Reply #44: And "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was just a book.

[Old Gardener]

However, when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her novel, it confronted literate Americans with a vivid and heartwrenching story of the evils and atrocities of slavery. Stowe's novel does not have the authenticity and gravitas of a book like Toni Morrison's "Beloved" but it successfully touched the minds and hearts of Americans. It made mid-19th century readers ask: Why do we allow slavery in the United States? We can't keep doing this.

Mrs. Stowe visited the White House in 1862 and met with Abraham Lincoln. His greeting to her may be apocryphal, but he's reported to have said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this big war."

I never misunderestimate the power of a work of art to touch minds and hearts and serve as a catalyst for change. Neither do governments nor authoritarian religions. That's why the former USSR repressed and imprisoned Alexander Solzhenitsyn for so many years. It feared the power of his stories.

The pity is that "The Da Vinci Code" was not written from the heart, but for the marketplace, just as the movie was made for the marketplace. American artists so often censor themselves by writing for the marketplace. There is a real story in "The Da Vinci Code" - a story about the abuses of power, but it's obscured by silliness and sensationalism.

Just it, Bobcat: "You want to know what's a real threat to people's faith? Church sex abuse." The Church knows this. So the Church wants its members to be out protesting the movie, instead of thinking about what's happening in their own parishes.

Does the tactic sound famliar?