Doesn't he understand that it's fiction? Top Cardinal Blasts 'Da Vinci Code' as 'Cheap Lies' A top Catholic cardinal has blasted "The Da Vinci Code" as a "gross and absurd" distortion of history and said Catholic bookstores should take the bestseller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies." Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, became the highest ranking Italian Churchman to speak out against the book, an international blockbuster that has sold millions of copies. "(It) aims to discredit the Church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close friend of Pope John Paul told the paper in its Monday edition. "This seems like a throwback to the old anti-clerical pamphlets of the 1800s," he said. The central claim of the book, written by American Dan Brown, is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. The Bible says Jesus never married, was crucified and rose from the dead. Bertone's comments were significant because until the Pope named him archbishop of Genoa in 2003 he was for years the number two man at the Vatican 's most powerful department - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. "You can find that book everywhere and the risk is that many people who read it believe that those fairy tales are real," he said. "I think I have the responsibility to clear things up to unmask the cheap lies contained in books like that." HOLY GRAIL A central storyline of the book is that the Holy Grail is not the cup which Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper but really the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Bertone calls this idea "a perversion." Bertone is so incensed about the novel that he will be the key speaker at a roundtable in Genoa Wednesday night attempting to dismantle the book, which also accuses the Church of covering up the female role in Christianity. "I will try to clear things up and help form consciences," the cardinal said. "I think that when faced with affirmations that are so shameful and unfounded, readers who have even a minimum of basic (Christian) formation should react," he said. He said it was "sad" that even Catholic bookstores were selling The Da Vinci Code "for purely economic reasons." One bookstore selling "The Da Vinci Code" is the one in the Gemelli Hospital, a Catholic institution where the Pope spent a total of 28 days in two stints in February and March. In the interview, Bertone firmly rejected the book's claim that the feminine role in Christianity had been suppressed. "This is one of the most vulgar of inventions. The feminine element is present in all the Gospels," Bertone said. Bertone also strongly defended Opus Dei, the conservative Church organization that the book depicts as a ruthless, Machiavellian group that resorts even to murder in its attempt to keep the Church's secrets hidden. The novel is going to reach an even wider audience next year with the release of a film based on the book staring Tom Hanks. link
Dan Brown is a certified badass. Haven't yet read Da Vinci Code, but I'm working on Angels and Demons presently, and finished Deception Point a few weeks ago.
"The Da Vinci Code" is a work of fiction, a fact that is probably not lost but by a chosen few. The Bible is also a work of fiction but we will leave that for another thread.
What a cheap and insenative way for Dan Brown to make money by writting cheap lies or theories about Christ and then blaming the Catholic Church. He must be an atheist.
i think it's odd that the church, or at least this archbishop, would get so defensive about a fiction book. his comments are also very ironic.......
It is a work of fiction, but D. Brown does try to play both sides of the fence a lot, by making bold pronouncements and then saying that they're fiction -- e.g., there's that thing in the beginning that says "FACT: xxx, FACT: xxx, FACT: xxx", a lot of which are very questionable facts.
agreed. it's a very oliver stoneish type technique. present fiction as fact...do it a documentary or historical fiction setting...and you can get people to believe the assumptions the book is based on.
Yeah. The bastid. How could he write FACT: and then follow it up with something that may or may not be factual in a book that is clearly fictional?? I can't believe it. It is a sneaky and ridiculous technique! To think, all this time I though it had to be true because it said FACT The reason the book is so popular isn't because it is about Christianity...it's a good book.
It's not in the book itself, it's written in the first few pages prior to the actual text. He calls it the "FACT" page. He presents them as "FACTS" . . . and it says so on his own website The "fact" is, a lot of his "facts" from the "FACT" page are conjecture - and it ends with this doozy, which is open to a very broad interpretation.. ...it's accurate that people in the past have claimed that all the stuff he talks about exists - whether or not it actually did seems doubtful in many cases. Now listen, I'm not out to debunk Dan Brown becaue I have a religuous agenda like most, I don't at all, but he tries to play both sides of the fence and makes provocative claims, uses bold capital letters that say FACT, and then retreats back behind the "fiction, fiction, fiction" fence when he gets questioned. It's a little disingenuous for my taste.
It's called building a story. If you haven't seen this technique used elsewhere before, then you're not reading enough. If you're naive enough to beleive everything you read, regardless of what page # it's on, then you are reading too much. You may not like it, but Dan Brown is getting PAID big time by doing it, and creating the controversy, so the way he is handling it is very smart, imo.
I read plenty, mostly real history nonfiction lately; I don't read pop fiction that much anymore, and perhaps that's why I have that sort of reaction. But if you think that it's somehow naive of me to interpret "THE FACT PAGE" in Brown's own words, which presents several items as true historical facts, as him trying to convey the impression that the things listed on the "FACT PAGE" are objectively true statements to some degree, well then maybe you're even more jaded than me (which is quite an accomplishment). What do I care if he gets paid to do it? That doesn't mean that I can't disapprove of him trying to have it both ways. He obviously wasn't smart enough to not get sued in England by the authors of the hokey piece of pseudohistory (holy blood holy grail, or something like that) that he lifted most of his stuff from, including some of his "FACTS".
I'm not trying to start an argument or something, but, well I do think it's naive. Maybe I'm just a more critical, jaded person. Or maybe it's because by the time I read it, the book had already been popular for a while and I knew going in that is was a story. My reaction when reading it was: "Ok, here is what he wants to lay-out going into the story as historical background in the world of this story." I just can't even think about reading it and actually thinking it must be true. To me, it had the same impact as if he put it in his first paragraph.
I guess we shouldn't be suprised when people of faith are disputing the facts. It is this same principle that drives the evolution "debate." It is pointless to get into this argument about facts when the very root of the religious beleif system teaches you to look beyond facts.
Here's the "FACT PAGE" You honestly read this and thought none of it was true? Or that readers less astute than yourself wouldn't be taken in, by the big black bold print that says "FACT" and believe it as being represented as "FACT"? Or that Brown himself, on his FAQ page, continually insists about how his descripionts places, things & secret rituals are real? Anyway, even if you did think it was all fake, you'd be wrong, Opus Dei does own a bigass building on Lex Ave, I walked by it once. But the Priory of Sion? That seems to be fairly conclusively proven to be a hoax for a long time as a hoax by a French con man back in the 50's, and the "dossiers secrets" are total fakes. Brown's defense other than the "fiction" thing seems to be "well history is written by the winners", which IMO is a giant cop-out that can be used to support any outlandish theory.
