Another entry—Canadian!—from the "It's Just a Novel" Files

From CBCNews.ca (ht: American Papist), news of a novel battle between fact and fiction:

Residents of a quiet West Coast community say they will fight plans by a Catholic organization featured in the novel The Da Vinci Code to build a spiritual retreat in their town.

Opus Dei was depicted in the fictional bestseller by Dan Brown as a powerful and insidious secret society involved in a bloody conspiracy that reached up into the highest levels of the church. The real-life organization, however, says there is nothing sinister about its plans.

Spokesman Fadi Sarraf said the group wants to build the 60,000 square foot facility on a 13-acre lot overlooking Britannia Beach, a former mining community located roughly 50 kilometres north of Vancouver on the route to Whistler.

Opus Dei was founded in 1928 in Spain by the Roman Catholic priest St. Josemaria Escriva, and is based on the belief that ordinary people can live ordinary lives that lead to sanctity.

The project will have benefits for the community, but those opposed to the plan have been handing out copies of The Da Vinci Code to encourage opposition, Sarraf said.

On the plus side, interest in reading in the small community has increased 17% since the "fight" began (that's a joke); on the negative, none of the claims made about Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code are true (that's a fact).

Comments

[Kevin]

I wonder if the title of Brown's next book will be The Protocols of the Elders of Rome.

[Geneva Street]

Perhaps the BC villagers for the sake of diversity would like to balance their fictional reading with some non-fiction like "De-coding Da Vinci." by writer Amy Welborn?

[Carl E. Olson]

I've heard that The Da Vinci Hoax is decent, despite being co-authored by Yours Truly. ;-)