Post by LadyTass2001 on Mar 22, 2005 0:47:25 GMT -5
This was taken off of Sci-fi News Of the week, I got a good laugh out of it.
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 best-seller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies," the Reuters news service reported.
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, Reuters reported.
"[It] aims to discredit the church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," said Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close friend of Pope John Paul. "This seems like a throwback to the old anti-clerical pamphlets of the 1800s."
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, the wire service reported.
A central storyline of the book is that the Holy Grail is not the cup Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper, but rather the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Bertone calls this idea "a perversion," Reuters reported.
The Da Vinci Code is being adapted into a film that will star Tom Hanks.
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 best-seller off their shelves because it is full of "cheap lies," the Reuters news service reported.
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, Reuters reported.
"[It] aims to discredit the church and its history through gross and absurd manipulations," said Bertone, the archbishop of the northern Italian city of Genoa and a close friend of Pope John Paul. "This seems like a throwback to the old anti-clerical pamphlets of the 1800s."
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, the wire service reported.
A central storyline of the book is that the Holy Grail is not the cup Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper, but rather the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Bertone calls this idea "a perversion," Reuters reported.
The Da Vinci Code is being adapted into a film that will star Tom Hanks.
