CULTURE & POLITICS, ODDS & ENDS

Here is someone who has many sensible things to say about Dan Brown's book and the forthcoming movie. Barbara Nicolosi is a Hollywood scriptwriter and consultant who blogs on http://churchofthemasses.blogspot.com/2006/02/may-19-every-christian-goes-to-movies.html
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MAY 19 - Every Christian Goes to the Movies!

I just read a ludicrous statement by some Christian pastor, calling for all Christians to go to see The Da Vinci Code when it opens. His statement was something to the effect of "Every Christian needs to see this film!" I beg to differ.

No. We don't need to see this film. We all know what is in it. (Especially me, as I have read the screenplay.) It is a movie which begins from the point that Jesus was a fraud. He was not only not Divine, he was less than a man. And His Church is a sham association of megalomaniacal conspirators whose unifying principles are in the oppression of women.

I have, thus far, been campaigning for a kind of non-campaign as regards The Da Vinci Code. I was thinking that we should all just agree to ignore it, and put our efforts into praying for the people who hate Jesus and us, His disciples, so much that they would make this film. I was reluctant to throw any free p.r. at the project by speaking about it publically, as that is all that the studio wants here. The people promoting the movie want - with every fiber of their obscenely well-compensated beings - that we make this film an event.

The almost irresistible hook for us all is that we supposedly need to see The Da Vinci Code, so that we can then tell all the other people what is wrong with it. All these Christians are being hooked in to write and speak about the film in the name of "dialogue." "How could you criticize something that you haven't seen?" And, "Everybody is going to be talking about this film! We won't be able to talk back if we haven't seen it."

Folks, there is no dialogue here. The dialogue which might have happened involved Sony and Imagen making changes in the story, that would have reflected some kind of fidelity to history or fairness. They didn't make those changes. Basically because they wanted to bash Christians. (Quick, someone assure me that Time and Newsweek and the NY Times, et al. will NOT be running reviews or ads for The Da Vinci Code because it is such an offensive caricature of the central figure of a major world religion!) Secondly, I don't agree that "everybody" is going to see this film. I found the script somewhere between idiotic and way too cute. I didn't find it half as clever as National Treasure....and that wasn't exactly a work of cinematic genius. As 80% of America is Christian, if they don't get us in, the movie basically tanks. And most of us probably weren't going to be going -- until we were told "Every Christian must!!!" All in the name of "dialogue."

(Note from The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word 'dialogue.' I don't think you know what that word means." Dialogue is based on equal playing field. In this case, the "Jesus was a fraud" side gets a major studio film costing $150 million. Our side gets a little website and a discussion guide.)

Further, we absolutely do not need to see the film to talk about Jesus. No more than we need to see porn to talk about human sexuality. Or to read Mein Kempf to decide whether we can have an opinion about gassing Jews. Besides, it would be dignifying a really inane story. Da Vinci Code is so ridiculous in its premises, that it is giving it a false gravity to even take it seriously enough so as to argue about it. ["And tomorrow, the Christians will be offering a hermeneutic of moral praxis as can be gleaned from next week's episode of WWF Smackdown. Ahem."] Yeah, let's all find a starting point for dialogue in the notion that a secret coterie of albino monks has been mythmaking about Jesus' Divinity for 2,000 years. No, you go first.

Now, Christians being coaxed into writing anti-DVC pieces on a stupid web site (like, well, this one) are meekly accepting that they are being given "a seat at the table" in some grand cultural discussion. Duped! There is no seat folks. There is no discussion. What there is, is a few p.r. folks in Hollywood taking mondo big bucks from Sony Pictures, to deliver legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham.

The masses who will see this film will not be coming to the web site. They will go in to the theaters, eat handfuls of popcorn, and then come out marveling that millions of people for 2,000 years could have been so duped by a lie. They won't go to any web site. They won't be coming to any Christian forum.

I love how we Christians have moved from all agreeing that DVC is evil, to now arguing about what cultural engagement means. Ha! Fabulous! It is a plot twist worthy of Da Vinci Code (if, you know, it were a really clever book with good plot points...)

ANYWAY.... here's what I think we should do. I am hereby announcing my personal "How to Respond to Da Vinci Code Strategy." And the answer is to go to the movies on May 19, 2006. Every Christian who loves Jesus, your mission, if you will accept it is to buy movie tickets. We need to bring our kids, our church groups, our youth ministry clubs, our seniors groups - and buy tickets for the homeless for after we feed them. And we all need to go to see THIS! [The site directs you to an advertisement for the animated movie, Over the Hedge.]

Let's make this little movie the biggest release of the year. Let's have DVC positively dwarfed in the weekend box-office, because all of us dutifully marched off to register our vote for the other movie opening that weekend. It's brilliant, mais oui?

Over the Hedge! Over the Hedge! More screens for Over the Hedge!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2006 7.29]

I like the ideas expressed in this blog by Dominican priest Father Phillip Powell in his blog
hancaquam.blogspot.com/2006/02/on-habits-and-spirit-of-diss...
It seems to apply to all the Catholic "dissenters" I can think of!
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Friday, February 03, 2006
On the Habits and Spirit of Dissent

When we talk about a “Spirit of This” or a “Spirit of That,” I think we mean to point out a deeply seated habit of assenting to and doing This and That. A Spirit of Charity points out a habit of assenting to the call to charity, being charitable, and doing charitable works. The Spirit of Disobedience points out a habit of assenting to the temptation of rebellion, being rebellious, and actually rebelling. To say then that a person or institution is “possessed of a Spirit of X” is to say that this person or institution is habitual assenting to, being, and doing X.

If all of this is true, then I think we can learn something about the Spirit of Dissent by looking at the Habits of Dissent among those charged with teaching the faith in the Church. This includes both clerical and lay teachers, elementary-secondary teachers, and teachers in college, seminary, and schools of theology.

Habitually, dissent looks like…

…anger: a consuming frustration, disappointment, rage toward the Truth
…hatred: a self-defining loathing for the apostolic faith
…willful ignorance: a refusal to learn, a refusal to be disciplined (to be a student)
…pride: an utter failure to be humble in the face of 2,000 years of teaching
…arrogance: an expression of pride that manifests as dismissiveness of authority
…entitlement: an obsessive assertion of prerogative/privilege over service
…idolatry: the raising up of Novelty and Trendiness as final ends
…rebelliousness: revolting against legitimate authority in favor of private choice

What feeds the Spirit of Dissent? (NOT a comprehensive list)

1. The hermeneutics of suspicion. This is a method of reading texts that requires the reader to approach the text suspiciously, that is, to be deeply skeptical of the text’s author, his/her intent, his/her credentials, any and everything about the text: origin, timing of publication, method of publication, drafts, editions, private/public comments of the author — all of the “histories of production” — every possible scrape of information that could add to the interpretation of the text.

