In a thought-provoking post at Gay Patriot, Dan (GayPatriotWest) reviews a movie I haven’t seen and wasn’t planning to see (The Da Vinci Code), and the film made him think about the tension between our joint Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman heritage:….

The book is entitled:
“Buried Alive – A Discussion on Overcoming the ‘Seven Lifeless Sins’”.

Its premise is that most of Christians are not evil.
Must of us don’t have 12 mistresses. We aren’t serial killers.
Rather, it is the the sly and subtle sins of life – sins like fundamentalism and materialism and comfort and busyness – that keep us from the life we were intended.

By referencing over 2600 Scripture verses “Buried Alive” discusses how each of us can overcome the hidden dangers of lifeless living.

“Fresh, bold and convicting.” – Jason Pollack,
Project Coordinator, Soderquist Center for Leadership & Ethics

“…will shake you out of a business-as-usual faith walk. A must read.” – Ivan Max Dunn,
Retired US Navy Captain

“Buried Alive: A Discussion on Overcoming the Seven Lifeless Sins” is available now at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com

Come join the discussion!

(Upon reading the book I would love to hear your personal feedback. You can reach me at: jenkinsbookinginfo@yahoo.com)

I didn’t know I was defending the Catholic Church. I was sharing what our parish priest offered as his perspective last Sunday… no, he didn’t get clearance from Rome before talking. I think he nailed it.

Not to put too fine a point on it… but if I were you and had been “run out” I would have run back in via another door or found an alternative parish because I know the people INSIDE church as sinners (just like me) working toward salvation.

I know gay Catholics. I know black Catholics. I know Republican Catholics. I know pro-choice Catholics. I know anti-war Catholics. Every last one of them shares a common bond with you and me: sinners all.

Church isn’t a political party. It isn’t a sports team. It isn’t an investing group. It isn’t a book club. It’s isn’t meant to be a convenient association.

You don’t quit your Faith anymore than you quit your Country. If your Faith isn’t strong enough to confront bigotry, then your “faith” isn’t worth exercise.

With all due respect, you didn’t get “run-out” by someone or something; YOU ran out, fled. The Church is still there, still filled with sinners and bigots, still filled with people trying to work toward salvation –and a few others who aren’t sure why they are there.

I’d rather be in there mixing it up with fellow sinners than take comfort at “having left” and now being able to toss bricks.

Now does it sound like I’m defending the Catholic Church? LOL, I guess now I am.

The truth is that when something makes it up on the screen –it connotes a false truth and credibility to many. Just like with Last Temptation, JC Superstar, and the Passion –people take away from these emotional films falsehoods that are packaged as truth. Ollie Stone’s films, Stevie Segal’s anti-corporate drivel, the “cops are crooks” genre, and countless other examples make the point.

Just like another post here about Mikey Moore’s current trouble over F-911 or, after it has been better dissected, like with Al Gore’s upcoming docu-drama pseudo-science film on global warming… truth sometimes evades the movies as easily as it does DanRather’s producers.

I never have subscribed to the notion that “…They don’t know it’s fiction? Please. Then they get what they deserve.” Even lemmings, dear hank, deserve to be saved from the cliff’s edge.

It’s why I still have marginal hope for the GayLeft.

My parish ran me out because I was a gay Eucharistic Minister. How can you defend them?

DaVinci Code is hogwash, but I can’t defend the Roman Catholic faith.

You give no credit at all to the movie going public? What are they ” morons”? They don’t know it’s fiction?
Please. Then they get what they deserve.

This truth is stranger than these fictions

Dan Brown, quite unwittingly I’m sure, has done us a great service – he has made known to the general population the existence of certain ‘stories’ about Jesus.

The Qur’an’s portrayal of the ‘Virgin Mary’ and Brown’s Da Vinci Code share a common genesis and will eventually meet up at the same destination.

