On Pilgrimage

God as Father and Mother - Part I

This is the first of a new series inspired again largely by Pope John Paul I, but also by my interest in the writings of his successors about the vital subject of the imagery we use for God. I hope to finish it by this August for the 32nd anniversary of his election as Pope.

In his 1995 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote an in-depth analysis of the modern approach to God. This passage is especially telling:

Hegel’s paradigm of the master and the servant is more present in people’s consciousness today than is wisdom, whose origin lies in the filial fear of God. The philosophy of arrogance is born of the Hegelian paradigm. The only force capable of effectively counteracting this philosophy is found in the Gospel of Christ, in which the paradigm of master-slave is radically transformed into the paradigm of father-son.
The father-son paradigm is ageless. It is older than human history. The “rays of fatherhood” contained in this formulation belong to the Trinitarian Mystery of God Himself, which shines forth from Him, illuminating man and his history.
This notwithstanding, as we know from Revelation, in human history the “rays of fatherhood” meet a first resistance in the obscure but real fact of original sin. Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship. As a result, the Lord appears jealous of His power over the world and over man; and consequently, man feels goaded to do battle against God. No differently than in any epoch of history, the enslaved man is driven to take sides against the master who kept him enslaved. leaving man only with a sense of the master/slave relationship.” (1)

This is a profound statement of the origins of modern humanity’s alienation from God, and the source of so much atheism.

The Pope was not alone in this view. In his book Faith of the Fatherless, Paul Vitz posits that the rejection of the idea of God by many prominent atheists, including Freud, Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be traced to their anger at dead, abusive or emotionally distant fathers. (2)

On the other hand, trying to fill in the gap, we have the pop culture feminist view of God as the “goddess within,” the life-affirming, fun loving earth mother Gaia. One of the most prominent examples of this is the idea of the “Sacred Feminine,” popularized by Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, which counters the teaching of the Church with a sex goddess (I wrote about this here). Not all goddess worship is this silly. But it is often very tied to the rejection of the father. Comments I have heard from those who believe in a goddess indicate that they fundamentally reject the idea of God as an authority figure. A goddess, they reason is non-judgmental, and doesn’t have all the “rules” of the patriarchal male God. Here are more signs of a dysfunctional relationship with the father, as well as the Father.

This trend toward “feminization” of God baffles and upsets many Catholics. Of course, it is hurtful to see God the Father as understood in Scripture and Church tradition rejected by so many people. Not surprisingly, these Catholics particularly resist the idea of God as Mother when people try to bring it into the Church.

Once, maybe four or five years ago, we had a guest speaker come to our Secular Franciscan fraternity meeting in the Bronx. He wanted to give a talk about spirituality, but hardly got beyond the first paragraph where he encouraged us to think of God as mother. He met with fierce resistance to this idea from the membership of our fraternity – which, by the way is 100% female, most of them older women. I, who was the youngest in the group, was the only one not opposed, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The women in the group said to the speaker: “God is our Father; this is traditional, why are you changing it?”

People very frequently say to me when subject comes up: “Replacing God as Father with God as Mother feminizes the Church, and it’s already too feminized!” Or “It doesn’t help the spirituality of men in the church to replace God the Father with God the Mother. Men no longer have a real sense of masculinity because of this.” Or “Jesus told us how to speak of God as our Father, and that’s that. We don’t need any more than that.”

Yet our last three Popes have thought differently.

It all began in September 1978, when John Paul I startled a great many people during his very short papacy by proclaiming, “God is a father, but even more a mother.” (3) Yet this memorable remark doesn’t begin to exhaust what he had to say on this subject both before and after he became Pope. John Paul II continued this trend by speaking about God as mother in his encyclicals and letters, in his audience talks, and even in his lovely proclamation of the Our Father. In turn, his successor, Benedict XVI, has used some of the same imagery, and introduced theological clarifications to it.

Yet the idea of God as mother as taught by the most recent popes has penetrated very little into the mind or life of the Church. Many people continue to identify this feminine and maternal imagery for God with dissent in the Church, or at least with something suspiciously trendy, completely unaware that it is papal teaching.

