Barb unloads
Barbara Nicolosi
can't figure out why many Christians are either enthusiastic for "The Da Vinci Code," or at least fail to see it as a threat. Excerpt:
We need to be very clear here: The Da Vinci Code is much, much worse than The Last Temptation of Christ in the errors that it contains. Last Temptation was wrangling with what being a God-Man really looked like. Da Vinci Code asserts that there was no God in Christianity's God-Man.
Having read the script, one of the things that I found particularly disgusting was the way in which screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (interpreting Dan Brown) continuously sets the Roman Catholic Church up against "true" Christianity. We are led to believe that Jesus wanted Christianity to be something else completely - a goddess cult - but that the "Roman" Catholic Church (why do so many non-Catholics always have to use that "Roman" word like it is some kind of disease?) co-opted the regular-Joe guy, Jesus, and corrupted his merely "happy thoughts" by making him God and creating a subversive political institution around him.
It is worth some serious discussion as to why the Catholic Church - among all Christendom - merits such hatred and persecution from the secular powers that be. Hmmmm... What do you all think?
But anyway, those Christians with anti-Catholic bigotry in their veins who are getting dark jollies out of watching the Catholic Church get trashed in DVC need to take a step back and stop scratching their painful, always inflamed rash - "Hurts so good!" - to feel the real pain of biting off noses to spite faces. As a Catholic friend remarked to me recently, completely dismayed by the warm embrace that DVC has found in some Christians, "They seem to hate the Catholic Church more than they hate blasphemy against Christ." Hard to hear? Definitely.
I don't see it as a threat any more than I see other pieces of bad fiction as a threat. It's a fast-moving adventure story with a transparently silly historico-religious concept at its heart. If that's sufficiently convincing to people, then the fault isn't in the book. At most, it highlights how ready people are to believe pretty much anything put in front of them--but I'm inclined to doubt that readers take the book all that seriously.
If I want to get worked up over something, it'll be the volumes of Biblical pseudo-scholarship that masquerade as scholarly nonfiction. At least the press refers to Dan Brown as "novelist"; they're still calling Elaine Pagels "scholar" and "expert".>
Geez, I don't see people getting worked up about science "fiction," or the theories about "chariots of the gods" and other extraterrestrial alien-human interaction -- (which carry equally fictional and/or mythical content as Mr. Brown s book.) The implications contained in those pieces of literature by standards posted here would be just as blasphemous and carry the same implications as Mr. Brown's "plot.">
Adam said: "I don't see it as a threat any more than I see other pieces of bad fiction as a threat. It's a fast-moving adventure story with a transparently silly historico-religious concept at its heart. If that's sufficiently convincing to people, then the fault isn't in the book. At most, it highlights how ready people are to believe pretty much anything put in front of them--but I'm inclined to doubt that readers take the book all that seriously."
I'm with Adam on this one. I don't think the DVC is a threat to Christianity. To those that are strong in their faith, the contents of the book/movie will have no impact. Those that start to buy into its notions were probably weak in their faith to begin with.
I believe the Roman Catholic Church is the target, per usual, because it is both one of the oldest and certainly the largest denomination on earth...and it is also especially the dominant faith in the western world where much of this Da Vinci nonsense took place. So I don't think it is so much an anti-Catholic conspiracy so much as that is the only target to attack given the setting of the book. Would she recommend they go after Pentecostalists instead? (even though they didn't appear on the 'scene' til around 1900).
BTW, I am not sure why Barbara Nicolosi takes such issue with the prepend name of Roman, as that is the official name of that church.
I liken the DVC to all the sundry titles I see in the "Politics" section at bookstores like Borders or Barnes and Noble. Anybody can publish a book these days and fill it with whatever rubbish they want.
Too much big deal is being made of all this and it will die just like the Last Temptation of Christ et al. did.>
"BTW, I am not sure why Barbara Nicolosi takes such issue with the prepend name of Roman, as that is the official name of that church."
Actually -- and technically -- no. "Roman" Catholic came into use as a perjorative after the Reformation. Actually the Catholic Church is made up of about 22 rites of which the Roman (Latin) is only one. There are Eastern as well as Western Rites in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
But it's understandable that the name gets confused in the media, et al.>
Christine,
Very well and good point. It is a name of convenience and therefore easy to confuse...but since the title "Roman Catholic Church" is appended to the monument signs in front of nearly every one of those churches, you can see where people attain this understanding and where it is still correct in a way, since that is what they call themselves.>
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