Hi people,
It is always useful to know what is untrue in a work of fiction which deals with fact.
Even if it doesn't seem to matter to you now, don't navigate away from this post before reading it.
Thanks =)
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
-Galileo Galilei
"It's not what you know that gets you in trouble, but what you think you know!"
summary of the post:
1) Why the fuss?
2) 20 Big Lies
3) True Witnesses
4) Feminity in the Church - The Importance of Women
5) More Historical Errors
6) Why We're All Jesus' Children
7) Holy Grail Wars
8) Who Is the Real Mary Magdalene?
9) Art History; Real Life
10) For You
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It isn't a defense to say that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. Fiction can't change the basic facts about major historical figures without being subject to criticism. People would be outraged if Doubleday printed a novel portraying Adolph Hitler in a positive light. Christians have a right to be outraged when the basic historical facts about Christ are falsified. The criticism will be even more intense when a publisher releases a book parodying the most sacred beliefs of others in this fashion.
Further, the book takes great pains to create the appearance of factuality, including placing the infamous "fact" page at the beginning of the novel. Brown has stressed the ostensible accuracy of the book on his web site and in interviews. This is not a case where an author and a publisher have produced an ordinary novel. They have gone to great lengths to mislead people into thinking that the novel has a historical basis. They deserve especially sharp criticism for this, and when criticism is made they cannot hypocritically hide behind the "It's just fiction" allegation after having made such extensive efforts to convince the reader that it is not "just fiction."
source. Catholic Answers Special Report: Cracking the Da Vinci Code
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20 Big Lies in the Da Vinci Code
By James A. Beverley
Don't be fooled. Here are just a few ways Dan Brown's best-selling book twists and distorts the truth of the gospel.
In a little more than three years The Da Vinci Code has become the best-selling adult novel of all time. It has also become the subject of intense debate among Christians because of its radical claims that undermine basic Christianity.
Why all the fuss over a work of fiction? The answer lies on Page 1, where author Dan Brown asserts that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
In reality, the novel is a model of inaccuracy in almost every subject it addresses. Critics have noted its mistakes in mathematics, French geography and even the layout of the Louvre. More important, Brown's jarring claims about Jesus, the Bible, secret societies and ritual sex are based on shallow research, sloppy investigation and careless thought. However, given the novel's popularity and the staggering bravado in its tone, it is necessary for Christians to provide a critique of its central blunders. Here are 20 of them.
1. The Bible was invented by Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century.
The Da Vinci Code reports that "Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible," one that left out the Gnostic texts and included the four traditional Gospels. In fact, Constantine had nothing to do with the making of the Christian canon. He is not even mentioned in the standard Cambridge History of the Bible. The traditional Gospels were recognized by virtually all Christians 150 years before Constantine.
2. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels are the "earliest Christian records."
Not so. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and date from 250 B.C. to A.D. 100. However, these documents have virtually nothing to do with Christianity but with various Jewish groups, rituals and ideas before and during the time of Christ.
The Gnostic Gospels offer a twisted and heretical version of the Christian faith, but they didn't come into existence until about a century or more after the death of Christ.
The earliest Christian records are the writings of the New Testament.
3. The Gnostic Gospels present a positive view of the feminine.
The Gnostic texts are said to picture a human, sexualized Jesus who embraced the sacred feminine. Actually, the Jesus presented in the Gnostic material is often simply weird, and the underlying ideology tends to be radically anti-feminine. Consider this bizarre passage from the Gospel of Thomas: "Simon Peter said to them, 'Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.' Jesus said, 'Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.'"
4. Early Christians did not believe Jesus was God's Son.
This is a bizarre claim, rooted in either willful ignorance or blindness to the obvious. After 2,000 years, people continue to debate whether Jesus is the Son of God. But what has never been subject to doubt is that early Christians confessed that Jesus is God's Son, as the following Scriptures indicate: "Simon Peter answered and said, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'" (Matt. 16:16); "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son" (Gal. 4:4).
5. The Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) invented the divinity of Jesus.
Contrary to Brown's claim, the famous church council met to clarify the divinity of Jesus, not create it. There are thousands of references to the divinity of Jesus in Christian literature and archaeology before the Council at Nicea. This includes the hundreds of claims in the New Testament and the witness of early church leaders through the second and third centuries.
