Have you ever read the book?

Another reason the decision to "fact-check" Angels & Demons is that its such completely over-the-top fiction, much moreso than DaVinci Code, that its almost laughable. I don't want to spoil anything, but to suffice it to say it involves sociopathical murderous upper-level Vatican members and an EXTREMELY ridiculous coup d' grace of an ending.

Any Catholic with even a modicum of "faith" (in both senses of the word) would just laugh the flick off. Silly Catholic League.

The movies, like the books, are blatantly anti-Catholic. That being said, it is a mistake to give them more publicity. There will never be a reaction to these movies that one saw to Gibson's movie. Anti-Catholicism is a popular prejudice.

Alert to Archie Bunker Donohue - Get thee to Portland, OR - There is a rumor some theater is trying to reprise Jayne Russell and "The Outlaw".

Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are as realistic as the National Treasure movies. That is, their historical settings make them very interesting, and they do have the occasional factoid right. But they also have lots of facts wrong. (Note to National Treasure dudes: you were correct that Daylight Savings Time did not exist in the 1700s -- but you missed that time zones didn't exist either. And shadows vary by date of the year as well as time of day.) And the plots are totally implausible.

I suppose some people will walk away from the movies believing they may be based on truth. I mean, after all there are a lot of people running around who believe that there is an invisible man watching everything they do, and who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old, etc. But what the hell?

I don't care if it's perceived as "blatantly anti-" anything; Catholic or otherwise.

It's fiction. It's a movie.

These clowns continue to spotlight their silliness. Here's to hoping they keep it up.

Unless I'm mistaken, the phrase "Bill Donohue and the Catholic League" is redundant. Bill Donohue IS the Catholic League. It's a one man blustering self publicity machine.

terraformer:

You don't care that it's blatantly prejudiced. Did you feel the same about Gibson's movie. Look at the furor that created. Again it depends on whose ox is gored. Your response simply proves the point.

Cool said:
I suppose some people will walk away from the movies believing they may be based on truth.

Have you got any idea how many people down here think Gone With The Wind is a documentary???? ;>

Are you kidding? How often does a fundraising bonanza like this come along?

Oh, it worked out pretty well for Bill Donohue last time, and it will work out just as well for him this time. Publicity, you see, works both ways, and relatively speaking, Donohue gets much more publicity out of this than the movie will. A million dollars of publicity for the Catholic League is a lot of money; a million dollars for the film is about 5% (if that) of its ad budget.

These people are masters of deception and self promotion -- skills pretty much everyone involved in religion eventually master.

One of the great (but now, alas! possibly apocryphal) foundation grants I ever heard of, was for James Loewen to examine history as it is 'taught' by the movies. I mean -- how much fun would that be?

Loewen wrote "Lies My Teacher Told Me" with one of the other great foundation grants of all time, which exposed all the nonsense that gets published in history textbooks. I talked to him a couple times, and he told me IIRC that he'd gotten another grant to do the same for Hollywood movies with historical themes, but I've never seen it published (though others have done something similar).

I doubt ANY movie with an historical theme could possibly do as much damage as Gone with the Wind, and it's certainly not gonna be a prequel to the DaVinci Code.

How much publicity did the JDL and other get from their response to Gibson's movie? Of course, Catholics defending themselves are only in it for "deceptive" and dark purposes. You people are pathetically prejudiced.

impartial said:
The movies, like the books, are blatantly anti-Catholic. That being said, it is a mistake to give them more publicity. There will never be a reaction to these movies that one saw to Gibson's movie. Anti-Catholicism is a popular prejudice.

The DaVinci Code is about the Catholic church covering up "facts" (in this case, the "fact" that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene) in order to preserve the institution of the Catholic church.

This is just what happened when the church force Galileo to recant. The members of the Inquisition who put Galieo on trial for heresy were learned men. They knew the heliocentric model of the Universe was wrong. But they convicted Galileo anyway.

The DaVinci Code is a perfect metaphor for the church's sex abuse scandal, where the Catholic church decided to protect its institution and image instead of protecting children from predators.

Call me anti-Catholic if you like. I will plead guilty to being anti- any organization that puts the survival of its institutions above the protection of those who are put under that institution's care.

Read the above comment if you question the tendency of some to regard fiction as fact. Case closed.

It never ceases to amaze how right wingers can get so frothed up over a movie that has yet to be released.

Just off the top of my head, the
The DiVinci Code, Dogma, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Life of Brian have all threatened the very core of Christianity - long before they were released.

I'm not seeing any lingering effects of any of them.

