“Angels & Demons” opens May 15 and promises to be yet another hit job on the Catholic Church. Just as bad, those responsible for the film are engaging in doublespeak.
In a TV promo for the film, Tom Hanks, who plays Harvard professor Robert Langdon, discusses “the 400 year myth of the Illuminati”; he says they “have come for their revenge” against the Vatican.
What makes this so infuriating is that Hanks is on record saying he doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories. Yet that hasn’t stopped him from playing the lead role in two back-to-back conspiracy tales, both of which target the Catholic Church. “Conspiracy theories, I think…conjured up by people who can then sell their books about conspiracy theories,” says Hanks. People like Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons?
Here’s more doublespeak. On Brown’s website he addresses the conspiratorial Illuminati: “It is historical fact that the Illuminati vowed vengeance against the Vatican in the 1600s.” But as we have pointed out, it is an historical fact that there was no Illuminati until 1776; it folded in 1787.
Were it not for savaging Catholicism, few would care about the duplicity of Brown and Hanks. But they are obviously not content to spin mysterious tales absent an anti-Catholic animus. That is why the Vatican denied them the opportunity to film on its grounds. It also explains the Catholic League’s on-going campaign to educate the public about their agenda.
