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Comments

xavier

Carl:
Nice refutations. If Duh vincite comes up to me as says that the church hates women, I'll just retort by saying yeah the Greeks, the Romans and Egyptians loved girls so much they'd expose them in the moutains, toss 'em down sewers; drown them or simply abandonded. Roman society loved girls so much that Tacitus lambasted the Jews as aberrant and despicable for their opposition to infantcide.

The church is so secretive that when John Paul died 5 million people secretly went to see him in state and participate in his funeral while all the media covered the secret funeral with hidden cameras so the rest of the world could sneak a peek.
People die for a lie. Christanity has practiced Neitzche's holy lies and fooled everyone but not Dan and the Duhvincites who know the TRUTH and stand tall against the lies.

ett while I yawn

xavier

Robert Johnson

From the travel and tourism industry's point of view, The Da Vinci Code film is an opportunity to bring increased tourism and travel to the UK. But how sincere is this and what should Christians think about it?

This author's point of view is practical: sometimes 'bad' publicity is better than no publicity. Millions of people will see the film and many of them will come to Europe to visit locations used in the film. They will enter genuine holy sites and while there perhaps they will put aside the film's mixed message and have time to consider the beauty of the sites and think about God.

We at HolidayKeys would certainly recommend spending time near each of the sites. There are lots of bed and breakfasts and holiday cottages for rent around Lincoln Cathedral and Rosslyn Chapel. Even the north-west of Paris where Chateau de Villette is, there are French holiday villas.

Richard Sperbeck

What do you think about the book "Map of Bones" by James Rollins? It seems to be similar to TDVC. However, I just read an interview with the author where he is quoted as saying the following:

"Many thrillers, when collided with the Catholic Church or the Vatican, paint the Church, faith, and belief in a disparaging light. In Map of Bones, I sought to show the Church and its past in a manner that is both realistic and acknowledges some of the Vatican's corrupted past, but also stresses the role of Church as a fundamental factor in forming Western Civilization, and how faith in all its forms is as part of human nature as our own biology, whether it be the belief in God, a Higher Power, or in the substantive good in mankind. "

That sounds like it might be a good read. I'd be interested in your comments (and those of others).

Richard

Cristina A. Montes

Richard: I haven't read "Map of Bones" and I don't know if I ever will get to do so. But I just want to say that I have actually encountered literature that presented less-than-holy clergymen and yet did not offend my Catholic sensibilities. So I think it can be done. An example is Graham Greene's masterpiece, "The Power and the Glory".

Another example, on a local level, is the play "Walang Sugat" ("No Wounds"). It's a Filipino patriotic play where the hero, a revolutionary against the Spaniards, was brought to the church fatally wounded just at the moment when his girl was about to be wed against her will in an arranged marriage. His requested that he be married first to the girl, on the premise that he was fatally wounded anyway and would die soon, after which the girl could marry the man her parents arranged for her. The priest agreed, and after the exchange of vows, the hero stood up and reveals he just feigned his injuries. Earlier in the play, there's a scene of a Spanish friar directing the torture of captured revolutionaries. (The "bad Spanish friar" is a standard villain in our patriotic literature.) In the wedding scene itself, the priest asks for a "tip" before conducting the wedding. But my family and I did not find the play offensive because it shows that even if the clergymen are corrupt, the ordinary people still practice the faith.

So yes, it can be done. The problem with TDVC is that it does not present a bad friar or a bad priest, but it accuses the entire Church as an institution.

Cristina A. Montes

"From the travel and tourism industry's point of view, The Da Vinci Code film is an opportunity to bring increased tourism and travel to the UK."

Do you need a book or movie like TDVC to motivate tourists to visit the land of the Stonehenge; the Big Ben; the Westminster Abbey; the Buckingham Palace; the home country of writers like Shakespeare, Milton, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, etc.; the birthplace of saints like St. Thomas More, etc.; etc., etc., etc.?

