Here’s what Cardinal Cimillo Ruini had to say about the DaVinci code: “It is difficult to escape the sensation that the great success of works like the ‘The Davinci Code’ have more to do that hatred, or that failure of love for oneself… that is insinuated in our civilization.” :rolleyes:
You know, I’m getting a little sick of this new breed of Catholic rhetoric, popularized by a resurgent of pretentious pundits like Mark Shea (ah the world is drowing in a culture of death where baby-raping is an inevitable outcome of gay marriage and extra-marital!), and which more and more Cardinals are getting into. Catholic theologians and Catholic intellectuals have always taken the cake for pretensious know-it-all-ness, sneering at all critics with a “ah, you have not an ounce of the understanding necessary to see that you are wrong about everything,” and mostly because they have always tended to be such good and influential writers in the history of cultural and intellectual develop, I don’t mind: sometimes it’s even charming. But now it’s just getting petty and knee-jerk and pathetic.
Yes, yes. Because a conspiracy theory with little historical backing and many factual errors that differs from YOUR pet conspiracy theory with little historical backing and many facual errors was briefly popular as a POP cultural phenomenon amongst people who can read, but don’t read very good books, that means that people are full of hate, don’t love themselves, and that this is a great dangerous movement in our civilization.
I still don’t get the big controversy about the DaVinci code. This same sort of story has been told before. Heck, the Preacher comic told a much more vile and outrageous Grail story. The Last Temptation of Christ already covered the ground of Jesus’ potentially more domestic life. If anything, the DaVinci code is remarkably tame. Heck, the bad guy, if I remember, is basically a greedy, powerhungry atheist. And for all the supposed religious bashing, the main preist character is portrayed as an almost saint-like man and his servant is TRICKED into doing bad things.
But I suppose if you weren’t given to grandiose hyberbolic laments about the vile state of everything that doesn’t conform to the one-true-belief-system, you might not rise to a position of leadership very easily. But come on dude.
Telling people that they are full of hate and don’t love themselves because they don’t believe what you believe or they get interested in a different story than the one you value is something I would expect from a cult-member, not a respected scholar or the leader of a major world-religion. Aside from the issue of vaginas and what goes in and comes out of them, the Catholic Church is one of the most progressive institutions around. Don’t start acting like you’re the freaking Manson family all of a sudden.