{"id":664,"date":"2006-05-22T17:25:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-22T17:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664"},"modified":"2006-05-22T17:25:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-22T17:25:00","slug":"664","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

A Pagan’s perspective on The Da Vinci Code<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper<\/a> is that a Pagan was asked to join the “panel of religious experts.”<\/p>\n

The most serious problem according to the panel – a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan – is that the basic premise is incoherent. The quest is to find the descendants of Jesus, but because the film portrays him as human, not divine, it simply doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n

“All you are left with is the bones of Mary Magdalene . . . Big deal! I didn’t understand the significance at all,” said pagan Caroline Tully. “If Christ’s not supernatural, what’s the point of being a descendant?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to a rattlesnake bite, I spent two days last week in a Catholic hospital in Tucson, where the only religious TV channel was the Catholic channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I watched one program where a serious-minded Jesuit worked through all the canonical arguments against the movie’s premise. He was an intelligent man–most Jesuits are–and his scriptural arguments were sound. But it also was clear that his postition kept him from answering the “elephant in the living room” question: Why is the story so appealing? Why are people drawn to the element of the divine feminine in the story? He wouldn’t touch that part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Pagan’s perspective on The Da Vinci Code The most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the “panel of religious experts.” The most serious problem according to the panel – a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan – is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-664","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":676,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=676","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":0},"title":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's drop 'Neopagan'Back in the 1970s, when Tim (now Oberon) Zell was editing Green Egg (America's leading Pagan zine at the time), \"Neopagan\" or \"Neo-Pagan\" was a cutting-edge term for a collection of religious movements from Wicca to Egyptian Reconstructionism.More recently, the British Pagan scholar Graham Harvey has suggested dropping\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2991,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2991","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":1},"title":"Home Country: A Southern Colorado Catholic Splinter Group","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I visited Florence, Colorado, yesterday and noticed that the congregation of St. Jude the Apostle of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ\u00a0 (not to be confused with the Ecumenical Catholic Church) had apparently evaporated. At least their sign was missing from the old brick church on Second Street by which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gateway Chapel, Florence, Colorado","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/st._jude__co.2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2145,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2145","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":2},"title":"Why We Do Pagan Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"During my first semester of graduate school, I was told a cautionary tale. It was about a Christian pastor who went back for a PhD in religious studies. But one day he had had enough. He stood up from the seminar table and exclaimed, \"That's my Jesus you're talking about!\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2145#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":403,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=403","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":3},"title":"Job prospects for Pagan scholarsI\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Job prospects for Pagan scholarsI am speaking only of religious studies here, and I wish only to point out that a PhD (or terminal master's degree) with an emphasis on Pagan Studies is a poor bet in the academic job market at the present time.Every year, following the annual meeting,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2226,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2226","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":4},"title":"DADT Repeals Raises Issues for Wiccan Chaplains–Assuming that We Had Wiccan Chaplains, That Is","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Terry Mattingly at Get Religion, a blog about religion and journalism, looks at some of the fallout from the \"don't ask, don't tell' repeal for military chaplains. His main question is whether a new military policy on homosexuals serving openly (they have always been there clandestinely) will affect the ability\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3682,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3682","url_meta":{"origin":664,"position":5},"title":"What Do Pagans Get from Interfaith Activities?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"What does \"ecumenism\" mean when you don't \"all worship the same god\"? Elizabeth Scalia, a\/k\/a The Anchoress, a Roman Catholic blogger at Patheos, comments simultaneously on posts by another Patheos Catholic blogger and by Star Foster, who manages the site's Pagan portal. Both of the latter, in Star's words, hold\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}