6. Jesus was really a pagan or a witch.
No standard reference works on witchcraft ever include Jesus as a witch or pagan. The novel attempts to argue that Jesus was a copycat figure of ancient pagan deities. This view depends on totally ignoring the Jewish context of the life and teaching of Jesus. If Jesus had been a pagan or a witch, this would have been noticed by the Jewish leaders who opposed Him.
7. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.
The novel claims that there are "countless references" to their union in ancient history and that the topic "has been explored ad nauseam by modern historians." First, there is nothing in the New Testament or other first century material about such a marriage. Second, there is no explicit mention of the alleged marriage in the Gnostic material of the second and third centuries. All we have in the Gnostic material is one reference to Mary as the "companion" of Jesus. That word, however, does not usually mean "spouse" or "wife."
8. Jesus and Mary had a child named Sarah.
The novel claims Mary was pregnant at the time of the death of Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea, her uncle, helped her move to France. There she gave birth to a girl she named Sarah. Mary and Sarah found refuge in the Jewish community in France. We are told that "countless scholars of that era chronicled Mary Magdalene's days in France." This is nothing but historical junk first made popular by the 1982 potboiler Holy Blood, Holy Grail. There are no ancient documents supporting any of these claims, and no scholars of that era chronicled these alleged events.
9. There was a smear campaign against Mary Magdalene in Catholic tradition.
To the contrary, Mary Magdalene receives positive attention in the Bible and in Catholic tradition. In fact, she is regarded as a saint, and her Feast Day is July 22. As a close disciple of Jesus, she was one of the first witnesses of His resurrection. The mistaken view that she was a prostitute did not arise until A.D. 591 when Pope Gregory I confused her with a prostitute mentioned in Luke 7:36-50.
10. A secret society named the Priory of Sion started in 1099 and has protected the bones of Mary Magdalene and documents about the bloodline of Jesus Christ.
This is one of the most significant blunders of The Da Vinci Code. The Priory of Sion was actually started in France on May 7, 1956, by a con artist named Pierre Plantard (1920-2000). The Priory was first a civic organization. In the 1960s Plantard created the mythology of a secret society led by figures such as Isaac Newton and Leonardo da Vinci.
11. Ancient documents about the Priory were discovered in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in 1975.
The Da Vinci Code refers to these alleged parchments as Les Dossiers Secrets. These documents are not ancient but are actually forgeries done by Philippe de Chérisey (1925-1985), a co-conspirator with Plantard. They were not discovered by the French library in 1975 but were placed there by Plantard in 1967.
Both de Chérisey and Plantard admitted the hoax before their deaths. In fact, Plantard was forced to admit his fraud before Judge Thierry Jean-Pierre in a French court case in September 1993.
12. There are historical lists of the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion.
Actually, when Plantard invented the Priory of Sion he copied most of his list of Grand Masters from lists of alleged leaders of other groups, such as the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, a secret society founded in America in 1915. Plantard also changed his list of Grand Masters as he adopted different conspiracy theories about his Priory of Sion.
13. The Holy Grail is not the cup used at the Last Supper but the bones of Mary Magdalene.
The novel states that "the quest for the Holy Grail is literally the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one, the lost sacred feminine."
The Holy Grail legends started about A.D. 1180 and continued through the 19th century. They never involved claims about the bones of Mary Magdalene. Isn't it amazing that no Priory of Sion member has ever given in to the temptation to reveal the location of the bones of Mary Magdalene?
14. The Knights Templar guarded the bones of Mary Magdalene and four huge chests of ancient documents about the bloodline of Jesus Christ and the French kings who descended from Him.
The Knights Templar is a religious military order founded in the early 12th century. Hugues de Payens, a French Knight, led eight comrades in the campaign to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land.
It has never been argued in the historical material about the Templars that they protected either Mary Magdalene or documents about French kings. These claims are the inventions of Pierre Plantard, who declared at one point that he was the descendant of Jesus and the proper heir to the French throne.
[See The Knights Templar, Wikipedia - Knights Templar for more.
