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Title: Top Cardinal Blasts 'Da Vinci Code' as 'Cheap Lies'
Source:
Netscape News
URL Source: http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news ... 2&dt=20050315130200&w=RTR&covi
Published: Mar 15, 2005
Author: Reuters
Post Date: 2005-03-15 17:59:13 by Mr Nuke Buzzcut
Keywords: Cardinal, Blasts, Cheap
Views: 8012
Comments: 568
Top Cardinal Blasts 'Da Vinci Code' as 'Cheap Lies' ROME (Reuters) - A top Catholic cardinal has blasted "The Da Vinci Code" as a "gross and absurd" distortion of history and said Catholic bookstores should take the bestseller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies." Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with the Milan newspaper Il Giornale, became the highest ranking Italian Churchman to speak out against the book, an international blockbuster that has sold millions of copies. "(It) aims to discredit the Church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close friend of Pope John Paul told the paper in its Monday edition. "This seems like a throwback to the old anti-clerical pamphlets of the 1800s," he said. The central claim of the book, written by American Dan Brown, is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. The Bible says Jesus never married, was crucified and rose from the dead. Bertone's comments were significant because until the Pope named him archbishop of Genoa in 2003 he was for years the number two man at the Vatican's most powerful department - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. "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." HOLY GRAIL A central storyline of the book is that the Holy Grail is not the cup which Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper but really the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Bertone calls this idea "a perversion." Bertone is so incensed about the novel that he will be the key speaker at a roundtable in Genoa Wednesday night attempting to dismantle the book, which also accuses the Church of covering up the female role in Christianity. "I will try to clear things up and help form consciences," the cardinal said. "I think that when faced with affirmations that are so shameful and unfounded, readers who have even a minimum of basic (Christian) formation should react," he said. He said it was "sad" that even Catholic bookstores were selling The Da Vinci Code "for purely economic reasons." One bookstore selling "The Da Vinci Code" is the one in the Gemelli Hospital, a Catholic institution where the Pope spent a total of 28 days in two stints in February and March. In the interview, Bertone firmly rejected the book's claim that the feminine role in Christianity had been suppressed. "This is one of the most vulgar of inventions. The feminine element is present in all the Gospels," Bertone said. Bertone also strongly defended Opus Dei, the conservative Church organization that the book depicts as a ruthless, Machiavellian group that resorts even to murder in its attempt to keep the Church's secrets hidden. The novel is going to reach an even wider audience next year with the release of a film based on the book staring Tom Hanks. © Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd. 03/15/2005 13:02 RTR
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#401. To: wbales (#398)
Are you in a hotel? Should be in that top drawer ... under the phone.
start at page #1 right through to the end. You'll probably find what your looking for if you ignore conventional Christian beliefs and focus on what it really says.
Never is an often misunderstood period of time ... we should "never" say "never" ... I have found that whenever I have poorly chosen this word NEVER to express my determination regarding almost any subject ... never is just around the corner.
You can try it with the Grimm's Fairy Tales too. Works about the same. Morality plays with a supernatural twist.
The Founding Fathers didn't agree with you...
This thread and the longevity of Christ's Gospels are very similar. The harder the Sanhedrin tried to extinguish Jesus ... the more Jesus tended towards expansion ! Long live the debate.
Sorry, wrong on ALL counts, this is NOT a skull and bones mystical satanic exercise. Jesus was a nazarene, and as a nazarene and a mystic, it was one of the exercises that a teacher went through with a student when the student had graduated. You don't know your history very well, but then again, that's not unexpected.
Time is relative change. An abstract illusion of dimension.
Psst! Over here! You gotta know your quarry. With this guy, it's ALWAYS a skull and bones mystical satanic exercise.
The existence of God is a matter of faith, and always will be a matter of faith. Unless God comes down to earth and starts working miracles at some point in the future, which is NOT going to happen, then there will never be any proof positive or negative to the existence of god. The rapture as some Christians call it is NOT going to happen, and Jesus is not coming back to take the Christians to heaven nor start a 1000 year reign. So sorry charlie, but it was made up by selfish men for selfish reasons, the miracles were never miracles and are misunderstood by most people, and of course by most Christians. Christians, as such, take the bible at face value, claiming that it is the word of God, well, sorry, it is the word of man, written down by men, to control other men.