But why have recent popes spoken about God this way?

It is true that we are almost a fatherless society. We are rapidly becoming a national of single mothers, with hardly a father in sight. Perpetual male adolescence is celebrated as the norm, and the responsibility of fatherhood is something people hardly expect anymore. Many people have no relationship with their fathers. In the past, literally or emotionally fatherless Catholics have often turned to priests as father figures. And yet this relationship has so often been betrayed because of the clerical sex abuse scandal.

Yet this emotional distance isn’t connected with just one parent. Radical feminism, and the prevalence of abortion has wounded many women precisely in their maternal instinct.

Some radical feminist pro-abortion women with whom I have had discussions have shown an amazing disgust for motherhood; they are unable to see pregnancy and childbirth, particularly of an unlooked-for child, as anything but “rape for nine months,” “slavery of the uterus,” and “forced motherhood.” Becoming pregnant makes you no more than a “breeder” or “incubator,” and Christianity, by its praise for motherhood, perpetuates this “dehumanizing” view of women. Some of these feminists have even denied that women have a biological maternal instinct, because this “naturalizes” the idea of women as mother – which is an contradiction of their ideal of woman as a career-driven, independent person; above all, motherhood is a slap in the face to the dream of being able to have sexual pleasure any time they like without unpleasant consequences like children.

What is most frightening of all is that women with this deficient maternal sense sometimes do end up becoming mothers. I feel certain their children must suffer for it. Other women who have had and regretted abortions have also admitted great difficulty in parenting when they do have “wanted” children because of their unresolved guilty feelings. So yes, motherhood in our society is in as much trouble as fatherhood is.

Some who have had both parents who were distant have found they were unable to relate to God as Father or Mary as Mother. One recent commenter on an internet post said:

I think there is definitely a correlation. In my own case, my father was rather distant (spent his energies in various get-rich-quick schemes) and my mother is an alcoholic. I became an atheist, quietly (they never knew) in my teens.
I’m now back Home, but I have a hard time with God as Father — oh, not intellectually (I’m solid there) but in terms of any emotional attachment — the heart just isn’t involved. Nor do I have any idea how to regard Mary as my Mother — again, I accept the concept intellectually, but there simply is no attachment. I have no idea how to change this at all — I just trust that God will forgive me my lack of love, as I truly do want to love Him and His Mother. I just don’t know how. (4)

This suggests that negative reactions to emotionally abusive or absent mothers also influence us spiritually.

But — presuming we can actually form an attachment to a spiritual mother- don’t Catholics have a sufficient mother figure in Mary? Why do we need to speak of God as mother?

Mary is a wonderful spiritual mother to us. Yet Mary is not God nor any part of God. In fact Catholics know that it is blasphemous to call Mary God. So she is not a divine mother; a divine mother is different.

If Mary really were sufficient as a spiritual mother, we wouldn’t expect to see John Paul II put forward the maternal image of God as he did. For it is just about impossible to imagine a more ardent or devoted lover of Mary than he was!

It’s well known that Karol Wojtyla lost his mother at a very early age. Soon afterward he asked the Blessed Virgin to become his mother. He put Totus Tuus (All Yours) on his episcopal coat of arms out of devotion to her. After the assassination attempt against him in 1981, he credited her with deflecting the deadly bullet from his heart. We can find a similar robust devotion to Mary in the other two Popes I have mentioned. So we can’t say that it was a lack of devotion to the motherhood of Mary that led them to speak of God as mother. Evidently, sometimes only a divine Mother will do.

Still, many have as much difficulty with the idea of God as Mother as they do with God as Father. Given that our sense of the motherhood as well as fatherhood of God may need healing, I hope we can learn something of what divine motherhood is like and how it differs from the neo-pagan conception of Gaia and the Sacred Feminine.

So I plan to make “God as Father and mother” the subject of my next few posts. We will learn something of what John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have thought on this subject.

