(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) It hardly seems necessary to offer further commentary on Hollywood’s latest anti-Catholic initiative—The Da Vinci Code.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock for six months, you’re well aware of the new film from director Ron Howard (Opie, from the old Andy Griffith TV series), starring Tom Hanks (who got his big break playing a cross-dresser on the TV comedy, Bosom Buddies, and whose rise to superstardom began with his Oscar-winning performance as a homosexual in the 1993 film, Philadelphia).

The Da Vinci Code is based on the best-selling novel by American fiction writer, Dan Brown. Though it has already sold over 40 million copies, it is such an obvious rip-off of the Henry Lincoln hypothesis (presented twenty years ago in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, also condemned by the Church) that Brown recently had to answer charges of plagiarism in a London court. 

The Da Vinci Code spins a wild yarn of how Catholics—especially the Knights Templar in the past and Opus Dei in the present—have been covering up a secret marriage between Christ and Mary Magdalene for the past 2000 years.

Not surprisingly, given the dumbed-down state of affairs these days, this bit of sophistry has touched-off an international debate among pseudo scholars and late-night talk show hosts over whether the Holy Grail was the cup that contained the blood of Christ, or the “cup” of Mary Magdalene’s womb.  (Next up for Dan Brown: Was Mr. Spock really half Vulcan or were those pointy ears just pasted on?)

The fact that not one serious scholar has given this patently absurd thesis a second thought hasn't stopped A&E, The History Channel, National Geographic and the networks from giving this stupid film millions of dollars worth of free advertising, even after it was panned by the critics, including those at this year’s Cannes film festival who reportedly couldn’t suppress snickers at the film’s most dramatic moments. 

Even Tom Hanks referred to it as a lot of “hooey” and “nonsense”: "We always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this movie to be shown," Hanks told London's Evening Standard newspaper. "But the story we tell is loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense." (One can only imagine how far this lame excuse would fly if Hanks were referring to a little “scavenger-hunt-type nonsense” in a Ron Howard film that denied the Holocaust, for example.)

Then there was the Vatican’s reaction. At a time when the Catholic Church distinguishes itself more and more by doing less and less against the anti-Christians, it was refreshing to see an outspoken condemnation of a film that, its “hooey and nonsense” notwithstanding, is an affront to Almighty God and deeply offensive to Catholics.  Hats off to Archbishop Angelo Amato, for example, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who blasted it as “perversely anti-Christian”.

Cardinal Francis Arinze went a step further when he called for Catholics to take “legal action” against those responsible for it: “Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and to forget.”

This is encouraging indeed, but I wonder if His Eminence ever questions how the Church drifted so far from what she once was that she can’t even quell salacious little outbursts from the moral midgets of Hollywood.  The Vatican leveled attack after attack on the The Da Vinci Code in the runup to the film’s May 19 opening, but to little avail.  Movie goers rushed out to buy tickets, even tens of thousands of advance tickets in the case of nominally Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain and Mexico.

At the same time, there was something of the surreal about the Vatican’s roar of protest—not against the sodomite takeover of the priesthood, or the forced acceptance of gay marriage in Malta by the EU, or the pederast priest scandals— but against a Ron Howard flick.  

My, how the fallen have become mighty!

The modern Church—relegated to its assigned bleacher along the level playing field with the rest of the world’s “great religions”—can do little more these days than boo loudly as the heroes of Hollywood have their way out on the field and rake in millions of dollars in the process. Despite the Vatican’s best efforts, the show did indeed go on.

I applaud the Vatican’s effort, even if, as a father of 5, I must admit that it would be nice to see the Vatican rouse itself in similar fashion against, not only the movie monsters, but the real ones—the clerical and episcopal monsters who utter heresy all the time and whose scandalous antics have been pushing the sheep over the cliffs of apostasy for forty years.  Certainly, the Vatican should be irate over The Da Vinci Code, but I wonder why it took a ridiculous movie to bring out such hierarchical wrath.

It’s true that Opus Dei is attacked in The Da Vinci Code, but there has got to be more to it than that.  Flagrant anti-Catholicism is nothing new in Hollywood. Besides, who is more to blame for The Da Vinci Code: a little man like Dan Brown or those churchmen who’ve been sitting on their hands and talking about the “springtime of Vatican II” for four decades while all hell was breaking loose in the Church?  Whatever happened to the Legion of Decency, for example, which used to routinely make or break every Hollywood blockbuster that came along?  I suppose that was just too pre-Vatican II—it had to go!  After that, what do you know, along came The Last Temptation of Christ, Brokeback Mountain and The Da Vinci Code.