Reading the text is a matter of holding in perpetual suspension all of this info, one’s own socio-political identity/agenda, and all of one’s deeply held prejudices against anything that looks/sounds like Truth. This method is especially popular among dissenters because it varnishes their dissent with the very thin veneer of academic respectability. Typical suspicious statement about an authoritative text: “We need time to look at the document in its fullest possible context and ask questions about how it applies to our current situation…”

2. Identity Politics. This complex network of self-serving nastiness allows the reader of authoritative texts to “read through” his/her “social location” and come to an understanding of the text that best assists in the creation and advancement of his/her identity. Circular? You bet. But that doesn’t matter at all because dissenters celebrate the…

3. Death of Reason as a metanarrative. This is an important move for the Habit and Spirit of Dissent in that it allows the reader of authority and tradition to discard the pesky habits of rational discourse and rely totally on affectivity. Assertions of personal need, experience, and “hurt” overwhelm rational argument by sheer force of emotionalism and the fear of causing additional “hurt.” Typical affective statement about an authoritative text: “I am deeply wounded by this document. It fails to understand me.” End of discussion.

4. Failure of humility, triumph of pride. The Habit and Spirit of Dissent is fundamentally about the failure to understand and accept the necessity of authority in defining and teaching the faith. Pride tells us that we are basically independent creatures, freed from any and all obligation, beholding to none (including and especially God!). Humility in teaching the faith means that we begin my assuming the authenticity of the witness we’ve received. In other words, we start this whole project by trusting the Holy Spirit to do what He said He would do: to guide His church, to keep Her free from error though the apostolic tradition. The Habit and Spirit of Dissent begins by assuming that the apostolic tradition as received is deeply flawed, in desperate need of repair, and that he/she is the One to accomplish this healing through radical reformation and revolution. The model for this reformation/revolution is almost always secular in origin: ecclesial democracy, spiritualized psychotherapy, fetishization of various secular or non-Christian philosophies (Marxism, feminism, Eastern thought), ad. nau. Typical prideful statement about an authoritative text: “Most Catholic theologians disagree with Dogma X. The latest research indicates that Dogma X is an outdated assertion of ___________ [insert Current Dissenter Object of Derision, e.g. papal authority, institutional identity, gender domination, etc.].”

Teaching the faith means teaching with the mind of the Church. On this subject, the constitutions of the Order of Preachers reads: “In all things the brethren should think with the Church and exhibit allegiance to the varied exercise of the Magisterium to which is entrusted the authentic interpretation of the word of God. Furthermore, faithful to the Order's mission, they should always be prepared to provide with special dedication cooperative service to the Magisterium in fulfilling their doctrinal obligations” (LCO III.1.80).

A failure to dissent is not a failure to question. As a Dominican, I am trained to question. The Catechism recognizes a legitimate form of doubt (nn. 157-159). But notice where the burden of assent and belief rests: on the student, not the teacher.

We can legitimately fail to understand, fail to “get it,” and in that failure, doubt. This is why we need faithful teachers, power masters of the faith who begin by trusting God, putting their own agendas and issues behind them, and putting forward the clearest picture of our apostolic faith that their gifts allow.

At its root, public dissent on the part of Catholic teachers is quite simply the spirit of entitled narcissism, the habit of petulant self-worship.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2006 5.03]

Thanks for posting the Barbara Nicolosi piece, Teresa Benedetta.

Aside from the book's enormous popularity, I wonder whether the movie version will indeed draw the crowds in to see it. Hollywood movies advertised as blockbusters have not been doing well in the box office for a while now, even with big name actors, directors and full-blown hype. It may do well the first weekend then tank shortly afterwards. That's been the pattern for many first-run films lately. Of course, the real revenue is in the DVD and overseas markets. Nevertheless, the "damage" this movie (along with the book) can inflict upon ignorant and biased movie watchers will be long term, since ticket buyers might not flock to see it in the multiplexes, but they can always see it later via DVD purchase, Netflix rentals, pay-per-view cable, etc. We may be dealing with the after-effects of the DVC infected for some time to come. I guess this is just another challenge placed before the Church to see how well or how badly we handle this controversy. It certainly should provide an interesting contrast regarding Catholic reaction to media that insults our religion and the angry Muslim response to those cartoons this past week. We'll see.

I have been wondering what percent of the 40 million who have bought Dan Brown's book are Catholic, and of those, how many were gullible enough to be taken in by the author's tricks to make his fiction seem to be historical fact! Any Catholics who did not react with outrage but rather became prey to doubts or even, God forbid, swung to believe what the author wants them to believe, would seem to show that their grounding in the faith was inadequate.

But the vast majority of the readers are likely to be non-Catholic Christians, many of whom may only be too ready to believe the worst of the "Papist Church" or to pick up more slings to throw at the Catholic Church if they were already hostile to or mistrustful of it to begin with.

I had marked this down for translation when it first appeared three days ago and somehow it got passed over, but Sandro Magister makes a very good point in this blog that I wonder the fact he reports hasn't been picked up or remarked upon by secular commentators in the MSM. Herewith, a translation of
blog.espressonline.it/weblog/stories.php?topic=03/04/09...
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Moderate Islam? Here it is - in Iraq!


The news accounts of the violent aggression against Westerners and Christians because of the satirical cartoons depicting Muhammad pubished in Denmark have overlooked a statement of great importance – that of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.

He is the most authoritative and respected Shiite Muslim leader in Iraq. He has always ranged himself against the theocracy of Khomeinist Iran and favors a new political system in Iraq which will reconcile Islam and democracy.

Well now, commenting on the ongoing violence, Al-Sistani called the publication of the cartoons “a horrific action” but he has directed his condemnation more against “misdirected and oppressive Muslims …who have taken advantage of that act to sspread their poison and revive their old hates with new methods,” resulting in projecting through their violence “a dark and distorted image of (Islam) as a religion of justice, love and brotherhood.”

Al-Sistani is well aware that the violence organized in different Muslim nations using the cartoons as a pretext has the same root as that of terorrists who are targeting the anscent democracy in Iraq. He recognizes in them the true enemies, whether it be of civil liberties, or of Islam in which they profess to believe.

“Moderate” Islam which is often spoken of, without knowing exactly where it is to be found, or identifying it with wrong persons, has in the Ayatollah Al-Sistani a principal figure. He represents those Muslims who must be understood, supported and defended. Iraq is an extraordinary testing ground for constructive relations between Christianity and Islam.
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The ayatollah joins Jordan's King Abdullah who has been quite outspoken about his condemnation of the violence. Let us pray the forces of unreason and hate do not turn against them!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2006 14.20]

I loved this article. Thanks for the posting, Teresa-B.

Just one or two comments: I've mentioned elsewhere that some Protestants believed much of Dan Brown's rubbish. What I didn't explain is that those people had already been doubting Thomasses and had very little or no association with organised religion any more.

Conversely I also have many non-Catholic friends, mostly Reformed Protestants, who absolutely refused to read the book. Others, who did read it, were upset by the non-divine portrayal of Jesus AS WELL AS the scandalous, lying portrayal of the Church and its history. Most intelligent non-Catholics know full well that the history of the Church (the RCC) is the history of the "mother church", therefore also that of protestantism before the Reformation. Protestants see Dan Brown's book as an attack on the core beliefs of Christianity; on the truth of Christianity. They are, as Christians, totally united with the RCC in condemning Brown's (and other similar) theses.
It is just amazing how the DVC hit the world as though the ideas behind the plot were new. Iv'e read the Freke and Gandy book published in the 1980's (I think) on the same topic, and "theologians" like (Dr)Barbara Thiering (Jesus, the Man), had already brought the married Jesus, Mary Magdalen etc. before the larger public eye. And they've been succesfully refuted by how many Christian scholars....

