Other than spanking hookers at conventions occasionally, the creepy yokel bubbas in the gocarts drunk on mystery punch have little to do with the Kaballistic-Alchemical-Occult-Albigensian-Tantric-Templar-Sodomite-Jesus-Was-a-Mushroom-and-MaryMagdalen-was-the Holy-Grail-who-blew-him Neo-Gnosticism that fascinates anti-Catholic wackos. The people promoting The Da Vinci Code do have an agenda and their fantasies about Jacques de Molay are related to this in some bizarre manner. You don't need a tinfoil hat - THEY themselves brag and boast about their anti-Catholic global grandiosity.
Heck, Barnes&Noble is practically sponsoring an anti-Catholic crusade filled with the pro-secret society propaganda. It's out in the open. Not exactly an arcane secret. They would have to explain why their fascination and obsession with the Cathars, Gnostics, Essenes, and Templars requires contemporary intrigues against orthodox Catholicism. It's a damn lie that nothing is going on here.
The Jesuits, the seminaries, chanceries, and even Opus Dei (as the KGB Hanssen case shows) have been targeted FOR YEARS!
That is absolutely true. It's also, to add to your depression, worldwide. Every time I go to Spain, I find another spate of books has been published gushing about the Templars, for example.
I'm planning to do the Camino de Santiago next month, and these people are out there crawling all over the place now announcing how the Camino was really part of the Templar Magical Mystery Tour or some such thing. They have polluted absolutely everything. If I meet any of them, I may have to pop them in the chops.
Cathars? Templars??? I didn't know there was any valid extant data available on the actual workings and specific gnostic beliefs of either group (outside of, maybe, the Vatican archives)...or are the new agers just using those names to cover up the fact that they're making up most of what they write?