Top Cardinal Blasts 'Da Vinci Code' as 'Cheap Lies'

VATICAN CITY (March 16) - If you're not among the millions who have already read "The Da Vinci Code," an Italian cardinal has a plea for you: Don't read it and don't buy it.

Genoa Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who previously was a high-ranking official of the Vatican's office on doctrinal orthodoxy, told Vatican Radio on Tuesday that the runaway success of the Dan Brown novel is proof of "anti-Catholic" prejudice.

"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."

Allegations in the novel that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and has descendants have outraged many Christians and have been dismissed by historians and theologians.

"The distribution strategy has been absolutely exceptional marketing, even at Catholic bookstores - and I've already complained about the Catholic bookshops which, for profit motives, have stacks of this book," the cardinal said.

"And then there's that strategy of persuasion - that one isn't an adult Christian if you don't read this book. Thus my appeal is: Don't read and don't buy" the book.

Asked about commentary that the book's success is "only further proof of the fact that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice," the cardinal exclaimed. "It's the truth."

"There's a great anti-Catholic prejudice," Bertone said. "I ask myself if a similar book was written, full of lies about Buddha, Mohammed, or, even, for example, if a novel came out which manipulated all the history of the Holocaust or of the Shoah, what would have happened?"

"The Da Vinci Code" was published two years ago this month and is available in 44 languages. Booksellers expect the novel to remain a best seller well into this year.


03-16-05 09:55 EST

That actually makes me consider reading it.

If the vatican thinks its bad, it may well be good for the soul.

. . . or at least a larf.

Unlike you.

If I hadn't read it already, I would now.

Was it as entertaining as it sounds by the Cardinal's description?

Dear Cardinal: Oh, you mean like the bullshit you bastards propagated about the Templars and Freemasons? Payback's a motherfucker, ain't it? At least no one's tying your sorry asses to a stake.

It is full of inaccuracies and outright fantasy, but it's a fun read.

Speaking of Carnivale and Rennes Le Chateau.. oh waitaminute.

Yeah. The Templars got screwed back there in 1314!

If they only had some Absinthe to bide their time...

Since when do we refer to fiction as cheap lies?

The hooplah over this book kinda reminds me of when Bridges of Madison County first came out and scores of women were calling National Geographic trying to get in touch with the main character.

It's fiction. No need to take it so seriously.

The problem started when the book opened with the statement that everything mentioned inside is accurate.

What he meant was the mention of art, architecture and secret rituals...

Since I don't know 100% of any one of those subjects, I had to take that statement as truth.

Where people took it wrong was by thinking Dan Brown was saying that EVERYTHING in the book was true.



There is some history though behind the concept of the book and that's what Scudder was talking about.

(Damn... only two more episodes, right?!)

Yep, just two more.
I'm so sad.

How about freaky Lodz doing his um... um... well, he did this naked snake crawl thing and then he was Ruthie and he /she started to snack and... yeah.

So...

I know, only 2 episodes... :(

I don't think there will be a 3rd season.

I think Lodz needs some Absinthe.

Damn clanks.

I agree on this being the last season. I don't see how they can end the season without the big showdown. Once that takes place, it is a Feit Accompli'. A third season would be anticlimatic.

I just wish they had not moved it to 10pm eastern time. I was able ot hold off on the forggy juice till 8:30, but I don't make it till 9:30. I like to start sipping my first glass just before the episode starts.

Just like the Malleus Maleficarum.

There was nothing really new in the ideas Dan Brown presented. He just arranged them around an interesting set of fictional characters and circumstances. Even that fabrication was not entirely novel. The book reminded me a lot of Foucault's Pendulum.

The cardinal seems to take offense to the ideas in the book, which are not the author's, but which comprise the belief systems of other groups (e.g. Gnostics). Given their bad rap for intolerance (e.g. against scientists, healers, other religious groups, women, etc.), I would have expected a little more care in responding on the part of the church.

Given the past reach and destructive force of that intolerance, it never fails to disturb me to see it manifested. The DaVinci code was a slightly spooky, if not wholly imaginative, book about the church. The cardinal's response makes the church look a whole lot spookier.

and much like the rest of the church's beliefs,

way fucking outdated.