RE / The Da Vinci Code:
It's a STORY. The story is a NOVEL (a term which implies fiction). Yes, it's thought-provoking. But I'm not sure that this story is as heretical as it's cracked up to be. What if Jesus WAS married to Magdalen? The point of Christianity is the Resurrection, not whether Jesus ever kissed a girl. If this book upsets you, then perhaps, as the famous bumper sticker says, your karma ran over your dogma.
RE / The Crusades:
The Crusades were a bad idea. Can someone explain to me how one Pope can apologize for them and the next Pope basically say just kidding, they were OK?
RE / Harry Potter:
My generation listened to Black Sabbath and watched Dark Shadows and ran amok in the neighborhood every Halloween. We curled up in our jammies with our families every year and watched a famous film featuring wizards, witches and flying monkeys, in which a sweet little girl from Kansas munches hallucinogenic poppies with a lion, a sentimental funnel and a loquacious scarecrow, is nearly killed by a witch, meets an inept wizard, and is saved by a bright little telepathic dog and a giant fairy. Please do not tell me that my generation was driven away from God; many of them not only GOT religion when they got older, but got a particularly conservative or intolerant version of it - and God help us, they're also having conniption fits about Harry Potter. (I blame the flying monkeys.)
RE / the flap about the Gospel of Judas:
Why is everyone so darned shocked by this? People have been wondering since time immemorial what on earth would provoke one of Christ's disciples to flake out and turn him in. It seems to me there was an entire rock opera based on speculation about this (remember Jesus Christ Superstar?)
1) Let's start with the premise that Jesus was a highly evolved spiritual being, Son of God, God Himself, or whatever you believe.
2) Suppose Jesus, being all of the above, KNEW that in order to accomplish his spiritual quest / mission / goal, he had be martyred in some horrible way.
3) Suppose Jesus, being all of the above, KNEW that he needed someone to take a role in this quest, by whose agency he would be turned in to the authorities.
4) Suppose Jesus, being all of the above, KNEW that he needed to be turned in by someone who could be trusted to actually follow through, and who had the spiritual fortitude to do it. Suppose Jesus ASKED Judas to take on this terrible task (which is what the Gospel of Judas suggests).
Advance a few centuries.
1) SUPPOSE that repressing the Gospel of Judas and the other Gnostic Gospels seems like a pretty good idea, because of a particular combination of early church politics.
2) SUPPOSE that having an evil Judas furthered the medieval (and post-medieval) agenda of blaming the whole nasty and lamentable business on those awful Jews. (Oops, we forgot Jesus was a Jew - our bad.)
Is the Christian faith so tenuous and in so much trouble that it can't handle some discussion about Judas? Whether Judas was or was not appointed by Christ to do the "betrayal" takes nothing away from a belief in the Resurrection. If anything, it would make it rather more astounding, wouldn't it, if Christ knew what was happening, and orchestrated it?
And wouldn't it be a profound spiritual teaching to ponder that if Jesus called upon Judas to do what Judas did, then Judas was forgiven / redeemed before he ever took action? And is it not then heartbreaking to think of Judas taking his own life in a frenzy of grief?
Here's my own little Urbi et Orbi speech: it's ALL ABOUT INTENTION. Every moment of every day of every life springs from an intention. It is the INTENTION that determines the quality of an action AND the karmic baggage that goes along with it.
Which brings me back to the religious kerfuffles. What the heck is the intention behind saying that maybe the Crusades were OK after all? Or behind squelching any and all dialogue about alternate interpretations of religious teachings, or behind demonizing every child's delightful penchant for magical thinking, or behind roadblocking every attempt to take a Major World Religion into the 21st Century?
NNNNNNNNoooooo one expects - Oh, sorry, sorry - NNNNNNNNNNo one USED to expect....I mean at least no one was expecting since the second half of the twentieth century - I mean - sorry, sorry...PERHAPS we now possibly expect...oh blast.
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