Just a few thoughts I’ve been having. But first:
**Housekeeping note: being new to St.Blog’s, I didn’t know that you had moderate the comments before they were posted. I know that now. 
So if you leave a comment I will look at it! I promise!!
**Why is Hollywood making a second Da Vinci Code movie? The first one tanked and the book is awful. No, I didn’t not read the whole book. I read two pages. But I saw no need to continue reading a book where the “facts” listed on the FACTS page were not, in fact, facts. And if one more person tells me that the book is just fiction and I “need to chill” I will scream. I’m sorry. As a writer I believe that you have a certain obligation to your audience. If you’re dealing with real people and history, then you have to be accountable for that. It would be like writing a novel about Henry VIII and saying that he didn’t really behead Ann Boleyn and there’s a whole secret society of Boleyn kids out there with a “shadow crown” or whatever. The best historical fiction (i.e., Phillippa Gregory, whom I love, or even Allison Weir’s recent venture into this genre) is well researched. DVC was not. As we know.
**A side note: can you imagine what would happen if something akin to DVC had been written about Jews or Muslims? I doubt it would’ve been made into a movie. Heck, I doubt it would’ve been published. Of course anti-Semitism is alive and well in the West, so maybe I’m wrong about that. I read once that Orthodox Jews and Roman Catholics have more in common than Catholics and Protestants. There may be something to that.
**Here in Ohio, the Governor (a pro-choice D) is saying he wants to end the abstinence-only sex ed program in public schools and he won’t apply for more federal money when our current grant runs out in September. The fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by about 20,000 a year doesn’t seem to register when he says it doesn’t work.
Here’s the thing. If you teach abstinence, and that’s all kids know, then you would drastically cut down on the spread of STDs and AIDS, wouldn’t you? I mean, if you talk about not having sex until you’re married, then it seems like that would stick…for some kids, anyway. You have to be consistent with your message. Now I went to Catholic grade school, so our sex ed consisted of the biological facts only There was no discussion of birth control or anything. Which, it being a Catholic school, is how it should be. But if you go into a classroom and say, “Well abstinence is best, but if you really want to screw around, here’s how to do it safely,” what message are you sending them? Besides the fact that no birth control method is 100% other than abstinence, as we know. It just kills me when this stuff happens. Besides the fact, I don’t want teachers teaching my kids about sex anyway…unless they’re at a Catholic school. I want to make sure they know my personal beliefs (read: The Church’s).
**Who came up with the idea that all Catholics are gloom and doom? Or that we’re all these awful people? Every single book I read that has Catholic characters (with some obvious exceptions, like Waugh’s Brideshead) treat Catholics like evil, abusive idiots that are slaves to doctrine and rule with an Iron Rod. That has not been my experience at all. Maybe I should write the pro-Catholic life book. Hmmmm. (I guess this can connect with my DVC point, above)