It's important to remember that there is nothing at all Catholic about The Catholic League. It's just another ultra-right propaganda organization made up of a bunch of wingnut, anti-liberal, anti-Democrat culture warriors with a bogus religious niche. It has no affiliation whatsoever with the Catholic Church, and it might just as well be called Catholic Hot Air. Here's its Board of Advisors, wingnuts all:

Brent Bozell III
Gerard Bradley
Linda Chavez
Robert Destro
Dinesh D'Souza
Deacon Keith Fournier
Laura Garcia
Robert George
Mary Ann Glendon
Dolores Grier
Alan Keyes
Stephen Krason
Lawrence Kudlow
Thomas Monaghan
Michael Novak
Kate O'Beirne
Thomas Reeves
Patrick Riley
Robert Royal
Ronald Rychlak
Russell Shaw
William Simon, Jr.
Joe Varacalli
Paul Vitz
George Weigel

Hold up. It's been a long time since I read the book, but wasn't it a lot gentler on Catholicism than its sequel? The antagonists are members of a militant anti-Church group that murders cardinals and promotes radical atheism. They stage some kind of big plot on the day the new pope will be chosen, and at the climax a promising young Vatican official (who's portrayed quite favorably) makes an internationally televised speech about the power of faith and the limits of science, which struck me as Dan Brown being didactic. Or did I completely miss the point of the book?

While not a Catholic, and despite disagreeing with most of their agenda, I've always had a sneaking admiration for the Church. Their ability to survive and thrive through 2000 years of changing circumstances is pretty impressive, I think.

However, this time they've met their match. This movie will be the end of them.

Sorry, impartial, but I'm not as quick as you. Just what fiction is being regarded as fact?

The fiction that the Catholic Church covered up for pederasts? I didn't even know that was debatable.

Maybe it's another fiction (not mentioned above) that the Catholic Church apparently has little trouble embracing Holocaust deniers?

There is plenty of anti-Catholic thought that comes from . . . wait for it . . . ex-Catholics and still-Catholics who have gotten tired of the hypocrisy. So I'd say the Catholic Church is doing a bang-up job creating its own image problems, Dan Brown's efforts notwithstanding.

Do you think that the Catholic Church is above criticism? Since you haven't said you do, this is a real question, but since you seem to conflate criticism with predjudice, it's also not much of a stretch.

It has been a while since I read Angels and Demons, but as I remember it the Catholic Church itself was the victim rather than the villain.

How much publicity did the JDL and other get from their response to Gibson's movie?

They got plenty of publicity out of it. It's just that, in this instance, they were heavily outnumbered by the numbers of Christians who wanted to wail and chestbeat about victimization, and because of those numbers, the JDL's noise ended up being diluted.

Sorry anonymous but are you out of your mind. How pray tell did gone with the wind(a fictional movie based on a fictional novel) do damge. to whom and what. Jesus man it was just a movie.

The Catholic church is a hypocrisy wrapped around a warped view of moral and ethical guidance. At every chance in history they have failed to live-up to their "face" of moral and ethic responsibilities. From the plundering of the Aztec gold that eventually ended up in the ceiling of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome, to their ostrich-like stance in their lack of timely outrage to the WW2/Hollicost, to their nauseating response to the massive pedophile disgrace that they are still covering and now, their stupid outrage over a fictional movie, they are, once again, illuminating just how vestige their organization has become, or perhaps, mutated.

Having been raised as a Catholic and witnessed their moribund decline one no longer has to wonder why their organization's symbol is a guy who was tortured and then nailed to a cross. Budda, on the other hand, is depicted as a jolly ol' bald fat guy who seems to urge us all to revel in the happier side of life before reaching the "next level"...

I'm not going to see the movie, but that's because it's going to suck. Donohue should be protesting that they didn't get a better writer and director.

There will never be a reaction to these movies that one saw to Gibson's movie. Anti-Catholicism is a popular prejudice.

You do know that Mel Gibson is not Roman Catholic, right? He rejects the current Pope and all popes after Pius X. He rejects all of the teachings of Vatican II and insists that Pope Benedict is an anti-Pope.

You sure put a lot of energy into defending someone who's a heretic and an apostate. Or are you another of those cafeteria Catholics who insists you don't have to follow Vatican II because you're such a special snowflake?

How can anyone take seriously a modern organization that calls itself after the group resonsible for the st. Bartholomew's Day Massacre adn the assasination of Henri III?

You don't care that it's blatantly prejudiced. Did you feel the same about Gibson's movie. Look at the furor that created. Again it depends on whose ox is gored. Your response simply proves the point.

Didn't see Gibson's movie. I didn't want to see it, so I didn't see it.

It's a movie. In a free society, people are not required to ensure that all the i's are dotted and t's crossed toward suiting some particular group's definition of what constitutes truth.

You don't have to see it if you don't want to.

But you're certainly welcome to get exercised about it, and doing so just proves my point. You and people like our friend Donohue don't get to decide what is and what is not 'approved.'

Have a nice day!