The Knights Templars were the earliest founders of the military orders, and are the type on which the others are modelled. They are marked in history (1) by their humble beginning, (2) by their marvellous growth, and (3) by their tragic end. -Catholic Encyclopedia - The Knights Templar]
15. Leonardo da Vinci was once the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion.
The Priory started 437 years after the death of the great artist. Not one Leonardo da Vinci specialist in the entire world has supported the view that he once headed a pagan sex cult. James Beck of Columbia University calls this "total nonsense." Leonard da Vinci scholars have convened special conferences in order to debunk the novel's false claims about the famous artist.
16. Leonardo da Vinci placed Mary Magdalene next to Jesus in his famous painting The Last Supper.
In da Vinci's time everyone believed that this person was John, the beloved disciple. Renaissance art specialists have always noted that John was painted in a rather effeminate manner. The painting was not meant to reveal the identity of a woman but the tension created among the apostles after Jesus says to them, "'One of you will betray Me'" (Matt. 26:21). Of course, even if da Vinci put a woman next to Jesus in his painting, this would not tell us anything about the real Last Supper more than 14 centuries earlier.
17. The Catholic Church killed 5 million
women during the Witchcraft Inquisition. The women targeted as witches were freethinkers, scholars, priestesses, gypsies, nature lovers, mystics and midwives.
The novel radically misinterprets the nature and scope of the Inquisition. First, both men and women were targeted as witches. Second, the female victims were generally older and were not from any specific class or profession. Third, the deaths totaled no more than 100,000, counting both males and females. Most important, the Inquisition was rooted in the real belief that certain men and women actually worshiped Satan and performed diabolical acts of evil.
18. French President Francois Mitterand ordered 666 panes of glass in the pyramid at the front entrance to the Louvre.
The novel adopts a false rumor that circulated in French society two decades ago. Mitterand did not order 666 panes of glass to be in the pyramid. In fact, the public relations office at the Louvre informed me that the pyramid actually has 673 panes of glass.
19. Early Jewish as well as Christian tradition involved sex ritualism in worship.
There is not a single hint in the entire Old Testament or in Jewish history that sex rites were part of temple worship. Jewish males did not engage in sex with priestesses in the temple. The word "priestess" is not even used in the Old Testament.
In the novel Jesus and Mary Magdalene are pictured as the ideal participants in an early Christian sex ritual. This wild claim has no basis in history, either in terms of early Christian tradition or even in reference to Gnostic documents.
20. True worship involves sex ritualism.
The Da Vinci Code states that "historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God" and that "by communing with woman … man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God."
The Da Vinci Code will bring great harm to every innocent religious seeker who follows its endorsement of sex ritual as the path to God. Brown is surely bluffing in his rhetoric about sex in worship. It is impossible to imagine that he really believes his own novel's ideology.
Would he be willing to participate in the ancient ritual that The Da Vinci Code defends? Would he really recommend this ancient ritual to his wife, family and friends?
In both book and movie form The Da Vinci Code represents a threat as well as an opportunity for Christians. Its danger lies in its strident assertions of falsehoods that undermine basic teachings of the gospel.
Uninformed readers and moviegoers must be made aware of the historical blunders in Dan Brown's claims.
source: 20 Big Lies in the Da Vinci Code
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Error: The book tells readers that "The New Testament is false testimony."
Rebuttal: The New Testament was sealed with the apostles' blood. They put their money where their mouths were. The Greek word for "witness" - as in the idea of witnessing to the truth about Jesus - is "martyro," from whence we get the word martyr. Why? Because so many witnesses to Jesus, e.g., the apostles, were killed for testifying about what they themselves saw. Brown glibly ignores this history and, instead, exalts the questionable writings of second-, third-, and fourth-century Gnostic Christians, who were sexual libertines for the most part. (Other Gnostics were strict legalists.)
source: "Da Vinci Code" Errors: a quick list
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...what Dan Brown's book aims to tear down: the Christian Faith in general, and the alleged "just-too-masculine" Catholic Church with its all-male clergy in particular. But what does Brown's book offer as a replacement for Christianity? As critics are beginning to point out more and more, what the Code is really calling for is a return to the fertility cults of the ancient pagan mystery religions as a substitute, or at least a "remedy," for Christianity - all in the name of "the sacred feminine."