Eric Lund

Do we, the sons and daughters of God, here on Earth have a duty to defend ourselves from lies and false accusations about our faith? Yes, not only for ourselves, but also for our children, our neighbors, and our Catholic faith community, which is none other than Roman Catholic Church. That's enough for all of us to understand that we must know the truth, speak the truth, and conduct ourselves in the truth. When a book like The Da Vinci Code mixes fiction with truth, especially the truth that is the core of God's love of man, then it is our joyful obligation to set the record straight and to live in the real, true joy of God's love of you and of me.

June McIntosh

When presented with the challenge: "Isn't it a good thing that TDVC is starting discussion?" one possible response is that, yes, we can certainly make this lemon into lemonade.

I think that many people are sincerely confused about Christianity and do not know that it is an historical faith, that although much is taken on faith, this faith is based on historical events that not only can be, but are in fact known. OK, so we don't have an A&E bio of Jesus' life from early childhood up. Certain facts are known; but what is also important is that the Gospels are historical documents, recording the response of real, living human beings to the life of this one man, Jesus. Our faith is not based only on our conjectures about him - our faith is based on the witness of our fathers who knew him when he walked on the earth and witnessed his death and resurrection.

Some people seem to think that Christianity is a fairy tale, and so it's reasonable to give equal treatment to Gnostic accounts. But these are demonstrably fairy tales. TDVC is a good opportunity to say: "We're not just conjecturing here - we believe these things really happened - our faith is incarnational. I think the reason the Da Vinci fans constantly vacillate between "It's only fiction/It's really true" is that they're truly baffled and think that the Christian belief in Jesus is like, I don't know, the belief in St. George slaying the dragon - a naive acceptance of a myth. They don't realise that Christians have already confronted this stumbling block, this huge rock in the path of easy-going mystical thinking: these things are real, as water and blood and hair and nails are real.

That our faith is incarnational and anthropological is going to be more and more important with the increase of civil challenges to societal norms that are Christian in origin, for example challenges to the anti-polygamy laws. We will need to hold fast to our conviction that what is anti-Christian is anti-human.

June McIntosh

When presented with the challenge: "Isn't it a good thing that TDVC is starting discussion?" one possible response is that, yes, we can certainly make this lemon into lemonade.

I think that many people are sincerely confused about Christianity and do not know that it is an historical faith, that although much is taken on faith, this faith is based on historical events that not only can be, but are in fact known. OK, so we don't have an A&E bio of Jesus' life from early childhood up. Certain facts are known; but what is also important is that the Gospels are historical documents, recording the response of real, living human beings to the life of this one man, Jesus. Our faith is not based only on our conjectures about him - our faith is based on the witness of our fathers who knew him when he walked on the earth and witnessed his death and resurrection.

Some people seem to think that Christianity is a fairy tale, and so it's reasonable to give equal treatment to Gnostic accounts. But these are demonstrably fairy tales. TDVC is a good opportunity to say: "We're not just conjecturing here - we believe these things really happened - our faith is incarnational. I think the reason the Da Vinci fans constantly vacillate between "It's only fiction/It's really true" is that they're truly baffled and think that the Christian belief in Jesus is like, I don't know, the belief in St. George slaying the dragon - a naive acceptance of a myth. They don't realise that Christians have already confronted this stumbling block, this huge rock in the path of easy-going mystical thinking: these things are real, as water and blood and hair and nails are real.

That our faith is incarnational and anthropological is going to be more and more important with the increase of civil challenges to societal norms that are Christian in origin, for example challenges to the anti-polygamy laws. We will need to hold fast to our conviction that what is anti-Christian is anti-human.

Donald P. Jeanne

Has anyone heard of a homily about the Da Vinci Code?
The only thing worst than heresy, is the absent defense of Holy Mother Church by our clergy. I suspect that most priests and deacons can not speak against the novel and movie, because they themselves have read or watched the movie itself.

THE MOVIE IS NOT FICTION. Snow White is fiction. THIS MOVIE IS A LIE, a heresy presented factually, covered by "fiction."

- Don.

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