Ultimately, culpability for the success of The Da Vinci Code  can (and must!) be laid at the feet of the progressivists inside the Vatican who’ve turned the Church into the theological equivalent of the PTA—milling around like a nice old lady with a protest sign while Hollywood spits in the face of Christ and then holds up the disfigured image for millions to “enjoy” on the silver screen.

This shouldn't be cause for surprise, I suppose, since the modern Vatican has a hard enough time keeping its own people in check. Homosexuality is raging in the seminaries, every manner of heresy is tolerated—nay, encouraged!—in Catholic universities, “Catholic” priests are allowed to buddy-up to the Jesus Seminar loonies who wax rhapsodic about the Resurrection “myth”…  and nothing is done.  Doesn't it seem a bit preposterous, then, when a mere movie causes the Vatican to morph into Tomás de Torquemada, if only for a day?  I’m glad of it, don’t get me wrong; but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t occur to me to wonder where this clarion call for resistance was back when it still could have made a difference.  As it is, the horses have not only left the barn, they’ve disappeared into the next county….And the Vatican is just now getting around to shutting the barn door?

When Will Enough Be Enough?

Over the years, old-fashioned “kooks” such as the present writer have been lampooned for campaigning against, for example, not just “bad” rock music but rock music in general—that disordered musical construct with its lyrical pornography that the entertainment industry has been pumping into our lives for fifty years.  It’s difficult to understand how a person can remain a “soldier of Christ” while entertaining himself every day with music produced by an industry that hates Christ and even allows its cretin spokesmen to encourage children to develop relationships with Satan.

Freedom from moral restraint, after all, is as luciferian as it gets, and this “freedom” is what rock ‘n’ roll was founded on.  In his masterwork, Magik, the famed homosexual occultist, Aleister Crowley, predicted the following: “Do as thou wilt shall become the whole of the law.” Entire books have been written on the considerable influence Crowley—a renegade Freemason who referred to himself as “Beast of the Revelation” and “666”— exercised over the thinking of Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ozzy Osbourne, Jim Morrison, the Eagles, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, and even Marilyn Manson—legendary rockers who readily admit what even Catholics go to ludicrous lengths to deny: From its disordered musical composition to its revolutionary lyrics, Rock ‘n’ roll has always been fundamentally anti-Christian. Ever since Elvis Presley walked into Sun Records in 1954 the music has been advocating license for young people to do whatever they want, dance how they please, think what they will, and throw off the moral and spiritual “shackles” put in place by God, Church and family.

Isn’t it time for us to admit that Hollywood has long been in the same business?  The Da Vinci Code is only the most recent in a queue that stretches over almost ten decades of beautifully filmed cinematic attacks on Jesus Christ and His Church. And, yet, we—His alleged disciples—go on, year after year, making excuses for the inexcusable.  We might like Tom Cruise, for example; so what if he’s an ex-Catholic who, together with his third wife (also a fallen away Catholic), has embraced (and is proselytizing for) a “religion” which was founded by a man who considered Aleister Crowley a good friend.  So, what?  He makes “great” movies!

Since when do Catholics entertain themselves with fare produced by practitioners of the occult and dabblers in the diabolic?  I wonder if the Cure of Ars would have taken such risks in the name of mere entertainment.  Would he too have found amusement in the performances of Scientologists, occultists and homosexuals?  Were saints as open-minded as we evidently have become?

Way back in 1939, Pope Pius XI was already warning the world of the advent of a powerful new tool of anti-Christian indoctrination—the motion picture.  In his encyclical Vigilanti Cura, he wrote:

Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are occasions of sin; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage, affection for the family. They are capable also of creating prejudices among individuals and misunderstandings among nations, among social classes, among entire races.

This was 1939! The movies have come a long way since then: Open sacrilege and blasphemy, every manner of sexual deviancy, flagrantly rewritten history, and subtle but incessant indoctrination in the diabolic philosophy of the Enlightenment— now that’s entertainment! 

Pope Pius XI knew what he was talking about.  Hollywood—a global conglomerate which even famed actor Marlon Brando had to admit (on Larry King Live, April 5, 1996) has always been run by powerful Jewish moguls— is now openly Anti-Christ, and is enlisting the aid of the most renowned movie makers in the world to plant seeds of doubt in the Divinity of Jesus Christ in the minds of millions.