One of the amusing things about some of these posts is how easy it seems to be for some Christians to complain about anything they perceive as being anti-Christian (or anti-Catholic) while many Christians, in sermons, television shows, "contemporary Christian music" and (ahem) novels, not only mock everything they disagree with but also label much of it as Satanic.

Alan Keyes is on the board of the "Catholic League"? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA. Why don't they just join up with Fred Phelps and they can have a big ol' hatefest.

I can just picture it now. Something like a Renaissance Fair except with bigots.

The thing that I like about the defenders of ignorance and superstition crying foul about a fiction writer's mischaracterizing their dogmas and history, besides the irony, is the hope that more people will become interested in the truth about the fallacies inherent in these organizations. My personal atheism was mostly a passive dismissal of the ignorant (albeit I've since learned how fervid and irrational some of these people are). After trying to ascertain some of the truth behind Mr. Brown's nearly talentless narrative, I was lead to Dr. Bart D. Ehrman's "Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code," which lead me to another of his excellent books: "Misquoting Jesus" (also recommended is "Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene"). About this time, Christopher Hitchens released "God Is Not Great," wherein I learnt many more of the supremely foolish things that the faithful insist on believing, and teaching to the credulous.

Now I am a convert from atheism to anti-theism, and I pray more make a similar journey. To wit, while I don't espouse singling out any particular denomination of collective ignorance, I hope that "Anti-[organized religion] is a popular prejudice," and becomes a more popular one.

Steve, you seem to be under the impression that Donohue wants to undermine the movie. Get real! He wants to cash in on its success. The more publicity that surrounds the movie, the more he'll get, too. And you know the cable outlets will have him on: here's a major motion picture, full of stars and great pre-packaged video clips, with lots of public interest, and they can just bring on Donohue to drum up a little controversy and cash in on the very same publicity machine while pretending to be covering a legitimate issue.

No point in writing about the game if you're not going to acknowledge how it's played.

In other news, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library protested the "falsehoods" in Watchmen. No, Nixon never enlisted a giant blue man to explode the VC. No, Nixon was never re-elected to a fifth term -- which would be unconstitutional, anway. That movie was totally bogus!

Spoiler alert: if you're one of the three people in existence who haven't read the Da Vinci code and/or Angels and Demons,stop here.

Brown writes mystery thrillers, which means that the ending has to be a surprise, and that the obvious suspect has to be proven innocent. In The Da Vinci code, we are supposed to suspect Opus Dei, and in particular the archbishop who has been a father-figure and mentor to the crazy monk Silas. We're also supposed to believe that the French police official, also an Opus Dei member, is in on the plot. At the end, however, in an astonishing twist expected by only about 95% of the readers, Opus Dei and the Bishop turn out to be innocent, and the real villain turns out to be a non-Catholic obsessed with discovering the secrets of the Knights Templar that the Church supposedly suppressed. In fairness to offended Catholics, the movie version of TDVC botched the ending, and managed to suggest that Opus Dei was complicit, when the book was quite clear on the point that it wasn't.

"Angels and Demons" is about the clash between religion and science, argued on a level that would make most junior high school science students roll their eyes. This time, we're set up to suspect the anti-Catholic "Illuminati," and possibly also a distinguished physicist from CERN, only to discover that this time, the real bad guy is on the other side. Here too, however, it isn't the Church as a whole that is condemned, but loose Canons (sorry, couldn't resist) within it. Both the books are ridiculous and pathetically poorly written, but are still guilty pleasures. And as an art historian, I appreciate the fact that they do get people to go and look at some great monuments. But people who take their religion-versus-rationality themes seriously really need to get a life.

P.S. -- Fumphis, yes, I'm afraid you did miss the point, such as it was, of the book. Or at least, you skipped the last chapter, in which that promising young cleric turned out to be -- oh, well, read it yourself, if you have a half an hour to waste. Let's just say that by that time, the hero has survived a two-mile fall from a helicopter without a parachute, and that plot development seems pretty believable compared to the subsequent ones.

Excellent summation, T-Rex. I wouldn't go quite as far as "ridiculous and pathetically poorly written", but they are thoroughly enjoyable beach read type books.

Jack Lemon starred in a movie (whose name escapes me) about a man's search for a son gone missing at the hands of the Chilean death squads during the Pinochet years. It was criticized by Reagan's State Department for painting the death squads in a bad light. Lemmon went on Johnnny Carson to plug the film, and Carson ask him how he felt about that critique. He smiled, put his hands togeether, looked heavenward as though addressing God, and mouthed, "Thank you".

These bozos are professional christians who make their living selling manufactured outrage. They aren't trying to reduce the movie's profit, but to increase their own.

