The Truth Behind Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code
Compiled by Fr. Barton Geger, SJ
Regis University
I. Preliminaries: How serious was the author?
Much is made of Brown’s claim on the first page of his novel that the details therein are accurate.
In fact, however, his exact words are: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret
rituals in this novel are accurate”. (p.1) Nowhere does he claim that the history he presents is accurate.
In interviews, Brown continued to reaffirm the accuracy of his depictions of the art, architecture,
documents and secret rituals, but noticeably avoids any mention of church history. This suggests
that he wishes to keep readers uncertain about what is historical fact and fiction.
Why? In interviews, Brown said that he wished to raise consciousness about the place of women in
the church, and also that he wished to startle complacent Christians into questioning their faith.
Perhaps he believed that creating a sensationalist novel would accomplish these purposes. . . which
it certainly did.
Does Brown believe that the history he presents is accurate? Probably he does not. Sprinkled
throughout the novel are what appear to be inside jokes where he pokes fun at himself:
[Langdon’s publisher says:] “But if I agree to publish an idea like this, I’ll have people
picketing outside my office for months. Besides, it will kill your reputation. You’re a
Harvard historian, for God’s sake, not a pop schlockmeister looking for a quick buck. Where
could you possibly find enough credible evidence to support a theory like this?” (p.163)
“Everyone loves a conspiracy.” (pp.169 & 381)
“Faukman hung up the phone, shaking his head in disbelief. Authors, he thought. Even
the sane ones are nuts.” (p.290)
II. Untruths and Half-Truths
DVC:
Truth:
Robert Langdon is “Professor of Religious Symbology” at Harvard. (p.7)
There is no academic field called “symbology”.
DVC:
Aringarosa has meetings with the Secretarius Vaticana of the Secretariat Council. (p.415)
There is no such official or council at the Vatican.
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
The Roman emperor Constantine shifted the Christian day of worship to Sunday. (p.232)
On March 3, 321, Constantine declared Sunday a day of rest from work. Sunday was always
the day of worship for Christians. See Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2, Rev. 1:10. See also St. Ignatius
of Antioch’s letter to the Magnesians (circa 105 A.D., 200 years before Constantine), Part 9,
where he writes that Christians do not celebrate on the Sabbath like Jews, but rather on Sunday.
“The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact derived from Jehovah, an
androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.”
(p.309)
The opposite is true: “Jehovah” derives from YHWH. The name YHWH dates at least to the
9th c. B.C. Ancient Hebrews considered it blasphemous to pronounce God’s name aloud or to
write it down, so they avoided the problem by removing the vowels. Over time people forgot
how the name was supposed to be pronounced. Sometime during the Middle Ages Christians
supposed the correct pronunciation was “Jehovah”. Today we know this is incorrect. Scholars’
best guess today is “Yahweh”.
The Council of Nicea in 325 invented Jesus’ divinity. Before the council he was considered only a man.
(p.233)
The gospels, St. Paul, and the Church Fathers affirmed the divinity of Jesus 250 years before the
Council of Nicea. See John 1:1-18, John 20:28, Philippians 2:5-12 and Colossians 1:15-20.
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
“Mona Lisa” is an anagram for “Amon L’isa”. (p.120)
Scholars debate who was the model for the painting, though documents of the time suggest it
was Mona Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco di Bartolommeo di Zanobi del Giocondo.
“During three hundred years of witch hunts, the [Catholic] Church burned at the stake an astounding five
million women.” (p.125)
Catholics and Protestants executed roughly 50,000 women between 1400-1700. While this is a
tragic part of our history, five million women is an absurd number that would have decimated
the female population of Europe at that time. Brown exaggerates the truth by 100x.
“Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape the Church’s defamation. In
France and Italy, the words for “left”—gauche and sinistra—came to have deeply negative overtones,
with their right-hand counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity and correctness. To this day, radical
thought was considered left wing, and anything evil was sinister.” (p.125)
Ancient peoples noticed the vast majority of persons are right-handed. They therefore believed
there was something unnatural about left-handedness, which is why even as late as the 1950s
grade-school teachers tried to force left-handed students to write right-handed. Today many
cultures still look askance at left-handed people. This is the reason why the Latin word for
“left”—sinister—took on negative overtones. The Church had nothing to do with it.
