Ernesto Portillo Jr. : My Catholic faith has lots of room for 'Da Vinci' fiction

Being Catholic is fun. I do things I'm not supposed to do, like watching "The Da Vinci Code," the movie based on the chart-busting 2003 book of the same name.

The much-anticipated movie, which will be released Friday, has caused a religious ruckus in the Catholic Church.

It shouldn't. The church has more serious and real problems, including financial issues in the wake of the priest sex-abuse scandal, a declining number of priests and intolerance toward gay priests.

Still, some Catholics feel the movie will undermine the church.

Dan Brown's murder mystery, which has sold more than 40 million copies, mixes fiction with Christian religious history and practices.

It's Brown's portrayal of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene and his interpretation of early Christian writings that has upset some Christians. In addition, some Catholics are upset with the author's portrayal of the conservative and secretive Catholic group Opus Dei as secretive and conservative.

Some Christian churches have called for a boycott of the movie, and a Vatican prelate suggested Catholics do the same.

"Don't see the movie or else, Ernesto," I imagined the nuns admonishing me at the old All Saints-Cathedral Catholic School on South Sixth Avenue Downtown.

I can hear the voice of a priest at St. Augustine Cathedral warning me, "If you see the movie, Ernesto, you will be violating our guidelines."

Being the good Catholic I am, I plan to see the movie.

The first church rule I clearly remember ignoring was "don't drink the Mass wine."

I don't how old I was, but I was an altar boy at the Cathedral when I took my maiden sip of altar wine from the bottle.

My face, I bet, scrunched up in disgust. The wine was way too sweet.

I don't remember sneaking a swig after that.

In the sacristy I also broke another sacred rule: Do not eat the hosts. Those are the small, round wafers we Catholics eat during Holy Communion. Our faith tells us they are transformed into God's body during Mass.

Of course, I didn't eat the consecrated hosts. I didn't want to eat that much of God's body.

Still, confronted with the rule that I shouldn't, I did. I took a handful of unblessed wafers from a large plastic bag after Mass one day and stuffed them in my mouth.

I wasn't hungry, I'm sure of it. I already knew they were dry and tasteless. I did it because, well, you know why.

There's a litany of other Catholic rules that I overlooked. Sometimes I was filled with powerful Mexican-Catholic guilt, and other times I felt a rebellious indifference.

As the years passed, I drifted out of the church, flustered by its rules. Later, I returned to the church, renewed my relationship with God, despite the rules Catholic leaders insist on maintaining.

Some of us Catholics won't let the church's mandates get in the way of exploring and following our faith.

Many of us, I suspect, will disregard the call to avoid the movie. We can tell the difference between fiction and fact.

As for me, I have to see the movie. After reading the book, I want to see if Hollywood got it right.