Throughout Brown's piece of fiction, various characters lament the loss of this "sacred feminine" in religion and culture. In one scene, members of an esoteric secret group are even depicted performing an erotic ritual, including a publicly performed marital act which glorifies "the sacred feminine." The book places this modern-day fertility rite in a very positive light. In other words, when The Da Vinci Code is thoroughly unlocked, what lies inside is a venomous agenda: the promotion of sex as religion, with the feminine generative powers having the privileged place of worship. This is the "old-time religion" which Dan Brown's bestseller is subtly peddling. Talk about an easy sell for the sex-drenched culture of the West.
... the Blessed Virgin Mary personally embodies an authentic "sacred feminine" spirituality [in Christianity.]
source: The Oranta Solution: Our Lady's Solution to Dan Brown's Code
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Over the centuries one of Mary's greatest strengths as a symbol is the considerable tension she exemplifies between the humble peasant woman and the powerful mother of God.
source: Virgin Mary, Mother of God
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The Church sees in Mary the highest expression of the "feminine genius", and she finds in her a source of constant inspiration. Mary called herself the "handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38). Through obedience to the word of God she accepted her lofty yet, not easy vocation as wife and mother in the family of Nazareth. Putting herself at God's service, she also put herself at the service of others: a service of love. Precisely through this service Mary was able to experience in her life a mysterious, but authentic “reign". It is not by chance that she is invoked as "Queen of Heaven and Earth."
source: Mary Reveals True Feminity
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Why the Blessed Virgin Mary Is Better Than Wonder Woman or My Mom Can Beat Up Your Feminist Icon
2.) Mary is a real, historical person. Unlike Wonder Woman, I can model my life on Mary. As one who is baptized and therefore illuminated by grace, I can actually attain to the same things that Mary actually achieved. Through Faith, I can give birth to the Word Incarnate, both in thought and action. Through Hope, I can unite any misery or suffering to the Passion of Christ, and thus not submit to despair. Through Love, I can achieve victory over the greatest evil of any time or place. No matter how hard I try, I will never become an Amazonian princess. (I think we are all glad about that.) Additionally, I can never learn to fly under my own power or deflect bullets with magic bracelets.
1.) Mary's Son is God! In the final analysis, this is the Ace of Trumps in this discussion. Rather than having some muddled sense of divinity being like a genetic trait, which predominates in both Greek and modern American culture, Mary's Son reinforces the great divide between Creator and Creature, while simulataneously showing us the condescension which God shows to Man in order to bring all creation back into union with Himself.
source: Catholic Ragemonkey
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It is probably safe to say that for nearly two thousand years "'Mary' has been the name most frequently given to girls." She is the model, the archetype for feminity, much more than Jesus is the archetype for masculinity. She is the single most important female figure in art and music. Though we know very little about her, and mostly through these birth stories, Mary has been the inspiration to more people than any other woman who has lived. She also has been the enforcer of the status quo in a male dominated church, and of the cultural stereotypes of women for centuries.
source: All Souls Unitarian Church - Sermon: Mary
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We talked a bit about the idea of Mary Magdalene becoming more popular because people want to tap into the feminine divine. It's true that Catholics, in some sense, have a feminine figure in the Virgin Mary. Protestants don't have that and will sometimes express feelings of loss at not having that. So what do you say to Protestants, and especially maybe to Protestant women?
It seems to me that the novel's popularity has to do with an unfulfilled longing. You can say there needs to be balance between the idea of God as father and something on the other side, and in fact we do have elements of that in the Bible - even though the Bible is very clear that its portrayal of divinity has nothing to do with gender. Men and women are both made in the image of God. But we also get the picture of wisdom as female. We get pictures of God gathering his people like a mother hen would gather [her] chicks.
So it isn't like there isn't feminine imagery associated with the nurturing care of God in scripture. It's there. The reason this is a problem is because it suggests a need to place God in gender categories, when the point theologically is that God transcends gender.
source: Da Vinci's Secret Agenda
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Ungodly Errors
Scholarly gripes about The Da Vinci Code's Jesus.
