{"id":12,"date":"2008-06-17T10:39:33","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T10:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo.html"},"modified":"2008-06-17T10:39:33","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T10:39:33","slug":"angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo.html","title":{"rendered":"“Angels OR Demons?” No ecstasy for Ron Howard or Dan Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ecstasy.jpg\"<\/span>So the Diocese of Rome (that’d be the pope’s diocese) has barred Ron Howard and Tom Hanks<\/a> and the production team filming “Angels & Demons,” the “Da Vinci Code” prequel\/sequel, from shooting inside two churches in the Eternal City. At the risk of committing pop culture heresy, I can only say: Bravo!
\nI don’t necessarily base my condemnation on the anti-Catholicism of Brown’s novels, which do traffic in those stereotypes and certainly give church authorities every right to bar such filming. And before you go off on a Brown-ish rant, note that the Vatican is not stopping filming of the exteriors of the churches in question, and that the Anglican Communion also barred filming inside some sacred locales during shooting of the Da Vinci Code for similar reasons–offenses against Christian belief, history, and the rest. Besides, the two churches are gems–Santa Maria della Vittoria houses Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstasy (or is that Mary Magdalene?) and Santa Maria del Popolo has the remarkable Caravaggios of the conversion of St. Paul and the crucifixion of St. Peter. Spare a thought for them, at least!
\n\"Tom<\/span>But Brown’s anti-Catholicism is so cartoonish as to be almost laughable. Less amusing is his writing. Sure, I’m a sucker for a paperback thriller, more than most. I knew Robert Ludlum backwards before Matt Damon was born. But for me, Brown’s writing is a greater sin against the spirit than almost anything else in the books. I tried, I really did, not to read “Angels & Demons” once the “Da Vinci Code” tsunami broke. But it’s part of the job…So I read it on a plane ride to Rome, and it didn’t make the trip any shorter. Maybe I needed that plasma-fueled X-33 jet that no one ever heard of that gets Langdon from Manhattan to Geneva in an hour. (“Not Geneva, New York<\/em>, Mr. Langdon. Geneva, Switzerland<\/em>.” OMG!!! Does anyone know there is a Geneva, NY? And does anyone realize he coulda done the same to Rome!)
\nCould anything be worse than “The Da Vinci Code”? Turns out “Angels & Demons” makes a case. More there than one post can critique, but I’m sure there will be other opportunies to do so. But one beautiful passage, from Page 115 in the paperback, when Our Hero, Robert Langdon, the most brilliant intellect in the Western World, is reminded that, oh yeah, the pope just died:<\/p>\n

“How could he have forgotten. It had been in the news recently.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The real secret: Dan Brown is a humorist, the David Sedaris of thriller writers. But I am spitting into the wind. I can’t help myself. This movie will be a phenom, and our cross to bear for the next year or more. Maybe I’ll learn to deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the Diocese of Rome (that’d be the pope’s diocese) has barred Ron Howard and Tom Hanks and the production team filming “Angels & Demons,” the “Da Vinci Code” prequel\/sequel, from shooting inside two churches in the Eternal City. At the risk of committing pop culture heresy, I can only say: Bravo! I don’t necessarily…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\n"Angels OR Demons?" No ecstasy for Ron Howard or Dan Brown - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Angels OR Demons?" No ecstasy for Ron Howard or Dan Brown - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So the Diocese of Rome (that’d be the pope’s diocese) has barred Ron Howard and Tom Hanks and the production team filming “Angels & Demons,” the “Da Vinci Code” prequel\/sequel, from shooting inside two churches in the Eternal City. At the risk of committing pop culture heresy, I can only say: Bravo! I don’t necessarily…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-17T10:39:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/Ecstasy.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Angels OR Demons?\" No ecstasy for Ron Howard or Dan Brown - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/06\/angels-or-demons-no-ecstasy-fo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Angels OR Demons?\" No ecstasy for Ron Howard or Dan Brown - Pontifications","og_description":"So the Diocese of Rome (that’d be the pope’s diocese) has barred Ron Howard and Tom Hanks and the production team filming “Angels & Demons,” the “Da Vinci Code” prequel\/sequel, from shooting inside two churches in the Eternal City. At the risk of committing pop culture heresy, I can only say: Bravo! 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}