The Da Vinci Code....no big deal.

Agence France Presse reports:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a new website refuting key claims made in Dan Brown's novel that are likely to be brought to the big screen in Howard's movie, starring Tom Hanks.

"'The Da Vinci Code' is a mess, a riot of laughable errors and serious misstatements. Almost every page has at least one of each," the bishops wrote on the website Jesusdecoded.com.

"What this novel does (is) ... 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," the site claims.

I read the "Da Vinci Code" and "Angel and Demons" when they first came out. I enjoyed both books. They were both very well written. It never occurred to me to take anything in the books seriously. It was fiction after all. I read all sorts of books with themes or stories regarding Catholicism and Christianity that are untrue. The nature of fiction is that one can write what they wish. Then I started reading about premises in the books that were being advanced as having some merit. I have read many things by scholars regarding the history of my faith. Some true, some false, some speculation. Many novels take a bit of history and then add their own twist to it. It happens all the time.

I just don't get the uproar over this. I understand why the Bishops felt a need to put out this website since so many people seem to be taking this novel way too seriously. But I don't believe that Catholics should be up in arms about it. It's just a book. It's just a movie.