By Larry Hurtado
Posted Monday, May 22, 2006, at 5:19 PM ET
Faith in the divine glory of the resurrected Jesus appears to have emerged amazingly soon after his execution, most likely among circles of his Jewish followers.
...the historic Gnostics and the gospels often linked with their circles did not emphasise Jesus' human nature at all - quite the opposite.
In reality, the Gnostics' negativity about the body includes a dim view of procreation and the sexual activity that went with it.
...the New Testament was not created at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. The question wasn't even on the council's agenda.
...this question of which writings to treat as scripture... was not decided at a single point by a church council, a pope, or a Roman emperor.
There were no two-way wars between Christians and pagans in the decades before Constantine.
source: Slate: Scholarly Gripes about The Da Vinci Code
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Why We're All Jesus' Children
Go back a few millenniums, and we've all got the same ancestors.
By Steve Olson
Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2006, at 1:40 PM ET
On Monday Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, testified in a London courtroom to defend himself against the charge that he stole from an earlier book the idea that Jesus has a secret line of descendants who are alive today. But no matter how the court case turns out, both books are confused. If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet.
...If Jesus had children (a big if, of course) and if those children had children so that Jesus' lineage survived, then Jesus is today the ancestor of almost everyone living on Earth. True, Jesus lived two rather than three millenniums ago, but a person's descendants spread quickly from well-connected parts of the world like the Middle East.
Source: Slate: Why We're All Jesus' Children
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Holy Grail Wars
The latest battle over The Da Vinci Code.
By Tim Wu
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006, at 11:57 AM ET
The authors of Holy Grail chose to make claims to truth - and while that gives their book a certain rhetorical power, it should also mean their work loses much legal protection. When copyright starts saying you can't borrow claims to truth, it stops helping and starts hurting all authors.
Let's start at the beginning. One of the basic principles of copyright law is that you can't copyright historical facts, though you can own how you express those facts.
...The answer is that Leigh et al., had a choice: They could have decided to portray their work as fiction, not history - and that, in the words of American judge Frank Easterbrook, "makes all the difference." When you, as an author, make a claim to present the truth, you both gain something and lose something. You have a shot at changing what we think to be true, and you may gain reader interest. But you cannot own the truth the way you might own elements of a fictional story, like the character "Rocky." To claim the truth is fine, but to own it is not.
...How can duelling authors ever have a meaningful public discussion of who Mary Magdalene was, if, for example, one side claims exclusive ownership of the theory that she was a lowly prostitute? Progress in science and scholarship requires the freedom to examine and expose claims to the truth, even crazy ones. Giving ownership to such claims would create free expression problems that go beyond book sales.
If the author calls it a fact, you can steal it. The first person to publish a historical theory, again in the words of Judge Frank Easterbrook, "does not get dibs on history."
source: Slate: Holy Grail Wars
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So who is the real Mary Magdalene? Father Collins, who wrote the "Mary Magdalene" article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, told Catholic News Service, "Luke describes Mary Magdalene as a woman from whom Jesus cast out seven demons, and that characterization of Mary Magdalene is repeated in the longer canonical ending of Mark's Gospel."
But he noted that in Jesus' time it was not uncommon to attribute physical or mental afflictions to demonic possession and this did not imply that the possessed person was sinful. "Whatever affected Mary Magdalene was considered to be the effect of demonic possession so she would not have been considered a public sinner the way the medieval legends have made her out to be," he said.
He said she is called the Magdalene because she comes from Magdala, "a fishing village up in northern Galilee."
He said one also learns from Luke "that she supported Jesus from her resources," suggesting that she was a woman of some means, and that she was one of several women from Galilee who were disciples of Jesus and followed him.
Luke's Gospel is the only one that mentions Mary Magdalene by name in the narration of Jesus' public ministry. But all four Gospel writers place her as a witness to Jesus' death on the cross, a witness to his burial and the chief witness to his resurrection, making her one of the most significant female figures in the Gospels apart from Jesus' own mother, Mary.
Summing up the real Mary Magdalene with what she called the "w's," Sister Elizabeth said, "Let's get this straight: She was not Jesus' wife ... neither a wife nor a whore, but a witness."
