Manila - A senior Philippine bishop on Tuesday urged movie regulators to ban the public showing of the Da Vinci Code movie in the predominantly Catholic country.
US actor Tom Hanks during shots of the big-budget production of Dan Brown‘s international best-selling book'The Da Vinci Code', Thursday, 30 June 2005. EPA/-
Archbishop Ramon Arguelles said the movie, based on the book by Dan Brown, 'destroys' the image of God and the Catholic Church.
'If you are a Catholic and you watch or encourage others to watch this film, that destroys the image of God and the church, you are encouraging others to commit blasphemy because this film is sacrilegious against God,' he said.
Arguelles said that after reading the book, he was convinced that the film could shake the belief of even the most devoted Catholic and urged the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) not to approve it for public screening.
The book involves both a murder mystery and conspiracy in which the Catholic Church is depicted as covering up the nature of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene's relationship with Jesus.
'I appeal to the MTRCB and the government to ban the said film on the grounds that it injures the religious sentiments of the majority of Filipinos,' he said.
Arguelles said he already sent a letter to the board, which has yet to issue any decision on the film's ratings.
'In a predominantly Christian country like the Philippines, making publicly available such a film is sinfully condoning blasphemy and undermining the very limits of the people's values and religious foundation,' the bishop's letter said.
The influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, however, does not support Arguelles' position.
Spokesman Monsignor Pedro Quitorio said other bishops believe that banning the film would only create more controversy, which would intrigue more Filipinos into seeing it.
'We neither oppose nor endorse its showing,' he said. 'We don't want to ride on the commercialization and marketing hype because we know that this is all marketing strategy and the bottom line here is money. It's not religion.'
More than 80 per cent of the Philippines' estimated 85.2 million people are Roman Catholic.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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