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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Angels and Terrorists By Antonio C. Abaya Written April 06, 2005 For the Philippines Free Press, April 16 issue With an estimated two to four million visitors, including dozens of heads of state and heads of government, expected to descend on Rome in the next few days for the funeral of Pope John Paul II on April 8, and many of them expected to remain for the conclave that will begin on April 18 to elect the next Pope, the worry of Rome�s municipal bureaucrats is how to feed and house and provide toilet facilities for this unprecedented mass of humanity. Others, however, including this writer, worry more about possible terrorist attacks. Never before have so many of the leaders of the world�s Christian countries been gathered, and probably never again will they be gathered, together in one small and constricted space, under security arrangements that at best have been slapped together after only a few days� notice. Those who harbor smoldering hatred for the �Crusaders and the Zionists� must now be racking their brains on how best to take advantage of this heaven-sent opportunity to score some dramatic points for their cause. I will admit that I have, perhaps, been reading one novel too many. In particular, the novel Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown, who wrote it before he wrote The Da Vinci Code (which has made him a multi-millionaire). My interest in The Da Vinci Code was sparked by its detailed references to the Gnostic Gospels, the Council of Nicaea, and Emperor Constantine the Great, about which I had previously been doing some reading to satisfy my curiosity. (See my article �Da Vinci�s Code,� Aug. 19, 2004.) I picked up Angels and Demons at a bookstore in The Podium last Christmas, not because it was also by Dan Brown, but because its plot revolved around anti-matter, in which I have a layman�s interest, it being an integral part of my personal cosmology. (Anti-matter is the opposite twin of matter: its electrons are positively charged and its protons are negatively charged, the exact opposite of matter. The laboratory evidence is that when matter collides with anti-matter, they annihilate each other in a burst of pure energy. And if this is all Greek to anyone, the question has to be asked, �What�s the anti-matter? Don�t you understand sub-atomic physics?�) In Angels and Demons, a scientist working in the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire or CERN near Geneva has discovered a way to isolate and collect anti-matter. CERN is a real institution and is only one of two in the world with an underground particle accelerator, more than two kilometers in diameter (if memory serves), that accelerates sub-atomic particles to speeds approaching the speed of light, preparatory to collision. In the novel, the scientist is brutally murdered and his canister of anti-matter is stolen by person or persons unknown. Dan Brown�s formulaic hero, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, is enlisted to track down the killer or killers because the murdered scientist�s chest has been burned with a mysterious symbol. Langdon eventually deciphers it as the ambigram of the Illuminati, a secret society going back to the time of Galileo and made up of scientists and thinkers who hate the Catholic Church for the blind faith that it supposedly encourages. If all this sounds familiar to those who have read The Da Vinci Code, it is because both plots were cast in the same mold. For the Priory of Sion, read the Illuminati; for the Holy Grail, read the canister of anti-matter; for the murdered curator of the Louvre, read the murdered scientist at CERN; for the beauteous (French) niece of the Louvre curator, read the beauteous (Italian) daughter of the CERN scientist, as Langdon�s female sidekick; for mysterious clues in the paintings of Da Vinci, read mysterious clues in the statues of the sculptor Bernini. And the only reason I am writing about Angels and Demons now is because the action takes place in the Vatican while the cardinals are having their conclave to elect a new Pope. The bad guys who stole the canister of anti-matter from CERN have smuggled it into Rome with the intention of detonating it during the conclave, which would have blown all the cardinals and everyone and everything else in the Vatican to high heavens.. There is non-stop action as Langdon and his beauteous sidekick, who happens to be a nuclear physicist, frantically search for the canister in the different rooms and crannies, each minutely described, of the Vatican, as the cardinals meet in the Sistine Chapel to elect the next Pope. There are plot twists involving the camerlengo, the Swiss Guards and a BBC television crew. Four of the conclaving cardinals are kidnapped and are murdered one by one as Langdon and the beauteous Vittoria rush from one mysterious clue to another imbedded in Bernini statues located in different parts of Rome, until the final denouement in the dungeons of the Castel Gandolfo, the Pope�s summer residence. The anti-matter scare is, of course, fiction, even if anti-matter does exist in the cosmos and in the laboratory. But suppose, instead of anti-matter, it