Is it offensive if someone falsely accuses your family of murder?

CNN reports that actor Tom Hanks, star of the Da Vinci Code sequel Angels & Demons, has stated that there is nothing controversial about this film.

"Everybody is looking for some scandal whether a scandal exists or not," Hanks said of the film. "I think a kind of natural reaction is now that somehow because it's the second Robert Langdon mystery that there is some degree of controversy over it. And there is really not."

No cause for controversy? The movie pits the Catholic Church against the Illuminati, who we are to believe (contrary to reality) were a secret society of scientists dedicated uncovering the truths that the Church was vigorously suppressing. The incorrect portrayal of the Illuminati might be controversial to some, but it could possibly be described as artistic license.*

But still, no cause for controversy? What about Hanks' character Robert Langdon's remark that "the Catholic Church ordered a brutal massacre to silence [the Illuminati] forever"? What about this quote from the trailer, in which Langdon declares, "They were dedicated to scientific truth. And the Vatican didn't like that. So the church began to, how did you say it? Oh, hunt them down and kill them."

Making grossly libelous claims about men who are, Catholics believe, God's earthly representatives is cause for controversy. I'm not sure how Mr. Hanks missed that part.

A major religious leader has publicly denounced the film for ridiculing people's faith, spreading lies, creating confusion about the truth, and perpetuating false stereotypes about the Catholic Church. He is not a Catholic leader, nor even a Christian leader; this came from American Hindu statesman Rajan Zed.

Zed, notable for reading the first Hindu prayers in the U.S. Senate, is also a panelist on Newsweek's On Faith. Does Hanks think that thoughtlessly "looking for scandal" because of the name Robert Langdon is a vice that extends to respected, well-informed non-Christian religious leaders like Zed?

What do you think about the controversy around Andgels & Demons? Are Catholics justified in being upset?

*Perhaps before being issued an artistic license, a person should be required to pass a proficiency test in creating art. That may have saved us from films like this.

Death and life have fought a huge battle,
The Prince of Life was dead, but lives and reigns.

(Full translation)

Victimae paschali laudes
immolent Christiani
Agnus redemit oves:
Christus innocens Patri
Reconciliavit peccatores.
Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando,
Dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus.
Dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via?
Sepulcrum Christi viventis,
Et gloriam vidi resurgentis:
Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes.
Surrexit Christus spes mea:
Praecedet vos in Galilaeam.
Credendum est magis soli
Mariae veraci
Quam Judaeorum
Turbae fallaci.
Scimus Christum surrexisse
a mortuis vere:
Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.
Amen. Alleluia.

During this season of Lent, my parish is using custom-printed booklets for "worship aids" (which we use instead of missalettes). The booklets contain all the hymns for each Sunday, as well as the first two readings. Each Sunday is prefaced by a little meditation written by Father Paul Turner, a priest in Missouri who has created a large body of writing for this purpose.

Some of Fr. Turner's "bulletin inserts" are quite though-provoking and provide good food for meditation. The blurb for this past Sunday is another story. With my mad Google skilz, I found it online, at the top of page 2 of this parish's bulletin (PDF link). The subject is the first reading for March 1, Genesis 9:8-15, the end of the story of Noah's nautical adventure, in which God makes a covenant not to flood the earth again. Fr. Turner's commentary includes this:

So, what did God give up? God gave up global floods. “There shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.” God gave up giving up on people.

As I read these words, the catechist in me cringed. God did not give up giving up on people — because God has never given up on people. Though the Genesis account may make it sound as if God was intent on destroying his creation, our understanding of God makes it clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Old Testament stories like this are included in Scripture because they teach us something about humankind's relationship with God. It was sin that destroyed the earth, and God who saved it (through Noah). The covenant not to flood the earth is a prefigurement of the final covenant, when God sent Christ to save the earth from the flood of our sins.

