Archbishop Amato Comments on "Da Vinci Code" and "Gospel of Judas"

VATICAN CITY, MAY 18, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A Vatican official says that attempts are made to slander and discredit the Church because it is the only institution that explicitly defends questions that are fundamental to man.

Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reflected Wednesday on Vatican Radio on publications such as "The Da Vinci Code" and the "Gospel of Judas."

"It is a fact that today one can speak badly of the Pope without impunity, as is being done in Germany with some cartoons," the prelate said. "One can also falsify at will the history of Christianity without the least respect -- I won't say, for religious -- but for elementary historical ethics."

In this connection, the content of the cited works, "lacking in real foundation, … seems a calumny against the Church, aimed at discrediting it," the Vatican official said.

He suggested that the attacks have arisen because "the Church is today the only institution that clearly and explicitly protects human life from the beginning until death, that protects the family, that says a clear word on topics of sexual and bioethical ethics, that proposes the values of the Ten Commandments."

Distorted

Of "The Da Vinci Code," Archbishop Amato said that "the whole book is a wicked distortion of the truth."

"For example, to deny Jesus' divinity and affirm that it was invented by the Council of Nicaea in the year A.D. 325 means to falsify history," he observed.

"Immediately after the death and resurrection of Christ," the archbishop explained, "around the A.D. 40s, the Church sang the famous hymn contained in the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians: 'Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.'"

To defend the truths of the faith, the Church "continues its work of defense of the doctrine through the magisterium of the Pope and the bishops," and through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which "continues to protect the Christian people also through the correction of mistaken theological theories," said Archbishop Amato, 67.

In his opinion, "the Churches and Christian communities should speak out strongly, should cry out the truth from the rooftops, as the Gospel says, to stop the lies that, unfortunately, use all the weapons of media persuasion to achieve this mass consensus."