Well, it had to be mentioned, I suppose.

The Da Vinci Code.

It's a good yarn. Not especially well written, but with a plot and not overly obsessed with carnality - though how he thinks that the "thumbs up" sign has its origins in the male physiology, I'll never know. Has he never studied the culmination of a gladiatorial combat?

The broohaha is essentially over the issue that fiction is presented as fact in order to sell the story. These false facts are quite easily seen to be false, so perhaps too much of a fuss is being made over nothing. The public reaction, however, is the cause for worry.

It is Gnosticism raising its ghastly head again. In order to gain some kind of fulfilment, we have to solve puzzles set by God or mankind. Salvation occurs by having the required knowledge; life becomes an Indiana Jones movie - how exciting!

Precisely, it is because it is exciting that it becomes tempting. We get a feeling of intellectual smugness when we solve the puzzle and move into the next sphere. As a mathematician, I am familiar with this sense of warmth whenever I legitimately write QED (or QEF) at the end of my work. However, it is only knowledge, and knowledge will vanish away.

Salvation is an ongoing process that does not finish until we stand before God face to face. It does not require the solution of puzzles, or the divining of secret knowledge or exposing that which is hidden: it involves a quest to find God for who He really is, to find what He wants done. Salvation requires a great deal of working out (in fear and trembling as St Paul reminds us), but it is work that anyone can undertake and is suited to the individual's God-given gifts. God's salvation is available to each human being. It is not covered up, nor hidden in dusty archives, or in whispered liturgies of secret societies. It requires a search, yes, but the duty of the Church is to help individuals onthat search.

Mankind looks for the truth that the Grace of God is too good to be true. It looks for the catch, the filthy underbelly. Of course, the poor old Roman Catholic Church gets all the accusations, and is at the heart of so many conspiracy theories, and is regularly insulted by people who just haven't bothered to get to know what the Church is doing. Of course the people within the RCC aren't perfect and there have been some cover-ups, but by and large, she bears the Truth, points to the Truth, and indeed worships the Truth (i.e. the Lord Christ).

I have heard ghastly things about the Holy See that make me laugh and/or cry. There are some Protestants who will leap on every attempt to regard the RCC as the organisation of the Anti-Christ. I have heard one preacher explain that the 666 comes from the words written on the Papal tiara "Vicarius filii Dei", taking the Roman numerals out ("VICarIVs fILII DeI") and adding them up 5+1+100+1+5+1+50+1+1+500+1=666. Great piece of divination, the trouble is
a) no words were written on the tiara
b) not every Pope has worn the tiara (indeed it's been abolished effectively)
c) the Pope is called Vicarius Christi, not Vicarius filius Dei.
d) there is even doubt that the number of the beast is 666!

There are more of these nasty, destructive theories in circulation. If you look hard for a conspiracy, you'll find it. It's like finding faces in fires, or ghosts in photos. All you will find are, in the words of Bishop Berkeley, are the ghosts of departed quantities, or rather the ghosts of quantities that never were.