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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (224363)	3/16/2005 2:26:58 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574379

Cardinal Asks Catholics to Shun Da Vinci Code 1 hour, 3 minutes ago Entertainment - Reuters Celebrity/Gossip By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The cardinal leading the Vatican (news - web sites)'s charge against The Da Vinci Code urged Catholics on Wednesday to shun it like rotten food and branded the bestseller "a sack full of lies" insulting the Christian faith. In an interview with Reuters inside the Vatican, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone also said Catholic bookstores should take the thriller off their shelves and accused U.S. author Dan Brown of "deplorable" behavior. The novel is an international murder mystery centered on attempts to uncover a secret about the life of Christ that a clandestine society has tried to protect for centuries. "Don't buy this. Don't read this because this is rotten food," said Bertone, the highest ranking Catholic churchman to speak out against the blockbuster. "A lot of novels do good but this book is rotten food ... it does harm, not good," Bertone said in the 30-minute interview in the offices of the Vatican's doctrinal department. "This book is a sack full of lies against the Church, against the real history of Christianity and against Christ himself," said Bertone, archbishop of northern Genoa. The central tenet of the book is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children. Christians are taught that Jesus never married, was crucified and rose from the dead. "We can't keep quiet about the truth when faced with all the lies and all the inventions in this book," Bertone said. "Some of the gross falsehoods include the treatment of the death and the resurrection of Christ, which is the central mystery of Christianity," he said. His comments are significant because he is close to Pope John Paul (news - web sites) and until 2003 was deputy head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's most powerful office. Speaking as one of the Church's top theologians, he said the book sows doubts and dangerous confusion among the faithful. A central storyline in the book is that the Holy Grail is not the cup which Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper but the bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I would ask the author of this book and similar ones to be more respectful because freedom of expression has limits when it does not respect others," he said. "DEPLORABLE" BEHAVIOR FOR A WRITER "I deplore this behavior ... Great writers did not behave this way," he said. Brown's agent in New York said the author was "incommunicado" writing a new book and was not expected to reply to Bertone. On his Web Site, Brown rejects anti-Christian charges, saying the novel explores "certain aspects of Christian history that interest me." But Bertone called it "the latest in a series of devastating attacks against Christianity" and that he believed that similar attacks on other religions would not have been tolerated. Bertone said he was stunned that Catholic bookstores, even those near the Vatican, were selling the book. "It's impossible to pull the book off shelves of general bookstores ... but certainly not selling it in Catholic bookstores would be a good first step," he said. Bertone, who was appointed a cardinal by Pope John Paul in 2003, also said he had received much encouragement from fellow bishops and cardinals for his campaign against the book. "I am happy that a lot of people have been put on the alert and that I have sounded the alarm of vigilance against the spread of this book," he said. "I have arrived too late. Millions of copies have been sold. I can't hope to slow down sales but at least to prompt a critical response," he said. Bertone is so incensed about the novel that he will be the key speaker at a roundtable in Genoa on Wednesday night attempting to dismantle the book, which also claims the Church suppressed the female role in Christianity. He rejected the assertion, saying: "The role of women in the Church is a primary one, starting from Mary, the mother of God."