Oh no, say it isin't so! BAAAAWH
Capps asked very politely if we would drop this subject for the time being before permanent hard feelings were created. I agreed to her request. I'm sure the topic will come up again and we'll have the opportunity to jump back in with both feet. But, until then -- be well. :-)
Perhaps you recall this sad news event: Jesus a "No Show" At New Year's Eve Rapture Party, Causing 167 Baptists To Plummet to Their Deaths A police officer and several pastors watch as Mrs. Cartwright dangles from an oak tree, wondering when she will finally fall to the ground. DES MOINES, IOWA (AP) Almost one hundred members of Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers and their spouses were killed at a December 31, 1999 "Rapture Bon Voyage" party. All of the women had paid Mrs. Betty Bowers $34,000 to be among the first to be taken to heaven as Jesus' special guest at the stroke of midnight. Party attendee Mr. Tommy Jenkins had reportedly told friends, "Eunice was real excited about scraping enough money together to get to go. It was Becca's college money, but Eunice knew it was End Times so there wasn't going to be no college and Mrs. Bowers always does everything really nice. Eunice wanted to go out with a little flourish." The party was held on the rooftop of the 35 story Landover Hotel & Prayer Convention Facility. Special 40 foot golden staircases had been constructed to start the partygoers on their journey up to heaven. Hourly catering staff dressed as angels were positioned at the top of each staircase to beckon the partygoers on to Heaven at midnight. The exclusive party featured everything from Petrossian caviar to French nonalcoholic "Champagne-like" sparkling beverage for the teetotalling Baptist crowd. "I knew something was amiss," lamented Mrs. Bowers, "when I went to open a case of Clicquot for my millennium party in Maui and realized it was that dreadful faux-champagne I'd ordered for Landover. UPS must have swapped the orders. And the implications of that blunder didn't occur to me until those dear BITCHs were already dead. To be as honest as my Savior, I was simply too busy worrying about how the mix-up would be the figurative death of my party to stop and think how it might lead to the actual death of those poor women who never drink even an unpretentious hock, much less a lovely quality champagne." An obviously homosexual waiter for the event recounted, "I told several of the ladies that I was going to cut them off because they were getting real drunk. But they told me that they never drink and they were just 'drunk in the Spirit.'" He then rolled his eyes and added in that snide, homosexual way of theirs: "Spirits was more like it." According to the waiter, all of the partygoers were horrendous tippers and as it got closer to midnight they started to walk up the golden staircases located all along the periphery of the roof. "They were yelling things like 'I'm coming, Jesus,'" recalled the fey waiter. When the Landover Chapel bell struck twelve, each member of Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers grabbed her husband's hand and began racing up the golden staircases. As each got to the last step, they threw themselves off the side of the 470 foot building and into the waiting arms of Jesus. According to eyewitness accounts, however, Jesus, apparently tied up elsewhere, was a "no show" and was regrettably not able to stop them from denting car hoods, flattening expensive shrubbery or staining the sidewalks below. Mrs. June Gordon was the only Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers member on the roof not to make the fateful leap. Crying, she told Channel 2: "Wanda June told me that 'If you have faith in Jesus, you will jump and His warrior angels will swoop down to take you to heaven.' I am embarrassed to admit it, but I did not have enough faith so I did not jump. I am so jealous of all them who died because they had the faith to jump. I will now be sent to Hell for not trusting Jesus." The first witness to the gruesome scene on the ground was Mrs. Jerry Johnson. "I was up on the roof when it was decided that we was going to "Jump to Jesus" at midnight. But I was wearing kick-pleats. What a stupid choice for jumping off the top of a building! I realized that they would just fly up and I didn't want to flash my Personal Savior and have Him think I was some kind of trailer-trash slut and just let me fall. So, I went home to put on a long skirt with thicker unmentionables. By the time I drove into the parking lot, I heard Mrs. Tomkin yell, 'Catch me, Jesus!' as she threw herself off the roof. She was the first to hit the sidewalk. It sounded like a big bag of wet flour. You know, that Italian fellow Galileo said that stuff falls towards Hell at the same speed, no matter how heavy, but Wanda Madison, who is kind of plump, bless her heart, hit that Town Car way before Karla