The Vatican recently asked all of its followers and a lot of other people to boycott The Da Vinci Code movie, which is scheduled to be released May 17-19 around the world. While the Vatican states that the movie and the novel that it is based on is false, it still is threatened enough to tell people to boycott.

The Vatican needs to understand that whether or not people believe the book or the movie is true, people do not need to be told if they should see it or not, especially by the Vatican.

I understand that some people who are Catholic or are Christen may take offense to the book because it states that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had children, and it puts the church and Opus Dei at the center of a conspiracy to cover up the alleged secret.

Realizing that they cannot stop the film from being released, some high ranking groups such as Opus Dei are saying that they want Sony, who is distributing the film, to run a claim saying that the movie is fiction.

Both ideas are ridiculous and neither should be done is the definition of closed-mindedness. I doubt that any one at the Vatican has read the book or will see the movie. So what this says is that the Vatican is telling over a billion people what to do without experiencing the event themselves.

I know that members of the Vatican will not see the movie because they do not want to be hypercritical and see the film while telling others not to see it. Because as well all know, the Vatican has never been hypercritical before. Like trying to heal the poor and give away worldly possessions while the Popes robe is worth millions.

To run a disclaimer with the film is also a bad idea. Not once in the book or most likely in the movie has anyone said the story is true.

But that does not mean that it is not. Call me crazy or you can say that I have watched too much of the X-Files, but I am not one to dismiss so called conspiracy theories too quickly. I am fairly convinced that a majority of Americans believe John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed by the United States Government and that is still considered a conspiracy theory. So I am not going to dismiss the Da Vinci Code to fast.

I am not saying I believe what the book or the movies says, but I am still an open-minded enough person to judge the movie, like I did the book. If Sony were to run a disclaimer, it would be waiving its own right to freedom of speech. It is basically saying we will bow down to a certain demographic.

I have no problem with people who say they do not want to see the movies or read the book and it is not for me to decide what they should or should not do. The problem that I have is when people tell me what I should do, especially people who have no experience in the matter at hand.

The people that are going to follow the Vatican’s advice are people that have most likely not read the book or see the movie, but they will be out there deciding for others what is right for them. Remember Dogma? This will be a million times worse because of the publicity that the movie has.

With all this being said, I do not think it is right for organizations to tell people what people should or should not do. As for me, I will be there in line on opening night, arguing with those “protestors.” The difference in this case is most protesters now what they are protesting about. This case, however, will be much different.

I cannot wait till May 19.

Justin Satzman may be contacted at sport_sundial@csun.edu