Mere entertainment?  Yeah, right!

Fighting Back

So, what are we Christians to do?  When The Lord of the Rings hit the theaters some years back, we were all encouraged to support the film. I didn’t, nor did I see it. There were several reasons for this, actually, not the least of which was the film’s co-star, Ian McKellen—a notorious old poofter who has been promoting his particular brand of perversion ever since he came out of the closet in 1988.  McKellen also stars in The Da Vinci Code. (What a coincidence!)

I realize, of course, that an “open-minded” lover of the arts is supposed to retain an ability to distinguish art from the artist, but this is becoming problematic, especially when it comes to “artists” who are blatantly anti-Christ on and off the screen. I find it impossible, for example, to sit back with a nice bowl of popcorn and an iced-up cola and allow self-righteous sodomites to entertain me and my children. How would my children possibly develop a proper abhorrence of the sin of sodomy when Daddy spends hours transfixed by the “great” artistic performances of its blatant practitioners? 

I wonder if the early Christians, after a long, hard week hiding out in the catacombs, would have gone topside on Friday night to head on down to the coliseum for a few laughs with the Roman degenerates. Can you imagine little Agnes saying: “Yes, I know that actor was one of the guys who stoned Tarsicius to death last week, but, man, you just gotta see his work in The Odyssey.  He’s brilliant!” 

Sound absurd? Sure, but isn’t this essentially what we do all the time?  “Yes, I know he’s a rank sodomite who mocks Christ and His Church and encourages his fans to do likewise, but, man, you just gotta see his work in The Lord of the Rings.  He’s brilliant as Gandalf.” 

I don’t care if he makes Sir Lawrence Olivier look like Chevy Chase, he is what he is, and we are what we are.  How can we close our Catholic eyes so tight and still see the movie?  How can we keep our Catholic indignation so soundly in check?

When asked by Matt Lauer of NBC’s Today show if he thought The Da Vinci Code should feature a fiction disclaimer, McKellen responded:

Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith.

Have we become so imbued with pluralist fuzzy-headed thinking that we can’t even see the contradiction involved with good Catholics shelling out their wages to help line the pockets of homosexuals who denounce sacred Scripture as fictitious? Is art so all important that it trumps everything, even a well-deserved Catholic boycott of antichristian bigots like Sir Ian McKellen?  (Yes, like the notorious miscreants Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Elton John, McKellen was also knighted by the Queen of England. God save…the…er…Queen!)

Until I can figure out how it is possible to be a Catholic on the one hand and a fan of these birds on the other, I propose the following under the heading: “It’s The Least We Can Do”:  The Remnant is to initiate a new Catholic Index, whereby any high profile actor or director associated with an overtly anti-Christian film will be permanently blacklisted.  This will have less to do with a financial boycott in the usual sense and more to do with satisfying our own innate need as Catholics to do something to fight back.  If nothing else, at least our children will grow up knowing we took some stand against the anti-Christians.

The Da Vinci Code, for example, crossed the line, and unless and until Tom Hanks and Ron Howard issue a public apology for the blasphemy they have committed against Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we will withhold support for any and all films they make in future, no matter how “good” they might be.  We will encourage everyone we know to not go to their movies, not rent the videos, and not buy the DVDs.  It’s just a start, I realize, but at least it’s a start!

The names on this soon-to-grow Catholic Index will be posted at www.RemnantNewspaper.com and, for the time being, will read as follows:

Tom Hanks (The Da Vinci Code)

Ron Howard (The Da Vinci Code)

Ian McKellen (The Da Vinci Code)

Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)

Randy Quaid  (Brokeback Mountain)

Brokeback Mountain? Yes, the explicitly homosexual film is so morally objectionable that its star, Heath Ledger, could play Ben Hur, for all I care, and it wouldn’t make any difference—I won’t see it.  Heath Ledger is on the Catholic Index.

As for The Da Vinci Code? What else can be said other than that it proves we live in a day and age when Christ crucified is considered “entertainment”.  What does that say about our “enlightened” society?  The question for us is this: Will we stand between Him and the raised scourges of an entertainment industry filled with hate and eager to crucify all things Christian, or will we just go to the movies and order another bucket of popcorn?

Our last word on The Da Vinci Code is one borrowed from Fatima. Let it suffice to say all that needs to be said:

Most Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - I adore thee profoundly.  I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences whereby He is offended.  And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.