Johnson. And they jumped at the same time. Once again, fine Christians have proved the falsity of secular science." Adroitly deflecting questions of culpability in the deaths, Mrs. Bowers, when reached on her lanai in Hawaii, said, "Well, I thought it was going to be the end. But everyone makes mistakes. Even God started over with Noah when He realized He'd botched His first try at populating the Earth. And this Second Coming business is inherently tricky. I mean, even Jesus told his disciples that he would return before they had all died. So, when your own Personal Savior is clueless and makes wildly exaggerated claims, it makes mortal prognostication rather dicey." When asked why Mrs. Bowers wasn't with the women from Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemakers, Mrs. Bowers stated, "I was with them in spirit. But I had to be at the most divine Millennium party in Sydney and then take the Gulfstream up to Maui to celebrate the new century again with 325 close friends at my place there. And when you are hostessing that many people, you really have no business running off and jumping off buildings. I received news of the deaths just as the clock was about to strike midnight in Hawaii. I said the most lovely and heartfelt toast to the people who had died and we decided that each time someone blew a noisemaker, it would be in memory of those dear dead women. It was remarkable how the whole party joined in on the commemoration. Such a noise! It was really rather moving. Indeed, the whole evening turned out wonderfully. My party was fabulous and I would hardly call the Bringing Integrity To Christian Homemaker's Bon Voyage party a failure. I mean, in addition to to-die-for food, all I promised them was that at midnight they would be with Jesus. And, unless there were sins I am unaware of, that is precisely where they are. So, of course, there will be no refunds." Commenting on the tragic deaths, Pastor Deacon Fred told the Landover congregation on Sunday, "All people are precious in God's eyes, but our Gold Level Tithers are particularly precious to us at Landover. And we lost 14 of them. We are asking the rest of the congregation to take a moment from their grieving to make up the difference." Assessments will be mailed Monday.
Now see, you can post stuff like that, and get laughs. If I post it, I'm the freakin anti-Christ and I get bozoed off the map. ;)
Your problem is that you have a good heart and you care too much. Looking for an ambassadorship to Somali?
Why, no! I'm "laying up treasures in heaven." (smirk) You're right, I do care too much. It's just the internet. A "bozo" or two doesn't affect a dime's worth of my paycheck or rob my table of a single morsel of food. :D
*sigh* You understand the Four S's ... shelter, sustenence, sex and stimulation ... the rest is poppycock.
Where is that Bozo Button Rowdee ???
From Betty Bowers?? That's rather like the Onion.. hardly to be taken seriously.
Ok, citizen...be well. Joy, Joy.
Shall we go to Taco Bell for sustenance?
Have you heard the story about the two buzzards sitting on a limb? One buzzard turns to the other one and states, "Patience, Hell. I'm gonna go out and kill something."
Taco Bell, the dining pleasure for all good citizens.
Wait..that's really just three. Unless you meant MENTAL stimulation. :D
Poor baby. The digital equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying LALALALALALALALALA. Bozoing is a sign of weakness, be it in argument, constitution, or backbone.
Shit-heads, Sour-Pusses, Suck-asses and Sams
C'mon. Bozo me, you know you want to. Wuss.
Of course goofball ... I meant mental stim ... but then you couldn't call it the 4 S's, now could you? Shelter/Sustenance/Sex and MS ... now doesn't that sound great? A dreadful neurological disease or Morgan Stanley on the NYSE. Next you'll be asking if I didn't mean S&M ... you can see where this is leading, can't you?
You mean that you're NOT??? Dang! I just lost the bettig pool!
For your Do-Si-Do..
Multiple...Bozos?
If I was the anti-Christ, I wouldn't be working for a living and I'd have more concubines than I currently have. Besides, I'm thin on top and that 666 birthmark thing would be a bit overt and tend to scare the Fundies. Hmmm, I just saw something there. "Fundies" = "FUN DIES"
Naw ........... we already have a POTUS Bozo for four more _ears ... why complicate our lives?
I agree, I was referring to the weird practice of bozoing folks that "talk dirty". When God closes a door, Satan can enter "innuendo."
I'm the freakin anti-Christ It took every ounce of restraint on my part to resist responding to this foot- in-mouth remark. Thank you.
Aww...cute. You're just dyin to share what you think passes for wit and you want someone to ask you?
Great. Let's talk in innuendo, euphemisms and glittering generalities. No body understands us anyway, so what the heck. Sometimes I think you are one chip short of a portion ...
