I suppose everyone heard of this dan brown's bestseller and most should have read about it before. Recently, there's many speculations floating around forums regarding the "facts" of the book. Maybe because it's an important week in the Christian calendar with good Friday, Easter Sunday and all. There's even an article in Newsweek talking about how this cardinal opposes of Christians reading the book.

In Yahoo News.com. there's an article saying that 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."
Later, he goes on to say that "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."
See the irony? A fairy tale is supposed to be fake; If it's fiction, then he shouldn't even be worked up. That's like saying that people reading about... fairies or monsters in a book, will believe that they are real just because of what they read.

Here are some abstracts of the article:
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.

He said it was "sad" that even Catholic bookstores were selling The Da Vinci Code "for purely economic reasons."

"This is one of the most vulgar of inventions. The feminine element is present in all the Gospels," Bertone said.

Come to think about it, it is highly possible that this already bestseller will be piping hot next year with the movie by Tom Hanks coming up. More insults, more claims should be brewing..

I was reading a editor commenting about the book in New York Times. She said.. (some abstracts again)
Some may mock the Vatican for waiting until everyone on earth has read "The Da Vinci Code" to denounce "The Da Vinci Code."

I am not one of them. It's Easter, and I don't want to blot my catechism.

It's a little late, now that the two-year-old thriller by Dan Brown is a publishing miracle - with 25 million copies sold in 44 languages, a cascade of other books inspired by the novel and a movie with Tom Hanks set to start filming this spring - for Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to intone on a Vatican radio broadcast: "Don't read and don't buy 'The Da Vinci Code.' "

Mr. Brown's zippy version has Jesus and Mary Magdalene marrying and having children. This "perverts the story of the Holy Grail, which most certainly does not refer to the descendants of Mary Magdalene," Cardinal Bertone said. "It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies."

For years, female historians and novelists have been making the case that Mr. Brown makes, that Mary Magdalene was framed and defamed, that the men who run Christianity obliterated her role as an influential apostle and reduced her to a metaphor for sexual guilt.

The church refuses to allow women to be ordained as priests because there were no female apostles. So if Mary Magdalene was a madonna rather than a whore, the church loses its fig leaf of justification for male domination and exclusion.

It's obvious that Vatican officials did not read to the end of Mr. Brown's novel or they never would have denounced it.

The woman who is the descendant of Mary Magdalene and Jesus tells Robert Langdon, Mr. Brown's Harvard symbologist hero, that the secret saga of how the church smeared her ancestor as a slut and swindled all women out of serious roles in the church does not need to be aired. It can continue to remain a secret.

"Her story is being told in art, music and books," the woman says, adding that things are gradually changing for women: "We are beginning to sense the need to restore the sacred feminine."

No whistle is blown. No alarm is sounded. Talk about an anticlimax for a fantastic ride. As it turns out, Mr. Brown is not the tormentor of the Vatican, but an ally.

So much about the book. Yeah, actually, I think the book is over-rated. I prefer his other book, Angels and Demons. Yeah, about the same concept again.. abit on Catholic. ancient brotherhood. I find the book more interesting as it's more thrilling and apprehensive. and cool. You got to read the book to understand what I mean. The four different ways of killing..

I like his books mainly because of his endings. The three books that I've read: Angels & Demons, Da vindi code, Deception Point all have endings that are totally/almost unexpected.

Sources:
http://www.danbrown.com
article 1
the review

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