I'm sure DB is an interesting guy and his passion for art must run deep... but I was truly embarrassed for him as I read Angels & Demons. This is not a novel a serious Catholic can respect. I'm not an expert on Rome, artwork or Galileo (heck, I'm not even sure if I spelled his name right), but I have a basic grasp of the Catholic faith, and a great respect for it. To earn a reader's willingness to suspend disbelief, an author has to have an inkling of how his characters might think. Brown clearly had no guidance from a Catholic clergyman -- or even probably from a knowledgable Catholic lay person, for that matter -- as he wrote.



The minimum amount of time priests-in-training spend studying philosophy, theology, Church history and other such subjects is six years. Those at the Vatican typically spend much longer. Brown, however, has them speaking at remedial levels of understanding, as though they just emerged from their first high school Catholic Moral Theology class. At one supposedly climactic point in the novel, he actually has a priest speaking "to" the very concept of science, as though it were some kind of being! At another, he has a Catholic priest having a supposed revelation from God that causes him to completely misinterpret the Scripture verse "thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church." He calls the "most sacred" thing in the Basillica of St. Peter the tomb of St. Peter -- completely neglecting to mention Christ Himself in the tabernacle. Also, it doesn't help that Brown puts his story in a backdrop of half-truth, half-stuff-he-just-makes-up (e.g., only cardinals present in conclave can be elected pope). I could go on.



At least his recklessness in treating his subject matter didn't ruin good storytelling. There was very little of that, Brown uses a lot of cliches. He employs far too many predictable would-be "cliffhangers." And if a reader knows anything about foreshadowing, hardly anything in this book would come as a surprise.



Finally, I have a moral problem with the book, too, and would caution anyone serious about their relationship with God to consider it -- particularly my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church. The book uses Christ (i.e. the Church) for strictly entertainment purposes, devoid of moral value -- so is a reader of the book using the notion of our Sacred Lord for a "cheap thrill," in a sense? Am I too serious? Think about it -- after all, God did take the initiative to, literally, write something in stone for mankind to look at. Is using God as a character in a suspense novel with scant or no moral value using God's name "in vein?" This thought did kind of make me squirm as I read, especially in light of the author's lack of both respect for and understanding of the Church. I'll offer you this comparison: C.S. Lewis first conceived the fine book "Screwtape Letters" to convey the thoughts of devils as they tried to tempt a man, and angels as they tried to guide him closer to God. After prayer, Lewis wrote the book only from the devils' perspective. His reason?: He had too great a respect for angels to even pretend he could know their wisdom. In other words, he had a sense that there was something too sacred to write about. In my own life, I would like to keep such a sense of the sacred, and that includes not (again) picking up a book that uses Christ (i.e. the Church) without a higher purpose than simply to entertain. Please, do think about it. May God bless!