I had him down as a "useful Idiot" and one of Satan's lesser minions...
Neat graphic. Around Shakespeare's time?
Still leading with your charm , eh, Flint? Remind me again why you're still breathing American air? I thought you were gone as of November 2. What's keeping you? I'm sure they have some sort of net access in Central America.
Here's a modest review of the thread topic ... Da Vinci Code Your Life Everything is interwoven. Jesus tongue kissed Mary Magdalene, a lot. Potent juicy mystical secrets are everywhere, if you know where to look. Organized religion is the worst possible answer. What supposedly sacred truths are available to us are all relative to those who hold the power. Often, just behind the facade of things is a huge hunk of gorgeous convoluted magic you would do well to lick. Meanwhile, the divine feminine is right there, winking, sighing heavily, waiting for you. Like, duh. And oh yes, there are so many repressed buried burned crushed or otherwise flayed secrets of the true nature of divinity floating in the air like a mad delicious perfume, mysteries that have been rather nauseatingly overpowered by the rank dank cologne of the patriarchal church -- it's all you can do to breathe deeply anymore without gagging on all the repressed sexuality and stale machismo. This much we know. Simple truths, all of them. And all so nicely mapped out in Dan Brown's deliciously well-researched (if rather flawed), still red-hot best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," that incendiary little page-turner packed like a hot sausage with combustible and wonderfully damning religious fact and insinuation and researched tidbit that all serve to make the church and its more uptight sects cringe and recoil and deny deny deny. So you know it must be true. Brown's is a book that, with the notable exception of a very bitter Mel Gibson and maybe the most denial-happy, millions of giddy readers have taken as radiant, irrefutable proof that we don't know nearly as much as we think we know, and a huge amount of what we've been force-fed by power-drunk religious orgs and political strategists lo these past centuries has been a gargantuan, sticky, carefully orchestrated deception. Not exactly shocking news, I know. Realizing those in power have swindled the world since time immemorial to preserve their hollow supremacy has become a bit of a cultural pastime. From well over 10,000 hideous sexual-abuse cases in the Catholic Church stretching back to 1950 to realizing how an American presidential regime has openly lied and betrayed the nation so as to lead our exhausted populace into two brutal unwanted wars and a paralyzing deficit just to further a corporate-crony agenda, you just sort of sit there and go, yeah, well, what else is new. But this is a bit different. The broad and rather intoxicating deceptions so refreshingly illuminated and carefully researched in Brown's book are of the kind that rattle worlds and question core beliefs and make your id sit up and go, hmm, maybe this means something slightly more, you know, potent. And wicked. And dangerous. In a good way. The book, of course, deals with hidden and long-buried truths surrounding the Holy Grail and all its concomitant intricate, astounding histories and secret societies and churchly deceptions, art and sex and pagan symbol, all very factual and well documented and all relating back to the "real" Jesus and his life, his true teachings and, of course, his wife -- and the church's ongoing, centuries-old oppression of the divine feminine. Hey, it's a page-turner. But it's also packed with enough intense and well-researched fact about art and religious "truth" and the church's repressed pagan history to make anyone but the most blindly devout begin to see things anew. But here's the divine gist: You don't have to stop with the book. The great thing about "The Da Vinci Code" is that it could very well do for the mass public what no other chunk of dense scholarly research, no subversive New Age movement, no horrific blood-drenched movie depicting the gruesome and sadomasochistic bludgeoning of a popular Jewish mystic could do: that is, offer the general public wide-open access to vital, unsettling questions of faith, of power, of Mystery with a capital M. It's true. Could the wild popularity of this little book mean we're more ready to hear more potent, revealing truths, to uncover the more divine meanings behind all those seemingly commonplace things we take for granted, to question those stagnant histories and false gods that have been so viciously forced upon us? Could it maybe indicate that we really are more ready than we've ever been to go beyond the church's meager misogynistic homophobic revisionist teachings, to start seeing the deeply mystical and hilariously twisted interconnectedness of the