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BERTONE-DAVINCI Mar-15-2005 (380 words) xxxi
Italian cardinal: 'Da Vinci Code' plays on anti-Catholic sentiment
By Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The success of Dan Brown's novel, "The Da Vinci Code," is the result of a marketing strategy playing on anti-Catholic sentiment, said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, Italy.
The cardinal told Vatican Radio he was particularly concerned about the fact that the book, first published in Italian in 2004, now is available in paperback and is popular among high school students.
"There is an idea circulating in the schools that one must read this book to understand the dynamics of history and all the manipulations carried out by the church in the course of history," Cardinal Bertone told Vatican Radio March 15.
"This is truly sad and terrible," he said, explaining why he had scheduled a public discussion about the book in Genoa.
Cardinal Bertone said the most ridiculous premise in the novel is the Catholic Church's alleged "obliteration of the feminine aspect from the Gospel narratives and in the life of the church."
"There is nothing more false," he said, pointing to the importance the church gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the attention the Gospels pay to Jesus' female disciples, including the women who announced to the male disciples that Jesus had risen.
"There is nothing more false than the need to rediscover a -- how can I say it -- an 'amazon' Mary Magdalene in order to recuperate the presence of women" in the church, he said.
"The more mystifying element" of the book, Cardinal Bertone said, is its "denial of the death and resurrection of Jesus."
Cardinal Bertone, calling the book a "castle of lies," said he thinks promotion of the book is an anti-Catholic reaction to all the positive attention paid to the Catholic Church and the Christian faith during the Holy Year 2000.
The cardinal said it seems acceptable to be anti-Catholic; "I ask myself what the reaction would be to a similar book, full of lies, about Buddha or Mohammed or if a novel came out manipulating the whole story of the Holocaust, the Shoah."
Part of the book's marketing strategy, he said, is to try to convince people "that one is not an adult Christian if one has not read this book. But I say, 'Do not read it and, especially, do not buy it.'"
END
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