The Catholic Church has a long history of warring against the infidel (especially if there’s plunder to be had), and even the modern Church has men on call day or night for when a demon needs exorcising. But there’s one facet of evil that starts the Pope quaking in his golden bunny-slippers: Fiction. Tell a story that involves the Church or an analogous institution and paints it in a less-than-perfect light, and suddenly the Catholic League is up in arms.
They ranted about the DaVinci Code movie, but that was nothing compared to their apoplexy over The Golden Compass. Here was a story written by a man who was (gasp!) openly atheist, and portrayed a too-powerful, corrupt religious organization at odds with the forces of reason.
Their most recent fit, and the inspiration for this entry, is the reaction to “Angels and Demons”, a new film based on a book by DaVinci Code author Dan Brown. They’re worried that a church might be used in the making of this new piece of blasphemy, and so:
The Vatican has banned the makers of a prequel to The Da Vinci Code from filming in its grounds or any church in Rome, describing the work as “an offence against God”.
Angels and Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be turned into a film, includes key episodes that take place in the Vatican and Rome’s churches. Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, the head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that Brown had “turned the gospels upside down to poison the faith”.
I’ve not read any of Mr. Brown’s work, nor do I have any plans to see the movies; but if the Church keeps banning them, I’ll probably have to pick one up to see what all the fuss is about.
The Catholics are right to see threats in such stories, of course. Popular fiction can introduce and reinforce news ideas that go against long-standing conventions, slowly enlightening the masses as they become accepted more eagerly than simple, blatant truths tend to be. If I stand up and say, “the Catholic Church’s doctrine is bullshit”, I’m dismissed as a lunatic or a competitor or someone with an agenda; but if I write a good story that gets people to think a little about why the church’s doctrine is bullshit, I’ve chipped away a little more at its crumbling stone walls. History is full of examples where fiction has helped change the world for the better; one that immediately springs to mind is the effect on racial relations in the US of Mark Twain’s portrayal of black characters as actual thoughts-and-feelings human beings.
The irony is not lost on me, when hearing of these expressions of holy outrage, that the Church is protesting against fiction that endangers their own fiction; they’re engaged in a war of interesting lies where only one side is willing to admit they’re just making it up as they go along.
I wonder if the Church is going to have a reaction when the movie “Religulous” comes out.