This idiot opines at a newspaper-sponsored blog

It’s official.

The Catholic Church is officially calling for a boycott of The DaVinci Code – The Film.  This will ensure that Catholics will flood to it.  OK, I’m just kidding.  But all of the brouhaha is reaching ridiculous levels.

A high ranking Vatican official called for all good Catholic folks to forget the movie exists, according to reports.  Or, in other words ignore it.  Said official blasted the lies in the book, the lies that will naturally come courtesy of the book in the movie and the lie that Notre Dame is God’s college football team of choice.  Ummm…errr….OK, I’m going out on a limb for that last one. 

And of course, Catholic scholars are going to try to poke, dissect and fricassee what effects – be they negative or positive – that the film would have, according to other reports.

"As a book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ doesn’t merit serious attention," Rev. John Wauck told The Associated Press in a telephone interview before the conference.

"However, as a phenomenon it demands serious attention, because a book that sells 40 million copies is not just a book, it tells us something about our society and the world we live in," Wauck said.

Sure, when a book sells 40 million copies, it tells us word-of-mouth spread like the common cold and that many viewed it to be a worthwhile piece of entertainment.  I don’t know what larger explanation of the world Rev. Wauck is looking, but I get the impression that they’re worried that millyuns and millyuns of people will like start a religion devoted to The DaVinci Code.  😉

No, George Thomas, the "Catholic Church" did not officially call for a boycott. One Archbishop gave a speech in which he said he "hoped" those in his audience would stay away and find something better to do, not "all good Catholics."

And, as I said in the post below, here’s another case of a commentor suggesting that there’s "fear" involved here. Fear of stupidity, perhaps.

Lather, rinse, repeat: George Thomas can accompany me to my next talk and listen to people come up to me afterwards and share stories of friends, colleagues and family members who have, indeed read DVC as a presentation of serious history. Then he can snark. Or perhaps then, it will be my turn.

Oh, one more point: The sophisticates among us are always sniffing that churches, especially the big, hulking monstrous Catholic Church, is "out of touch" with life and what’s going on in the world today. So now, some folks in the Church (Fr. Wauck, again) suggest that a book that sells 40 million copies is worth noting and addressing, that same Church is – what – treading forbidden waters? Even though the book concerns, you know JESUS and is woven around the assumption that CHRISTIANITY IS THE ENEMY OF TRUTH…it’s silly for us to address it? When our own experience shows us that some readers are letting their understandings and perceptions be formed by this?

Make up your mind.

Another genius at the Orlando Sentinel movie blog:

Frankly, I am REALLY interested in this, now. Yeah, it’s fiction. Fact checking it is probably a lot more fun for these religious scholars than say, footnoting the Bible…"This creation myth dates from the Sumerians…and this Flood myth comes from…This ‘book’ was written hundreds of years after the man died, and edited by idealogues with an ax to grind. So we’re not really sure if these quotes are accurate. And really, you DO have to take somebody’s word that A) they heard a voice and B) that the voice was a god. PS, King James had his own agenda when his poets transcribed the book into Elizabethan verse."

Nooooo. There’s more money in hacking at a current best seller.

But I think I can tell the difference between movie/novelist hyperbole and fact, or blinkered, blindered faith-not-fact-based dogma.

Can you?