The second reading for last Sunday is taken from the first Epistle of Peter. I rather think St. Peter had much more astute thoughts on the Noah story. From the reading:

[Christ] also went to preach to the spirits in prison,
who had once been disobedient
while God patiently waited in the days of Noah
during the building of the ark,
in which a few persons, eight in all,
were saved through water.
This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. (1 Peter 3:19-21)

The catechist in me was struck with wonder at this interpretation, which seems so obvious, but which had escaped my notice until now: The Great Flood, which symbolically cleansed and "purified" the world, prefigured our water baptism, in which our souls are really cleansed and purified from all original and personal sin. God did not give something up; he gave something to us.

I am jumping on a meme bandwagon: Seven Quick Takes Friday, hosted by Jen F. at Conversion Diary. Since this is a blog about science and faith, not a personal diary, I hope Jen will forgive me if my seven snippets consist of news, info, and thoughts about those subjects.

1.

If you grow your young in a uterus, but you have not evolved a placenta, how do you feed them? For the gray nurse shark, aka the sand tiger shark, the answer is incestuous cannibalism. Gray nurse shark pups in the womb eat each other for nourishment, so only two are born per pregnancy (females have two uteruses). Since they are endangered, marine biologist Nick Otway is trying to develop an artificial uterus for gray nurse shark pups. Back when I worked as an aquarium biologist, we had several of these huge sharks. They are quite docile despite their fearsome complement of teeth.

At right: Grey nurse shark at the Minnesota Zoo, courtesy Joe Lencioni. (CC) Some rights reserved.

2.

Check out this video of comedian Stephen Crowder, hosted by the Raving Theist (formerly the Raving Atheist). He does an over-the-top parody comparing Planned Parenthood to a used car salesman.

3.

From the world of physics (via Scientific American) comes a story about the continued dissonance between Einstein's special relativity and quantum mechanics. This particular story has to do with a principle of special relativity called locality, which conflicts with a principle of quantum mechanics called entanglement. Of note is a comment buried on page 4 of the online article:

The old aspirations of physics to be a guide to metaphysics, to tell us literally and straightforwardly how the world actually is—aspirations that had lain dormant and neglected for more than 50 years—began, slowly, to reawaken.

This is good news for philosophers who, like me*, view reality as a concrete thing and truth as absolute.

*Not that I am any kind of philosopher.

4.

Shame on the New York Times for its headline, "For Catholics, a Door to Absolution is Reopened." The article is about the church's promotion of indulgences — which are decidedly not the same as absolution, and which have never had the door closed, having always been available. The Times notes that the tradition of indulgences is "one of the most complicated to explain," then proceeds to do a rotten job of explaining it. In particular is the omission of the crucial point that Purgatory is a process of purification, of making us more like God so we can enter his heaven, not a place in space-time where one serves a sentence of days or years. (Hat tip to Science and Religion News.)

5.

When Pluto was removed from the list of planets, it became the first discovered member in a brand-new class of space objects: the dwarf planets. In a way, this is actually a promotion, not a demotion. But apparently a lot of people are emotionally attached to Pluto as a planet. In 2007, the State of New Mexico (home of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh) declared Pluto officially a planet. (Hat tip to Spaceports blog.) This reminds me of the apocryphal tale of one of the Appalachian states (Tennessee?) trying to declare the mathematical constant pi as equal to exactly 3.

At right: Image of Pluto and its moons by the Hubble Space Telescope (courtesy of NASA).

6.

If you are Catholic, and the Pope himself told you to your face that you were wrong on some issue, would you reconsider your position? Apparently, Nancy Pelosi would not. She shows no signs of easing from her pro-choice stance despite a face-to-face reprimand from Pope Benedict XVI. One prays that at least a seed was planted.

7.

Until now, the Alavesia fly was an insect known only from amber fossils from the Cretaceous period, before the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs and many other species. Now two species of living Alavesia have been found in Namibia and have been dubbed "living fossils" by the media. A completely new suborder of insects, the Mantophasmatodea, was discovered as well. There is still much we do not know about the mysterious world of living things. It's no surprise the new discoveries were insects; there are an estimated six to ten million species of insects, but only about a million have been described.