(Incidentally, Brown never explains why femininity is supposedly connected with the left-hand
side.)
“As a descendant of the lines of King Solomon and King David, Jesus possessed a rightful claim to the throne
of the King of the Jews.” (p.231) “‘Mary Magdalene was of royal descent.’ ‘But I was under the
impression Magdalene was poor. Teabing shook his head.” (pp.248-249)
In Jesus’ day, being a descendant of King David was prerequisite for attaining the Jewish throne,
should the Jews ever manage to throw off their Roman oppressors and re-establish their
monarchy. However, many Jews claimed lineage from David. No one would have thought
Jesus alone had an actual claim to the Jewish throne simply by virtue of being a descendant of
David. Nor is there any evidence that Mary Magdalene was descended from David. Almost
certainly she was poor, as were the vast majority of people at that time.
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
“Magdalene was recast as a whore in order to erase evidence of her powerful family ties.” (p.249)
“Magdalene was no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign
launched by the early Church. The Church needed to defame Mary Magdalene in order to cover up her
dangerous secret—her role as the Holy Grail.” (p.244)
In the early days of the Church, the faithful commonly assumed or supposed connections
between certain individuals in the New Testament and early Church figures. For example,
many believed St. Ignatius of Antioch, an early bishop and martyr, was actually the child whom
Jesus had taken in his arms in Mk 9:36. Or again, it was assumed that the “Linus” mentioned in
2 Tim 4:21 was none other than Pope Linus, who succeeded St. Peter. While this is
theoretically possible, there is no evidence for it. Probably it was just wishful thinking.
Similarly, there are many “Marys” and unnamed women mentioned in the New Testament.
Early Christians suggested that Mary Magdalene (mentioned in Lk 8:2) was the unnamed
prostitute (or “sinner”) who washed Jesus’ feet in the previous story (Lk 7:36-50). As time
went on that connection became so common that it became unquestioned. Only recently have
scripture scholars “discovered” that the gospels never actually call MM a prostitute.
In short, the tradition that MM was a prostitute was a naïve, pious mistake (one that still
endures in such films as Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Mel Gibson’s The
Passion of the Christ.) It certainly was not a conscious attempt by the Church to defame her.
After all, she was a favorite saint of the early and medieval Church.
As for the idea that the early Christians were embarrassed by MM’s role in the early Church,
if that were true, they surely would have erased the most embarrassing of all stories, that the
risen Jesus appeared to her first. In Jewish culture the testimony of women was not considered
reliable, nor was it admissible in court. Jesus’ followers claiming that he appeared to MM first
would have compromised their message from the very beginning. But they did it anyway.
St. Augustine of Hippo, Pope Gregory the Great, and St. Thomas Aquinas praised Mary
Magdalene as the “Apostle to the Apostles.” St. Augustine even called her a symbol of the Gentiles
who would come to Christ. St. Dominic and the early Dominicans called her “the Preacher”.
The medieval Church had a deep devotion to MM, praising her in art, music and prayer. None
of this sounds like the work of a Church embarrassed by Mary Magdalene.
“More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen
for inclusion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them.”
“Who chose which gospels to include?” Sophie asked.
“Aha!” Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. “The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we
know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.” (p.231)
It is true that more gospels were written that the four currently in the New Testament, for
example, the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary Magdalene. The term for those gospels not
included in the NT is “apocrypha”. The Church never made a secret of the existence of the
apocrypha; it has been known by educated Christians for 2,000 years. It is a standard part of
any college-level introduction to Scripture. Ancient and medieval Catholic artists used stories
from the apocrypha to inspire many of their works.
The quality of these gospels varied widely. Just like today, there were responsible writers
and “tabloid” writers. Since the four biblical gospels do not say much about Jesus’ boyhood, for
example, early writers created stories to satisfy peoples’ curiosity. The so-called “Infancy
Gospel of Thomas” tells a story that the boy Jesus was making mud sparrows by the river on the
DVC:
Truth:
Sabbath, and someone tattled on him to Joseph. Before Joseph could arrive, Jesus clapped his
hands and the sparrows came alive and flew away. Or again, when another boy tried to prevent
Jesus from playing on the Sabbath, Jesus touched him, whereupon the boy promptly withered
and died. Stories like these were clearly written not as an expression of faith or theological
reflection but rather to satisfy readers’ desires for the sensational.
