Word: dei
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...Vinci Code brims with mysteries: Did Jesus have a girlfriend? And did they have a daughter, whose descendants live today? Is the Priory of Sion an ancient covenant whose Grand Masters, including Leonardo Da Vinci and Isaac Newton, have sworn to protect this royal blood line? Is Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic sect Brown paints in such lurid colors, really that awful? Can a fictional thriller that is nothing more or less than (as one Biblical scholar called it) "a great plane read" be taken seriously as an ecclesiastical exposé? (My short answers: No, no, no, no idea...
...script is doggedly faithful to Brown's plot: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) is paired with pert police detective Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), and against Silas, the albino hit man from Opus Dei, as they race from Paris and environs to London and environs in the company of crippled scholar Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen) to discover the meaning and whereabouts of the Holy Grail, a central artifact in Christian mythology. We eventually learn that, unawares, our hero and heroine have attracted the attention of rival gangs of learned loonies, latest in a millennial line of combatants over the central tenet...
...part; he gives it the fretful stare that spoke tragic volumes in Philadelphia and Saving Private Ryan but just registers as numb here. The villains fare a bit better. Bettany gets some poignance out of his role as self-flagellator and avenging devil, and Alfred Molina, as an Opus Dei poobah, plays liturgical corruption as if he were an Enron exec in robes. McKellen, a pro's pro, lends suavity and power to the Leigh Teabing role (a character Brown named for two of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail). Yet when he delivers the film's dead-serious...
...very surprised and upset by your insistence on the secrecy of Opus Dei. The society has centers all over the world. I have been a numerary member of Opus Dei for more than 30 years and have never been told to keep my membership secret. Members of Opus Dei, however, don't like our efforts to live a spirit of penance to be vaunted about. That should be a private matter between the soul and God. Marciano Escutia Madrid...
...cover speaks of a "Secret Catholic Society," but while the article makes unblushing use of anonymous and pseudonymous critics, it is the folks in Opus Dei who showed their faces and gave their names. Opus Dei's headquarters in Rome are open to the public every day of the year, so next time you're in town, stop in. Father John Wauck Rome...