Da Vinci Code: Take III
The Dec. 15 issue of America magazine had a review of Dan Brown's mystery novel The Da Vinci Code. The review, written by Gerald O'Collins, author or co-author of 43 books and professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, debunks some church history presented as "fact" in the book.
Some excerpts:
"The Da Vinci Code teems with historical misinformation. The claim that the Emperor Constantine shifted the Christian day of worship to Sunday (p. 232) is simply false. Evidence from St Paul and the Acts of the Apostles shows that, right at the start of the Christian movement, Christians replaced Saturday with Sunday as their day of worship. Sunday was the day when Jesus rose from the dead. What Constantine did on March 3, 321 was to decree Sunday to be a day of rest from work. He did not make Sunday the day of worship for Christians; it was already that from the first century."
"Killing so-called witches was a horrible crime in the story of Christianity. But the idea that the Catholic Church burned at the stake “five million women” (p. 125) is bizarre. That kind of savagery would have depopulated Europe. Experts give instead the statistic of around 50,000 victims for the three centuries of witch hunts carried out by Catholics and Protestants. But it suits the tenor of Brown’s book to multiply the figure by one hundred."