Some apocrypha no doubt contain some true deeds and sayings of Jesus, some of which are
not found in the four canonical gospels. Most apocrypha, however, including the Gospels of
Philip and Mary Magdalene (which Brown uses extensively), were written much later than the
biblical gospels, as much as 250 years later.
All the gospels—biblical and apocryphal—almost certainly were not written by the persons
whose names they bear. St. Matthew, for example, probably did not write the Gospel of
Matthew. An anonymous Christian or group of Christians (possibly students of Matthew)
wrote this gospel and put his name on it. This was not considered unethical or unusual at that
time. Putting the name of a prominent Christian on it guaranteed a wider reading audience.
Why is this important? The fact that these gospels are attributed to famous early Christians
is no guarantee in itself that they are accurate. Most of the apocryphal gospels were written
under the influence of Gnosticism, an early heresy, or more accurately, a spiritual movement
that infected many religions at that time (similar to the New Age Movement today). Gnostics
had beliefs and attitudes very contrary to Christian belief. For example, Gnostics claimed they
had a special, mystical knowledge of the truth about God, which could only come through
personal enlightenment. This secret knowledge was necessary for salvation. They claimed
physical matter is evil, thus the body is a prison for the spirit, and God only seemed to become
human in Jesus. Since God would not create anything evil, this world was not created by God,
but by a half-god called an eon. Human souls existed from eternity, but had become trapped in
this physical world. Therefore divine messengers were needed to remind us of our true nature.
Jesus, for the Gnostics, was such a messenger. Since Gnostics denied creation, incarnation and
resurrection, the mainstream church eventually rejected their writings.
Brown’s implication that the Church followed a deliberate process to create the NT is
untrue. Bishops never sat down at a specific time and selected books for the NT. Instead,
Christians were using all kinds of different gospels and letters in their worship, but gradually,
over the centuries, they began to prefer certain gospels and letters over others. In fact, the NT
list of 27 books which we have today did not come together in its present form until the early
400’s. The Catholic Church continued to use these 27 books consistently until the 1550’s,
when Martin Luther wanted to drop the Letter of James from the NT because it disagreed with
his theology. In response, the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent declared the
current 27 books to be the “official” list, or what we would today call the NT canon.
“Sophie had not known a gospel existed in Magdalene’s words.” (p.247)
As just indicated, Mary Magdalene did not write the apocryphal gospel that bears her name.
“I thought Constantine was a Christian,” Sophie said. “Hardly,” Teabing scoffed. “He was a lifelong pagan
who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to protest.” (p.232)
In the early centuries of the Church it was common practice for converts to Christianity to put
off baptism until their deathbed. The reason is that baptism brought full forgiveness of sins, and
they did not want to risk “staining” their baptisms by sinning later. (Individual sacramental
confession in the manner Catholics know it was not practiced at that time, so this was not an
option for them.) While there were possible political benefits for Constan-tine by becoming
Christian, there is no evidence to suggest his conversion was not genuine. He spent lavishly in
the construction of churches and cathedrals. His mother, a great influence in his life, was a
saint: St. Helen. No one forcibly baptized Constantine.
“And virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual—the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion,
the act of ‘God-eating’—were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions.” (p.232)
All these are patently false. The miter (bishop’s hat) began in the Christian East, after the style
of the emperor’s crown. Bishops in the West did not begin wearing miters until the 11 th
century. Catholic altars came from the Jewish use of altars. The doxology (“Glory to the Father
and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. . .”) is based on Psalms 8, 66, and 150. Holy Communion
comes from the Jewish Passover, which is what Jesus celebrated at the Last Supper.
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
“Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking his
human message, shrouding it in an impene-trable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own
power.” (p.233)
There is not a shred of historical evidence to suggest that Jesus’ original followers saw him as
simply human. There are ancient documents which affirm his divinity and ancient documents
which attack belief in his divinity. The latter were written by opponents of Christianity, and the
fact that they were attacking this belief means that followers of Jesus were already professing that
belief. But there his no historical evidence whatsoever that the the earliest followers of Jesus
saw him as solely human.