is ricin powder or sarin gas or smallpox bacteria or a dirty bomb, in real time? Seven years ago, Dan Brown could have written a novel about a bunch of religious fanatics (not necessarily from the Opus Dei) who hijack two airliners, with the intention of crashing them against the World Trade Center, but are prevented from doing so by the timely intervention of his hero Robert Langdon and his beauteous Negro-Oriental-American Indian sidekick, working from mysterious clues spray-painted on Manhattan subway coaches. That novel could have been in the New York Times bestseller list for 150 weeks and could have been made into a movie starring Tom Hanks, to be premiered in a Times Square theatre on, let�s see now�� September 11, 2001? ***** Reactions to [email protected] or fax 824-7642. Other articles in www.tapatt.org. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Angels and Terrorists� Although I'm a catholic but i'm not a fanatic one. I never cry when i heard someone dies because everybody will end up that way. But i never contriol myself to cry when i watch the burial of Pope John Paul ll. I never knew him because i ignore anything about him, even when he visit the philippines i ignore the events. Even when fpj died and many people testify how good guy he was, i never feel sad about him becauase i feel its a lie. It is different about Pope, i feel sad because i never knew how good and and so good enough to be Saint because i ignore him when he is alive. I feel any testimony i heard about him during that day i feel it is all true. I'm sorry Pope for ignoring your presence, although i pray that day i knew i'm not worth doing it for you. I love you Pope John Paul ll. Alexander Carranceja, [email protected] Kuwait, April 11, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww My Dear Abaya, I liked your article. Lots of truth in it. Many Questions posed. I am a scientist, so I do understand matter and anti-matter as much as a lay scientist can know about all those mathematical abstracts they use to try to explain it. Although I have read hundreds of books and novels, I have not read either "Angels and Demons" or the "Da Vinci Code". If I come upon them, I will make sure I read them. I am into comparative religion, contemporary psychology and the Human Condition. I have worked out how and why we humans say, do and believe what we do. There are not many surprises in human nature left for me. The Terrorist, the mass killer, etc, this all fits well with what I think I know�� Graham Reinders, [email protected] April 11, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya: Your fears on what to happen on the funeral of Pope John Paul were based on fictions by Dawn Brown, not on the actual past realistic events, like the bombings in Manila, New York City, Africa, Israel, etc., as televised and broadcasted in many forms of media. There's no logic on these comparisons - actual current event to fictional events. You could have just deleted the opening paragraph on the Pope, and focused on your reviews on the two books by Dan Brown � which actually consumed two-thirds of this article. Jess Guim New York City, April 11, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Hi Tony! Get hold of the Bible Code II. There are several revelations which you will find interesting like nuclear explosion in NY next year, spread of small fox in Israel and the presence of Osama not in Afghanistan or Pakistan but in the Middle East probably Iran. Narciso Ner, [email protected] April 12, 2005 MY REPLY. One Sister Reodica, who claims to have predicted the tsunami last Dec. 26, has also predicted that an Intensity 9 earthquake would hit Manila today, April 14, at 5pm. It is now 10pm and we are still waiting. Just because a priest or a nun predicts something does not mean it is going to happen. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww You wrote: �...Seven years ago, Dan Brown could have written a novel about a bunch of religious fanatics (not necessarily from the Opus Dei) who hijack two airliners, with the intention of crashing them against the World Trade Center, but are prevented from doing so by the timely intervention of his hero Robert Langdon and his beauteous Negro-Oriental-American Indian sidekick, working from mysterious clues spray-painted on Manhattan subway coaches. �That novel could have been in the New York Times bestseller list for 150 weeks and could have been made into a movie starring Tom Hanks, to be premiered in a Times Square theatre on, let's see now.. September 11, 2001?� A good idea. A possible twist of Night Fall by Nelson Demille. Have you read it? Ogie Reyes, [email protected] April 12, 2005 MY REPLY. No, I haven�t. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Hi, Tony. Well done. I forwarded it to friends. Cheers Gil Santos, [email protected] April 13, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww You could have gone on to write that the Illuminati, like the Priory of Sison as well as the references to the Masons/Opus Dei, were all clever manipulations of historiacal facts generated by Dan Brown's fertile imagination. Victor A. Lim, [email protected] Asian Institute of Management April 20, 2005 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |