Location fee funds Da Vinci Code rebuttal

Tonight at Winchester Cathedral The Da Vinci Code will be described as “usually stilted and often worse … a sensationalist thriller … with all its inaccuracies and absurdities” – and the makers of the film, released next month, have paid for the swingeing attack.

Last winter the tombs of Victorian worthies in the nave were wrapped up in fake ancient stonework, and the glorious medieval building was flooded with special effects mist, through which ranks of armoured Knights Templar assembled to surround the Pope.

The cathedral will be seen in two scenes of the The Da Vinci Code, after several other English churches turned the film-makers down flat.

The Winchester chapter debated whether to host Dan Brown’s plot that for two millennia the church has stopped at nothing, including murder, to suppress the truth that Christ married Mary Magdalene, and that their bloodline survives to this day.

Finally, Winchester decided unanimously to give permission, take the £20,000 location fee – and use it to pay for an exhibition in the cathedral itself, and the lecture series beginning tonight.

Professor Michael Wheeler, curator of the exhibition, launches the series, and later speakers include Michael Scott-Joint, Bishop of Winchester. It all adds up to a point by point demolition of the book and film. The decision to take the money was not just to help with the cathedral’s £6,000-a-day running costs, but to seize the chance to address the huge market for the book and film.

Professor Wheeler said that while The Da Vinci Code was “good for nothing” as literature, “it’s good as a white-knuckle narrative of the kind we see in action movies”. He likes a puzzle himself, and says of the plot’s labyrinth of conspiracy theories and gender politics: “It’s all quite yummy really – it just doesn’t have a lot to do with religion.”

Read Another Article

Scottish Catholic Church launches DVD to debunk Da Vinci Code
Cashing in on 6-6-06

Related News Articles Topic(s): Da Vinci Code Subscribe to Religion News Blog updates Subscribe to Religion News Blog [What is this?] Get Religion News Blog's headline by Email [What is this?] Follow Religion News Blog at Twitter Find Related Information Use our custom search engines to find additional research resources on religions and cults: ApologeticsSearch.com: Search for apologetics articles, books, videos, and other research resources across 135 Christian apologetics websites and blogs. CounterCultSearch.com: Search for information about (religious) cults, cult-like organizations, and cults experts -- as well as paranormal-, New Age, and pseudoscientific claims -- across 260+ websites, blogs and forums dedicated to cult research, spiritual abuse, ex-cult counseling & support. Find Related Religion & Spirituality Books at Amazon.com Da Vinci Code Possibly related... or Most Popular Religion News Articles Kent Hovind: Evangelist arrested on federal charges Beast’s real mark devalued to ’616′ Muslim Woman Gives Sex Advice on Arab TV Michael Jackson Confirms Conversion to Islam Kent Hovind, ‘Dr. Dino,’ guilty on all counts The fall and rise of Carlton Pearson Search False prophet Harold Camping sets another date for rapture: May 21, 2011 Watch the film Theo van Gogh was murdered for Kent Hovind — Dr. Dino — sentenced to 10 years in prison

Search Religion News Blog