I think it’s important to stress that I am not striving to “replace God the Father with God the Mother” as some good Catholics fear – and some feminists are actually trying to do. I want to explore the maternal images of God that exist in the Bible that have come to be an important though unacknowledged part of the papal Magisterium and how they can affect our spiritual lives.

So next time I will start with the teaching of John Paul I.

(1) John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, paperback ed., (New York: Knopf, 1995, 2003), pp. 225-26.

(2) Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism; Dallas: Spence Publishing Co, 2009).

(3) Angelus address, September 10, 1978; L’Osservatore Romano [Italian ed], 11-12 September 1978.

(4) Comment by “J” on Mark Shea’s blog Catholic and enjoying It on December 6, 2009.

Filed under: Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II, The Da Vinci Code | |2 Comments

The Murphy Case:
What Really Happened inside the CDF

For various reasons, I haven’t been blogging in the last week or so. The most important reason was the fact that on March 21, the night of the House vote on health care, my laptop’s hard drive failed and it had to be taken in for repair. It was unavailable for a week and I am only just now getting up to speed. So I haven’t blogged on the fallout of the health care vote. But now something else has gotten my attention. This is a major and totally unfair attack against the Church and especially the Pope, that is all over the news during Holy Week; it is one that cries out for an answer.

By now, everyone has heard from the media that in 1998, Pope Benedict XVI while head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), supposedly failed to expel a priest who had molested deaf children from the ranks of the clergy, that he “looked the other way.” Ratzinger is said to have blocked the trial and kept the priest from being laicized because of a letter that the priest in question, Fr. Lawrence C. Murphy, wrote him in January 1998, saying that he had repented and was in poor health, and begging the Cardinal not to take “the dignity of his priesthood” from him.

Some bad, even malicious reporting by the New York Times has distorted the record in this case and I want to do by best to rectify it.

Fr. Murphy headed a school for the deaf in Milwaukee from 1950 until 1974. After persistent rumors that he had molested students under his care were investigated by the diocese, he was pulled from the school by the Archbishop Cousins of Milwaukee and sent to a different diocese, Superior, Wisconsin, to live with his mother; he was given no parish assignment, but nevertheless continued to be active in ministry. The police had been notified by the victims, but after investigating, dropped the case. A later civil lawsuit had also gone nowhere.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s congregation only entered the picture some twenty-two years later, in July 1996, when the subsequent Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, wrote a letter to him at the CDF for guidance as he sought to have a canonical trial for Murphy at the request of some of his victims, who also wanted him to be laicized. The CDF had no jurisdiction over abuse of minors by priests at the time; Weakland contacted the Congregation because Fr. Murphy had been accused of soliciting his victims for sex in the confessional, which did fall under Ratzinger’s jurisdiction. For about nine months, there was no answer, which has been seen as indicating a lack of caring by Cardinal Ratzinger and his congregation. But delays of this type really unusual for the Vatican. Oddly, no one seems yet to have questioned why Weakland sent no follow-up letter for some six months, although he was supposedly eager to get on with the case. At any rate, in March 1997, Weakland did hear from Ratzinger’s second in command, the Secretary of the CDF, then Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, with instructions about the proper application of canon law.

By late 1997, the case had been transferred to the diocese of Superior, where Murphy was residing. Murphy wrote his pleading letter in January 1998, which was not directly answered by the CDF. Weakland and other bishops involved met with Vatican officials at the office of the CDF on May 30, 1998 to discuss the case. According to the notes of Bishop Richard Sklba, Weakland’s auxiliary, they had not been encouraged to pursue a formal dismissal of Fr. Murphy from the clerical state. On August 19, Archbishop Weakland wrote to Rome to say he was stopping the trial, and Murphy died 2 days later, on August 21, 1998, without any real redress for his victims.

This case began to cause a furor last week when it appeared in the March 25 New York Times in a story by Laurie Goodstein under a headline screaming: “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest who Abused Boys.” It created a firestorm of controversy. In some quarters there are calls for Benedict’s resignation. But the Church is fighting back. My own Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, has weighed in here.