Second, what kind of power does Brown suppose the early leaders of the Church had? In the
first two centuries, the bishops had no significant money or political authority. All they had was
spiritual authority over their flock. The first thirty bishops of Rome (popes) were all martyred
by the Romans! That’s not too impressive for men supposedly seeking power.
“Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard view of Jesus as a bachelor.” “Why?”
Sophie asked. “Because Jesus was a Jew,” Langdon said. . . “and the social decorum during that time
virtually forbid a Jewish man to be unmarried. According to Jewish custom, celibacy was condemned. . . If
Jesus were not married, at least one of the Bible’s gospels would have mentioned it and offered some explanation for His unnatural state of bachelorhood.” (p.245)
It is true that Jewish culture placed an exceedingly high value on marriage. However, marriage
was not mandatory. Jewish hermits called “Essenes” were celibate; many scholars believe that
John the Baptist was an Essene. Other itinerant preachers were known to be celibate. St. Paul,
a devout Jew, was celibate and discussed it explicitly (1 Corinthians 7:7). St. Paul
recommended celibacy for Christians but did not require it (1 Corinthians 7:1-40).
The gospels do mention Jesus’ celibacy, albeit indirectly. Although Jesus affirmed the
holiness of marriage, he nevertheless strongly recommended celibacy for his followers, which
would be hypocritical unless he himself were celibate (Matthew 19:10-12, 29, Luke 9:61-62,
14:26). When Jesus’ family is listed in Mark 3:31-35 and Luke 8:19-21 no mention is made of
a wife, nor in Luke 8:1-3 when it lists the women in Jesus’ company.
“Rumored to be part of the [Grail] treasure is the legendary ‘Q’ Document—a manuscript that even the
Vatican admits they believe exists. Allegedly, it is a book of Jesus’ teachings, possibly written in His own
hand.” (p.256)
Biblical scholars believe the gospel writers used a written collection of assorted sayings of
Jesus as part of their source material. No archaeologist has discovered such a document, but
scholars are certain it existed. It is called the “Q” document from the German word quelle,
which means “source”. The Vatican has no problem admitting the existence of Q because there
is no reason to be embarrassed by its existence. No serious scholar believes that Jesus wrote the
Q Source himself. It was compiled by anonymous Christians two decades after Jesus.
“Teabing was laughing. ‘Believe me, it’s no mistake. Leonardo was skilled at painting the difference
between the sexes.’ . . . The woman to Jesus’ right was young and pious-looking, with a demure face,
beautiful red hair, and hands folded quietly.” . . . (p.243)
DVC:
Truth:
It is true the apostle John in The Last Supper is very feminine. In tradi-tional Christian art
John is painted young and beardless, because he was supposedly the youngest of the apostles and
lived the longest. In Christian piety he was also supposed to embody guileless innocence, which
meant his facial features were portrayed softer. He was also Jesus’ favorite apostle; John laid his
head on Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper (John 13:25). Hence we should not be surprised that
Leonardo suggests a closer relationship between them in his art. All this is nothing new.
Leonardo painted many males with feminine features. See his portrait of John the Baptist,
which is extremely feminine. But he was not the only artist to do so. Donatello’s bronze
sculpture of David is feminine. In Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, the sibyls (female oracles of
Greco-Roman culture) are quite masculine.
The mixing of the sexes was a common motif in 16th century art. Hence there is no reason
to suppose anything sinister in Leonardo’s depiction of John in The Last Supper.
Incidentally, if St. Mary Magdalene were as dear to Leonardo da Vinci as Brown claims, it
seems rather odd that Leonardo did not paint a single explicit image of her during his lifetime.
“’Venturing into the more bizarre,’ Teabing said, ‘note that Jesus and His bride appear to be joined at the
hip and are leaning away from one another as if to create this clearly delineated negative space between
them.’” (p.244)
Brown does not mention that there is also a space between Jesus and the apostles to his left.
Leonardo depicts the moment when Jesus reveals that someone is about to betray him. Notice
that Jesus’ right hand is reaching for a piece of bread at the same time as Judas’ left hand (the
third apostle to Jesus’ right), which corresponds to John 13:26-27.