How can this be? Well…a couple of millenia or so, ago, a thirst to know more about Jesus than the gospels revealed gave rise to the concoction of various ‘fables’.

These ‘fables’ were tailored specifically to resonate with certain audiences and to meet perceived needs and prevailing ‘expectations’. Naturally therefore, they were riddled with historical errors.

The Da Vinci Code and part of the Qur’an’s ‘Virgin Mary’ story borrowed material from this ‘fabled’ library and, living up to time-honoured tradition, tailored their own ‘fables’ to resonate with certain audiences and to meet perceived needs and prevailing ‘expectations’. Naturally therefore, they also are riddled with historical errors.

Being only a ‘lending’ library, however, these ‘fables’ based on ‘fables’ will eventually be called in by their rightful owner – the great ‘fable’ library of history.

“FACT: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

But they aren’t. How would you feel if a “fiction” book came out with the above statement emblazoned on the front page, and then the backstory involved the following “facts” – that homosexuals were not targeted for execution by the Nazi party, that the Stonewall riot was the plot of a secret cult of pedophiles and infanticists, that every homosexual who ever lived was part of a vast conspiracy to undermine society as we know it?

Just some fun fiction? How about if the backstory also ascribed secret rituals and verifably false histories to gay advocacy groups?

But it says “novel” on the cover, so anything is fair game?

Like that bit about Mona Lisa being an anagram for Egyptian gods? Trouble is, Da Vinci never named the portrait Mona Lisa.

Folding up the “Virgin on the Rocks?” It is painted on wood. It can’t be done.

The list of verifiable historic errors in the novel are too numerous to list. This is fine for a very loose work of fiction, not one that begins with the claims that the DaVinci Code does.

Some movie goers don’t know it’s fiction, hank. That’s the point of alarm for some Christians.

AMEN! Oddly enough, a lot of contradictions between various Christian doctrines just go away when you look at them through buddhist terminology and concepts. One example – “Clinging” and the deluded sense of ego it arises from turns out to be a very good analysis of Original Sin, and it dispenses with all the nonsense about why a loving god would create people one way (sinful)and then damn them for it.

“I don’t know why celibacy has such a mystique about it other than in relation to the idea that the spirit is good and flesh is bad and therefore sex is bad. ”

Synova, that is obviously a very valid way of looking at it, but remember that Shiva was a celibate ascetic for whatever number of eons, and he is anything but a goody-goody.

I had the same reaction to Ollie Stone’s “JFK” –where it’s implied the military was involved in the murder of Kennedy– or Spike Lee’s movie on Malcolm X where blame for his death seems shifted from the Nation to the FBI.

For most Americans, seeing it on the screen tends to make one believe that it’s true or real. It’s why Micheal Moore and Al Gore understand that if they can gain the legitimacy of the screen and the credibility of a docu-drama format, it’ll be believed by most viewers.

The flick U93 proves the point about the compelling nature of docu-drama formats.

I like the comment of our parish priest last week about his lack of concern over the film’s success… he said, “The people going to see it and whose faith is changed because of it, don’t deserve to be called religious or Catholic. A film like this can influence those of weak spirit or faith –but not the righteous or true. It’s a film for the ChrisEasters and those suspicious of and intolerant of religion in the first place”.

ChrisEasters (pronounced KREE-sters) are those Catholics who come out of the closet for Mass on Christmas and Easter and fail to live a faith-based life the other 363 days of the year.

I liked the movie for the same reason I like Ludlum novels, LeCarre books, T Harris, Tami Hoag, Grisham and Patterson… thrillers that strain reality in all the right places –but works of fiction nonetheless.

He said the Bible needs a disclaimer at the front saying that it’s a work of fiction and on Bill Maher’s show said he believes what the character he plays in the movie says regarding Jesus having a wife etc. to be true….

Sic em Magneto!

As for the story, I thought it seemed as believable as the original. I suspect that’s why the church despises it so. Because of its simplicity, this notion that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife is probably an idea that will stick.