TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Bishops New Web Site

Bishops New Web Site

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:34:04 -0600

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops took aim at "The Da Vinci
Code" on Friday, launching a Web site that disputes central points of
the best-selling novel.

The site, http://www.jesusdecoded.com, denies one point on which the
novel turns, saying the New Testament "does not offer any support for
speculation about Jesus' being married or having a child."

The novel by Dan Brown centers on the idea that Jesus married Mary
Magdalene, they had children who survived and married into a line of
French kings, that the lineage continues today and a secret society
based in France aims to restore the lineage to the thrones of Europe.

The bishops' group said in a statement that the Web site "presents
authentic Catholic teaching about Jesus and the origins of
Christianity and corrects misinformation that appears in current
popular media."

The site disavows the book's notion that the Leonardo Da Vinci work
"The Last Supper" shows Mary Magdalene bending toward Jesus.

"What this novel does to Leonardo's Last Supper, it does to
Christianity as such," according to the site's introduction. "It asks
people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition
quite a few odd claims.

"Some are merely distortions of hypotheses advanced by serious
scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or
false."

In a section on the art mentioned in the novel, an art historian
wrote: "Along with trashing Christianity, Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci
Code' is a veritable museum of errors where Renaissance art is
concerned."

A copyright trial is currently under way in a London court based on
accusations that Brown borrowed research from the work of two
historians to write his book without acknowledgment.

A paperback edition of the novel is due out this month, with a run of
5 million copies, and a major motion picture adaptation starring Tom
Hanks is due for release in May.

Reuters/VNU
Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

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