Sunday, March 27, 2005

MoDo Doesn't Expect The Spanish Inquisition

Maureen Dowd writes something very silly in her Times column today. Wishing to berate the Vatican for its slow response to the poorly-sourced airport novel The DaVinci Code, MoDo says, in her awesomely sarcastic way:

But when you think of the history of the Catholic Church, the Vatican is acting with lightning speed. It took the church more than 350 years to reverse its condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican only began an inquisition of the 16th-century Inquisition in 1998.

So, what MoDo is doing here is conflating the Catholic church's willingness to confront its past mistakes, which is poor, and leaves it moving very slowly, and its willingness to take on perceived threats to its authority. Which is fast and brutal. You could check with the non-Catholics of Spain in the 17th century, only there weren't any after the Inquisitors had been round. Pick a heretic, any heretic, watch him (usually him) burn. With alacrity. Jumping down Galileo's throat before he could say "Heliocentric".

These guys don't mess around. They can't afford to, when Catholicism's place in the religious marketplace depends on it being right. This isn't to say that the Roman catholic church is nice, or even right. Just that it couldn't see the point in taking on a book that makes the Day of the Jackal look like the Spiritual Exercises. Their bad, but it's not like Dan Brown has any new religion on offer, except for the "Buy books that make Robert Ludlum turn in his grave" cult.

Ask Monty Python. They knew the score:

4 Comments:

At 10:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

is Gringcorp stealing links from the kindly researchers at MIT? For shame.

 
At 11:29 PM, Blogger Gringcorp said...

No, Mig-Hell, Gringcorp is stealing bandwidth from the sickeningly well-funded IT department at MIT. After the inanities we've had thrown at us by US higher education, it's the least we deserve.

 
At 9:06 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you read The Da Vinci code backwards, turn all the letters upsidedown and translate it into aramaic it still reads like join the dots. Why not do a wordsearch instead?

Thought you has rid yourself of your nemesis did you? Well wait for the launch of my "World of Phi", 250 pictures of the golden ratio in nature, inlcuding a manatee with its head up its arse.

 
At 9:50 AM, Blogger Gringcorp said...

Nazareth’s members are: Dan McCafferty (vocals), Pete Agnew (bass), Jimmy Morrison (lead guitar), and Lee Agnew drums. So, “Barbara”, or whoever you are, start running now, because the boys don’t take too kindly to people posting as them on the internet. Ever since Testament’s moderately successful “that guitar, it is all air, the playing, it is done by Brian May” slander campaign against them, they’ve been in the mood for some dismemberment. Just a warning

 

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