Note the apostles are divided into groups of three. Each set of apostles represents a dramatic
moment in miniature. The space between Jesus and John is the largest of the spaces, but this by
itself does not seem remarkably important.
Leonardo intended viewers’ eyes to be drawn to the betrayed Jesus who stands alone and
vulnerable. Notice that all the lines of the building, if extended, converge at a point just over
his head. The slopes created by Jesus’ arms, if extended, also point to his head. There is also a
cornice over the door behind Jesus, shaped in a an arc, which if extended into a circle would
form a halo around his head. In other words, Leonardo grouped the apostles in such a way as to
make Jesus the center of attention.
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
“‘These are photocopies of the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scrolls, which I mentioned earlier,’ Teabing
said. “The earliest Christian records. Troub-lingly, they do not match up with the gospels in the Bible.’”
(pp.245-246)
The Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian documents. They were written by a Jewish sect
called the Qumran Community between 200 B.C. and 70 A.D. Most of the texts are ancient
copies of Old Testament books. Absolutely none of them related to Christianity or made
references to New Testament figures.
The Nag Hammadi scrolls are 53 assorted texts of philosophy and theology discovered in
Egypt in 1945. Many deal with Christian themes and relate supposed words and deeds of Jesus.
Some of these words and deeds are likely accurate. However, they were written later than the
biblical texts. Brown’s claim that they represent the earliest writings on Christianity is false.
Moreover, these texts were not written by Christians, but by the aforementioned heretical
group called the Gnostics. Gnosticism was not originally Christian, but rather a spiritual
movement which absorbed some doctrines of Christianity and rejected others. Thus the Nag
Hammadi writings do not represent the earliest thinking of Jesus’ followers, as Brown asserts,
but rather the later thinking of those rejected as heretics by the early, mainstream Church.
“Does this fresco tell us what the Grail really is?” (p.236)
Brown demonstrates significant ignorance of art. First, The Last Supper is not a fresco, but
tempera on stone. Second, no art scholar refers to Leonardo da Vinci as “da Vinci,” as if it were
his last name. Brown does this consist-ently. This is like referring St. Joan of Arc as “of Arc”.
Third, that Leonardo did not paint a chalice (grail) on the table simply followed the conventions
of Florentine art at the time, which stressed the betrayal and sacrifice of Jesus rather than the
institution of the Eucharist. (See Bruce Boucher’s article “Does ‘The Da Vinci Code’ Crack
Leonardo?” in the New York Times, August 5, 2003.)
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
“Langdon’s Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the early Jewish
tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in
Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking
spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses—or hierordules—with whom they made love
and experience the divine through physical union.” (p.309)
“Old Testament scholars agree that prostitution was sometimes used to obtain money for the
temple. But there is no convincing evidence for sacred or ritual prostitution, and none at all for
Israelite men coming to the temple to experience the divine and achieve spiritual wholeness by
having sex with priestesses.” The name Shekinah is not found in the Bible, but does appear in
later Jewish writings. It does not refer to a female god, but describes the nearness of God to his
people. (See Gerald O’Collins’ article “Sensational Secrets,” in America, December 15, 2003.)
“By the 1300’s, the Vatican sanction had helped the Knights amass so much power that Pope Clement V
decided that something had to be done. Working in concert with France’s King Philippe IV, the Pope
devised an ingeniously planned sting operation to quash the Templars and seize their treasure, thus taking
control of the secrets held over the Vatican. In a military maneuver worthy of the CIA, Pope Clement issued
secret sealed orders to be opened simultaneously by his soldiers all across Europe on Friday, October 13 of
1307.” (p.159)
France was bankrupt in the 1300’s, and Phillip held great animosity toward the Pope. Eyeing
the Knights Templars’ wealth, and mindful that he could attack the Pope indirectly by attacking
the Templars, Phillip began a success-ul smear campaign against them, blaming them for the
loss of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1187. He even forged scandalous “initiation rites” which he
claimed the Templars were using on their new recruits. It was Phillip, not Pope Clement, who
conducted a “sting operation” against 2,000 French Templars without papal approval. In July
1308 Clement conducted his own investigation of the Knights Templar; in every country that
was untouched by French influence they were found innocent. Clement, being a weak man,
and owing his papacy to Phillip, nevertheless abolished the Knights on March 22, 1312. He
reserved for himself the right to question, and if necessary, prosecute them. Disregarding this,
Phillip tortured and executed several Knights, including their Grand Master Jacques de Molay,
whom history has shown was unquestionably innocent. Phillip was later enraged when the
Pope dispersed the Templars’ money to other religious groups.
