That confirmed for Castle that Bartholomew had internalized the image of the man on the Shroud, such that his subconscious was capable of projecting that image back in the manifestations Castle was currently seeing. “Maybe studying the Shroud has made such an impact on you that your imagination has taken over. Surely you must realize that all of us project onto reality what we want to believe is true.”
Bartholomew thought for a minute, formulating