Source: Mary Magdalene: Setting the Record Straight
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oh, but the material on Leonardo da Vinci is very interesting.
Perhaps, but it's all wrong. The Da Vinci Code is wrong on every single point in makes about Leonardo: from his name, to his religious and philosophical beliefs, to every statement about every art work mentioned: the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, the Madonna of the Rocks, and The Adoration of the Magi.
I once gave a talk at a university. At the end of my talk, an art historian stood up and addressed the group. She said, "So many people come up to me and gush about how much art history they’ve learned from The Da Vinci Code... I tell them they’ve learned nothing about art from the Da Vinci Code!"
Indeed, if you asserted to any art historian that what is really going on in the Last Supper is that Leonardo is revealing that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and she is the real Holy Grail…they would laugh. They would.
The Jesus of The Da Vinci Code is so much more human. I can relate to him so much more easily than I can the Jesus of the Gospels and the Church.
The Jesus of the Gnostic writings more human than the Jesus of the Gospels and the Church?
Really?
If you believe that, you’ve never read a Gospel.
If you believe that, you’ve never set foot in a Catholic Church.
Because, when you read the Gnostic writings, you meet the most unearthly, abstract, and frankly, boring and yes, barely human figure you can imagine. He walks around talking, talking and talking. He doesn't suffer, and for sure he doesn't die.
But when you actually sit down and read a Gospel, what do you see? Or rather... who?
You meet a man who was born of a woman, who, it is said in the Gospel of Luke "grew in wisdom." He eats with his friends, goes visiting, gets into arguments, has to get away from people at times, weeps, and is even afraid. He dies. On a cross, in agony, he dies.
You're going to tell me that's not human?
Think about Christian iconography, as well. What are the two most frequent ways of depicting Jesus that you see in 2000 years of devotional art from this church intent on suppressing the humanity of Jesus?
An infant on his mother's lap... and a man suffering his death throes.
You're going to tell me that's not human?
source: What do you say to a Da Vinci Code Believer?
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Mirror Writing
Several reasons have been put forward for the use of mirror writing:
He was left-handed and in those days of writing with pen and ink this was a particular disadvantage; as your hand crossed the page it would smudge the still wet text.
source: Leonardo Da Vinci
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How the Da Vinci Code Doesn't Work
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Causing people to see something they never saw before in a five-hundred-year-old work of art which is among the most famous and reproduced of all time is an accomplishment of genius, if that "something" is a valid new insight. If it is not, then this kind of achievement usually goes by other names.
The Da Vinci Code novel contains a claim that in Leonardo’s mural The Last Supper, which portrays Jesus and his twelve apostles at the meal he took with them on the night before he died, one of the twelve is not the apostle John but actually a woman who is Mary Magdalene.
Forget the Gospel narratives through which Leonardo, like every other Christian, would have known about the Last Supper and which contain no mention of Mary Magdalene; forget the fact that this mural seems to have caused no sensation among the monks whose refectory it decorated and who would have been as likely to recognize a female form then as we are today; forget the many paintings of the Last Supper which show a handsome youth often leaning on Christ's shoulder or on his chest following the tradition that identified John with the unnamed "beloved disciple" of the fourth Gospel. If such a claim is put between the covers of a book, apparently it merits respectful consideration no matter how absurd.
What this novel does to Leonardo's Last Supper, it does to Christianity as such. It asks people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition quite a few odd claims. Some are merely distortions of hypotheses advanced by serious scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or false.
Reporters have asked whether even a bestselling novel can seriously damage a Church of one billion believers. No, in the long run, it cannot. But that is not the point. The pastoral concern of the Church is for each and every person. If only one person were to come away with a distorted impression of Jesus Christ or His Church, our concern is for that person as if he or she were the whole world.
source: Jesus Decoded
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Happy June holidays.
and feel free to talk if you have any questions.
JIAYOU!!!
*pours oil over everyone*
love, Jean
PS: Disclaimer - I am not responsible for recent oil shortages in the North Sea.
"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent."
-Napoleon Bonaparte
PPS: Thanks to Teresa for emailing Cracking the Da Vinci Code and Darren for 20 Big Lies in The Da Vinci Code
