Vatican City - Three top Vatican cardinals have bemoaned the religious ignorance they say fuels worldwide interest in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," whose film premiere is due on May 17.
Speaking out amid a publicity countdown to the premiere, the Vatican's culture minister, Cardinal Paul Poupard, said the book seriously twisted Church history but most laymen did not have enough religious knowledge to separate fact from fiction.
"The Da Vinci Code" has aroused fierce criticism from Christian churches because it says Jesus Christ married his female disciple Mary Magdalene and fathered a child with her but the Vatican hushed up the truth.
Clergy have expressed concern that readers and moviegoers might believe this heretical view rather than church teaching that Jesus was celibate.
"The absence of basic knowledge makes it difficult to distinguish among fables, fantasies and attacks on the history and values of the Church," Poupard told a conference in Rome on literature and religion on Tuesday.
A revival of interest in fantasy stories "plundered from history, art and the religious world" had caught the attention of readers interested in spiritual topics, the French cardinal said, according to the I.Media agency.
Cardinal Julian Herranz, the top official for Vatican legislative texts, said the Church had "to urge people to do some reading (so they can) confront lies with the truth."
He and another cardinal found a scene in Dan Brown's book that showed "an absolute ignorance of what the College of Cardinals is," he said in a film for the Romereports television agency shown to journalists on Wednesday.
"We were splitting our sides laughing -- it looked like something out of a Mafia film, a kind of gangster meeting in Chicago," the Spanish-born cardinal said.
Herranz said he expected a boomerang effect among people who read or see "The Da Vinci Code" and seek further information that could convince them of Christian teachings.
He noted he joined the conservative movement Opus Dei -- highlighted in the book as a ruthless defender of Church secrets -- after reading an article "similar to what Dan Brown has written, presenting the Opus as a secret, criminal and fundamentalist society."
Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who heads the Vatican office for designating saints, said "The Da Vinci Code" was "a novel that demonstrates huge ignorance of the real history of Christ and the Church."
Poupard did not cite Dan Brown's work by name but complained about the media industry in the English-speaking world that now dominated the global entertainment market.
"A novel or a saga quickly becomes a film bringing in enormous profits," he said. In the process, he added, "the most basic rules of common sense and professional ethics seem to be forgotten."
He said the Church had been attacked many times in the past but what was new now was "the religious ignorance and general ignorance" of the audience the attacks addressed.
But he said that debates with its critics could strengthen the Church. "Every challenge can become an opportunity to grow and mature, to take on more awareness and responsibility, if it is seen as such and confronted with intelligence and common sense," he said.