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Tom Hanks, Father Heffernan

The Devil's Da Vinci Code

By Judi McLeod
Monday, May 15, 2006

With The Da Vinci Code about to debut in Cannes on Wednesday, Tom Hanks is criticizing its detractors.

The film, said Hollywood's Forrest Gump, "is a damn good story and a lot of fun…all it is is dialogue. That never hurts," he told London's Evening Standard.

Well, part of that dialogue has Jesus fathering Mary Magdalene's children, something that Christians consider highly blasphemous.

(The Da Vinci Code) "is a story loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense," said Hanks.

according to a mini biography on the Internet, Hanks' parents were pioneers in "the development of marriage dissolution law" in the state of California. Hanks met his second wife, actress Rita Wilson on the set of the movie Volunteers (1985). They have two children and Hanks has a son and daughter by his first wife, who died of cancer.

Wonder if Hanks would think it "a lot of fun" if the tabloids reinvented him?

Guess it's only fun when Hollywood has Jesus romantically linked with Mary Magdalene, Or as anti-Da Vinci Code, one-man army Father Bernard Francis Heffernan puts it: "Welcome to the shacking up of Jesus and Mary Magdalene."

as preparation for the world debut of The Da Vinci Code gets underway at the Cannes Festival, Fr. Heffernan is asking the proprietors of surrounding restaurants, shops and the magazine in front of the theatre to place a picture of Jesus, bearing the word TRUTH in French and English in their windows.

Only half a block away, a funeral hearse and cars now surround the famous church of Notre Dame du Bon Voyage, where Father Michel Beaugeois, beloved pastor of some 41 years, has died. (See Fr. Heffernan's story, Cannes on Da Vinci Code Eve).

Hollywood types could be forgiven for thinking that true life sometimes imitates art.

In The Da Vinci Code, Hanks plays Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who receives an urgent late-night phone call that an elderly curator at the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum.

In Cannes, Fr. Heffernan is playing himself.

"Mostly the news segments have been parroting author Dan Brown–spelling the end of Christianity, the end of the credibility of its moral leader; the end of Christ; the end of his followers called Christians; the end of Christian morality," he says of the book on which the movie is based.

"The Da Vinci Code never shocked or fooled anyone who knows the history of Christianity. But what shocked them was how it could dupe the religious illiterates on this pagan planet."

Fr. Heffernan, who hails from Peterborough, Ontario is in good company regarding strong objections to the film.

archbishop angelo amato, the number two official in the Vatican doctrinal office once headed by Pope Benedict XV1, has called the film "stridently anti-Christian, and asked Christians to "reject the lies and gratuitous defamation" in the book.

In the archbishop's opinion, "If such lies and errors had been directed at the Quran and Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising. Instead, they are directed against the church and Christians, they remain unpunished. I hope you will boycott the film."

Nigerian Cardinal Francis arinze, the Prefect of the Vatican's Office of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said: "Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and forget."

"This is one of the fundamental human rights: That we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected," he said.

Fr. Heffernan is no stranger to Hollywood types. For five years he wrote and produced a TV program called The Church, involving people such as archbishop Fulton Sheen and Rose Kennedy, segments which were distributed to TV stations across Canada, the U.S. and even the Orient.

In another era, his book Future Vision of the Christian Mass Media Mission was read by Bing Crosby and the Master of Ceremonies of the Beatle's Shea Stadium Concert.

Meanwhile some are calling the movie The Devil's Da Vinci Code.

See Father Heffernan's Column

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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