Even so, mr. Brown is laughing all the way to the bank on the back of old, refuted theories. I suppose gullible people will always love stories with even just a whiff of "conspiracy".

In John Allen's 2/10/06 Word From Rome, he quotes a fragment from an essay written by martyred priest Andrea Santoro about Turkey for a Roman pilgrim agency. He was clearheaded about Islam:
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"I discovered the face of Islam in practice: an instinctive sense of God and His providence; spontaneous welcome of His word and His will; trusting abandonment to His guidance; daily prayer in the middle of one's activity; certainty about the afterlife and the resurrection; the sacredness of the family; the value of simplicity, of the essential things, of welcome and of solidarity.

"Alongside these lights, however, there are also shadows: the fear of true liberty; the limits placed on a more interpersonal and intimate relationship with God, seen as too majestic to come down among human beings; an image of women still very much to be discovered and given value; an individual and public practice of the faith that has to be more thoroughly linked with interior life; and an overly fearful attitude concerning dialogue between cultures and religions."

Inviting readers to visit Turkey, Santoro wrote, "God willing, I'll be here to welcome you."

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Earlier in the column, Allen had this to say about the tragedy in Trabzon:

Amid the global soul-searching triggered by Muslim backlash against the Danish cartoons, the Feb. 5 murder of Fr. Andrea Santoro, an Italian missionary in Trabzon, Turkey, will probably end up as a footnote, little more than a blip on the radar screen of a much larger story.

For religiously concerned people, however, that may prove a serious miscalculation.

Among other things, what Santoro's death illustrates is just how thin the veneer of civility sometimes can be in the border zones of the world where Christians and Muslims rub shoulders. In that sense, the lessons of the killing may have little to do with the cartoon controversy, but a great deal to say about the future of Christianity in majority Muslim nations.

On the afternoon of Sunday, Feb. 5, a 16-year-old Turk entered St. Mary's Church in Trabzon and fired two bullets into Santoro's lungs and heart, shouting Allah akbar, meaning "Allah is great." He later said he had been agitated by the controversy surrounding the Danish cartoons.

Santoro, 61 at the time he was murdered, was a donum fidei priest, a priest released by the diocese of Rome to serve as a missionary on Turkey's Black Sea Coast. A popular Roman pastor, he left for Turkey at the age of 55, saying he felt the need to "start over again" in the place where one tradition holds that Abraham was born, in Urfa, and where the earliest Christian communities took shape.

"Being here, where what you can do is so limited, it's much more important who you are," Santoro told an Italian documentary last year, which was rebroadcast on the morning of his funeral. "You have to ask, 'What have I got inside?' If you love others only when you're surrounded by a certain apparatus, with a certain level of satisfaction, is that really love?"

"As Christians in this land, we carry a message of reconciliation, the same reconciliation that was born with the blood of Jesus," he said.

Santoro is the first Roman priest to be martyred in the 21st century, and his death has had an enormous impact in Italy. Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to Santoro during his Wednesday General Audience, eliciting a sustained standing ovation from several thousand people in the Paul VI audience hall.

At Friday's funeral Mass, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar of the Roman diocese and president of the Italian bishops' conference, spoke of Santoro as a martyr.

"Allow me, in this regard, to express frankly my personal conviction," Ruini said. "We will fully respect all the laws and the rhythms of the church in the process of beatification and canonization that I have in my heart to open. But already, I am interiorly persuaded that in the sacrifice of Fr. Andrea are present all the constitutive elements of Christian martyrdom."

The congregation at the Cathedral of St. John Lateran broke out into sustained applause.

I had the chance on Wednesday to speak with Bishop Luigi Padovese, a 58-year-old Capuchin from Milan who serves as the apostolic vicar in Anatolia, and who was Santoro's superior. Padovese was in Rome accompanying Santoro's body, and was set to return to Turkey after the funeral Mass Friday morning.

Listening to Padovese, the most chilling aspect of the story is perhaps how little indication there was that this young man harbored hatred strong enough to kill. The 16-year-old was not, Padovese said, raised in circles linked to any known radical groups or jihadist movement, although his brother has told Turkish media that the young man was influenced by an Islamic militant group he met on-line. His father was not an imam or a fundamentalist politician, but a local dentist. It was his father's pistol the teen used to gun down Santoro, and the father has said that his son was undergoing psychiatric care.

I asked Padovese what he believes the real motive was for Santoro's murder. He said he doesn't know what demons drove this young man, but said dismissing it as an isolated act is a mistake. Rising Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Christian prejudice, Padovese said, shaped the context in which the teen acted.

"It's the anti-Christian climate that has been produced in Turkey," Padovese said. "There's a strong current of religious extremism, and that climate can fuel this sort of hatred. It's passed along in families, in schools, in the newspapers."

Padovese said that every week the Turkish bishops' conference prepares a bulletin citing "denigrating comments" or "banalities" about Christianity that have appeared in the Turkish press.

"There's a false image of our presence that usually goes unchallenged," he said.

As one example of what Padovese has in mind, the Catholic news agency Asia News recently carried an essay by a Western academic who had been doing research in a small Black Sea Coast town last summer, near Trabzon. During that time he saw a local newspaper article titled, "A priest sighted." It reported that local children had seen a priest in the vicinity of the town, but chased him off, to the great applause of the locals.

The article quoted a local politician: "The priests who arrive in our area want to re-establish the Christian Greek-Orthodox state that was here before. There are spies among these priests, working for the West. They are trying to destroy our peace."

That's the sort of misrepresentation Padovese has in mind.

Padovese stressed that he "loves the Turkish people," most of whom "are good people who want dialogue." At the same time, he said, "there are zones of Turkey which are completely 'Islamified,' where it is dangerous to be a Christian."

Padovese linked Santoro's death to the broader struggles of the small Christian population in Turkey, a country often lauded as a model of moderate, Western-style Islam, and currently a candidate for membership in the European Union.

"There were several million Christians in Turkey at the fall of the Ottoman Empire," he said. "How is it possible that in the arc of just 70 or 80 years we've become merely 60,000 or 70,000? The truth is that hundreds of thousands of Christians converted to Islam, taking Islamic names and hiding their identity, out of fear of persecution," he said.

"The Christian presence is still there, I know it's there," Padovese said. "Many of these people know that they are Christians, or come from Christian families, but cannot say so."

The same pressures, in different forms, affect Christians across the Middle East, which has helped produce a steady exodus among the estimated 20 million Christians in the region. Today there are more Palestinian Christians in Australia, for example, than in Palestine. The rapid decline of the Christian population has long been a source of concern in the Vatican.

Faced with these realities, some observers believe the pope has to do more to challenge anti-Christian prejudice.

In an interview in the Rome daily La Repubblica, for example, Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli called on the Pope to defend Christian rights.

