“This is not one of these ‘he said, she said’ things, he’s simply wrong,” Donohue commented, accusing Howard of “making up out of whole cloth the idea that there was this Illuminati in the 17th century, which he has to put in the 1600s so he can drag out Galileo.”
He reiterated that the Illuminati was not formed until the 18th century.
Donohue also accused Brown and Howard of being two-faced in describing their work as fictional but then promoting it as fact-based.
“They can’t have it both ways.” Donohue said, noting that Ron Brown went on “The Today Show” about another of his books, “The Da Vinci Code,” and claimed it was fiction. Soon afterward, Brown claimed it was “based on fact.”
“They try to play both sides of the street,” Donohue told CNA. “Dan Brown is a master of this.”
“If Ron Howard wants to debate me on this, I’ll be glad to go on any television station. I have a feeling he won’t do it,” he added, saying a debate would be better than “to have somebody write something for him on the Huffington Post and then walk away from it.”
Donohue reported that Canadian priest Fr. Bernard O’Connor was on the “Angels & Demons” set in plain clothes and overheard “some of the most vicious anti-Catholic statements, made repeatedly.”
“The agenda is to smear the Catholic Church, which they did in The Da Vinci Code,” Donohue argued.
“What is happening here is that [Howard] is fueling some of the basest appetites and stereotypes,” he told CNA. “‘Amos and Andy’ was just a comedy, but CBS won’t air it on reruns because it’ll offend African-American communities.
"Nobody’s going to say ‘it’s okay.’ People would complain that would feed the worst stereotypes.”
“Every demographic group has their dirty laundry, and they also have the lies and the smears and the myths. People in Hollywood don’t make films based on the lies and smears and myths,” he said, adding that the Catholic League wanted Catholics to be likewise treated with “some degree of tolerance and respect.”
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He told CNA the movie advanced “one of the most pernicious lies” against the Catholic Church, namely the claim that it is anti-reason and anti-science.
“The Catholic Church doesn’t have a problem with evolution, it’s more a problem with our Protestant brothers and sisters,” Donohue remarked.
CNA asked Donohue how he responds to the claim that his objections are just giving the movie free publicity.
Donohue argued that it is a false generalization to claim that all objections about bias generate profitable publicity, even though that may happen in some cases.
He pointed to the anti-Christian movie The Golden Compass, saying its sequels have not been made because of its box office failure. Donohue told CNA that Philip Pullman, author of the book on which the movie is based, has said the boycott worked in the United States.