Da Vinci Code in Rome

Da Vinci Code, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

The Da Vinci Code film is being given a massive advertising campaign in Rome. Very fitting and extremely appropriate, given the accusations made against the Roman Church in the book.

I believe that the book did not sell well here and that even the pope suggested to people not to read it.

I found the book to be an exciting read, if the characters are rather annoying and the plot so unrealistic. But I was very glad that the book was written and has been so widely read because it brings to very large numbers of people the fact that the Romans perverted the course of Christianity by applying a totalitarian regime, similar to what mibght have been seen in Russia and China in the 20th century.

A small committee sat down and decided which books could and could not be read. The state then outlawed anyone with opposing views, often killing them, certainly confiscating and burning books, indeed whole libraries of books, which were not deemed to accord with the official line, they re-wrote existing books to reflect their views, forging whole parts of the nasty parts of the letters of Paul, for example, made up stories to ' explain' inconsistencies in their own texts, and generally re-wrote history.

One of the effects of this was to plunge Europe into ignorance during the so-called Dark Ages, and when real learning came back with the Renaissance, the Church responded with the Inquisition.

We have been thinking of erecting monuments to all those pagans, so-called heretics and anyone else who has been persacuted and murdered in the name of the Roman Church. We always hear so much about the martyrdom-obsessed early Christians who were supposed to have been so persecuted, well maybe it is time to recast history and give time and consideration to those who have suffered from the Church.