{"id":1954,"date":"2006-05-19T08:53:07","date_gmt":"2006-05-19T08:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/mercator-on-dvc.html"},"modified":"2006-05-19T08:53:07","modified_gmt":"2006-05-19T08:53:07","slug":"mercator-on-dvc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/mercator-on-dvc.html","title":{"rendered":"Mercator on DVC"},"content":{"rendered":"

A special issue of this excellent ‘zine…an a review of DVC by a numerary<\/a><\/p>\n

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Naturally, I was curious to see how Howard would deal with Opus Dei, which had complained politely, but persistently, of being defamed in the book. He responded, all right — by turbocharging the defamation. Not only is the masochistic Silas the Mad Monk Assassin a member of Opus Dei, but Howard made the sadistic cop, Bezu Fache, one as well. Apparently we\u2019ve a complete range of S&M in our outfit. <\/p>\n

I felt like raising my hand to explain that Opus Dei is normal men and women, mostly married, just trying to do everyday things for the love of God. Unhappily Ron Howard beat me to it: he inserted a scene in which an Opus Dei bishop (also mealy-mouthed, two-faced and vicious) says precisely that to a reporter. Any similarity to real persons or institutions is unintentional, say the credits at the end. Well, that gets my vote for the greatest lie ever told. <\/p>\n

And the most cowardly, as well. You might remember last year\u2019s film The Constant Gardener<\/em>, in which the villain was the pharmaceutical industry. An evil drug company sends out assassins to knock off whistleblowers. Which drug company? Pfizer? GlaxoSmithKline? AstraZeneca? None of them, of course. The producer would have been taken to the cleaners. But Ron Howard and his producer Sony knew that the Catholic Church can\u2019t fight back and he could tip garbage all over Opus Dei without losing a cent. <\/p>\n

There are countless historical errors and distortions in The Da Vinci Code<\/em>. They offer a great opportunity for Christians to explain what their faith is all about. We have nothing to fear or hide, for the story of Christianity is based four-square on demonstrable facts, not — like Dan Brown\u2019s — on 1066 and All That<\/em>. In particular, I\u2019m going to be highlighting a core theme in Opus Dei, that love of God is a 24\/7 affair which should fill your whole life, not just church on Sundays. In other words, you should bring your faith to work with you. <\/p>\n

Dan Brown and Ron Howard & Co must be nice enough guys in real life. But if so, there\u2019s a chasm between their personal values and their work values. In the publicity lead-up to the film\u2019s launch, Paul Bettany, who plays Silas, told the London Telegraph<\/em>: \u201cThere\u2019s something nice about being able to leave your sense of morality at the door when you come to work in the morning and just be cruel to people all day.\u201d If you want to define what Opus Dei is all about, it\u2019s the precise opposite of that revealing comment. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A special issue of this excellent ‘zine…an a review of DVC by a numerary Naturally, I was curious to see how Howard would deal with Opus Dei, which had complained politely, but persistently, of being defamed in the book. He responded, all right — by turbocharging the defamation. Not only is the masochistic Silas the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMercator on DVC - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/mercator-on-dvc.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mercator on DVC - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A special issue of this excellent ‘zine…an a review of DVC by a numerary Naturally, I was curious to see how Howard would deal with Opus Dei, which had complained politely, but persistently, of being defamed in the book. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}