Free The Shroud Codex by Jerome R. Corsi

priest had a history of weight lifting. Castle immediately suspected Bartholomew’s physical strength andstamina had been critical to his ability to survive the violent car accident that had nearly killed him, as well as the stigmata that were afflicting him now.
    After Morelli excused himself to the waiting room, Castle settled into his chair. “I assume you know why you are here, Father Bartholomew,” Castle said.
    “Archbishop Duncan asked me to see you,” he replied, “and you can call me by my first name, Paul, since I assume we are going to get to know one another pretty well.”
    “Very well, Paul,” Castle began, taking Bartholomew’s file from the coffee table and paging through his notes. “You can call me Dr. Castle.”
    Castle was not interested in his patients becoming his friends. Besides, he knew from decades of experience that the process psychiatrists call “transference” would begin almost immediately. Once transference began, most patients would begin imagining the psychiatrist understood their inner thoughts and feelings, believing the psychiatrist was the only person in the world who could truly understand them and help them.
    Both Bartholomew’s forearms were heavily bandaged. Long white gloves with the fingers cut out had been drawn over his hands to help mask the sight of the bandages that reached from the fingers of both hands up the forearms to his elbows.
    In person, the impression that Bartholomew looked remarkably like images of Jesus Christ was unavoidable. Bartholomew’s long brown hair and thick reddish beard framed a long, thin face with prominent cheekbones. The beard ended with a double-pointed fork at the chin, just as Father Morelli pointed out with the man in the Shroud. Bartholomew’s mouth was well defined by a neatly trimmed mustache. His hair was twisted in a braid that trailed down his back to beyond his waist. Bartholomew’s soft brown eyes looked out from beneath bushy eyebrows thatalso appeared to need a serious trimming. In the two thousand years since the death of Christ, the image of Jesus had become an icon. Now something resembling that icon was sitting across from Castle as a patient in his treatment room.
    Bartholomew may have felt this change in his appearance had come upon him as a result of his mystical experience on the operating table. But Castle knew better.
    From decades of clinical practice, Castle knew without doubt that the priest’s exterior impression reflected his inner psychological realities. Castle speculated that Bartholomew, now in the grips of his mental illness, was becoming his mental image of what Christ had looked like in life. As an accomplished psychiatrist, Dr. Castle did not believe he was looking at the physical manifestation of the historical Jesus Christ in modern-day New York. He was simply looking at Father Paul Bartholomew’s idea of what he imagined Jesus Christ looked like, perhaps heavily influenced by the Shroud. Castle made a note on Bartholomew’s file to remind him to find out when Bartholomew had first seen the Shroud and to inquire about what impact the Shroud had had on the priest.
    “So do you think you can cure me, Dr. Castle?” Bartholomew asked.
    “Do you want to be cured?” Castle asked.
    “I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with me.”
    “Look at you, Paul. Do you think there’s anything about you that’s normal?”
    “Let me return the favor,” Bartholomew said wryly. “So you don’t think that your trimmed beard and nicely tailored clothes make you look like Sigmund Freud? All you need is the cigar.”
    “Touché,” Castle laughed, appreciating the priest’s intelligence and his wit. “So that’s how you see it? Christ meets Sigmund Freud.”
    Bartholomew enjoyed the joke as well. “So, tell me, Dr. Freud, are you sure you don’t want me to help cure you of this delusion? You must have heard by now that I have exceptional healing powers—maybe not as great as yours, but I’m told