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G. K. Chesterton famously said something to this effect: When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything. A good example of this is Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum, in which a group of friends program a computer to “write” a book about secret hidden knowledge. Titled The Plan, the book is the result of random links between things like Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Knights Templar, and other crackpot ideas. While The Plan was intended as a prank, other people take it seriously, with tragic results. Well, Foucault’s Pendulum shows us how gullible unbelieving people are....

Let me say at once what a pleasure it is to be here in Seattle and how grateful my wife and I are for your welcome and hospitality and for those who have worked hard to set this event up. I am excited at the high profile given here to the question which seems to me a major priority for the Christian church in our day — that of engaging with contemporary culture and so changing the world — hopefully in the energy of the Holy Spirit and for the glory of God and the benefit of all human beings...

LONDON (Reuters) - Author Dan Brown did not copy material from an earlier book when he wrote "The Da Vinci Code", his best-selling religious thriller at the center of a copyright case, a lawyer told London's High Court on Tuesday. With over 36 million copies of his novel in circulation and a major Hollywood adaptation due for release in May, the stakes are high in a case brought against Brown's British publishers by historians Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. In opening arguments for the defense, publisher Random House said that much of the "central theme" of "The Holy Blood, and...

Russian Orthodox Church against screening Da Vinci Code 18:06 | 01/ 03/ 2006 MOSCOW, March 1 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Orthodox Church shares the Vatican's opposition to screening a film based on Dan Brown's international bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" because of the novel's blasphemous content, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchy said Wednesday. Mikhail Dudko said that although "The Da Vinci Code" was based on a fictitious story, it would be wrong to regard the book and its movie version, due to be released in May, merely as works of art. "We, people of faith, are used to...

So you hear a friend, a roommate, a colleague or even a child or spouse enter into a discussion of The Da Vinci Code, and you realize pretty quickly that he, she or they aren't treating the book as a novel --a somewhat frenzied but still entertaining thriller-- or a movie that may or may not be a fun couple of hours at the theater, but rather as a work of history. You hear them treating fiction as fact. What to do? That depends on whether you are in fact prepared to persuade them that the story is just that...

LONDON: The author of the blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code” faces an English High Court challenge Monday from two men who claim he stole their ideas. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing their own publishers, Random House, claiming Dan Brown’s book draws heavily on their 1982 bestseller “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”. Brown’s 2003 book has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and earned the American 45 million pounds in one year, instantly making the writer one of the world’s richest. Baigent’s and Leigh’s book tackles theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had a child, and the...

The author of the blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code" faces an English High Court challenge Monday from two men who claim he stole their ideas. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing their own publishers, Random House, claiming Dan Brown's book draws heavily on their 1982 bestseller "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". Brown's 2003 book has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and earned the American 45 million pounds (66 million euros, 78.5 million dollars) in one year, instantly making the writer one of the world's richest. Baigent's and Leigh's book tackles theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married,...

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (CNA) – Far ahead of the May 19 film release of the “DaVinci Code,” Sony Motion Pictures corporation has decided to address the film’s numerous critics by providing them a Web platform. The film, which goes by the same name of the popular and controversial Dan Brown fictional work, stars Tom Hanks. The plot of the book, and now film, makes claims that Jesus married and never rose from the dead, and that the Catholic Church, along with the apostolate Opus Dei, orchestrated a massive cover up of this information. The site (www.thedavincichallenge.com) features essays and opinions of...

Opus Dei, which has protested its portrayal in "The Da Vinci Code," has embarked on an image-polishing campaign that includes its own book, a report said. New York-based Opus Dei is portrayed as a secretive Roman Catholic organization in the book by author Dan Brown and movie set for release in May, in which fictional assassin Silas is an Opus Dei monk.

A new novel, based "90 per cent on historical facts", depicts Leonardo Da Vinci as a heretic who painted his own face into The Last Supper, and claims that the painting portrays Saint Peter as a traitor and carries a blasphemous message. The Secret Supper, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in Europe, is set to rival The Da Vinci Code for conspiracy theories about one of the most famous figures in art history. The novel portrays Da Vinci as a Cathar, a member of a gnostic sect outlawed by the Roman Catholic Church. The story, which is being...

