Catholic clergymen and activists really really don't want you to see The Da Vinci Code.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a distinctly Catholic organization, has garnered over 100,000 digital signatures to this letter, which they sent to the producers of The Da Vinci Code and Columbia Pictures:

Columbia Pictures
Attention: Producers of The Da Vinci Code

I am deeply opposed to your making a film out of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. Before you go any further with this project you should consider that millions of Catholics see this as Christ-bashing and insulting to the Catholic Church.

• The book, written as fiction, attacks all I hold sacred — the Divinity of Christ, the Gospel, the Papacy and the holy mysteries of my Faith.
• The novel is simply deceitful, replacing Our Lord Jesus Christ with an anti-Jesus Christ.
• The Holy Catholic Church is misrepresented as a cruel power that betrays Christ and His teachings.
• Furthermore, be sure that if you go ahead and produce the film, millions upon millions of Catholics will become engaged in the largest peaceful and legal protest ever seen.

Sincerely,

On another webpage the ASDTFP brags that "if anyone knows blasphemy," it's the former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez. Cardinal Medina is the man who had the honor of announcing the new Pope last year.

Medina has proclaimed the assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had sexual relations "simply blasphemous." There you go — case closed!

On April 28, Archbishop Angelo Amato, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (old name: The Holy Inquisition), criticized The Da Vinci Code book and film, and urged Catholics to organize protests worldwide, while speaking at a Catholic conference in Rome.

According to the news agency Ansa, the Archbishop said the book was, "full of calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors regarding Jesus, the Gospels and the Church."

He added: "I hope all of you boycott this film."

If you want to participate in a protest outside a theater, the ASDTFP has got you covered. You can download their "Protest Organizer Kit" and Protest Posters and Handouts. The Kit tells you what to say to reporters, what to chant through your bullhorn, and even reminds you not to get into verbal or physical fights with the blasphemous sinful movie-going public.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the pontifical household since 1980, managed to get in two swipes for the price of one last month in his Good Friday sermon at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Refering to the recently unveiled modern translation of the Gospel of Judas, he said, "There is much talk about Judas' betrayal, without realizing that it is being repeated. Christ is being sold again, no longer to the leaders of the Sanhedrin for 30 denarii, but to editors and booksellers for billions of denarii.

"We cannot allow the silence of believers to be mistaken for embarrassment and that the good faith of millions of people be crassly manipulated by the media, with raising a cry of protest, not only in the name of the faith, but also of common sense and healthy reason.

"No one will succeed in halting this speculative wave, which instead will flare up with the imminent release of a certain film. "The apocryphal gospels on which they lean are text that have always been known, in whole or in part, but with which which not even the most critical and hostile historians of Christianity even thought, before today, that history could be made," Father Cantalamessa said.

He said the Gospel of Judas, The Da Vinci Code and other works like them each have "a common explanation: We are in the age of the media and the media are more interested in novelty than in truth."

Not to be outdone in rhetoric, Archbishop Hector Aguer of La Plata, Argentina, during his Palm Sunday sermon accused the world of fomenting a "wave of hatred against Jesus Christ and the Church" that "bears the markings of a conspiracy."

Examples of this conspiracy include:

• A recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine in which a famous rapper appears wearing a crown of thorns
• A short movie on Christmas in which Jesus and Santa Claus get into a fist fight
• Obscene cartoons about Jesus in a French newspaper
• The logo of a popular Swedish brand of jeans depicting a skull with an inverted cross. "More than 200,000 pairs of the jeans have been sold, and the designer has said his intention was to speak out against Christianity," the archbishop stated.
• The "infamous fables of The Da Vinci Code, which will gain new strength with the upcoming release of the film"
• The "so-called Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic writing that was refuted by St. Iraneus in the year 180.... It has been presented as something new by National Geographic Magazine, thus taking advantage of the occasion of Holy Week. It also promises to be a successful economic move," he said.

"To all this one can add the numerous profanations of the Sacred Scriptures, the blasphemies against the Most Holy Virgin, and the growing, ubiquitous pressure to remove crosses and other Christian symbols from public places," the archbishop added.

Not content just to make his points above, the Catholic World News reported that he then whined about the "widespread condemnation and rejection of recently published cartoons depicting Mohammed, as well as the rapid activation of democratic mechanisms condemning discrimination and infringement upon religious freedom whenever there is the slightest attack against the Jewish community. And yet, he continued, 'the apathy, the leniency, the suspicious silence in response to attacks on the Christian faith stands out. It seems that Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, can be attacked with impunity,' Archbishop Aguer said."

Image: Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, center

Catholic Church | Catholics | May 19 | Da Vinci Code | Dan Brown | Jesus | Pope Benedict | Father Raniero Cantalamessa | Vatican | Gospel of Judas | Film | Movies | Archbishop Hector Aguer | American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property | Sermons | Conspiracy