What is unique in a way about this — and a sign of the vitality and rich possibilities of the new online journalism — is that the online NYT article was accompanied by 86 pages of documents from the case produced in the dioceses of Milwaukee and Superior as it was carried all the way up to the CDF. Yet Goodstein made very little use of the documents herself in her inflammatory account. In fact, the documents themselves tell a very different story than the news article. They also leave a slightly different impression impression of what happened at the meeting than do the accounts of the U.S. bishops involved.

In spite of what the NYT and others say, it is clear that the then Cardinal Ratzinger had no real connection to the case. While the initial letters from Weakland were written to him, the case was delegated to Bertone, who unlike the theologian Ratzinger, has a degree in canon law, and therefore was the obvious person to handle the matter. There is no indication of what, if any, decisions Ratzinger made in regard to Murphy; not a single letter or document from him appears in the files, not even an answer to Fr. Murphy’s letter. Bertone could very well consulted with his boss in the matter, but we can deduce nothing about this one way or another from the documents. Most important, however, Fr. Murphy’s letter was not the deciding factor in the case. This is important since even many of the Pope’s defenders assume that the decision was made because Murphy was ill or dying. But this evidently is not really what happened.

First of all, it is clear that in the early stages, that Bertone actually helped the trial process along by waiving the statute of limitations reporting offenses of this kind; this is revealed by his letter to Bishop Raphael Fliss of Superior, where the trial had been transferred. And yet in the same letter, Bertone summarized the contents of Murphy’s letter for the bishop, and suggested to him that before going to trial he might look for other pastoral solutions as outlined in canon law. Fliss wrote back on May 13, 1998, to say that he had considered the matter, but that they had exhausted pastoral solutions and were proceeding to trial. (In fact, the trial was begun after decades of inaction by the diocese).

The most crucial document in the case, however, is the only one in the NYT dossier that is not in English — the minutes, in Italian, of the meeting in the office of the CDF a few days later, on May 30, 1998, attended by the three U.S. bishops involved, Bertone and other Vatican officials and priests. A copy was sent to Weakland after the meeting. The document is crucial because it was in this meeting that the final decisions were made, or at least the way things would be decided were made clear. It also clearly gives the CDF’s own perspective on the case. But the translation supplied in the dossier, which was done by computer in 1998 by Fr. Thomas Brundage, the Judicial Vicar of the Diocese of Milwaukee, does not give a very clear picture, to say the least, of the original minutes.

I got involved in the story when I was reading the documentation myself and saw that what had been said at the meeting wasn’t accurately represented in the translation. Since I’m a professional translator with a pretty thorough knowledge of Italian, I made my own translation, which I sent to the estimable Jimmy Akin, who is working on a meticulous account of the story using the documentation at the National Catholic Register. He plans to use it. I’m also posting it here.

The minutes make it clear that the real motivating factor for the CDF’s actions in discouraging a canonical trial was not Fr. Murphy’s plea for “mercy” - neither his age, his illness nor his letter are directly mentioned in the minutes — but the fact, clearly expressed by Bertone, that there didn’t seem to be enough documentation or evidence in the case to go to trial. Arcbishop Weakland admitted during the meeting that the archdiocese had kept no records of its own investigation back in 1974. The diocese had failed to attempt to bring the case to trial for over 20 years, and it had been 35 years since the first cases of molestation had occurred. For Bertone, this distance in time was “the true problem, even from the canonical side.” It’s fairly easy to read into this a criticism of the diocese of Milwaukee for badly botching the whole business and delaying justice for so long.

The minutes also suggest that the CDF felt that pastoral measures, far from being exhausted, hard barely begun. Particularly noteworthy is Bertone’s very clear indignation at the fact that Fr. Murphy still had any contact with the deaf community in Milwaukee and was still saying Mass there — something that had particularly upset the victims and their families. Bertone told the U.S. bishops in no uncertain terms to put a stop to this.

