Free Republic

Hanover, Pennsylvania – As the controversy around the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie grows, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and its America Needs Fatima campaign announced plans to hold 1,000 peaceful prayer vigils outside theaters nationwide beginning May 19. “These public acts of reparation will literally blanket the country. From Alaska to Alabama, from California to Connecticut, dedicated volunteers are banding together for protest prayer vigils in front of movie theaters showing the blasphemous Da Vinci Code movie,” said America Needs Fatima director Robert Ritchie. “Wrapped in Gnostic heresy, The Da Vinci Code...

Since it was published three years ago, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" has become one of the most popular novels of all time, with more than 30 million copies in print worldwide. With a major movie based on the book due out soon, the book seems assured of a place on the bestseller lists for a considerable time to come. What has attracted readers to "The Da Vinci Code" is its central theme, which Dan Brown claims is not fiction but fact — that a mysterious European society, known as the Priory of Sion, has for centuries guarded a...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING MAY 19TH? May 19th is the date the Da Vinci Code movie opens. A movie based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor. What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie? I'm going to offer you the usual choices -- and a new one. Here are the usual suspects: A) We can ignore the movie. ........ The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot...

I was recently browsing Dan Brown’s web site to gather information in preparation for the one thousand theater protests against The Da Vinci Code movie, planned by the American TFP.   Since I hope to organize several protests, I felt obliged to get to know the real Dan Brown.  I wanted to hear, from his own mouth, why he wrote The Da Vinci Code and whether he believes the information contained in it.As I was clicking around, I came across a section containing TV and radio interviews that utterly shocked me.  While the articles I had read, left it rather dubious...

As you all know, it takes a lot to get the Vatican to address any given topic. But when it comes to the DaVinci Code, the trend's indicated that the designated point-man speaking for the Holy See is the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Last year, in Rome's first counter-offensive, the former holder of CDF's #2 post, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, characterized the book as "rotten food," "a sack full of lies" and said of author Dan Brown that "Great writers did not behave this way." (Bertone also makes cameo appearances as a soccer...

Carl E. Olson finds fault with Ron Howard, director of "The Da Vinci Code" and little "Opie" on the old Andy Griffith shows, for saying that he wants to see the film stimulate "conversation" about the nature of Christianity. "On the surface that sounds reasonable," Olson tells AIM in an interview. "We are a free society and we encourage debate. But one of the questions I would ask is: would we encourage open and honest debate with people who deny the holocaust or who say that the world is flat or say that Stalinism was a wonderful thing and people...

The Da Vinci Code, Christianity and the Bible The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million copies and has been made into a major movie. But how much of the story is fact and how much is fabrication? And how important is it for you to know? by Don Hooser The Da Vinci Code is a fictional thriller that is supposed to be set against a backdrop of real history. But how much of its "history" is actually true? The timeless and perfect standard of historicity and truth is the Bible. It contains true history—God's flawless account of...

ROME (Reuters) – The  Vatican stepped up its offensive against "The Da Vinci Code" on Friday when a top official close to Pope Benedict blasted the book as full of anti-Christian lies and urged Catholics to boycott the film. The latest broadside came from Archbishop Angelo Amato, the number two official in the Vatican doctrinal office which was headed by Pope Benedict until his election last year. Amato, addressing a Catholic conference in Rome, called the book "stridently anti-Christian .. full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the Church." He added: "I...

In early March, Elizabeth Heil, an arts-administration graduate student at Columbia University, was watching previews in a movie theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side when she cracked up inappropriately. The trailer was for the movie The Da Vinci Code, directed by Ron Howard and scheduled to open May 19, and it featured a grim-faced fellow uttering Christ's name repeatedly and then--wham!--whaling away at his already bloodied back with an Inquisition-issue cat-o'-nine-tails. It was not an intentionally funny scene. But Heil, who was familiar with the book on which the movie is based, recognized the figure onscreen as the albino assassin...

Front of Roman church covered by publicity for film ROME (AP) -- The Interior Ministry said Tuesday it would remove a poster promoting "The Da Vinci Code" movie from the scaffolding of a Rome church undergoing renovation after its clergymen complained, officials said Tuesday.The enormous poster, featuring a picture of Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and the title of the upcoming film, has been plastered for a few weeks on the scaffolded facade of the church of St. Pantaleo, which is located just off a major thoroughfare in Rome's historic center.The Rev. Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for Rome's Vicariate, said...

Front of Roman church covered by publicity for film (ANSA) - Rome, April 24 - Catholic authorities in Rome are outraged by a decision to display a huge advertisement for the forthcoming film The Da Vinci Code on the facade of a church in the city's centre . The new ad, one of many popping up around Rome, is attached to scaffolding erected in order to complete restoration work on the church of San Pantaleo, near the main thoroughfare of Corso Vittorio Emmanuele . The restoration work is being paid for by the Italian interior ministry, which presumably came...

