Angels & Demons:Fahgedaboutit

[HagiaSophia]

A novel about deceit and decay at Vatican enchants … Italians?
After being released in Italy last month, Dan Brown’s book, ‘Angels and Demons’ has been getting mixed reactions.

By Sophie Arie
ROME Pope John Paul II’s latest memoirs, “Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way,” may have topped Italy’s bestseller list in 2004, but by the end of the year, many Italians were reading a decidedly different book: “Angels and Demons.”

The novel - released here last month - is classic Dan Brown: Like his better-known blockbuster, “The Da Vinci Code,” this earlier work follows the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon - accompanied, of course, by an erudite and beautiful female scientist - as he uses historical clues hidden within Renaissance art to unravel a murder mystery.

Fans have flocked here to retrace Langdon’s architectural scavenger hunt. Several tour companies now offer “Angels and Demons” tours.

But where “The Da Vinci Code” may be unflattering to the Catholic church, some Catholics consider “Angels and Demons” insulting. Its tale of a warped mind desperate to save the faith takes Mr. Brown’s challenge right to the Vatican’s door.
For fervent Catholics, Brown’s success is the latest evidence that anti-Catholicism is not merely, in the words of US religious historian Philip Jenkins, “the last acceptable prejudice.” It is fashionable.

“Catholics have to put up with all sorts of abuse that would be considered outrageous if targeted at any other religion,” said lawyer Gianluca Bacchi, leaving the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere after mass this week. “The Catholic Church is depicted as not just old-fashioned and out of touch but amoral, power hungry, and sexually perverse.”

Dan Brown has denied that “Angels and Demons” is “antireligious or anti-Catholic.” But some readers say that his sensational conspiracy theories could intensify the anti-Catholicism that has swept Europe in recent years.

The plot details an attempt to destroy the Vatican with an antimatter bomb and contains disturbing images of naked cardinals murdered in Roman churches, Swiss guards bundling bodies into car trunks, and a poisoned pope who turns out to have fathered a test-tube baby.

abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=387448

 

[Shoshana]

Hagia,

This totally disgusts me. It anguishes me to see so many people caught up with this as an ‘exciting suspense novel’. The damage that this could cause is immeasurable. Our canan layer here in this diocese loves Davinci’s Code. I am not impressed…this canon lawyer who worked at the Vatican for a couple of years…go figure.

Blessings,
Shoshana

 

[HagiaSophia]

Shoshana:

Hagia,

This totally disgusts me. It anguishes me to see so many people caught up with this as an ‘exciting suspense novel’. The damage that this could cause is immeasurable. Our canan layer here in this diocese loves Davinci’s Code. I am not impressed…this canon lawyer who worked at the Vatican for a couple of years…go figure.

Blessings,
Shoshana

There are truly days when it feels as if during the night one was transported to some distant planet because one can’t comprehend where some of the people are coming from - and this exploitation of the uneducated, the uncatechized and the historically vague is really a sad thing. For some reason this “feeds” people in such a bizarre way - they never question any of it - they just think Wow I never heard that before. One wishes the messages of the Gospel and the Commandments were as easily absorbed.

 

[wisdom_3_5]

HagiaSophia:

There are truly days when it feels as if during the night one was transported to some distant planet because one can’t comprehend where some of the people are coming from - and this exploitation of the uneducated, the uncatechized and the historically vague is really a sad thing. For some reason this “feeds” people in such a bizarre way - **they never question any of it **- they just think Wow I never heard that before. One wishes the messages of the Gospel and the Commandments were as easily absorbed.

Funny how people of faith are characterized as not being able to think for themselves yet, it seems to be par for the course for the majority of people. I’ve learned far more history since I left High School then anything they taught me there. That was 22 years ago. . . makes me wonder what’s being taught in schools now. Certainly not being able to think critically.

 

[tee_eff_em]

HagiaSophia:

But where “The Da Vinci Code” may be unflattering to the Catholic church, some Catholics consider “Angels and Demons” insulting. Its tale of a warped mind desperate to save the faith takes Mr. Brown’s challenge right to the Vatican’s door.
For fervent Catholics, Brown’s success is the latest evidence that anti-Catholicism is not merely, in the words of US religious historian Philip Jenkins, “the last acceptable prejudice.” It is fashionable.

I dunno, I felt the Da Vinci Code was much more anti-Catholic than Angels & Demons. Sure there are sinister players in both, but in the former the Church (or “the Vatican” as Brown often anachronistically refers to her) is an agency of evil, while in the latter it seems morally neutral. Yeah, yeah, it destroyed all the pagan statuary from the pantheon, but at least it also preserved much of the same in its museums (which seems the most compelling reason Lagndon has to preserve it from annihilation).

But I positively love this quote, from p40 of A&D paperback:

“Conspiracy buffs,” Langdon replied. He had always been annoyed by the plethora of conspiracy theories that circulated in modern pop culture. The media craved apocalyptic headlines, and self-proclaimed “cult specialists” were still cashing in on millennium hype with fabricated stories that the illuminati were alive and well and organizing their New World Order. Recently the New York Times had reported the eerie Masonic ties of countless famous men – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Duke of Kent, Peter Sellers, Irving Berlin, Prince Philip, Louis Armstrong, as well as a pantheon of well-known modern-day industrialists and banking magnates.

Exactly my opinion of Dan Brown!

(And don’t get me started on his errors of fact regarding the Sede Vacante and the Vatican (The secret passeto between the Vatican and Castel San Angelo!? Does he mean the broadside of a barn big aqueduct-looking thing that runs between them, and that’s explained in any tour book you pick up, and if it isn’t you should demand your money back from the salesperson who never should have made the move up from McDonald’s to Barnes & Noble…!!? Oy vey!)

tee
(Who secretly wishes the late Peter Sellers had seized world-dominating power – Can you imagine? )