Vatican official attacks "The Da Vinci Code...."

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, officially known as "Preacher of the Papal Household," while officiating a Good Friday mass at St. Peter's Basilica, lashed out at Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, calling it an example of "literary and artistic parasitism" in a sex-obsessed society.

Father Cantalamessa was quoted as saying:

"In an unending stream of novels, films and plays, writers manipulate the figure of Christ under cover of imaginary and non-existent new documents and discoveries. This is becoming a fashion, a literary genre."

"Our time, obsessed as it is with sex, seems unable to portray Jesus in any other way than as a homosexual, or as one who taught that salvation is to be found in uniting with the feminine principle and gave the example by marrying Mary Magdalene. The passion and the crucifixion of Christ? All later inventions of the Church!"

"Yet if in some extreme cases believers react and phone to protest about these things, some people are scandalized and decry it as intolerance and censorship."

"Intolerance has changed sides in our day, at least in the West: where we used to have religious intolerance, we now have intolerance of religion!"

It seems like The Da Vinci Code has touched a raw of nerve of sorts within the Catholic Church. Earlier this month, Genoa Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has urged all Catholics to refrain from reading it, dismissing the the book as nothing more than "a sack full of lies" and even discouraged Catholic bookstores from selling it.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of this anymore. And frankly I'm a bit confused. A part of me is puzzled why a book which has never been purported to be anything more than a work of fiction...albeit, a very fascinating work of fiction...has stirred up this much brouhaha. I'm a Catholic, I've read it as well as Dan Brown's other works, and, at least as far as I'm concerned, I don't believe that the book has affected my faith in any way. If at all, I believe it made me more aware of my faith.

I also find myself appalled by all the fuss these church officials are making over the book. Nobody is claiming that the book is an authoritative source of information on Jesus Christ. The call to Catholics to shun the book is coming dangerously close in concept to censorship, or possibly even a reinstatement of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books) — also called Index Expurgatorius.

Here's an excerpt on the Index of Prohibited Books from AbsoluteAstronomy.com:

The Index of Prohibited Books is a list of publications which Roman Catholics were banned from reading, "pernicious books", and also the rules of the Church relating to books. The list was intended to prevent the reading of immoral books or works containing theological errors and so prevent the corruption of the faithful.

The Index of Prohibited Books was created in 1559 by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church (later the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). The index was regularly updated until the 1948 edition, with materials being added by either the Congregation or the Pope. The list was not simply a reactive work; the authors were encouraged to defend their works, they could re-publish with elisions if they wished to avoid a ban, and pre-publication censorship was encouraged.

The 32nd edition, published in 1948, contained 4,000 titles censored for various reasons: heresy, moral deficiency, sexual explicitness, political incorrectness, and so on. Notable novelists on the list were Laurence Sterne, Voltaire, Daniel Defoe, Honoré de Balzac, Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the Dutch sexologist Theodor Hendrik van de Velde, author of the sex manual The Perfect Marriage.

Some of the Index's actions were of a definite political content: in 1926, the Action Française magazine, espousing far-right French causes, was put in the Index.

The Index's effects were felt throughout much of the Catholic world. For many years in areas as diverse as Quebec and Poland it was very difficult to find copies of indexed works, especially outside of major cities. The index as an official list was relaxed in 1966 under Pope Paul VI following the end of the Second Vatican Council and largely due to practical considerations. It remains a sin for Catholics to read books which are injurous to faith and/or morals.

Going back, are we returning to the annals of ignorance when it would be the Church which would tell us what we should believe in? Remember, if we did just that, we would still be insisting that the Earth is at the center of the universe, still be burning alleged witches and heretics at the stake, still be believing that the world was literally created in seven days and that we were molded from clay in the image of God. (Actually, some really do still believe that the world was literally created in seven days, and that we were indeed molded from clay in God's image, but let's talk about Creationism versus Evolutionism in another post.)

Historically, the Church has made a lot of booboos. If you want to talk logically, I believe that God is infallible. I may even believe that the Church itself is infallible. But the Church consists of men. An no man is infallible. Self-contradictory? Oxymoronic? Perhaps.

Suffice it to say that I personally disagree with any Church policy which even hints at censorship, or controls what Catholics ought...or ought not to read. I believe that we are responsible enough and possess the moral and intellectual faculties needed to to decide what we want to read and what we want to believe in. If God is willing to give us free will...so should the Church. To treat us as immature, ignorant children is nothing more than a downright insult to our intelligence.

On the other hand, some sectors argue that Catholics have become too tolerant of attacks against their religion. I mean, imagine if a book came out even vaguely hinting that the Prophet Mohammed was a farce. Or the Buddha for that matter. Or that the holocaust never happened. Just imagine the outrage that would ensue. And yet, here is a book indirectly hinting (maybe that's the key word: "indirectly") against the divinity of Jesus Christ. Maybe I should be outraged, yet I am not. Maybe Church leaders have a point in criticizing anti-Catholic writings, like "The Da Vinci Code" in particular.

Somehow, I would like to think that Catholics are just more tolerant (perhaps to a fault?) of other beliefs, or just more open-minded. Isn't it our religion which taught us to "turn the other cheek?" Maybe that's why there are a lot of martyred Christians and Catholics throughout history. And it's all just a matter of faith. Just think about it this way: if a fictional novel can make you question your faith, maybe...just maybe...you never had any to begin with.

Scary thought, isn't it?