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BOOKS
Novel 'Shroud'-ed in mystery
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan is well known throughout the Church in America. Of course, this is in large part due to his being the ordinary of New York City, the most prominent diocese in the country.
 But he was known before being named to New York last year. As auxiliary bishop of St. Louis — where he grew up and was ordained a priest — and then as archbishop of Milwaukee, Dolan was known for his infectious positivity, his gregarious manner and his way of presenting orthodoxy in a gentle way.
Judging by his homilies and interviews since moving to New York, Archbishop Dolan seems to have brought these qualities to the much larger stage. And, with his new book, “Doers of the Word: Putting Your Faith into Practice,” the archbishop has an opportunity to evangelize to an even larger audience.
“Doers of the Word,” according to its introduction, comes from the archbishop’s morning reflections in his rectory’s chapel. He contrasts the chapel from his time in Milwaukee — the rectory was located on a bucolic seminary on Lake Michigan — to the chapel in his midtown Manhattan rectory.
One boasted silence, the other is smack-dab in middle of everything.
“At first, I admit, I pined for the recluse of my Lake Michigan ‘cave!’ But now, I have come to savor the clamor of my new chapel just as much,” Archbishop Dolan writes. “And I’ve come to conclude that both settings are conducive to meditation and reflection.”
The comparisons between Jerome R. Corsi’s “The Shroud Codex” and Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” are pretty much inevitable. Written about similar topics (old, arcane Christian lore), and written in similar styles (mysteries, with a frenetic timetable and lots of long pop-science discourses by learned men and women), the books are kind of like opposite sides of the same coin.
“The Shroud Codex” concerns Fr. Paul Bartholomew, a brilliant physicist turned priest who dies unexpectedly one day in a car crash. He arrives in heaven where he is reunited with his beloved mother and looks upon the face of God.
God gives Fr. Bartholomew a choice. He can either remain in heaven or he can return to earth for a special mission that will reveal some of God’s glory. Fr. Bartholomew — with his mother’s encouragement — decides to return to earth.
Back in his nearly destroyed body, the priest spends three years in rehabilitation before he resumes his ministry at a parish in midtown Manhattan.
During Mass one day, Fr. Bartholomew begins to receive the stigmata — the marks of the crucifixion — on his wrists and collapses in extreme pain. The archbishop of New York along with the pope quickly hire a psychiatrist to evaluate and treat Fr. Bartholomew.
Their worry is that he is a fraud or mentally insane. They also worry that so many New Yorkers and people all around the world have already begun to venerate the priest.
The psychiatrist is an avowed atheist who is certain the stigmata is psychosomatic and that Fr. Bartholomew is suffering from multiple personality disorder. All the while, somehow the priest’s mystical suffering is wrapped up with the Shroud of Turin — the relic that many believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus.
When “The Shroud Codex” succeeds, it is great fun to read. Corsi has peppered the book with quick lay summaries of quantum physics, the history of the Shroud of Turin and its scientific investigations.
Many disputes covered in the book are covered fairly by characters on either side of the debate. Corsi lays out why many scientists believe that the shroud is a medieval forgery, and then has a character make the best case for its authenticity.
Likewise, the book explores the nature of Christ’s resurrection and His appearances to various disciples after His death all within the context of advanced physics, multiple dimensions and event horizons. The mixing of physics and theology may seem strange, but Corsi makes a case for their interesting compatibility, however farfetched the ideas may be.
This kind of plotting keeps the reader engaged and propelled throughout the book. You want to hear the next argument or piece of the puzzle.
Corsi also manages the scenes of Fr. Bartholomew’s stigmata well. When he is afflicted by the stigmata, the priest is transported to Golgotha on Good Friday and actually experiences Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion. These scenes are moving and deftly handled.
The book — like many in its genre — disappoints at times with its clunky dialogue and sometimes thin characterizations. The pope, for instance, is a strange and altogether unbelievable character. A newsman tracking the story of Fr. Bartholomew, in turn, is more caricature than character.
But you don’t really read a book like “The Shroud Codex” for its character development. You read it for a good, engaging story. Corsi has managed this.
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"The Shroud Codex," by Jerome Corsi (Threshold Editions, 2010). $26. Available at simonandschuster.com.
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