Finally, reading paragraph 4, it’s clear that the CDF was not ruling out either a trial or laicization in the case (though Bertone’s undersecretary was more hopeful about the possibilities of a trial than he was). Weakland had explained to Vatican officials that Murphy was actually unrepentant. This is a contradiction of what Murphy had said in his letter, though no mention of the letter appears in the minutes, as I have said. The subsequent discussion makes it clear that Bertone and his undersecretary wanted the dioceses to make use of pastoral provisions before, not instead of, going to trial. They urged the bishops to use the threat of a trial or “canonical dismissal from the clerical state” (laicization) to persuade Fr. Murphy to admit to his crimes and realize the grave nature of the evil he had done; something that certainly would have been a help to him as well as those he had molested. Those deciding the case were all priests, after all, and were concerned with Fr. Murphy’s soul as they were for the well-being of his victims.

It’s also important to note that it is not necessary for a priest to have been found guilty in a trial for him to be laicized — this is made clear by the fact that diocesan officials were thinking of beginning the process for Murphy’s laicization even before his trial was fairly underway (NYT documents, p. 68). The Vatican would have to approve such an eventual laicization, but nothing in the minutes or the other documents suggests that they would have refused to do so.

The pastoral solutions envisioned were not really applied because of Murphy’s death. Again, in spite of what the NYT article says, there didn’t seem to be any clear indication or realization by those at the meeting that Fr. Murphy was dying.

In conclusion, though the Congregation may have been initially slow in acting, and Archbishop Weakland was obviously dissatisfied with the results, it’s clear that the blame lies almost entirely with the diocese of Milwaukee itself for failing to act for so many years, not with the CDF, which had been left with the thankless task of picking up the pieces — and now, unfortunately, with taking the blame.

Most of all, it is also clear that there was no refusal of laicization, that the CDF acted responsibly and there is absolutely no evidence of any blameworthy conduct by the future Pope Benedict XVI.

Here are the minutes of the meeting in full. All the emphases are in the original.

The meeting took place on Saturday, May 30, 1998 in the office of the CDF. Present for the CDF were: His Excellency, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary, who presided over the meeting, the Rev. Father Gianfranco Girotti, Undersecretary. Don Antonio Manna of the Disciplinary Office, Don Michael Jackels (translator) and Fr. Antonio Ramos. Present were Their Excellencies the prelates who had requested the meeting: His Excellency, Rembert Weakland, Archbishop of Milwaukee (USA), his Auxiliary, His Excellency, Bishop Richard Sklba and His Excellency, Raphael Fliss, Bishop of Superior (USA).

1. His Excellency Archbishop Weakland briefly set forth the previous facts of the case, bring out the following points: 1) there have turned out to be many victims of the abuses by Fr. Murphy, all of them deaf; 2) in 1974, there was an intervention in Fr. Murphy’s case, but nothing had been recorded in the archdiocesan archives (it appears that there was a civil lawsuit, which ended without any penalty being imposed on the accused and the intervention consisted of sending the said priest to another diocese, i.e. Superior); 3) the deaf community is now experiencing great indignation because of this case and refuses any pastoral solution; 4) because of the long period of time that has passed since the events took place, it is no longer possible to begin a civil lawsuit in the state of Wisconsin; 5) Fr. Murphy has no sense of remorse and does not seem to realize the gravity of what he has done. In addition, 6) there is the danger of great scandal is the case is publicized by the press. According to the testimonies that have been collected, Fr. Murphy’s misdeeds had their origins in Confession.

2. His Excellency the Secretary of the CDF – stressing both the long period of time that has now passed (more than 35 years!) from when the events took place, which constitutes the true problem even on the canonical side, and the fact that there have been no reports of other crimes perpetrated or scandals created by Murphy during these years in Superior – maintains that there is insufficient information to instruct a canonical process. Nevertheless, he stresses, it is unacceptable for him [Murphy] to be able to go and celebrate the Eucharist in the deaf community in Milwaukee; it will be necessary, therefore, to impede him, having recourse also to some penal remedies. For precautionary reasons, he can be ordered to celebrate the Eucharist only in the diocese of Superior, especially since this is agreed to both by his Ordinary i.e. the Archbishop of Milwaukee and the Ordinary of the place where he resides. But such a provision must be communicated to him in writing. [1]