“So the entire Holy Grail legend is all about royal blood?” ‘Quite literally,’ Teabing said. ‘The word
Sangreal derives from San Greal—or Holy Grail. But in its most ancient form, the word Sangreal was
divided in a different spot.” Teabing wrote on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to her. She read what
he had written. Sang Real. Instantly, Sophie recognized the translation. Sang Real literally meant
Royal Blood.” (p.250)
No one knows for sure how the word “grail” came to denote the cup of Christ. The earliest and
best explanation is that it comes from the Old French word graal, which meant cup. This word
come into the English language as “grail”. The idea that San greal comes from sang real (royal
blood) did not originate until hundreds of years later, in the late Middle Ages.
Leonardo da Vinci planted clues in his paintings to reveal hidden truths.
Many artists in Leonardo’s day planted secret symbols, inside jokes, and other subtle imagery in
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
their paintings. When Michelangelo painted St. Bartholo-mew in the Sistine Chapel, for
example, he depicted the apostle holding his own skin, because according to tradition
Bartholomew was martyred by being skinned alive. In the painting, Bartholomew’s head is bald
and he has a long white beard, but the face on the skin is clean-shaven with short, dark hair.
Most scholars agree that here Michelangelo mischievously placed his own self-portrait.
Or again, in “The Final Judgment” Michelangelo painted a Catholic Cardi-nal in hell, at the
far bottom-right of the wall. A snake wraps around the man’s nude body and bites him on the
groin. The reason is that when M was painting “The Final Judgment,” a cardinal complained
because all the figures were nude. He irritated M so much, that M put the cardinal’s face on the
man in hell! When the cardinal complained to the pope, the pope smiled and said, “I can get
someone out of purgatory, but not out of hell.”
Look closely at the right hand of one of the two angels standing behind the Cumean Sibyl in
the Sistene Chapel, one can see its thumb wedged between two fingers. In the sixteenth
century, this was equivalent to giving someone the finger. Why M put it there, no one knows
for certain.
In short, that Leonardo sometimes put subtle jokes in his paintings is not anything unusual...
and it certainly does not mean that he was privy to secret information. The disembodied hand
with a knife which protrudes from behind Judas in “The Last Supper” was probably some kind of
inside joke for Leonardo, the meaning of which has been lost to us.
DVC:
Truth:
DVC:
Truth:
III. Suggested Reading
Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, Paulist Press, New York, 1984.
Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity (vol. 1), Harper, San Francisco, 1984.
Joseph Martos, Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church, 2nd edition,
Ligouri Press, Missouri, 1991.
Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Intervarsity Press, 1994.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Harper, San Francisco, 2001. (A classic!)
Church Fathers were saintly intellectuals of the first six centuries of the Church, whose writings had a
considerable influence on how Christians came to understand their faith. They were bishops and laymen,
monks and philosophers, priests and theologians. Since their writings demonstrate what were the beliefs of
the early Christians, they refute many of the false historical claims being made today about Catholicism. To
read the writings of the Church Fathers, go to:
www.newadvent.org/fathers.
Church Councils are meetings of the Church’s bishops to discuss matters of faith and doctrine. When all
or most of the Church’s bishops meet, it is called an “ecumenical council”. Ecumenical councils were
convened during times of crisis or heresy in order to clarify Christian belief and practice. The first
ecumenical council was held in Nicea in 325. The last was Vatican Council II, held in 1962-65 in Rome. To
read the writings of the twenty-one ecumenical councils in the history of the Catholic Church, go to:
http://www.piar.hu/councils/~index.htm.
“That which is said well is believed.”
--Nietzsche
“If it’s too silly to be said, it can always be sung.”
--Voltaire
Revised 4 May 2004