Introduction Continued
One false claim is that the Emperor Constantine, for political reasons of his own, decided to make a god out of Jesus Christ who was solely a Jewish rabbi for whom neither he nor his first followers ever asserted a divine origin. This claim cannot be sustained on the basis of the existing evidence which demonstrates that Constantine did no such thing.
It also highlights the schizophrenia in the The Da Vinci Code about Jesus Christ. Only if Jesus is divine would we have any interest in the possibility that his descendant might walk the earth today. If he is not, such a descendant ceases to be a mythic figure and becomes only a kind of celebrity child, so many of whom have turned out to be disappointments to their parents.
Reporters have asked whether even a bestselling novel can seriously damage a Church of one billion believers. No, in the long run, it cannot. But that is not the point. The pastoral concern of the Church is for each and every person. If only one person were to come away with a distorted impression of Jesus Christ or His Church, our concern is for that person as if he or she were the whole world.
Due to the concern about many current media portrayals of Jesus Christ and the origins of Christianity, this Web site was developed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Department of Communications, under the direction of the USCCB Committee on Communications, chaired by the Most Reverend Gerald F. Kicanas, in consultation with the USCCB Secretariat for Doctrine.
Monsignor Francis J. Maniscalco is a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York who has served the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops since 1993, and since 1995 as Director of Communications
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