Posted on 05/16/2006 10:01:02 AM PDT by NYer
“The Da Vinci Code” has undermined faith in the Roman Catholic Church and badly damaged its credibility, a survey of British readers revealed Tuesday as tensions over — and hype for — the forthcoming film reached a fever pitch.
As its stars off headed to walk the red carpet at Cannes, where the film was set to debut Wednesday before a worldwide release Friday, at least two countries limited the film's release.
The British survey, released by a group of prominent Catholics, revealed that readers of Dan Brown's blockbuster novel are twice as likely to believe Jesus Christ fathered children and four times as likely to think the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei is a murderous sect.
“An alarming number of people take its spurious claims very seriously indeed,” said Austin Ivereigh, press secretary to Britain’s top Catholic prelate Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. “Our poll shows that for many, many people “The Da Vinci Code” is not just entertainment.”
He heads a prominent collection of English Roman Catholic monks, theologians, nuns and members of Opus Dei, who commissioned the survey from pollster Opinion Research Business (ORB) and have sought to promote Catholic beliefs amid the film’s release.
ORB interviewed more than 1,000 adults last weekend, finding that 60 percent believed Jesus had children by Mary Magdalene — a possibility raised by the book — compared with just 30 percent of those who had not read the book.
The group, which stopped short of following the Vatican line of calling on Catholics to boycott the film, accused Brown of dishonest marketing based on peddling fiction as fact.
Ivereigh complained that Brown and film studio Sony Pictures “have encouraged people to take it seriously while hiding behind the claim that it is fiction.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Sad doesn't begin to cover this.
Anne Rice had a few choice words to say about this a few nights ago. God bless her.
If a product of Hollywood can shake a person's faith, then perhaps some serious soul-searching is in order.
Brown is lying. Hanks is ignorant.
The Link seperating faact from fiction.
Christian Worldview Network
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/secure/cwnetwork/article.php?&ArticleID=667
Dying on the Cross did nothing to make you like Him?
SD
How about a factual book written as fiction, like an ithyphallic president who fritters away an economy and allows a deadly terrorist group to grow in strength while he gets serviced in the oval office? Or perhaps a book about a major political party who is willing to risk destroying their country in a foolish attempt at recapturing power?
I hate to break it to you, but there are sinful members of the Church, since the Church is made of sinful human beings. But sinful behavior does not affect the accuracy of the teachings of the deposit of faith handed down from the apostles in the Church. Those teachings survive despite, not because of the actions of Church members. Thus it is simply wrong and unfair to compare the recent failings with regard to clerical misconduct, which I do believe can be attributed in some part to a misguided charitable endeavor to forgive sexually-troubled priests and partly to an effort of homosexualists to infiltrate the Church, to some completely baseless claims that the first Christians two millenia ago falsified the fundamental core beliefs and events of their religion and have been covering it up ever since.
No doubt you are just as outraged by the number of child molesting teachers.
If your father were a drunk, or a child molester, or an embezzler, and he was discovered and "outed", would you be mostly angry, or mostly just sad and ashamed?
On the other hand, if someone from outside your family accused him unjustly of some crime ... maybe murder ("burned ... 50 million witches") or basing his entire career on a fraud ... wouldn't that make you pretty angry?
Apologetics is:
1. The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines.
2. Formal argumentation in defense of something, such as a position or system.
It means you defend your self, or your ideas. The idea of "apology" for a wrongdoing came about later, an outgrowth from the original meaning.
SD
Point taken.
Another attack on Christianity.
Yes it is and let us not forget we were told this would happen but much worst.....
Do you mean Brown is lying when he calls his book, "fiction?"
The DaVinci Code seems to illustrate once again the truth of what G.K. Chesterton is reported to have said:
"When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything."
Asked and answered. See post 47.
SD
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