So here I am facing another Minnesota winter, looking to expand my mind. Naturally I turn to "The Winter & Spring 2006 Community Education Catalog" of the Eden Prairie, Minnesota public schools, where I see the very first course offering is Da Vinci Code Historical Seminar Did you find the historical events in the 2003 fictional best-seller interesting but too fantastic to believe? Actually, most of the background items cited in the book were tied to events purportedly recorded in history. I struggled with "purportedly recorded" for a while, but decided to move on. As the rest of the description...

What's up with Opie? Ron Howard is currently busy directing what may arguably end up being the most serious attack on Christianity ever to emerge from Hollywood - the film version of "The Da Vinci Code" novel. Opus Dei, a Catholic group featured in the book, is asking that the movie be given an adult rating because children should be protected from prevarication about Catholicism. Meanwhile Ron's daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, will appear in an explicit sex scene in the new Lars von Trier film called "Manderlay." Bryce got her breakthrough in Hollywood the old-fashioned way - through nepotism. She...

Dan Brown clearly enjoys playing with legends, history, symbols and secrets. And readers' minds. In his best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, Brown wove all these - real and imagined - into a breathless mystery about Christianity, Mary Magdalene and the Divine Feminine that has spawned an industry of de-coders eager to separate fact from fiction.     Now that he has turned his attention to the mysteries of Freemasonry, the centuries-old fraternal order, the new book also might deal with Mormonism.    But rather than announce the Da Vinci sequel in a news release, Brown embedded tantalizing clues to its subject...

LONDON -- Westminster Abbey has implicitly criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of "The Da Vinci Code" last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians. The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying that the best-selling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." But Lincoln and Winchester cathedrals cooperated with the Hollywood adaptation, as did Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The film -- starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Sir Ian McKellen -- is expected to be one of the blockbusters of the year...

The publisher says the clues are already out there — on the cover of The Da Vinci Code THE ink is not yet dry on the eagerly awaited sequel to The Da Vinci Code, but already fans of the publishing phenomenon believe that they have deciphered clues to its plot. The CIA, the Freemasons, the Mormons and an unfinished pyramid on the US dollar bill are all expected to figure prominently in Dan Brown’s next adventure when it is published this year or early next. Fevered speculation has been building among the author’s legions of fans since it emerged...

- French President Jacques Chirac's office denied a report that he pushed for a family friend to be the leading lady of "The Da Vinci Code", when he met with the movie's makers last year. The film's American director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer were invited to meet the French president in December last year as they were holding auditions in Paris for the top female role. "They discussed a certain number of their acquaintances, such as Audrey Tautou, Paul Newman, Michele Laroque, Gregory Peck or Jean Reno, but without linking them to the casting of the film," a...

  Beside the MangerBased on a Christmas meditation by Plinio Corrêa de OliveiraOnce again, O Lord, the Feast of Thy Holy Nativity approaches. Christendom is present to venerate Thee in the manger, under the twinkling Star of Bethlehem and the refulgent light of Mary’s maternal eyes. Saint Joseph is at Thy side, so absorbed in contemplating Thee, that he does not even notice the animals which surround Thee, or the choirs of angels that part the clouds and sing visibly on high. Soon the approaching footsteps of the Three Wise Men will be heard as they bring gifts of...

Filmmaker Ron Howard says that the upcoming movie based on Dan Brown's mega-hit novel "The Da Vinci Code" will not soften the story's more controversial elements. There will be "no placating," he tells Newsweek in its annual "Who's Next" double issue, which names the up-and-comers in politics, business, science, sports and the arts that will make headlines in 2006. "It would be ludicrous to take on this subject and then try to take the edges off. We're doing this movie because we like the book," he says. Since "The Da Vinci Code" was published in 2003, the book has become...

NEW YORK - In the early months of 2006, expect a few novels with some very familiar story lines. "Labyrinth," by Kate Mosse, features a rival sect to the Catholic church and a search for the Holy Grail. In "The Templar Legacy," a thriller by Steve Berry, a former government agent attempts to unravel a mystery about an order of knights whose power rivaled the Pope's. Matilde Asensi's "The Last Cato" features the head of the Vatican's secret archive and his efforts to solve a murder with clues dating back to biblical times.

What role does Jesus have in our society and culture? I think that in this regard, one can speak of a presence-absence of Christ. At a certain level -- that of the mass media in general, Jesus Christ is very present, he is no less than a "superstar," according to the title of a well-known musical about him. In an interminable series of stories, films and books, writers manipulate the figure of Christ, at times under the pretext of new phantomlike historical documents about him. "The Da Vinci Code" is the latest and most aggressive instance of this long series....