It seems like the hype around Da Vinci code is on the ascendant as the movie is due to be released in a few months (or weeks?) time. Almost everyone around me have read the book; whether Catholics and non-Catholics (and non-Christians). And what's surprising, and troubling, is that more seemed to believe that what the book asserts as facts, were true! Some people I know have responded that this book was but a fictional work, but the masses out there didn't see it that way and furthermore, how can one get away saying it's just a fiction smears a historical (and to us, divine) figure? I would sue someone who wrote scandalous untrue stories about my mother; fiction or not.
I've never once been tempted to believe that anything Dan Brown asserted in that book, was true. Surely it doesn't take a historian, or a proper scholar, to realize that a guy who couldn't get his facts right and who throws lots and lots of historical inaccuracies & lies in a large portion of the book, is telling anything remotely true? On top of it, we know that the human mind is capable of self-deception: seeing patterns where there were none. Few years ago, I had the (mis-)fortune and the grace to experience my 'crisis' with the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church that took me to study the Church's history and claims. What I read in Brown's book was utterly poor re-telling & fabrication of history (some of which never happened!).
This latest attack on Jesus' divinity gave me great sadness: for He who has descended to become Man and died and risen for us so that we may become divine as God, was maligned! It is not the first of such attacks, and probably not the last one. Meek as we are, Christians don't issue fatwa against Brown (and Richard Leigh and other proponents of Gnosticism) for blasphemy. It is good to see a lot of responses—especially from grassroots level—from both Catholics and our separated brethren to Brown's Da Vinci Code. Last week I attended a talk given by an Opus Dei priest on this (Opus Dei does not, by the way, have any monks).
For anyone who wants to hear what Christians have to say to defend Jesus' divinity and the Church's claim from the illogical blasphemy Brown put forth: that Jesus was not really God but just another good person (if this is so—why did Brown claim the true Church was that of Mary Magdalene's?), and that the true chalice lies within Mary Magdalene who is:
1. a figure of a mistaken interpretation by modern day ignorant laypersons of the apostle St John the evangelist,
2. not in Leonardo's painting, (which has been repainted over and over again over many years), and
3. by the way, a saint honored in the Catholic Church
Check out these links and let your heart & mind think for yourself:
A (con?) artist lays bare his trade
I pray that this latest attack may get lukewarm souls to awake and for many many more souls to embark to find Truth long abandoned and much maligned in our Church.
UPDATE! More cracks on the Da Vinci Code: A mainstream media debunks one of the lies behind a multimillion dollar story
No comments:
Post a Comment