"He has to do it and he has to do it quickly," said Calderoli, a member of the populist Northern League. "He must dialogue with the Muslim world to guarantee the reciprocity of rights and duties."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/02/2006 2.53]

Anyone who has been to the Vatican Museums knows that it is one of the most stupendous cultural experiences one could ever hope to have, coupled with the more immediately accessible cultural wonder that is St. Peter's Basilica and Square. So, here's a toast to the Musei Vaticani as they mark half a millennium....
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Vatican Museums Turning 500, in Style
Events Planned Throughout '06
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 14, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican presented initiatives planned for the fifth centenary of the Vatican Museums, one of the world's most important art galleries.

"It is an anniversary," said Cardinal Edmund Szoka, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, "that seeks to recall the history of centuries of culture and art which Roman Pontiffs promoted with constancy and competence, collecting works of the past to preserve them from oblivion and destruction, destining them to successive generations."

A visit to the Vatican Museums, the cardinal said today, shows that artists of all ages have expressed "their own vocation at the service of beauty and faith."

"At a time in which there is talk of museum as places of meeting, contact and dialogue, of maturity and reflection between religions, cultures, experiences and different conceptions of the world, the Vatican Museums interpret today, more than ever, and in an exemplary way, this role," the Vatican official affirmed.

The Vatican Museums were founded 500 years ago in the Vatican Gardens. That is where Pope Julius II placed the marble group Laocoon, an ancient artwork that had been discovered on Jan. 14, 1506, in a vineyard near the Colosseum.

For his part, Francesco Buranelli, director of the Vatican Museums, outlined the various initiatives planned to mark the fifth centenary throughout 2006.

The official commemoration will begin this Friday, with the celebration of a Mass of thanksgiving in the Sistine Chapel, presided over by Cardinal Szoka and attended by the personnel of the Vatican Museums.

During the first half of 2006, two important museums, recently restored, will be reopened to the public.

"They exemplify the commitment of the Roman Pontiffs to promoting evangelization through the language of art," said Buranelli.

The first of these is the Pio Christian Museum, founded by Pope Benedict XIV between 1756 and 1757 to house the various objects acquired by the Vatican during the first half of the 18th century, and "to promote the splendor of Rome and affirm the truth of the Christian religion."

This museum will open on March 16 with an exhibition dedicated to finds made in the Roman catacombs during the 18th century, exhibited in glass cases decorated with busts of 24 cardinal librarians.

The second gallery to open will be the Missionary Ethnological Museum. Founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926, it was housed in the Lateran Palace until 1963 when Pope John XXIII decided to move it to the Vatican.

The museum, which opened to the public 10 years later under the pontificate of Paul VI, presents the cultures and religious practices of non-European countries, and their contacts with Christianity.

The sections dedicated to China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Mongolia are due to open June 20.

After their complete restoration, the wall paintings of the Room of Mysteries in the Borgia Apartment, the work of Pinturicchio and his assistants, will be presented on April 27.

The lunettes, decorated with scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary, have been cleaned, while restoration work also revealed a series of ornamental decorations hidden for more than 30 years behind heavy tapestries.

In the autumn, a new section of the Roman necropolis on the Via Triumphalis will be opened, discovered three years ago during work on the new Santa Rosa parking lot in the Vatican.

It will be possible to visit around 30 mausoleums and 70 individual tombs dating from the first century B.C. to the third century A.D.

The anniversary celebration will come to an end in November with the exhibition: "Laocoon, at the Origins of the Vatican Museums." The event will be accompanied by an international congress on the theme of the identity, essence and role of museums in modern society.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/07/2006 5.10]

Roberto Benigni's Advice to Young People

TERNI, Italy, FEB. 16, 2006 (Zenit.org).- On the eve of the feast of St. Valentine's Day, film director and actor Roberto Benigni told a young audience that Jesus is the "inventor of selfless love."

Being the man who could not sin, explained the director and actor of "Life Is Beautiful," Jesus "bore the sins of all."

The man who could not die "died for love of all," said Benigni. "He invented selfless love."

"You will tell me that love already existed," he added. "It's true! Radio waves and electricity also always existed, but if there had not been someone to discover them, we would not have known them."

Benigni on Monday was addressing a gathering of young people who filled the Verdi Theater in this city of the patron of lovers, St. Valentine.

The meeting was organized Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, who heads the Diocese of Terni-Narni-Amelia, according to the Italian newspaper Avvenire.

Oscar-winner Benigni told his audience that Jesus "has truly stated that he is Love."

Love is for others, "as our happiness depends on their happiness, and this is what Jesus has taught us," explained the actor-director.

Benigni gave young people a piece of advice. "May your steps move at the pace of [Jesus'] steps, fix your gaze in his direction."

During the show, Benigni recited passages of the Song of Songs and addressed a last thought to Mary, quoting one of the verses of Dante from "The Divine Comedy": "O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son! Created beings all in lowliness surpassing, as in height above them all; term by the eternal counsel pre-ordain'd."

Catherine Smibert in her weekly sundries feature for ZENIT alerts us to yet another dreadful mis-education of a gullible public to be laid at the doorstep of the best-selling Dan Brown.
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Real Rome

A Jan. 28 article in the Financial Times, headlined "Unreal History in a City of Demons," reported on a mysterious tour in Rome.

The tour was based on the book "Angels and Demons" by author Dan Brown, set in the Eternal City. At the conclusion of the article, the journalist wrote that she would have preferred receiving the "real Rome" -- not Brown's version of it.

Some tour guides are trying to fulfill this wish, by showing the real Rome.

Some tour groups, of course, try to cash in on Brown's inventions. But this, according to Tony Polzer, the director of Three Millennia Tours, only leaves a tourist so confused that they can't appreciate the genuine beauty and intrigue of the city.

"Rome is an amazing city on many different levels," Polzer told me. "Whether you're talking about the assassination of emperors or the power of the aristocracy in the Middle Ages, to the popes of today -- there have been some incredible things going on throughout the three millennia history."

Polzer said that his tour aims to debunk Brown's myths about Rome and the secret Illuminati society, in order to genuinely illuminate his clients. "Like the one the reporter from the Financial Times went on," he said. "Our tour covers the path of the so-called Illuminati -- the four altars of science and the illuminate lair."

(That includes the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo; St. Peter's Square; Santa Maria in Victoria; Piazza Navona; and Castel Sant'Angelo, for those who haven't read the book.)

"The difference is that instead of giving our opening introduction by describing the illuminate according to Brown's vision, we commit to proving the group never existed in this way, or stage of Rome's history, at least," Polzer said.

Guides such as Polzer get into debates with novel-clutching tourists when they (the guides) reveal that the markers in St. Peter's Square -- which Brown says were placed by Bernini as lighting the way to the next stop along the path -- were "in reality, … placed there two centuries later by a Vatican scientist."

Other guides, such as Tyson Monfredini of Eternal City Tours (Rome's Catholic guides), are busy pointing out to Brownies that there never was a church in Piazza Barberini, let alone it being moved.

But architectural faux pas aren't the biggest problem with fanciful fiction, lamented Monfredini.

