Cardinal: 'The Da Vinci Code' Proof Of 'Anti-Catholic' Prejudice

[AMP]

I don't agree. Why should Jesus' message have more (or even less) validity if he was celibate?

The last section of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" has some great research on the accuracy of the Gospels. The authors use the available evidence to make some educated suggestions about what really happened back then. Here's one example...

The book suggests that the Pharisees and Sadducees had nothing to do with Jesus being crucified, that it was all the doings of Pilate and the Romans. As the theory goes, the events leading up to the Crucifixion were rewritten so as not offend the growing community of Roman Christians. If Jesus was a threat to the Jewish elders, they would have simply had him punished and stoned themselves and not bothered the Roman authorities. Palestine was very resistant to Roman rule in the 1st Century. Jesus represented a threat to the Romans because he had a legitimate claim to being "King of the Jews" and was most likely working to restore Jewish self-rule.

My point would be your above question, to the Catholic Church; not the validity of Jesus' message. Why, IF there were children, should the Church have suppressed that information? Or why hasn't it surfaced beleivably before now? Why is there not one word about Jesus being married (in consideration of Brown's book) in the Bible, if he really was? And if "events leading up to the crucifixion were rewritten", as Baigent/Leigh theorize, then why believe in the validity of the Bible at all? (Uh, oh, I am starting to sound like 2ndA ).

What I meant is that if Jesus had been with, let's say, Mary Magdelene, and if they had produced children, the Catholic Church would have to do some backtracking. Brown has, perhaps unwittingly, blown the doors off parts of the Catholic faith. THis is causing people to question their beleifs, and their preferred doctrine. Many of them are perhaps asking the same question you posed above.

 

[Tonio]

Why, IF there were children, should the Church have suppressed that information?

"Holy Blood, Holy Grail" suggests this--after the attempt to establish Jesus on the throne failed, there was a split between Jesus' inner circle and the bulk of his followers. The "adherents of the message" didn't care about the royal bloodline. They just wanted to spread Jesus' message. The book suggests that it was these early Christians who first deified Jesus as a way to disseminate the new religion, and they felt it was unseemly for a god to be involved in a failed political conspiracy. So Jesus' family was a danger to the early Church because it had direct knowledge that contradicted the Church orthodoxy.

 

[Bustem' Down]

"Holy Blood, Holy Grail" suggests this--after the attempt to establish Jesus on the throne failed, there was a split between Jesus' inner circle and the bulk of his followers. The "adherents of the message" didn't care about the royal bloodline. They just wanted to spread Jesus' message. The book suggests that it was these early Christians who first deified Jesus as a way to disseminate the new religion, and they felt it was unseemly for a god to be involved in a failed political conspiracy. So Jesus' family was a danger to the early Church because it had direct knowledge that contradicted the Church orthodoxy.

I've read "Holy Blood Holy Grail" and "The Messianic Legacy" Both books were written about 20 years ago and even the authors have said that some of the information put forth by them has since been disproven. What I find most interesting about all of this is its irrelevancy. 1900 years ago this would have been have earth shaking to the early church, but now where so far along that I don't think it really matters. The doctrine is in place and for any oppents of it there's really nothing they can do, you can't fight and idea. If there is a bloodline to Jesus, after almost 2000 years, can anyone even imagine how many people in the world would be related to him? More than likely, almost none could be traced back because in the middle ages, only the arisocracy kept geneological charts. Even if Jesus was proved to be wholly mortal, that still doesn't change the doctrine too much. He could have still been appointed by God and embued with powers, to function in the capcity needed to found the current Christian religions of the day.

I think that the real impetus behind all this comes from two groups. First you have the militant aetheists. The people cling to information like this with the sole purpose of trying to crumble all organized religion because they feel it somehow offends them. Opposite of that you have the Rabid devote, who spurn any historical research in the faith as a personal attack from group A. The majority of the people sit in between, mildly curious, believing what they believe and not worried one way or the other.

 

[Charles]

Isn't Dan Brown writing a book/novel about the Mason's? That should be a good one.

 

[Tonio]

What I find most interesting about all of this is its irrelevancy. 1900 years ago this would have been have earth shaking to the early church, but now where so far along that I don't think it really matters...

I think that the real impetus behind all this comes from two groups. First you have the militant aetheists. The people cling to information like this with the sole purpose of trying to crumble all organized religion because they feel it somehow offends them. Opposite of that you have the Rabid devote, who spurn any historical research in the faith as a personal attack from group A. The majority of the people sit in between, mildly curious, believing what they believe and not worried one way or the other.

Excellent point. I don't think the question of whether Jesus was mortal or divine is all that important. I think what's important is the message that Jesus sought to spread. While I reject orthodoxy, I don't reject religion and I'm definitely not an athiest. My interest in this stuff comes from my belief that much of religious faith is a personal thing.

All the books cited in "The Da Vinci Code" talk about the split in the early Christian community. On one hand was the orthodox Church which taught that the Church hierarchy was the one source of salvation. On the other were groups such as the Gnostics.

 

[Tonio]

Here's some stuff from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that may answer the Cardinal:

The core of Christianity and the Christian ethos resides in Jesus' teachings. Those teachings are in some significant sense unique, for they constitute the “new message,” the “good news” for humankind and are valid in themselves. They do not need miraculous biographical details to support them, especially not the kind of miraculous biographical details that attended rival deities throughout the ancient world. If the teachings do require such details, it suggests one of two things: Either there is something seriously defective in the teachings or, more likely, there is something seriously defective in the believer’s faith. Any thoughtful Christian would concur that Jesus’ primary significance resides in the message he sought to communicate. And that message gains nothing by virtue of Jesus’ having been celibate, or does it lose anything by virtue of his having been married.

This is even better:

Underlying most Christian theology is the assumption that Jesus is God incarnate. In other words, God, taking pity on His creation, incarnated Himself in that creation and assumed human form. By doing so He would be able to acquaint Himself at first hand, so to speak, with the human condition. He would experience first hand the vicissitudes of human existence…He would partake directly of man’s lot. By doing so He would redeem man’s lot—would validate and justify it by partaking of it, suffering from it, and eventually being sacrificed by it…

Could God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the human condition? Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity?

We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolizes what it is intended to symbolize unless Jesus was married and sired children. The Jesus of the Gospels and of established Christianity is ultimately incomplete—a God whose incarnation of man is only partial. The Jesus who emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what Christianity would have him be.