3. In regard to the possibility of a canonical process for the crime of solicitation in Confession, His Excellency the Secretary draws attention to some problems that it presents: 1) first of all the difficulty of proving such a crime, the interpretation of which will have to be made in stricto sensu [in the strict sense]; the difficulty that deaf people have in furnishing proof and testimonies without aggravating matters [2], keeping in mind both the limits inherent in their disability and the distance of the events in time. Nevertheless, he stresses, it will be necessary to make Murphy reflect seriously on the grave nature of the evil he has done and on the fact that he will have to give proofs of reformation. 3) He mentions finally the broad right of [self]-defense that exists in the U.S. and the difficulties that would be put forward by the lawyers in this direction.

4. His Excellency Archbishop Weakland commits himself to try to obtain from Father Murphy – whom he compares to a “difficult” child – a declaration of repentance; all three psychologists who have examined him consider him a “typical” pedophile, who therefore “considers himself a victim.” In this regard, the Under-Secretary [of the CDF] Father Gianfranco Girotti, stresses that the said priest will have to give clear signs of repentance, “otherwise we will have to have recourse to a trial.” His Excellency the Secretary [i.e. Bertone] proposes imposing on him a period of spiritual retreat together with a salutary admonition in order to be able to understand whether he really is repentant or not, otherwise, he would expose himself to the risk of having more rigorous measures imposed on him, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state. He then advises entrusting him to a priest as his spiritual director, with meetings every one or two months.

5. His Excellency the Secretary finally sums up the two central points of the line to be followed in regard to the priest, in a word: 1) the territorial restriction of the celebration of the Eucharist and 2) the admonition to induce him to show remorse.

Before the conclusion of the meeting, His Excellency Archbishop Weakland thought it important to restate that it will be difficult to make the deaf community understand the slight extent of these provisions.

Notes

(1) Bishop Sklba’s own notes from the meeting add a bit more to this: “Archbishop Bertone noted that the disobedience of any precept forbidding contact with community members could be the basis for another canonical process.” (p. 61 of NYT documentation). In fact, both Weakland and Sklba had forbidden Murphy to have contact with the deaf in Milwaukee, but he had evidently disobeyed them (p. 37)

(2) aggravare i fatti. This is a difficult passage, and I’m not sure what is meant. The words could be very general, but they could bear the interpretation that because of their difficulty in communication, the deaf people could make Fr. Murphy’s misdeeds seem worse than they were. From the context it really isn’t clear.[Update: this is what I originally wrote; recently in an audio interview, Archbishop Weakland said that the deaf community in Milwaukee was deeply divided on this case; many of the older people disbelieved the victims and believed Fr. Murphy. If so, the victims' testimony against him could well have deepened the divide, and perhaps this is what Bertone was referring to when he mentioned the testimony "aggravating matters."]

Update: Monday, April 5: Jimmy’s piece is up! It’s really great and very detailed. Don’t miss it.

Update: Wed April 7. Our story has been picked up all over the Internet — including the Catholic News Agency!

Plus an Italian paper has now independently noticed how the bad translation distorts the truth (though I did it first).

Update, April 7: The Wall Street Journal has an article with still more documents on the case, making it clear how the bishops of Milwaukee and Superior had previously tried to prevent Fr. Murphy from going to Milwaukee and had imposed other restrictions on him.

Update, April 8: Now the excellent Get Religion blog has a full story on the work that Jimmy and I have done. I also have some comments there.

Update: April 13: I’ve even been linked to by a French blog! Magnifique!

I have been periodically correcting and updating this piece, and may yet do more.

Filed under: Pope Benedict XVI, The Da Vinci Code, sexual abuse by priests | |5 Comments

Dan Brown’s Code Gets Scrambled

A lot of people think Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol, is disappointing.