He warned of the spiritual damage that can come from using a fictional book as a blueprint guide to the heart of Christendom. It would be a shame, he said, for visitors who come to a place so filled with wondrous artifacts, to not uncover the faith behind the works.

When Monfredini describes the reality of Bernini, the committed family man who followed papal directions, some tourists' faces drop. "It seems that his being a pro-life Catholic, which is more logically consistent with our evidence, is more exciting these days than his representation as a pagan."

From www.voltosanto.it/ -
a quick backgrounder on the icon which Pope Benedict will be visiting in May (see NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT).



The “Holy Face” is a very tenuous veil between two framed glass sheets. In order to avoid running the risk of damaging the mysteriously impressed Image, the Veil has not yet been removed from its monstrance to verify scientifically the kind of staple that seems to be to the naked eye an ancient sea-byssus fibre, also found inside the pyramids of Egypt.

The horizontal threads are rather wavy and the structure of the material is simple, so the warp and the weft interlace in a simple way as in a normal weaving.

The cloth measures cm 17 X 24.

The fabric is so thin that the image is visible before and behind. If we put a newspaper behind the image, we can read it even at a distance. Its colour is a shade of brown, the lips are light red and seem to annul every material aspect.
It is the effigy of a long-haired Man. His beard is short and sparse. His cheeks are dissimilar: one, rounder than the other, appears considerably inflated.

His eyes look very intensely upward so we can see the white of the eye under the iris. His pupils are completely open, but in an irregular way. His glance is questioning but also loving. On the forehead there is a forelock of short, wavy hair.

Donato Vittore, university professor in Bari and Giulio Fanti, university professor in Padua, not only by high definition digital photographs but also by ultra-violet rays confirm the inexistence of paint on the Veil.

The expert iconographer B. Pascalis Slöemer proved the truth of her assertion by placing both diapositives (of the Holy Shroud of Turin and the Holy Face of Manoppello) one upon the other: their transparent data-points fit together perfectly and Our Lord's Face appears in His Deposition from the Cross and Resurrection from the dead.

Heinrich Pfeiffer, professor of iconography and history of Christian art in the papal Gregorian university, affirms that this Image was the model for the later representations of the Holy Face, included the portraits painted in the Roman catacombs during the IV century.

Furthermore, he asserts that Our Lord gave us not only his Word by means of the Holy Scriptures, but also his Image in the Holy Shroud of Turin and in the Holy Face of Manoppello, a divine evidence of his Passion, Resurrection and Glory.


"Simon Peter came and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths* lying, and the napkin** which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself". (John 20,6-7)

*”Othonia” – the Holy Shroud of Turin, well known all over the world; placed one upon another, this Image and the Veil of Monoppello fit together perfectly. (B. Pascalis Shlöemer)

**”Soudarion” – the Holy Face of Manoppello, venerated in times past in Rome and named Veronica "vera icona" = true icon.

[The notes above were written by the Jesuit priest H. Pfeiffer, who has been researching the icon for years.)

From Alejandro Bermudez in http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/blog/ -

Yes, that’s what the judiciary has decided, but not in the US -otherwise the ACLU would be hysterical by now - but in Italy, where a Muslim challenged before the law the presence of the crucifix in Italian public schools, arguing it was not only offensive to him, but a violation of the separation between church and state… sounds familiar?

An Italian Tribunal finally ruled on Wednesday that the crucifix must remain in public schools since it
represents “a cultural and spiritual value that reflects the state and the Italian people.”

---------------------------------------------------------------
Hooray for the Italians!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/02/2006 16.03]

BRAVO!!

I agree with Teresa. Hooray for the Italians for having the courage to uphold their heritage and beliefs. Wish we could say the same here where whatever minority pipes up overrules the majority.

AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT

Halfway To Heaven
A Catholic millionaire's dream town draws fire.

By Susannah Meadows
Newsweek

Feb. 27, 2006 issue - The 5,000-acre tomato field in southwestern Florida sure doesn't look like heaven. Bulldozers scrape the land flat while clusters of Porta Pottis signal an undeniable earthiness. But soon a massive cathedral will rise from this barren spot. Reaching 100 feet in the air behind a 65-foot crucifix, the Oratory will anchor Ave Maria, a whole new town and Roman Catholic university 30 miles east of Naples. Ground was officially broken last week, and the plan is to build 11,000 homes—likely drawing families who already hold the church at the center of their lives.

For Tom Monaghan, the devout Catholic who founded Domino's Pizza and is now bankrolling most of the initial $400 million cost of the project, Ave Maria is the culmination of a lifetime devoted to spreading his own strict interpretation of Catholicism. Though he says nonbelievers are welcome, Monaghan clearly wants the community to embody his conservative values. He controls all the commercial real estate in town (along with his developing partner, Barron Collier Cos.) and is asking pharmacies not to carry contraceptives. If forced to choose between two otherwise comparable drugstores, Barron Collier would favor the one that honored that request, says its president and CEO, Paul Marinelli. Discussing his life as a millionaire Catholic who puts his money where his faith is, Monaghan says: "I believe all of history is just one big battle between good and evil. I don't want to be on the sidelines."

The ACLU of Florida is worried about how he's playing the game. "It is completely naive to think this first attempt [to restrict access to contraception] will be their last," says executive director Howard Simon. Armed with a 1946 Supreme Court opinion that "ownership [of a town] does not always mean absolute dominion," Simon will be watching Ave Maria for any signs of Monaghan's request's becoming a demand. Planned Parenthood is similarly alarmed. So far, Naples Community Hospital, which plans to open a clinic in Ave Maria Town, says it will not prescribe any birth control to students. Will others be able to get the pill? "For the general public, the answer is probably yes, but not definitely yes," says hospital point man Edgardo Tenreiro. The Florida attorney general's office says the issue of limiting access will likely have to be worked out in court. Barron Collier and Monaghan say they're following Florida law.

Raised by nuns in orphanages, Monaghan, 68, has tried to franchise his religious views in the past, creating elementary schools, a small college, Catholic radio stations and, in 2000, a Catholic law school. While many of his initiatives have foundered, the law school, with 88 percent of its most recent class passing the Michigan bar, is off to a strong start. Early signs suggest the new Ave Maria complex, his final and most ambitious project, might also work out. The developers are close to leasing 60 percent of the commercial space (no pharmacists yet), says project manager Blake Gable, and they have received some 7,000 inquiries from people interested in buying homes, which will go for less than the half-million median price in nearby Naples. In an area of strip malls and bad traffic, Ave Maria's communal design—with shops within walking distance to the homes—has civic appeal. "The general buzz is that the university and town are going to be a spark plug for massive development in that area," says Michael Reagen, president of the Naples Chamber of Commerce. Even the pope is interested. When Ave Maria Provost Father Joseph Fessio saw Benedict XVI, the first thing out of the new pontiff's mouth, according to Fessio, was, "How's Ave Maria?" He's not the only one awaiting the answer.

[Fr. Fessio, as most of you probably know, is a former student of the pope's and is editor of Ignatius Press, which publishes most of the pope's books in the US.]

