Dan Brown Hurt by Vatican Criticism
Monday, April 11, 2005
(SNN) The story is one we have heard a thousand times. Jesus had sex and children with Mary Magdalene that are still alive today carrying out sinister plots against the wishes of the Catholic Church which wants to take over the world. Now the author of “The Da Vinci Code”, Dan Brown, finds himself under criticism by the same Catholic Church which made him so much money.
Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone used a Vatican Radio broadcast to urge all Catholics to boycott “The Da Vinci Code”
Last month, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone used a Vatican Radio broadcast to urge all Catholics to boycott “The Da Vinci Code”. "My appeal is as follows,'' he said. “Don't read and don't buy 'The Da Vinci Code.’” Cardinal Bertone has called the book "a sack full of lies". An assessment shared by the author’s publisher, DoubleDay, who insisted on listing the book under Fiction. Some have even gone as far as to point out that there is no Dr. Robert Langdon, a central character to the book. This may be too little too late though, as the book has been translated into 40 languages and has sold 25 million copies. There is also a movie in the works, but fortunately for the Vatican, it stars Tom Hanks, and very few people will actually see it.
Cardinal Bertone has called the book "a sack full of lies"
This has come as quite a blow to Brown, who has only made $50 million off the book in the last two years, and is signed into a multimillion dollar multi-book deal at DoubleDay. Brown describes the attention the Vatican has given him as a dramatic life change. Much like Salmon Rushdie, Brown has had to go into hiding. He has had to shy away from public places because of the number of people who line up to speak with him. He has also suffered the indignity of having to appear in a John Travolta movie with Aerosmith.
Things are not going so well for those who want to boycott the book. Some say that the protesting of the book from Vatican officials is a good enough reason to think that there is something inside that the Vatican does not want people to know. This has struck a chord with religious conspiracy theorists that long believed that Jesus was married, or gay, or a woman or an alien or all of those things. Also book sales of Brown’s “Angels and Demons” have risen dramatically since the death of the pope.