No, seriously. At least some of them (according to the reviews on Amazon) think it’s “anticlimactic” because after all the breathless chasing after secrets, mysteries and hidden coded symbols, it ends up with – the revelation that the true Word is the Bible! The Bible as interpreted by Dan Brown, of course.

This is what I found out so far, anyway. I don’t have time to read the whole thing at this point (if ever). But what I’ve managed to find out is certainly revealing enough. The novel deals with a plot against the Freemasons which Robert Langdon (as always, a kind of stand-in for Brown himself) must thwart, along with the requisite mysteries to solve and secret symbols to decode. But it’s the ending that’s really interesting.

SPOILERS STRAIGHT AHEAD (for anyone who actually cares about the plot)

With the night’s events over, Peter [a Freemason] decides to show Langdon the true Word. He shows Langdon that it is hidden in the cornerstone of the Washington Monument, and that the Word is actually the Bible. Peter reveals that the true Ancient Mystery is in fact the realization that people are not God’s subjects, but in fact possess the capability to be gods themselves. Once they realize this fact, they will open the gateway to a magnificent future. (From the Wikipedia summary)

Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same Bible (at least the New Testament part of it) that Brown described in The Da Vinci Code as a paste-up job by the mean old Emperor Constantine, intended to suppress the truth that Jesus was just a human being and not divine? The Bible that was part of a plot to suppress the sacred feminine?The Bible that was supposed to be so inferior to the ancient Gnostic texts? The same Bible? Really?

Brown doesn’t show any understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, since nothing in the actual Bible would ever lead anyone to think that “people are not God’s subjects.” Jesus does indeed tell us we are to become perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect, but makes it absolutely clear that the only way to achieve this is through obedience to Him.

It’s not clear whether Dan Brown himself actually knows which piece of idiocy he really believes, or if he really believes anything at all. Of course, an author isn’t required to actually believe any theory he has his characters put forth in his books, but this waffling certainly puts the lie to his repeated statements that everything he wrote in The Da Vinci Code is factual, things that he has been actually propagating as a kind of religion.

And many of his acolytes who have been pulled up short in their breathless search of secrets and mysteries that must be so much more interesting than the Christian religion, in their eagerness for more esoteric revelations about the sacred feminine, are annoyed at finding themselves back with – the Bible. What a let-down!

If only they had some understanding of the truth actually revealed there, which is much more exciting than anything Dan Brown has ever put forth.

Par for the course. I’m sure the book is filled with tons of mistakes in geography, history, the nature of the Freemasons and just about anything else you can name.

Now I may be totally unfair to Brown, because I haven’t read the book, only the plot summary and a couple of excerpts, so there may be more to his thoughts than this – but I seriously doubt it. Maybe some of my readers can enlighten me.

I can’t resist just one actual quote:

“I hate to embarrass you, Professor,” the woman said, sounding sheepish, “but you are the Robert Langdon who writes books about symbols and religion, aren’t you?”
Langdon hesitated and then nodded.
“I thought so!” she said, beaming. “My book group read your book about the sacred feminine and the church! What a delicious scandal that one caused! You do enjoy putting the fox in the henhouse!”

Don’t think much of yourself, do you, Dan?

Update: September 18.

In case you’re interested, the secret anagram for The Lost Symbol is MOLEST BY SLOTH. Sounds a lot like Brown’s working method to me.

Filed under: Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol | |2 Comments

“Angels and Demons,” Mary and Myth

I haven’t had time to comment on the latest film from the oeuvre of Dan Brown, Angels and Demons, due to hit theaters this Friday, May 15. In fact, it hasn’t created nearly as much controversy as The Da Vinci Code. I haven’t had time to read it either (I had a hard enough time making it through the other book), but Angels, based on a Da Vinci Code prequel, has the reputation of being less anti-Catholic than his more notorious work.

That judgment is probably a somewhat relative one, since, from the Wikipedia summary, the book apparently has not only the same type of breathless, nonsensical thriller plot, but the same abundant basic errors in historical fact, literature, art, science, geography and just about everything else you can name. And the same distorted view of the Church as an institution relentlessly opposed to science and progress. A major part of the DVC was its description of the Priory of Sion, a secret organization of which Leonardo and Sir Isaac Newton were supposed to have been Grand Masters, and much was made of them as scientific freethinkers opposed to Church doctrines (no matter that this was far from the truth).