Here is another very laudable anti-DVC effort, but how do we get all of this information to at least 40 million who have no read this monumentally best-selling fabric of lies?
----------------------------------------------------------------

Dissecting "The Da Vinci Code"
Interview With Apologist Mark Shea

SEATTLE, Washington, FEB. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Millions have read "The Da Vinci Code" and many are expected to see the movie version when it is released May 19.

That is why Mark Shea and Ted Sri -- an apologist and theology professor, respectively -- have co-authored "The Da Vinci Deception" (Ascension), a guide that reveals the fact and fiction behind "The Da Vinci Code."

Shea shared with ZENIT the main inaccuracies in the "Code" book, and why they threaten the faith of Christians.

Q: What compelled the writing of this book?
Shea: The short answer is that tens of millions of people have read "The Da Vinci Code" and many have had their faith in Christ and the Catholic Church shaken. This blasphemous book has become a major cultural phenomenon, largely by attacking the very person and mission of Jesus Christ. It must be addressed.

The longer answer is that "The Da Vinci Code" has become the source for what I call "pseudo-knowledge" about the Christian faith.

Pseudo-knowledge is that stuff "everybody knows," such as the "fact" that Humphrey Bogart said "Play it again, Sam" -- except he didn't. Pseudo-knowledge doesn't matter much when the issue is the script of "Casablanca."

It matters greatly when it adversely affects the most sacred beliefs of a billion people, and when it levels the charge that the Catholic Church is essentially a vast "Murder Incorporated" network founded on maintaining the lie of Jesus' divinity and resurrection.

When that happens, very nasty genies get let out of bottles, as when the lies recorded by 19th-century czarist secret police forgers in the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" became the basis for what "everybody knew" about the Jews in the terrible anti-Semitic persecutions of the 20th century.

"The Da Vinci Code" has sold close to 30 million copies. In May, it will appear as a major film and will acquire even more unquestioned authority among millions of historically and theologically illiterate viewers -- unless Christians state the facts and help viewers recognize just how badly they've been had.

The Da Vinci Outreach initiative, led by Catholic Exchange and Ascension Press, will equip Catholics and all people of good will with resources to help them respond to this movie.

Those who say, "It's just a story," simply do not understand that this deception is part of the book's power. People often receive through fiction what they would be on guard against in reasoned debate.

And this is particularly true as Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code," has actually stated he would not change any of his basic assertions if he were writing nonfiction. Brown means for us to understand that his claims about the origins are Christianity are true.

Q: What are the main inaccuracies found in the "The Da Vinci Code"?
Shea: Let me count the ways. Blunders include factual errors and outright lies, large and small, about practically every subject Brown addresses in art, history and theology. He purports that bogus documents that even his questionable sources repudiate are factual.

He claims Leonardo Da Vinci doesn't give Jesus a chalice in his painting "The Last Supper" in order to hint that Mary Magdalene is the true chalice who held the "blood of Jesus" -- i.e., his child -- despite the fact there are 13 cups in the painting.

He chatters about the meaning of an Aramaic word in the Gnostic gospel of Philip, oblivious to the fact it's written in Coptic.

He calls Mary Magdalene the victim of a Catholic smear campaign without pausing to wonder why she's a Catholic saint.

He blames "the Vatican" for various plots and conspiracies that are alleged to have taken place centuries before there was any Vatican to plot them.

And, of course, in the biggest lie of them all, he declares that nobody before the year A.D. 325 thought of Jesus as anything other than a "mortal prophet" until Constantine muscled the Council of Nicaea into declaring him God "by a relatively close vote."

Of course, he does not stop to ask why, if Jesus was just a "mortal prophet," he bothered founding a Church at all -- nor what the Church was about for the first 300 years if nobody was worshipping Jesus as God.

Q: How do these inaccuracies challenge the Church, her teachings and the person of Jesus Christ?
Shea: Brown is attempting to establish a neo-pagan feminist creation myth. The basic myth is: Jesus was actually a feminist, agog for neo-paganism. The Church supposedly covered up all this with lies about his divinity. Brown's point here is: Let's get back to goddess worship as Jesus intended.

This laughably baseless claim is, of course, utterly contrary to the facts about Jesus. But many in our overly credulous and historically illiterate culture believe it. So Catholics must undertake to catechize not just themselves but their families, friends and neighbors, or they can expect this dangerous myth to continue spreading.

Q: Why is there a concern about Catholics -- and everyone else, for that matter -- viewing "The Da Vinci Code" movie without a discerning eye and solid background information?
Shea: Because it's written with the express intention of destroying faith in Jesus Christ and replacing it with neo-pagan goddess worship.

The problem is the average reader does not know "The Da Vinci Code" actually makes you more stupid about art, history, theology and comparative religion.

"The Da Vinci Deception" and Da Vinci Outreach are there to educate readers on the quite deliberate falsehoods -- as well as ignorant blunders -- that fill the story. We are also including a resource aimed at educating high school students and helping them to tune their "bunk detectors" to Brown's wavelength.

Q: The recent backlash by Muslims against cartoons on Mohammed seems to signal rising tensions between religion and society. What do you think of the timing of this movie?
Shea: Undoubtedly, the promoters of the movie will attempt to characterize Catholic complaints about "The Da Vinci Code's" assassination of the facts as identical to radical Islamist threats to free speech.

The problem with this claim, of course, is that the Church does not condone burning down buildings or threatening people with death, even when they lie about Christ. We simply and politely request that the creators of "The Da Vinci Code" to not palm off scurrilous lies as fact.

Western manufacturers of culture are always braver about smearing the Church than in confronting radical Islam because, as they know perfectly well, the Vatican does not issue "fatwas" or death threats.

Q: How do you hope this book informs those who plan on going to the film "The Da Vinci Code"?
Shea: "The Da Vinci Deception" breaks down in simple terms the basic pattern of lies Brown deploys in "The Da Vinci Code" so that the reader can clearly see the clockwork going on behind this novel.

The book is broken into 100 questions -- as was our previous book, "A Guide to the Passion" -- that walk the reader through the skillful weave of Brown's very artful falsehoods and show you why it's such a scam. Once you understand Brown's game, you start to realize that it is Brown -- not the Catholic faith -- that is taking people for a ride.

We are confident enough in our book that we would, in fact, urge people to go to the film after having read it -- the better to help deluded family members, friends and neighbors see through the scam.

Q: Why are people taking Dan Brown's novels so seriously? In Rome there are even guided tours retracing the places covered in his book "Angels and Demons."
Shea: "The Da Vinci Code" is yet another manifestation of what I call "the latest Real Jesus"; every generation tends to discover the latest Real Jesus.

A hundred years ago, Albert Schweitzer discovered that the Real Jesus was a Social Gospel Protestant. In the booming 1920s, people found that Jesus was actually a poster boy for salesmanship. In the 1930s, the Nazis discovered a Real Jesus who was Aryan, not Jewish, while the Communists discovered a Jesus who was actually the first Marxist.

In the 1960s, the Real Jesus was found to be a flower child in "Godspell" and a devotee of hallucinogenic mushrooms -- which explains all the visions and miracles nicely. In the 1970s, the Real Jesus was found to be a "superstar" as per the diktats of rock culture.