As an ex-Catholic with a lot of baggage regarding the church, and absolute disdain for the slimebucket they now call pope, I generally have nothing good to say about Catholicism. That said, the DaVinci Code was a repulsive smear. It is religious bigotry at its worst and deserves to be treated the same way fair minded people treat antisemitism.

Donoghue's major problem is that for him Catholicism is defined by the majesty and power of the institutions and traditions. For him, the most powerful, spiritual place, the place he must feel closest to his god, is probably the Basilica of St. Peter. Which is an incredible place. I have been to Mass there, although I am not catholic. I have seen the teeming crowds in the square ecstatic at being blessed by the Pope on Easter Sunday. It's impressive. It's all a perfectly reasonable thing to be impressed with. But to me, personally, there is more magic and power in the priest ministering to farm hands in Guatemala, in my college classmate who runs a shelter on Newark, in the small chapels in rural areas struggling to get by. When your faith resides in an institution run by men, no matter how well meaning, you will inevitably be dissapointed and feel the need to defend it against all slights real or percieved, no matter how miniscule.

Jack Lemon starred in a movie (whose name escapes me) about a man's search for a son gone missing at the hands of the Chilean death squads during the Pinochet years.

The movie you are thinking of is called Missing and it is based on the book The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice. Horman was an American journalist who covered the U.S. backed military coup, and for his efforts was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.

There used to be a "Legion of Decency" that howled in outrage during the 50's over a film in which the word "pregnancy" was used. Of course, the movie did much better at the box office than it deserved. Same with the "Da Vinci Code." It was a crappy movie that certainly didn't rate earning three quarters of a billion dollars. These censorship fools never learn. I bet Ron Howard is rubbing his hands with glee and ready to gloat all the way to the bank.

T-Rex, @14,

Thanks for the summaries. I read the DaVinci Code and, though I found the overall plot mildly entertaining, I was appalled at how poorly it was written; never could understand its wild appeal. So, I never bothered to see the film (book-based films are usually worse than the books they use as basis) and put Brown on my list of "never again", thus missing the prequel. I see now I haven't missed anything :)

God, I love Catholic food fights. Can someone get Mel Gibson in here?

Yes Angels and Demons, like The DaVinci Code is fiction and presented as such, but Dan Brown made some unsupported and unwarranted (and likely false) claims and extrapolations in the forward IIRC - that sort of thing is fair game for rebuttal and pushback.

I can't wait to see their reaction if they ever make a movie out of The Genesis Code.

exlibra, I'm with you all the way on the execrable writing of TDVC. Also didn't see the movie for the same reason. On the other hand, since you did read TDVC, you might enjoy "The Asti Spumanti Code," a parody of same, and a pretty darned amusing one at that.

One of the great insights into "meaning" -- that is, the idea that someone communicates "this is true", while another person hears that and thinks "yes, that's so" -- is the Christian aphorism: Seek, and ye shall find.

It takes two to tango, too.

So it's just as true for the relatively few genuinely good Hollywood historical flicks, as it is for the many bad ones: people have to want to believe whatever the message is. Birth of a Nation was an atrocity, an lying obscenity about the rise of the Klan -- but it resounded so much with Woodrow Wilson that he called it not only truth, but "history written with lightning."

Likewise for Gone With the Wind, based loosely on Teddy Roosevelt's mother (Scarlett, before the fall of Tara), and his uncles (transmogrified into Rhett Butler): people with no personal knowledge of slavery or the South before the War and Reconstruction wanted a myth, and that's what Mitchell gave 'em.

LOL -- and if you think it wasn't influential, you haven't read enough textbook history. If nothing else, GwtW is the epitome of the "carpettbagger myth", the pernicious falsehood that the Union imposed corrupt rule on the South -- when in fact, thousands of the mothers and sisters of slain Union soldiers carried on the abolitionist, Unionist cause by going South to open schools to teach emancipated slaves how to read and right, while the emancipated themselves used the few institutions they had developed during slavery (like the church) to form political institutions and win FREE elections.

The carpetbagger myth was cover for the violent re-establishment of white supremacy -- so, yeah, GwtW counted for something.

I don't think that's true of any Brown novel -- very few people are intellectually Catholic, which is pretty much the only way the DaVinci Code or something similar would erode anybody's faith.

I don't know anybody, other than the professionally upset, who took the Code seriously. (This isn't quite true for Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, because it was fishing in much deeper anti-Semitic waters -- and it, too, was fundamentally inaccurate as history because the word "collaborator" was utterly missing: like Anne Frank without the Nazis.)

And, of course, that should have been "The Asti Spumante Code."

The DaVinci Code remained on the best seller list in hard copy for over two years simply because it was a harmless adventure story. Believe that and I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you. It sold because it had allegedly insider information about an evil scheme by the Catholic Church to deceive the world. That's what titillated its readers and it looks like a lot of you bought it because it reinforced your prejudices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-KZyniB4c