Amy Welborn has taken an axe to The DaVinci Code, and as far as I'm concerned, it's dead.

Who says that Catholicism doesn’t influence American culture? Who says we’ve been pushed out and away in favor of the joys of secularism? After all, the number one best selling fiction title in the nation – The Da Vinci Code – has “Catholic” on practically every page.Granted, the word is usually placed awfully close to other words like “repressive,” “patriarchal,” and “brutal,” but you know – you have to take what you can get.

I read this book two weeks ago. Got through it in one night, which should tell you that it's not a very intellectual or thought-provoking or literary work (it took me a month to read The Brothers Karamazov, and two days to read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; compare times and literary merit). I've heard almost all of it before, except that shocker about the figure next to Christ in DaVinci's Last Supper being a woman--Mary Magdalene, of course. Also, is it a coincidence that the supposed members of the Priory of Sion are almost all known Masons as well? So, did those men really believe all that crap or did they just have a thing for secret societies?

I wonder how Mary Magdalene feels about all this.