Secrets of the Vatican

If you believe everything you see and read, then you'd probably be up to your ears in conspiracy theories... and if you believe that the Illuminati is out there to expose the Catholic Church to the world as a ruthless organization, then you may as well just stop reading altogether. Hehe.

As much fun and entertainment these conspiracy theories are, they are still just works of fictions... or are they?

Here are some sites that try and unveil what goes on behind the walled city in Rome.

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Best source for Vatican Secrets is... from the Vatican itself! Awesome find here, the Vatican has their own website and a complete section on their Secret Archives.



Not so secret anymore eh?

Click here to see it.

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TheHarrowing.com is a pretty strange website, but you can find some interesting stuff in there about some of the Vatican's Secrets.

"Of all the vexing questions surrounding the widespread and on-going clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, perhaps the ones involving the Pope are among those most begging for an answer. For such a centralized, authoritarian organization headed by one single man, the Pope, the key Watergate-type question of 'what did he know and when did he know it?' is crucial to any understanding of the full dimensions of the crisis..."

Interesting eh? Click here to read more.

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Of course Wikis are a great source for information like this. But someone actually posted an ENTIRE BOOK... I think it's the book being mentioned in the video I posted below... not sure though.

Click here to read it... if you can read something that long anyway.

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This video I found on YouTube is another one that seeks to uncover the Secrets of the Vatican... though if you ask me, it's just rubbish. Fun to watch anyway... what the poor editing didn't give it away? Watch out for their 'interview resource person' at the end, after The Church and UFOs. Hahaha!

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After reading Angels and Demons and after seeing the latest trailer, I'm pretty sure there are more fired up conspiracy theorists out there (whether serious, or, like our last link, 'interesting'), especially those with an interest in Catholicism and religion in general.

You think they'll be in line for the movie when it opens on May 15 as well?

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Disassembling Dan Brown

Dan Brown has a very creative mind grounded on meticulous research and painstaking attention to detail. Anyone who's read his books can attest to the amazing depth of the characters he presents and the astounding amount of religious trivia one can glean by just reading a page of his novels. (Image borrowed from Age-of-the-Sage.org)

But who is Dan Brown? How did he become such an astounding writer talking about such a controversial topic?

In his biography, and I quote:

"Brown grew up as the eldest of three children in Exeter, New Hampshire and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, a decidedly up-market school where his father was employed as a math teacher, in 1982. His mother, Constance, was a professional musician principally involved in performing sacred music. Although Dan Brown actually attended local public, (i.e. open-enrollment), schools until the ninth grade he nonetheless lived with his family on the Exeter campus and participated in a college related life that was also informed by christian values- singing in the church choir and attending church camp."

Read the rest of his bio here:

Anyway, I guess it happens that a man who grew up with such exposure to religion as he did does make for a very rich background. After all, it does make it easier to write about a subject you know...

That being said, a lot of us Filipinos can probably attempt to be writers of a similar nature... considering almost all of us grew up with a Catholic education. What do you think? Is there a Dan Brown lurking in one of our aspiring writers?

For additional info on Dan Brown, visit his official website.

Religion vs. Science

In that eternal quest for truth, man has always been at odds with what is and what can be.

How so? Mainly because there are those that choose to believe only what they can sense--see, hear, touch, taste... and there are those of us that choose to really leave our fate in the hands of things we cannot understand, hence the birth of religion and faith.

Science has always dealt with the empirical. Things that we can measure, describe, outwardly observe... science has given man the option to learn, to become more than just a mere thought. Science came about because of mans thirst for knowledge, his quest for the truth...

Religion on the other hand, has always been argued as something that was merely 'invented' to keep man in check. Because if in his quest for the truth, he cannot find the answers he seeks, he turns to something he cannot understand and then attempts to explain and rationalize that things happen as God's will.

So why then can we not find a balance between scientific rationalization and religious belief?

Today science allows us to actually find out if the DNA of Jesus Christ exists... and if any one of us is actually, genetically related. But religious fanatics cry foul and say you cannot even attempt to discover let alone break down the matter that makes up God. And this is only one aspect of the ever-changing argument that is Religion vs Science.

In the first Dan Brown novel turned Ron Howard movie, The Da Vinci Code, man attempted to put a science behind Catholicism... man tried to break down what really happened during Christ's time... and they tried to do so using interpretations of what happened at the time, not even the actual accounts themselves... paintings, old scrolls, unpublished biblical verse... all of which can be 'hidden truth' but is it empirical enough evidence to actually state a fact?

Remember, though, that the movie is based on a work of fiction... but it does strike a chord with all of us scientists... if we did try and assess and examine and break down what was written in the bible, and then cross check it with all of the other documents and eyewitness accounts of the time, could there actually be merit in the arguments that Dan Brown presented in his novel? could there be merit in the 'discoveries' that Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon uncovered?

If you were given a chance... would you want to seek the truth about Christ's humanity, or leave it to faith and just... believe? What would you do?

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About Roberto Langdon

Robert Langdon, the character in the novels and the movies is like me.

Robert Langdon is a professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His specialities include classical iconology, symbols of pre-Christian culture, goddess art, and the decryption of ancient ciphers. He has written over a dozen books, including The Symbology of Secret Sects, The Art of the Illuminati, The Lost Language of Ideograms, and the renowned collegiate textbook Religious Iconology. (Source: RobertLangdon.com)

Like Robert, I have an eidetic memory--I can easily recall patterns, symbols and messages with ease, and describe them in detail at a later date. Like Robert, I have a great interest in classic iconology, symbols used in ancient times in the Philippines, and I've written a handful of books detailing these lost cultures, their alphabets and writings, and a few textbooks for universities. And, tragically, like Robert, I have great fear of enclosed spaces, elevators, enclosed cubicles, my faculty restroom... for all intents and purposes, I feel like Robert Langdon.

My real name is Roberto Langco.

And I'm about to encover the truth behind Catholicism in the Philippines.

(And yes I'm a big fan of the books and movies as well!)

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