world? You think? I, for one, didn't want to read Brown's book. I am not much of a fan of quickie best-seller page-turners with minimal character development and nonexistent literary nuance and sledgehammer plot devices. But that's just the lit snob in me. I read it anyway. And I had a blast. And I realized, there is a lesson here. And it does not have to be about massive conspiracy theory. You do not have to agree with every conclusion in the book and start running around trying to uncover links to secret societies while sinister forces move about the Louvre. You do not even need to begin with the rather insidious and soul-delimiting dangers of organized religion. You can focus this kind of perspective, this awareness, on just about anything in your life. Food. Cars. Sex. Politics. Guns. You trust your instincts and pick at a thread of curiosity and you pull, read up and educate yourself, and pretty soon you're reading "Fast Food Nation" or "High and Mighty" or "Stupid White Men" and realizing not only how you've been duped but also how refreshing it is to see through the masks and the bogus marketing and the hidden histories. It does not have to be complicated. You simply begin to notice. You begin to see the signs, understand the symbols, the divine winks, realize that there are enormous hidden worlds of belief and interconnected history just under the manufactured and carefully orchestrated surface of things, mysteries that have long gone unnoticed or underappreciated or ignored but that are ready and eager for you to discover them anew. Old buildings have ghostly mystery. Cities are teeming with forgotten and often culturally blasphemous histories. Churches are packed with stolen pagan iconography. That enormous tree in the city park was there long before you were born and has stories of sex and revolution and lost dogs and time. See it? Simply put, taking Brown's book as a cue, you can begin to see the world with new eyes. And you can begin to understand that mystics were right: It is indeed a wildly animated, kaleidoscopic, convoluted, maddening, ever-morphing world -- one that is most certainly not all about allowing yourself to be trapped by the narrow mythology set forth in one, say, pseudo holy book's version of life, of flesh, of truth. After all, where is the mystery, the divine feminine thrust, the raw page-turning heat, in that?
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#402. To: wbales (#398)
#403. To: Aric2000 (#383)
Bit of a quandry there, but neither can disprove the other, and will NEVER be able to.
#404. To: Continental Op (#402)
start at page #1 right through to the end. You'll probably find what your looking for if you ignore conventional Christian beliefs and focus on what it really says.
#405. To: Samuel Gray (#404)
You can try it with the Grimm's Fairy Tales too. Works about the same. Morality plays with a supernatural twist.
#406. To: CAPPSMADNESS (#376)
Don, lets just call a truce - or this thread will never die.
#407. To: noone222 (#390)
#408. To: Diana (#387)
#409. To: Aric2000 (#407)
this is NOT a skull and bones mystical satanic exercise.
#410. To: noone222 (#403)
#411. To: Aric2000 (#410)
The rapture as some Christians call it is NOT going to happen
#412. To: noone222, Continental Op, Don, All (#399)
#413. To: Flintlock (#411)
#414. To: 2Trievers (#413)
#415. To: Samuel Gray (#414)
#416. To: 2Trievers (#415)
Your problem is that you have a good heart and you care too much. Looking for an ambassadorship to Somali?
#417. To: Samuel Gray (#416)
#418. To: Aric2000, Rowdee (#407)
Sorry, wrong on ALL counts, this is NOT a skull and bones mystical satanic exercise.
#419. To: 2Trievers (#413)
#420. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#412)
#421. To: Don (#420)
#422. To: noone222 (#406)
#423. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#421)
#424. To: 2Trievers (#417)
sex and stimulation
#425. To: noone222 (#418)
Where is that Bozo Button Rowdee ???
#426. To: Samuel Gray (#425)
*sigh* You understand the Four S's
#427. To: noone222 (#426)
#428. To: Samuel Gray (#424)
Wait..that's really just three. Unless you meant MENTAL stimulation.
#429. To: Samuel Gray (#414)
I'm the freakin anti-Christ
#430. To: Samuel Gray (#427)
#431. To: 2Trievers (#428)
you can see where this is leading, can't you?
#432. To: CAPPSMADNESS (#429)
#433. To: Samuel Gray (#431)
#434. To: 2Trievers (#433)
#435. To: CAPPSMADNESS (#429)
Samuel Gray (said):
#436. To: noone222 (#435)
#437. To: Samuel Gray (#434)
#438. To: CAPPSMADNESS (#429)
Dang! I just lost the bettig pool!
#439. To: 2Trievers (#430)
#440. To: Flintlock (#438)
#441. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut, All (#0)
Can the blasphemous bestseller help you see the mystical world anew, or is it just another doorstop?
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