STILL FUMING over the “blasphemous” film adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the Catholic Church has banned filming – in the Vatican and inside all other churches in Rome – of Angels & Demons, an earlier Brown thriller now in production.
According to Worldwide Religious News, the Vatican has concluded that the latest Brown movie would be “an offence against God” and would “wound common religious feelings”.
Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had:
Turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business.
And Father Marco Fibbi, spokesman for the diocese of Rome, said:
Normally we read the script, but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough. When a film is about the saints or about stories regarding the Church’s artistic values, then we give permission. But when it is a question of content which does not relate to traditional religious criteria, then our doors are closed.
The Vatican fiercely condemned both the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version, which starred Tom Hanks as the Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Hanks also stars in Angels & Demons which, like The Da Vinci Code, is directed by Ron Howard.
Published before The Da Vinci Code – which suggested that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children – Angels & Demons revolves around a plot by a sinister elite known as The Illuminati to seize control of the papacy during a conclave to elect a new Pope.
Key scenes are set in the Vatican and two Rome churches, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria. In both churches cardinals are murdered and mutilated with mysterious marks and symbols.
Vatican officials said that they had been unable to prevent the filmakers shooting exterior shots of St Peter’s and the surrounding medieval streets of the Borgo. But the marble halls and staircases of the former Royal Palace at Caserta near Naples are having to be used to double for Vatican interiors.
The Vatican asked the faithful to boycott the film of The Da Vinci Code, which Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Archbishop of Genoa and now, as Secretary of State, the right-hand man of Pope Benedict XVI, described as a “phantasmagorical cocktail of inventions” and “a pot-pourri of lies”.
Honestly, the way the Catholic Church bangs on about movies like these, you’d think they have a monopoly on “inventions” and “lies”.
5 Comments
Well, I cannot see anything wrong in the ban: they have the right to allow or not filming inside their churches.
In addition, Dan Brown opus is indeed a pot-pourri of esoteric and religious lies. Does anyone think the opposite?
I am an atheist, but I have to defend whoever I think is right, sorry.
¡Peace!
I loved the way the catholic church were banging on about “A book full of lies and fairy tales” (or some such).
So that’ll be the bible, then?
But Angels & Demons is absolutely the worst book I’ve ever read… CERN even has a web-page devoted to debunking some of the stuff in there…”No, CERN doesn’t have a space plane…”
That’s all well and good for them to not like the movie or the book as everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but the fact still remains that both Angles & Demons and The DaVinci Code are fictional books. As in, NOT FACT.
I fail to see why it’s SUCH a big deal… If people are dumb enough to believe EVERYTHING they read in a book, just because it uses factual people/places/things/etc then, in my opinion at least, they deserve to be lumped into the same group of idiots that all ‘true Christians’ are in.
Also, minor point of contention: The Illuminati are not trying to fix the papacy. They are trying to completely destroy the Catholic church by blowing up Saint Peter’s Basilica. Just FYI.
I wish someone in Hollywood had the imagination to film R.A. Wilson & Robert Shea’s ‘Illuminati Trilogy’ instead of Dan Brown’s bilge.
Far funnier on religion, conspiracy theories & just about everything else. Having taken a few of the ideas up already I’m sure KLF would come out of retirement to do the sound track too.
Weren’t the Catholic Church kind of good guys in Angels and Demons?
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