The trailer for Angels and Demons mentions the “brutal massacre” the Church carried out against another secret society, the Illuminati. The who? you might ask. According to Brown, the Illuminati were a society of scientists, founded in the 1500’s, of which Copernicus and Galileo were members. Copernicus was supposedly killed by the Church for spreading scientific truths. In 1668, the Church carried out the supposed “massacre” on the Illuminati leaders, leading the sect to vow revenge . . . As you might expect with Dan Brown, not one word of this is true. Just more distortions and lies passing themselves off as history.

What is true is that there was a society similar to the Freemasons, the Illuminati, found in Bavaria in 1776, which lasted just a few years before it was suppressed by the Carl Theodor, the ruler of Bavaria (not a heresy-hunting Churchman, by the way, but an “Enlightened despot” himself). As for Copernicus, he died of a stroke in 1543 at the age of 70.

Here are two excellent takedowns of the errors in the book and film by Steven Greydaus of Decent Films, and sci-fi author John C. Wright.

Nevertheless, L”Osservatore Romano (what is it with this paper recently?) is praising the film as “harmless entertainment”. No real mention of the above lies, however, or the fact that historical lies do harm the Church — and history itself as well — as I’ve pointed out here.

Another troubling aspect — and there is a major SPOILER ahead, so beware — the book’ plot climaxes with the unveiling of the fact that it was the cardinal Camerlengo who murdered the recently deceased Pope. Worse yet, a secret society is involved. . . This plot point, of course, has been quite overworked in the last three decades in regard to John Paul I’s death, and his Camerlengo and Secretary of state, Jean Cardinal Villot, who has been unfairly maligned for decades by being accused of his supposed murder. Without having read the book, only a summary of the plot, I can’t say how great the similarities between the plots and characters are. I certainly hate to see it brought up again, though, even in another context. Let’s hope the film doesn’t lead to another rash of conspiracy theories in John Paul I’s case. (although, according to Steven Greydanus’ just-out review, the film’s Camerlengo plot and the climax differ significantly from the book’s).

And word is that Brown’s next book, The Lost Symbol, due out this fall, has something to do with Freemasons, and what do you want to bet, the Catholic Church as well? . . .

Update (evening of May 14): I’ve just read and can highly recommend Mark Shea’s e-pamphlet Answering Angels and Demons, from Ascension Press. Go here to get a free downloaded copy for yourself. It will answer everything you want to know about Dan Brown’s errors, the Church’s relation to science, and a number of other subjects.

Answering Angels and Demons

Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), I also received in the mail today the 3-volume set of Shea’s Mary, Mother of the Son (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2009). This trilogy, written by a Catholic who is a former Evangelical, is intended to reach not just Catholics, but Evangelicals and other non-Catholics. Mark Shea discusses with verve, insight and humor what what the Church really teaches about Mary. Volume 1, Modern Myth and Ancient Truth, manages to answer both Evangelical critics, who claim the Church’s worship of Mary is merely pagan goddess-worship, and Brown’s claim that the Church suppressed paganism and the Sacred Feminine (For all his blather about the Sacred Feminine, Mary is strangely, the one New Testament figure Brown utterly ignores). Instead, Shea shows the real relationship of Mary, the Church and paganism, and how the Gospel and grace actually crowned and transformed pagan beliefs. I’m nearly finished with the volume, and it’s a great treat.

Mary, Mother of the Son

You can get the book here.

Filed under: Angels and Demons, Dan Brown, Film, Myths and Mythology, Pope John Paul I, The Da Vinci Code | |No Comments

The Darkest Con of all . . .

Seems like Dan Brown has indeed been hard at work on his Da Vinci Code sequel. Here’s a sneak peek.

This one’s just irresistible. Thanks to Mark Shea for pointing it out.

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