Almost one in five Canadians believe that Jesus Christ's death on the cross was faked and that he married and had a family, according to a new poll that challenges the cornerstone Christian belief in the resurrection. Albertans were most likely to accept The Da Vinci Code's premise, with 22 per cent reporting they believe in a hoax. "It shows that The Da Vinci Code is winning the day," says religious studies professor Richard Ascough, referring to the bestselling novel that raises the conspiracy theory. The poll, conducted for CanWest News Service in the days leading up to Easter, indicated...

Washington DC, Apr. 24, 2006 (CNA) - Questions have arisen about the group of scholars who collaborated with National Geographic in its recent T.V. special about the “discovery” and contents of the alleged Gospel of Judas, which attempts to portray Jesus’ betrayer in a positive light.   Elaine Pagels is a feminist who has written several books against the Catholic Church, such as “The Origin of Satan,” written with the initial help of her colleagues at the Hebrew University of Tel Aviv.  With the assistance of the openly pro-abortion MacArthur Foundation, she researched and wrote “Adam, Eve and the Serpent,”...

Dissecting the Gnostic Gospels By Jenni Vinson Trejo April 21, 2006 During the third century, the Christian church cast out the writings of a heretic sect of “Christians” who claimed to be the keepers of knowledge, the Gnostics. These Gnostics claimed that they had found God within themselves and that they held the truth about God. The Gnostics wrote their own version of accounts regarding Jesus and his followers. They eventually had to bury their papyrus books to keep the Christian church from destroying them for being blasphemous. Those documents, discovered in 1946 at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, disclose a...

The DaVinci Jesus or The Real Jesus? In the book the DaVinci Code, the author has written untrue statements about Jesus. The author states that his book is fiction; nevertheless, these statements have been written and now must be answered. Was Jesus married and did He have a child? Jesus is a man and while on earth, He certainly could have enjoyed the blessings of both marriage and descendants. However, Jesus is also the Christ, the Messiah, and it was necessary for the Christ to suffer much for our sakes. Yet another suffering of the Christ, this man of sorrows,...

JESUS "dies" every year on Good Friday but rises on Easter Sunday and church attendance is resurrected with him. More than 4.5 million Australians will make time for tomorrow's services of remembrance or Sunday's services of rejoicing. Some will do both. Secular citizens should not assume such devotion is automatic. Some believers stay away, and some of those who go are not really believers, at least not in the bodily resurrection. The latter include some high-powered Christians. Attesting to this is one of the Church of England's heaviest hitters, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, who was in Australia recently...

Carl E. Olson says the The Da Vinci Code book by Dan Brown can be easily refuted by examining the history of Christianity, using mostly non-Christian sources. The Brown book, which insists that the figure of Jesus Christ is a fraud concocted by desperate church leaders, claims Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child, producing a bloodline and a shocking and scandalous truth that has been protected over the course of human history by a secret society called the Priory of Sion. True Christian believers, in other words, are fools and dupes. SNIP The problem with The Da Vinci...

Good money in rewriting Christ story Success of The Da Vinci Code raised ante for religious revisionism Lorne Gunter, The Edmonton Journal Published: Sunday, April 16, 2006 John Robson of the Ottawa Citizen says of the publishing world that this is its "Was Christ a black lesbian?" season. Each year before Easter, book and periodical publishers inundate us with features and new volumes disputing the divinity of Jesus. Or his death and resurrection. Or even whether he existed at all. (In his The Pagan Christ, released just before Easter 2004, Canadian author Thomas Harpur postulates there never was a...

Part of a crowd of 1,500 parishioners from the Archdiocese of Winnipeg walk with a wooden cross during Good Friday celebrations in Winnipeg. They joined many more Christians around the world in affirming their belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians will fill churches today to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, an event celebrated in the Bible's New Testament. But outside church walls, sacred Christian texts are under attack by scholars and in popular culture. From the fictional juggernaut of The Da Vinci Code to the historical account of the Judas Gospel to the scholarly critique of...

So while reading the papers on Friday, considering this, I glanced at the front page of USA Today. "Hollywood turns to divine inspiration," said the headline, and above it was a photo of actor Tom Hanks and a French beauty in the new movie "The Da Vinci Code." I hope the headline about divine inspiration was a pun, since the Hanks film appears to be a response to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." But Hollywood wants inspiration to produce movies that make almost $400 million, as Gibson's did, especially since Hollywood refused to help Gibson with his movie....