{"id":2202,"date":"2006-05-10T08:57:33","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T08:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html"},"modified":"2006-05-10T08:57:33","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T08:57:33","slug":"todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html","title":{"rendered":"Today’s DVC thoughts and links"},"content":{"rendered":"

1) There is a bit of a news buzz around Ron Howard and company’s refusal to provide any type of "disclaimer" for the film, particularly in relationship to Opus Dei. Media and blogging types are scoffing at OD, pulling out the "relax it’s a movie" line. Well, step back a minute. Opus Dei is not <\/em>a fictional organization. It’s real. DVC <\/em>mischaracterizes <\/strong>(to put it mildly) Opus Dei. It slaps the name of a real organization on actions that include murder and meglomaniac global control. It calls it (something like) an extremist sect. That’s not true. We’re not talking theories here. We talking falsification and lies. Why should<\/em> Howard and company be able to get away with this with nothing but a chuckle on late-night television? The burden’s on them in this one.<\/p>\n

2) I want to re-direct you to Fr. John Wauck’s "Da Vinci Code Catechism." – I do think this is worth forwarding to any priest you know who’s preaching over the next couple of weeks.<\/a> It’s a really sound approach that serves the greater purpose of teaching some truth, rather than just reacting.<\/p>\n

3) I’ve been thinking a lot about what readers of DVC actually absorb as "true" or close to it. I picked apart the variations in this effect in my piece on the bishops’ site<\/a>, but as I was driving about yesterday, a slightly different angle occurred to me.  DVC definitely feeds into the "CouldBe" mode of historical inquiry, and while most readers don’t believe the specifics of the Priory of Sion, etc., what they do <\/em>seem to be buying is the fundamental DVC contention that Christianity is based on nothing more than some guys promoting their version of Jesus and winning. Or something – a general sensibility that is being reinforced by the prominence of folks like Pagels and Ehrman. <\/p>\n

So I’d say that there are a couple of fundamental DVC lessons that are being absorbed by a good proportion of the general readership – and absorbed, not necessarily because they’re new, but because they reinforce various ideas, assumptions, and theories they’ve heard in the past:<\/p>\n

1) The doings of Jesus and his disciples in the first century are essentially unknowable. We have no idea what really happened.<\/p>\n

2) Those who promoted what became the orthodox Christian core did so because they sought power. They won, and suppressed the other views, simply because they wanted their story to win.<\/p>\n

3) Mary Magdalene has been maligned as a sinful prostitute through 2000 years of Christian history.<\/p>\n

That’s what I’m hearing in the interview questions I’m getting – a dismissal of the sillier stuff, Well, of course we know that’s not true, 60 Minutes, hahaha…<\/em>but then a statement like, "BUT…."<\/p>\n

So, no disclaimer needed Ron, my friend. But in my experience, those three points are sticking and seem to have staying power. And because I like, you know, the truth, pardon me for fighting them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1) There is a bit of a news buzz around Ron Howard and company’s refusal to provide any type of "disclaimer" for the film, particularly in relationship to Opus Dei. Media and blogging types are scoffing at OD, pulling out the "relax it’s a movie" line. Well, step back a minute. Opus Dei is not…<\/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-2202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nToday's DVC thoughts and links - 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\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Today's DVC thoughts and links - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"1) There is a bit of a news buzz around Ron Howard and company’s refusal to provide any type of "disclaimer" for the film, particularly in relationship to Opus Dei. Media and blogging types are scoffing at OD, pulling out the "relax it’s a movie" line. Well, step back a minute. Opus Dei is not…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-05-10T08:57:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Today's DVC thoughts and links - Via Media","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\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Today's DVC thoughts and links - Via Media","og_description":"1) There is a bit of a news buzz around Ron Howard and company’s refusal to provide any type of "disclaimer" for the film, particularly in relationship to Opus Dei. Media and blogging types are scoffing at OD, pulling out the "relax it’s a movie" line. Well, step back a minute. Opus Dei is not…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-05-10T08:57:33+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html","name":"Today's DVC thoughts and links - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-05-10T08:57:33+00:00","dateModified":"2006-05-10T08:57:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/todays-dvc-thoughts-and-links.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Today’s DVC thoughts and links"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/2202","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=2202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}