In the 1980s, he appeared on the scene to promise health and wealth and to heal your inner child -- that's when he wasn't suffering existential crises, grappling with his libido and riddled by self-doubt, rather like a self-absorbed baby boomer, in "The Last Temptation of Christ."

In the 1990s, he was suddenly discovered to be an enthusiastic homosexual in the blasphemous play "Corpus Christi."

Today, we live in a culture obsessed with the sex lives of the rich and famous, credulous about vast conspiracy theories, brimming with half-baked notions about paganism and feminism, and hostile to traditional notions of both reason and authority.

By some unfathomable coincidence, Dan Brown has discovered a Real Jesus who perfectly reflects this broad cultural mood. And when people believe things based on such a mood, particularly evil things, this is dangerous to their faith.

"The Da Vinci Deception" is designed precisely to help people stop taking "The Da Vinci Code" so seriously. Happily, Dan Brown and company have made things easy for us in that department.

His book is so laughably bad, its claims so easily and demonstrably false, the whole thing so silly, that debunking takes on a rather gleeful quality -- which is, I think, only fitting. The best cure for "The Da Vinci Code" is, in the end, hearty gales of well-informed laughter.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2006 14.18]

Here is a backgrounder on Pope Benedict's meeting today, 1/25, with Roman seminarians, from Elizabeth Lev's weekly feature www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=84994 in ZENIT's English service:
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Madonna della Fiducia and a Special Observance
By Elizabeth Lev

ROME, FEB. 23, 2006 (Zenit.org).- During this first year of Benedict XVI's pontificate, Romans have been delighted to see the continuation of many of Pope John Paul II's traditional appointments in the city. This Feb. 25, the Saturday before Lent, the Holy Father will commemorate the feast of the Madonna della Fiducia, at the Roman Seminary.

The Madonna della Fiducia is a simple little devotional image, painted by a religious sister in the 18th century, which has accompanied the Roman Seminary from its first home in the Collegio Romano to its present home at St. John Lateran.

The Madonna's fame grew during World War I when the Roman seminarians, after being drafted into service in the Italian army, gathered in her chapel and made a vow to her before being taken off to war. Only one seminarian returned and the dog tags of the fallen were incorporated into the image as rays around the Madonna and Child.

Over the decades, many popes have visited the small chapel from time to time, but John Paul II visited the Roman Seminary and the Madonna della Fiducia every year during his pontificate. And now the seminarians are busily preparing for the first visit of Benedict XVI.

The festivities formally commence with first vespers when all the new men receive their cassocks. The extensive preparations begin much earlier and include polishing the candelabra, taking out the special carpet and preparing the designated vestments.

The morning of the feast, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar of Rome, concelebrates Mass with the alumni of the seminary. Then after a long and elaborate lunch (this is Italy) everyone gathers in the courtyard for the arrival of the Pope. The same seminarians who seem so recollected and reserved in the streets of Rome, greet the Pontiff with the cheering and screaming that most young Romans unleash in the soccer stadium.

The Pope prays in the Fiducia chapel before joining the seminarians in the main chapel where the students perform an oratory written for the occasion. This event is so important that hundreds of alumni return for it every year.

An out-of-the-ordinary alumnus returned for the Madonna of Fiducia this year -- the last American priest to have been ordained from the Roman Seminary. Father Christopher Smith was ordained July 23, 2005, and is now serving at St. Mary's Parish in Greenville, South Carolina, which was celebrated in George Weigel's 2004 book, "Letters to a Young Catholic."

Americans are very rare at the Roman Seminary. Father Smith is only the 23rd American to be ordained for a U.S. diocese since the seminary's foundation in 1564. I spoke to Father Smith shortly after his arrival, curious to know how a young man from South Carolina found his way to the Roman Seminary.

"Although I became a Catholic at age 13," he told me, "I grew up in a fundamentalist Protestant environment. During my studies at Christendom College, I was introduced to the theoretical world of Catholicism. But I had this great desire to live at the center of the Christian world in the universal sense and to understand what the 'Roman' in 'Roman Catholic' really meant."

Father Smith came to discover that "Roman" means a good deal more than a large Italian city. "Just as the Roman Empire governed a huge territory containing diverse languages, philosophies and customs to a common purpose," he said, "so the Apostolic See has united people from all over the world under a common Truth, guarded by one person, the Roman pontiff."

We spoke about how this Roman experience was reflected in his home parish. Father Smith observed that he felt "a vibrant sense of the Roman charism of unity as fostering communion across all the various borders in his parish -- whether ethnic or social."

He went on to note that after seven years here, "the examples of the Roman saints and martyrs are not pages in a book to me, but part of my present. The living tradition handed from Roman to Roman is something that I carried back to my parish."

I asked Father Smith about his own devotion to the Madonna della Fiducia.

"When I first went to the seminary, I was struck by my fellow students keeping vigil day and night in the chapel," he replied. "'Fiducia' means 'confidence' and for us it meant confidence to pursue our vocation."

He then added an intriguing observation about the Madonna's continuing role in his ministry.

"As a newly ordained priest, I find myself trying to help people in various life crises," he began, "and when faced with complicated problems, instead of thinking I can come up with all the answers, I give people the holy card of the Madonna so we can pray to her together."

Father Smith also noted that the Madonna della Fiducia "helps people to reorient their thinking towards God's providential design in their lives which the Mother of God can give them confidence to see."

His final observation regarding the Madonna delighted the art historian in me.

"When you look at the image of Madonna and Child, Jesus looks out at the viewer while pointing directly at his mother," he explained. "In this way he exhorts us to trust in him the same way his Mother did."

According to Catholic Outsider blogger Alejandro Bermudez at
www.catholicnewsagency.com/blog/ -


Oriana Fallaci, the very well known atheist Italian journalist and writer, who met Pope Benedict XVI last August, is probably about to unleash another wave of controversy -and maybe violence- around Islam and the Mohammed cartoons.

According to Italian sources, Fallaci, who has become a ferocious critic of Islam since she witnessed September 11 from her Manhattan apartment, is working on her own cartoon of Muhammad.

The cartoon would represent Mohammed with his 9 wives, 16 lovers and a female camel.

Coming from Fallaci, is very likely that the cartoon will be widely reproduced in Europe, thus sparking a new wave of Islamic reaction.

--------------------------------------------------------------

DON'T DO IT, ORIANA! This is childish! Mohammed, whatever his personal life may have been, is not the problem here! You will not gain anything by it - the Muslims already know too well what you think about them - but you will provide the fanatics with a fresh excuse for more unnecessary violence. Do you want blood on your hands?.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/02/2006 17.49]

THE DAMAGE IS PROBABLY ALREADY DONE

Whether this story about Oriana is true or not, just the fact that the story is out there will be enough to cause angry Muslim reaction. Hopefully, Oriana has enough sense not to do something like this. If nothing else, let's hope that her lack of artistic talent will prevent her from trying. As if things weren't bad enough already....

