{"id":2740,"date":"2006-04-24T00:29:51","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T00:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html"},"modified":"2006-04-24T00:29:51","modified_gmt":"2006-04-24T00:29:51","slug":"the-ultimate-irony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html","title":{"rendered":"The ultimate irony"},"content":{"rendered":"

When reporters attempt to dissect the "reaction" to the Da Vinci Code<\/em>, they concentrate on the Christians. The non-Christians deserve a day in the sun as well.<\/p>\n

If you visit various discussion boards on the web, what you’ll find are conversations that usually end up focusing on the basics: Does God exist? Who was Jesus?<\/p>\n

And for some reason, unknown to me, atheists and materialists seem to believe that DVC <\/em>is on their side. <\/p>\n

Of course, I hasten to say that in my opinion DVC <\/em>is on no one’s side except Dan Brown’s – I’ve always tried to walk a line that’s careful to answer the questions<\/em> the novel raises in readers’ minds, but without taking the book itself too seriously. There is no great thinking going on here, and to expend a lot of effort arguing over what ideology or spiritual system lies behind it seems to give the book way, way too much credit. <\/p>\n

But as I’ve been reading over discussion boards and reflecting on my own email, I’m struck by two points:<\/p>\n

1) Atheists and materialists who use DVC, <\/em>thinking that the book is an argument for their side. To the extent that we even want to dignify it with the word "argument" – let’s remind those guys of something important. There’s divinity in DVC <\/em>all right. It’s all over the place. All over women, all over and in Mary Magdalene, and perhaps (main oui!) <\/em>even in Sophie Neveau. It’s just Jesus who gets left out. It’s a fun little point of illogic to bring up in discussions. <\/p>\n

2) Those who don’t care about the specifics of DVC<\/em>, but are glad that Christianity gets drilled. I think I mentioned last week about the letters I get scoring my DVC <\/em>work that barely mention DVC. <\/em>It’s kind of weird, but also kind of explains a lot.<\/p>\n

And just a reminder (I post this occasionally, because we have new readers all the time) – my work isn’t a response to The Da Vinci Code. <\/em>The existence of this novel in itself is of no consequence to me, as is the case with 99% of what’s on the "fiction" shelf. Okay – 97%.  I wouldn’t have said a word past my initial review if the mail hadn’t begun to pour in after that review was published. Mail indicating that some readers were taking this seriously. So, my work is a response to questions some readers have about DVC.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Christopher Blosser <\/strong>of the Ratzinger Fan Club<\/strong> has put together an excellent page of resources and articles. <\/a> He’s got linked an article that I also link on my own DVC page, and one that I would heartily recommend if you’ve got someone who’s sold on DVC, but won’t listen to you because you’re a religious fanatic and all that: Laura Miller’s "Da Vinci Crock" article from Salon from 2004. <\/a>Not exactly a religious fanatic, there. And she gets the job done just fine, pressing the basic point: Hey. The Priory of Sion was a fraud. Why do we need to talk about this for even one second more?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When reporters attempt to dissect the "reaction" to the Da Vinci Code, they concentrate on the Christians. The non-Christians deserve a day in the sun as well. If you visit various discussion boards on the web, what you’ll find are conversations that usually end up focusing on the basics: Does God exist? Who was Jesus?…<\/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-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe ultimate irony - 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\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The ultimate irony - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When reporters attempt to dissect the "reaction" to the Da Vinci Code, they concentrate on the Christians. The non-Christians deserve a day in the sun as well. If you visit various discussion boards on the web, what you’ll find are conversations that usually end up focusing on the basics: Does God exist? Who was Jesus?…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-24T00:29:51+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":"The ultimate irony - 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\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The ultimate irony - Via Media","og_description":"When reporters attempt to dissect the "reaction" to the Da Vinci Code, they concentrate on the Christians. The non-Christians deserve a day in the sun as well. If you visit various discussion boards on the web, what you’ll find are conversations that usually end up focusing on the basics: Does God exist? Who was Jesus?…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-04-24T00:29:51+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\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html","name":"The ultimate irony - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-04-24T00:29:51+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-24T00:29:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/the-ultimate-irony.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The ultimate irony"}]},{"@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\/2740","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=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}