{"id":4187,"date":"2006-03-12T00:35:49","date_gmt":"2006-03-12T00:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html"},"modified":"2006-03-12T00:35:49","modified_gmt":"2006-03-12T00:35:49","slug":"simply-bizarre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html","title":{"rendered":"Simply bizarre"},"content":{"rendered":"

A NZ paper report on native son Michael Baignet’s testimony at the Holy Blood\/Holy Grail – DVC trial. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

"Brother Michael" Baigent’s job as editor of the quarterly Freemasonry Today<\/em> can hardly pay much, though that and his books force him to keep the family address in Somerset secret. Being a prominent Freemason and critic of the Catholic Church seems to attract strange and not necessarily friendly types, the family feels. Tansy says she once suggested her father use a nom de plume: "At the time he wrote Holy Blood Holy Grail<\/em>, he got quite a lot of stigma. I think he had to face quite a few hostile people but he didn’t want to hide away." <\/p>\n

Jane adds: "Obviously the Pope and the Catholic Church got upset about him because he criticised the Catholic Church in his book The Inquisition<\/em>. But if he thinks something needs to be exposed or brought into the public domain, he will say it." <\/p>\n

And perhaps that is why Baigent seems so composed in the witness box. For him, it is not just a legal battle but also a philosophical one. He is playing for higher stakes. <\/p>\n

Maybe that’s why Dan Brown, a devout Christian, looks concerned. <\/p>\n

Outside the court, the usually reclusive Brown insisted that he would never deny the crucifixion: "I am well aware of Christ’s crucifixion and ultimate resurrection as the very core of the Christian faith," he said. <\/p>\n

But Baigent believes his arguments about Jesus’s mortality, if accepted, have the potential to mend fences between religions. <\/p>\n

Islam already recognises Jesus as a prophet, Judaism is happy with Messianic contenders, and some strands of Christianity already accept Jesus’s mortality – he argues it is just the Catholic Church that feels threatened. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Um, whatever. Is this the new meme? Dan Brown, Christian<\/em> is threatened by the heterodox stylings of Holy Blood, Holy Grail?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Not to mention the almost unmentionable…that both books are published by divisions of Random House. Oh, you want a conspiracy theory? Here’s one for you…free.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A NZ paper report on native son Michael Baignet’s testimony at the Holy Blood\/Holy Grail – DVC trial. "Brother Michael" Baigent’s job as editor of the quarterly Freemasonry Today can hardly pay much, though that and his books force him to keep the family address in Somerset secret. Being a prominent Freemason and critic of…<\/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-4187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSimply bizarre - 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\/03\/simply-bizarre.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Simply bizarre - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A NZ paper report on native son Michael Baignet’s testimony at the Holy Blood\/Holy Grail – DVC trial. "Brother Michael" Baigent’s job as editor of the quarterly Freemasonry Today can hardly pay much, though that and his books force him to keep the family address in Somerset secret. Being a prominent Freemason and critic of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-12T00:35:49+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":"Simply bizarre - 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\/03\/simply-bizarre.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Simply bizarre - Via Media","og_description":"A NZ paper report on native son Michael Baignet’s testimony at the Holy Blood\/Holy Grail – DVC trial. "Brother Michael" Baigent’s job as editor of the quarterly Freemasonry Today can hardly pay much, though that and his books force him to keep the family address in Somerset secret. Being a prominent Freemason and critic of…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-03-12T00:35:49+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\/03\/simply-bizarre.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html","name":"Simply bizarre - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-12T00:35:49+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-12T00:35:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-bizarre.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Simply bizarre"}]},{"@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\/4187","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=4187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}