Over the years here on the forum...I have read with interest many DA letters. Brave people!! Me? Not so brave. But I think I found a really good way to write what was and is really my DA letter and get it published in our local newspaper. And it was all because of The Da Vinci Code! All these people writing open letters about how the Catholic church wanted the movie & book boycotted, etc. It was getting on my nerves. So I spit out this letter and today they published it. I wonder when the s**t is gonna hit the fan???
LET OTHERS MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS (Stevens Point Journal, 6/20/06)
Oh my! Oh my! Such a hoopla over a book and a movie. Of course I’m speaking of the “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. I don’t know about the majority of readers of this fine newspaper, but I prefer to be able to make decisions on my own, using my own personal conscience and moral parameters, without being ordered by a church to “boycott” any type of book, movie or other various types of entertainment.
I was a member of a cult for over forty years, which had the authority over its members to tell them what they could watch, wear, what organizations they could or could not belong to and who they could be friends with. They made decisions for you on how much education you could get, what kind of work you could do, what types of celebrations you could participate in, what medical choices you could make and even where you should sit in their “Kingdom Halls”.
Though they claimed to leave such matters up to your conscience, if you did other than what they told you to do, you were either severely disciplined and reproved, or totally banished from the organization. Then the shunning would begin, because you didn’t agree with a teaching or “law” of the “church”. Human rights went out the back door, the same one I walked out of five years ago.
As I read some open letters pertaining to this movie and book, I have flashbacks of what life was like being told how to live your life and not being able to use your own conscience to decide right from wrong. I say: “Get a grip”! The “Da Vinci Code” is pure fiction mixed with a few facts here and there, and if anyone wants to believe parts of it that seems farfetched, then let them. Let them decide what to believe or not believe. Don’t demean people by taking away their freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of entertainment.
I will never again let another person or religion make my decisions for me. I will continue to live my life responsibly and with integrity and love for my fellow travelers in this world.
Cathy L.