Media Issues: May 2006 Archives

"Paris Hilton pal Brandon Davis's rant about Lindsay Lohan is one of the most loathsome verbal attacks we've heard. See it on blah-blah-blah.com."
—Newsweek's recent Blog Watch column

Ok I gave it away. There used to be such a thing that is apparently so uncommon today I can't even think of what to call it. Propriety? Grace? Seemliness?

If something's "one of the most loathsome verbal attacks" you've ever heard, you shouldn't be promoting it to people. Chances are there is slander and detraction in it, and propagating it is at best in bad taste, at worse a complicity in slander. You just encourage people to satisfy their basest motives.

Detraction is a forgotten vice. I don't know when I learned the definition of it and learned that it was wrong, but it was after college. Slander is when you say something to another about a third party that is not true but is damaging to their reputation. Detraction is when you say something (not well known) to another (who has no business knowing) about a third party that is true but is damaging to their reputation. For example, suppose your brother got a speeding ticket, and you decide to tell your neighbor about it. Most likely your neighbor has no business knowing (unless your brother works for your neighbor and drives as part of his job). Or someone you know is promiscuous, and you tell a new friend about this. If you say something bad about another person to someone, there should be a justifiable reason for it, and a need to know on their part.

The Da Vinci Code is being eviscerated by critics (thanks to Paul Croarkin for the link). I'm not sure I'm even going to bother with Over the Hedge. What a disaster! Ha!

Who would cast Tom Hanks in an action role anyway? Harrison Ford he's not ... Tom is more of the quiet, self-effacing, awkward type.

If you're like me, you wonder if you could come up with a book that says plausible but fictional things about something Dan Brown holds near and dear. Well someone has proposed such a book. The premise: It was Mr. Brown's mother, Constance, who starred in the controversial film Deep Throat, not Linda Lovelace. Touché!

I've been asked to post some additional information on the Da Vinci Code. As the "Homily Helps" at Da Vinci Outreach (from which I'll be liberally quoting) note, "the book’s primary attack is ultimately not on the Church but on the person of Jesus Christ."

These Homily Helps go on to say, "The book claims that Jesus was not the divine Son of God; that He was married to Mary Magdalene and had children with her; and that, by order of the Roman emperor Constantine, the Church “made” him divine at the Council of Nicea."

"In effect, The Da Vinci Code reduces Jesus to a mere “mortal prophet, a great and powerful man” (as the book puts it) who had a girlfriend. Of course, one cannot deny Christ’s divinity and still end up with Christianity. The very person of Jesus—who He is—forms the very foundation of the Christian faith."

"Throughout the work, Brown refers to “the Vatican” as the location of corrupt Church power. For example, according to Brown, it was “the Vatican” who ordered the suppression of women and the “sacred feminine” in the early centuries of the Church. This would be difficult to accomplish given that “the Vatican” (i.e., the Vatican hill in Rome, the site of present-day Vatican City) would not become the seat of Church power until the 12th century. In the early centuries of the Church, it simply did not exist."

"Brown claims that the early Church suppressed women and replaced worship of the “sacred feminine” with a “male God.” This suppression of women is, of course, hard to square with the Church’s obvious veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the unique exaltation she enjoys above all the saints."

"None of the most controversial claims made in The Da Vinci Code have any historical evidence to back them up. In fact, Dan Brown’s primary sources have been highly criticized by historians for their wholly unsubstantiated (i.e., made up) claims regarding the history of Christianity."

Here is a Catholic Answers summary of claims in the book which explain why Catholics should be concerned about The Da Vinci Code:

• Jesus is not God; he was only a man.
• Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
• She is to be worshiped as a goddess.
• Jesus got her pregnant, and the two had a daughter.
• That daughter gave rise to a prominent family line that is still present in Europe today.
• The Bible was put together by a pagan Roman emperor.
• Jesus was viewed as a man and not as God until the fourth century, when he was deified by the emperor Constantine.
• The Gospels have been edited to support the claims of later Christians.
• In the original Gospels, Mary Magdalene rather than Peter was directed to establish the Church.
• There is a secret society known as the Priory of Sion that still worships Mary Magdalene as a goddess and is trying to keep the truth alive.
• The Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed. It often has committed murder to do so.
• The Catholic Church is willing to and often has assassinated the descendents of Christ to keep his bloodline from growing.

John Hellman has an excellent site on The Da Vinci Code if you want more information.

Catholics and other Christians are calling for a boycott (or as some call it, an "othercott") of the Da Vinci Code movie, a move that is being acknowledged in the media. The deal is that on opening weekend May 19th-21st, go to the theater and see the animated feature Over the Hedge, in hopes of knocking The Da Vinci Code off the charts. It's a good idea; I plan on following through with it, and urge all of you to, too.

This movie just plays so fast and loose with history its not even funny. It's fiction, but casts itself in the form of fact. Fictional history which does damage to the reputation of the Catholic Church is portrayed as factual; it's as if someone created an entirely fanciful (and negative) "biography" of a famous person that few could distinguish from fact.

Let's do what we can do to throw this movie off the charts!