This piece is from a talk given a Jesuit professor from the Gregorian University in Rome to debunk the flagrant misrepresentations and outright falsehoods found in you-know-what (Poor Leonardo - to be associated with a monumental fraud after 5 centuries!]. As it is a lENGTHY piece, I am posting only the introductory part, which is quite substantial already, and you may read the rest onhttp://www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/homilies/davincidisarmed.asp
Fr. Carola gave his talk on 2/2/06 at the University of St. Thomas' (St Paul, MN) Bernardi Campus in Rome which Roamin' Roman Mary Gibson attends.
---------------------------------------------------------------

IRENAEUS AGAINST THE LATEST HERESY:
THE DA VINCI CODE DISARMED
Fr. Joseph Carola, SJ
Gregorian University, Rome
A. M. D. G.

Dan Brown's suspense-thriller, The Da Vinci Code, hardly needs a word of introduction. Since the novel first appeared on the literary scene in 2003, it has become an international best-seller. With the imminent release of its film adaptation, its audience is bound to increase exponentially. The novel has generated, by some accounts, a two-billion-dollar industry. Numerous books and articles debunk, decode and detail the plot's every twist and turn. As these works attest, the early Church takes an immense beating in Dan Brown's revisionist history, having allegedly engaged in a massive cover-up to suppress the knowledge that Jesus, a mere man, sired a daughter by Mary Magdalene. But given the chance, the ancient Church is, in fact, quite capable of defending herself. The second-century Martyr-Bishop St. Irenaeus of Lyons---no stranger to controversy he---effectively debunked Dan Brown centuries before the rest.

The novel's pseudo-history and neo-gnostic theology are---to put it quite simply---rubbish. No Christian need fear its foolishness. Church history weathers its attacks without fail. On this account, The Da Vinci Code challenge is a battle easily won once engaged. But for those unfamiliar with the Church's past, the novel's gross manipulation of historical fact may prove difficult to perceive. Therefore, with some help from Irenaeus, we venture to set the record straight in four fundamental areas: the Christian Tradition, the canonization of Scripture, the development of doctrine and the role of Mary Magdalene. In the end we shall see that the Church's faith in Jesus is duly credible. What will prove utterly outlandish is Dan Brown's tale.

Fact or Fiction?
Common sense wisely dictates that before signing onto anything one should read the fine print. Anyone reading The Da Vinci Code would do well to do the same. Read the fine print. Where is it to be found? Have a look at the copyright page: "In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously." The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. It's a page-turning thriller---which ends in a bust, any fan of thriller-novels will frankly have to admit. To call it anything other than fiction would be grossly misleading. Dan Brown certainly has a highly active imagination, and what he himself doesn't make up, he uses in an entirely fictitious manner. As long as one realizes that he is reading a novel in which various historical and geographical elements are used entirely fictitiously, Dan Brown won't succeed in deceiving him. But the tragedy is that Dan Brown has succeeded in deceiving many of his readers because they overlook the fine print which applies as much to the so-called 'Fact' page as it does to the some 500 pages which follow.

The 'Fact' page makes three basic claims: (1) "The Priory of Sion---a European secret society founded in 1099---is a real organization", (2) "The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei is a deeply devout Catholic sect", and (3) "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." Now, recall the fine print: "In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously." What, then, are the facts?

Well, the so-called Priory of Sion is a twentieth-century fabrication created by a French con-artist named Pierre Plantard who before his death in 2000 had to testify under oath that Les Dossiers Secrets, which list the Priory's Grand Masters, were a fraud. Originally, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, the authors of the 1982 nonfiction book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, had accepted Plantard's farce at face value. But they eventually recognized the sham. A 1996 BBC documentary helped to clear the waters, which unfortunately Dan Brown, drawing heavily upon Holy Blood, Holy Grail, has muddied yet once again.

As for Opus Dei, it is hardly a 'Catholic sect'. Rather it is an ecclesiastical institute founded in 1928 by St. Josemaria Escriva and established as a Personal (not Vatican) Prelature by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Referring to its founder in his penultimate book, John Paul II noted: "In October 2002 I had the joy of canonizing Josemaria Escriva Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, a zealous priest, and an apostle to the laity in modern times" (Pope John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way, 117)---not the words a Roman Pontiff would use to describe the founder of a 'Catholic sect'. Opus Dei functions like a non-territorial diocese in the Catholic Church, whose members personally rather than geographically belong to the prelature in contrast to the members of the Archdiocese of New York, Sydney or Westminster who live within its physical boundaries. Opus Dei, moreover, has no monks among its membership, and certainly no albino monk named Silas who gallivants across western Europe, leaving in his wake a trial of victims à la James Bond's sometime nemesis Jaws. By the end of the novel, after more than 500 pages of calumny against the Catholic Church, the reader learns that "both the Vatican and Opus Dei...[turn] out to be completely innocent" (559). But the damage is already done.

The most deceptive statement on the 'Fact' page is the last. Dan Brown assures his readers, as he has assured the viewers of his televised interviews, that "[a]ll descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." Well, no serious art historian would accept the notion that the admittedly effeminate figure to Jesus' right in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper is Mary Magdalene. It is a young male whose youth dictated to Leonardo an effeminate rather than strongly virile depiction. The only hint of a bosom, moreover, is to be found in Dan Brown's highly active imagination. As for questions of architecture, one example will suffice. Employing a literary past tense to describe a present reality, Brown writes of Castelgandolfo: "In addition to being the Pope's summer vacation home, the sixteenth-century citadel housed the Specula Vaticana---the Vatican Observatory---one of the most advanced astronomical observatories in Europe" (207). That's hardly the case. Yes, Castelgandolfo is the site of the papal summer palace (it is as much a 'vacation home' as is Windsor Castle!), but on account of interference from air pollution and the Roman city lights glowing in the distance, the Jesuit astronomers, who staff the Vatican Observatory, no longer use the telescopes at Castelgandolfo for any serious star-gazing. The Vatican does, in fact, have a first-class observatory, but it sits atop a dark mountain in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona! So much for accurate descriptions of European architecture. Finally, Dan Brown may well describe with particular accuracy the secret rituals found in the novel. But given that they are the secret rituals of a non-existent society, one can conclude that he depicts them with the same accuracy as J. R. R. Tolkien describes the customs of wood elves in Middle Earth.

Are there any facts on the 'Fact' page? Well, Opus Dei does have a big building in New York. As for the rest of the novel, I am willing to grant that the Louvre is in Paris and Westminister Abbey in London. Officials at the Abbey, by the way, refused to allow any filming of the movie adaption on their premises because they could not "commend or endorse the contentious and wayward religious and historic suggestions made in the book." So much for the 'facts'.
...

READ ON.
www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/homilies/davincidisarmed.asp

---

DON'T DO IT, ORIANA! This is childish! Mohammed, whatever his personal life may have been, is not the problem here! You will not gain anything by it - the Muslims already know too well what you think about them - but you will provide the fanatics with a fresh excuse for more unnecessary violence. Do you want blood on your hands?.

---

I second that plea to her. Could this be just a sick joke? This story seem so fantastically way off the chart, it's very hard to believe she would do such a thing. It just boggles the mind, after all that has happened in these recent weeks over those God-forsaken cartoons. (But then, I don't know her or her reputation at all - would she do it?)

Maybe this is her way of committing suicide, indirectly of course...