The US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ communications department has released a web site responding to the claims made in The Da Vinci Code.
The site–www.jesusdecoded.com–contains articles by various people on various aspects of the book, as well as the upcoming film. Amy Welborn is one of the folks contributing it.
The site doesn’t have an overabundance of info at this point, but it is a good effort that should help a lot of people. It also may grow substantially over time. There is a Q & A section where readers can submit questions and get answers.
There is also a "Jesus Decoded" TV special that will be available on DVD next month.
GET THE STORY.
VISIT THE SITE.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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**Waits for the obligatory “It’s just fiction!” meme.**
Oh, come on Scott! Everone knows it’s all true and that Opus Dei really is an Evil organisation tasked with protecting *The Secret* and killing anyone who suspects the truth, just as they took out Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and Tom Hanks, then replaced them with doubles. Soon, the duplicate Ron Howard will announce that the movie will not be released because he has come to realise that the movie is anti-Catholic. You just wait and see!
You would think so but the Ron-bot has been on the fritz lately. It continually fails to follow its programming and overwhelm films with heavy-handed, drippy sentimentality and instead wants to produce less manipulative, more emotionally-grounded work.
We think this might have something to do with the fact that it is a robot — you know, the whole Pinnochio complex and not having real feelings, etc. But the Ron-bot keeps insisting that by avoiding cheap appeals to the stay-at-home-weepy-eyed-Oprah-viewing crowd, it will help the film become more accessible and more artistically redeeming.
Whatever THAT means.
The Tom-bot, on the other hand, has been loaded with the same program used to animate Hanks when he was downloaded Tron-style for Polar Express and thus, can play the man to the tee.
No worries, though, because we have a blind Knights of Columbus nun assassin (of course) who is an expert in the three-sectional yardstick waiting in the wings. She’s a little creepy (likes to boil cats alive — something that of course must be inserted every time she enters the narrative) but like most nuns, she knows how to inflict a quick clean kill. Anymore problems, and she’ll take out all the reviewers who like the film.
By the way, I am reading the book right now and it is painful down to the last brain cell. I am not sure I can overcome this tripe.
By the other way, there is another Catholic website that is offering all sorts of free supplies to conduct your own study groups. It looks pretty boss. Here’s the site:
http://www.davinciantidote.com/
Finally, Ron (the real Ron) would never back down from his baby. Being Hollywood means never having to admit you were wrong (unless the cops catch you). Personally, I am rooting for the law suit. The Plaintiffs are obviously working from (but not saying outright) the assumption that their earlier “historical” work was is in fact a type of fiction…
So now apparently there is a lawsuit against Dan Brown for alledgedly stealing some of the ideas for his book from someone else –
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060314/en_bo_usatoday/copyrighttrialunlockscluestodanbrownsdavincicode
Great quote in the new piece:
Brown’s statement also pointed out differences between his book and theirs. He said, for instance, he did not include asupposition that Jesus did not die on the cross. “Suggesting a married Jesus is one thing, but questioning the Resurrection undermines the very heart of Christian belief.”
Wouldn’t want to undermine the heart of Christian belief, now would we Dan?
I like the line from the bishops’ site that called Brown’s story for its schizophrenic attitude towards Jesus.
Jesus is not God, therefore his descendants are nothing more than the progeny of a celebrity “so many of whom have turned out to be disappointments to their parents.”
Whoah, huge slam against celebrity children. At least they did not compare them to anteaters (MST3K Overdrawn at the Memory Bank — I’ve decided to cite my obscure references).
I think this is the best approach in defusing the movie hype. If people organize protests, then the film gets free publicity and the makers get to wear their put-upon-hapless-martyrs-of-the-idiot-believer-crowd masks — which, down the line, they could play up for a more “daringly artistic” image credit (which they are not — they are slamming an organization that never sues for libel or slander).
Unfortunately, we live in an age where we have to sit people down and slowly explain to them WHY a mocking, cynical, and blasphemous movie portraying Jesus as a non-god and the Church as History’s Biggest Liar … is in fact really “bad” (as in “sinful”). But most people get it after a while: if Christ made no reparations for our sins, everybody has been going to Hell for centuries now. So no matter how good the ending of the book, that nagging little problem in the plot never gets resolved…