Am I the only one who knows nothing about The Divinci code?

[LukenDC]

No. The Spanish Inquisition was overseen by a Cardinal, but he was appointed by the state. The Catholic Church did not have any authority over this event.

There were several Inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was only one of them. The Inquisition as an institution was established by the Pope.

 

[LukenDC]

DisneyGerry, as long as Christianity continues to leave a deep imprint on contemporary society, it should be open to scrutiny and debate. Christians do not have a monopoly on Jesus. If Christians want to use their faith to guide public policy, as a good many of them want, then they should expect people to closely examine and question that faith.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

To help others understand how offensive these are, encourage fans of the novel to imagine parallel situations involving other religions or groups of people. For example, a major publisher would never produce a novel that portrayed the Jewish faith as perpetrating a murderous, centuries-long, global conspiracy. Such a book would be met immediately with outraged protests and the author and publishers publicly branded as religious bigots. By producing this novel smearing Christianity, Brown and Doubleday show that they have a double standard and harbor anti-Catholic, anti-Christian prejudice.

That is simply not true. Publishers can and do publish books that show peoples of all religions in a negative manner -- and they don't even put all of them in the FICTION section.

In fact, the main criteria for deciding whether or not to publish a novel is deciding whether or not the plotline is a story that many people will want to read.

In this case, obviously Doubleday was right on the money.

 

[sodaseller]

There were several Inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was only one of them. The Inquisition as an institution was established by the Pope.

You're talking about two different things. The Inquisition as the word is popularly understood refers to the persecution of NonChristians, mainly Jews, in Spain at the end of the 15th Century. Torquemada. I think it was an act of the human Church (I'm being nontheoloical to avoid confusion), not just the Spanish state.

The Inquisition is also the former name of what is currently known as the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, a/k/a the Holy Office, the Congregation that defines what is orthodox, for lack of a better concise definition. The Church did not recognize the concept of religious Freedom until Vatican II, but now embraces it, except for those in this thread that seem to wish to emulate Saudi Arabia here

 

[WDWMom]

As far as it making anybody skeptical of Christianity, not anybody I know. The "secret" doesn't make me doubt the authenticity of Jesus or his message.
The Bible tells us that Jesus came to Earth to live a perfect human life. Are the concepts of family and love not a valid part of humanity, that we're to think there is something sinful and unperfect about marriage? Jesus had a Mother, a Father, and siblings - is the thought of a wife and children all that outlandish? The thought of Jesus as a Father is apparently repugent to some, yet every Sunday morning we go into Church and pray "Our Father who art in Heaven...."

However, the book is fiction.

This is exactly how I felt reading the book. It doesn't affect my believes if Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and had children. Even if there was/is a bloodline, there could be millions of people who would be decendents of Jesus by now.

 

[TheBellhop]

I have a question, and maybe this time one of you won't avoid it. Didn't the church ban Galileo's teachings due to it's inaccuracy to the bible? So is this REALLY different? Are we saying the bible is infallible?

 

[Laura]

I have a question, and maybe this time one of you won't avoid it. Didn't the church ban Galileo's teachings due to it's inaccuracy to the bible? So is this REALLY different? Are we saying the bible is infallible?

I just watched a big long documentary last night about the book and it debunked a lot of what Dan Brown gives as "fact". The Priory of Scion isn't an centuries-old organization (total hoax), St. John isn't really a woman in DaVinci's Last Supper painting, Sang Real (royal blood) was really just a misspelling by a monk doing transcription, etc. We can corroborate some of what occurred in the Bible with historical fact. We can't "know" if Jesus and Mary Magdalene ever got it on and produced offspring, but we can conjecture. I think the difference here is that Galileo's work was based on fact, and Dan Brown's book is based on conjecture.

I think trying to pretend that some of this book is factual when it isn't is a very wrong thing to do; it's commonly called lying. But that doesn't mean the book or the movie should be banned. Dan Brown's just trying to circulate buzz around his novel and make more money. Simple as that. Like the legend of the czar's daughter Anastasia surviving the family's massacre; we know now that she didn't. But the idea, the story is still captivating. Even though we know it isn't true. Writing a novel about Anastasia's survival now and pretending it's fact-based would be similar.

 

[TheBellhop]

Dan Brown didn't invent the idea of Mary and Jesus. Honestly I think he's trying to make money off of the idea, but that's besides the point.

 

[Saxsoon]

Of course he hasn't, but he sure is getting credit for it. Besides, the whole thing with Galileo was not a question of if the Bible was wrong, but those interpreting it. Obviously the church is ran by Humans that make mistakes. They misinterpreted the Bible thinking that the Earth was the center of the universe. There are parts of the Bible that are metaphorical and others that aren't. That is what makes something like the Bible to study and interpret with certainty.