Opus Dei cartoon and TV series to boost image

[tee_eff_em]

Opus Dei cartoon and TV series to boost image

Opus Dei, the ultra-conservative Catholic organisation portrayed as a secretive and sinister sect in The Da Vinci Code, is looking to improve its image by sponsoring a television mini-series and a children’s animated cartoon.

By Nick Squires in Rome
Last Updated: 5:04PM BST 02 Oct 2008

Dan Brown’s hugely popular book, and the subsequent film starring Tom Hanks, depicted the Roman Catholic order as a religious cult which would stop at nothing – including murder – to cover up the ‘truth’ that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had married and had a child.

Most damaging for Opus Dei was Brown’s fictional character Silas, the self-flagellating and serial-killing albino monk, said to be a member of the organisation – despite the fact that it is not a monastic order and has no monks.

Opus Dei has recently embarked on a public relations campaign to try to dispel its image as a powerful but shadowy off-shoot of the Roman Catholic Church.

The mini-series and cartoon are the latest initiatives in the charm offensive. They were announced on the 80th anniversary of the organisation’s founding by a Spanish priest, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, who died in 1975.

The cartoon is in the production phase by Mediaset, the media company owned by Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

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[fannypanny]

o my, that doesnt sound too good!!!
honestly, this is getting seriously ridiculous…Opus Dei is like any other order in the Catholic faith! except its made for lay people.
well…im sure there will be another petition on the web preventing it’s release (well hopefully).

 

[Reynardus]

I wish them good luck but I have misgivings. When I was a kid, I really hated the endings of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe when they spelled out some lesson in some didactic, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face melodramatic format. (“Don’t do this kiddies, it’s bad for you…duh”) I find most kids end up resenting such lessons deep inside.

The best cartoons usually have their moral statement hidden in an excellent plot or character behavior. Lessons are better absorbed compared to the former. Most religious cartoons I’ve seen unfortunately tend to be the He-Man type. I hope that’s not the case with this one.

 

[Pro_Domina]

Uh no the thing is that they are not like anyother order in the Church. They aren’t even an order. They are Personal Prelature.

But forget the cannonical stuff, that is clear.

It is the way they actually are that makes them wierd, not their statutes.