When it comes to raking in publicity, the best-selling blockbuster ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has been a megastar. Even in its existence as a novel, it has attracted not just news releases and straight-faced TV punditry in the same way that flypaper attracts flies, but legal proceedings as well - always a sign of success. Now that the movie has hit the screens, its PR prospects are practically circling the planet and its money-making potential has movie makers and backers salivating on their bank statements. An indicator of the interest that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has bred is its over 60 000 000 references on the internet.
Yet what is it? A novel, whether well written or badly written depending on your literary bent, that extends as its basic theme the idea that Jesus was a mortal man who was married to Mary Magdalene who was pregnant with their child when He was crucified. This child was to lead the Church but Peter stepped in to prevent this. The Emperor Constantine kicked a hole in this cosy scenario by decreeing that Jesus was the Son of God and manipulating the Council of Niceae to confirm this and to provide acceptable backup, he ordered that a new bible be written that confirmed his orders. A group called the Priory of Sion, a company of ‘special people’ including artists, scientists and writers, has been responsible through the ages for protecting this “basic truth” of Christianity that the Catholic Church as we know it wants to destroy and obliterate from people’s minds. Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail because she bore Jesus’ child.
Where Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the ‘special persons’ comes in is when his famous painting of the Last Supper is examined. There is no cup on the table, so the assumption is made that the Grail is in fact Mary Magdalene, not St John who according to the author is sitting next to Jesus.
What has made this religious tosh a multimillion best seller, and made its author a very rich man indeed, is the seeming truth of it all. ‘The Da Vinci Code’ belongs to a genre of literature that most libraries seems to stock on their shelves that cater for religion, but which have little or nothing to do with the revealed truth of Christianity. Most often works of imagination, many of them are risible but well written. What sets ‘The Da Vinci Code’ apart is that it provides historical details and interpretations in a very persuasive and realistic way. What it does not do with any measure of success or conviction is to provide empirically verifiable facts. A quick trawl through the internet will provide a whole range of sites that set out to disprove many historical statements that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ makes and do so comprehensively. Nevertheless, a cardinal of the Church has been delegated by the Vatican to contradict false statements in the Code, and the bishops of Scotland are providing a DVD to all schools and parishes countering the claims that it makes.
No doubt that when the movie is released, it will be a world-wide box office smash. Big stars, big money, big publicity will ensure all of that, combined with the fact that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ will be well made and as realistic and persuasive on screen as it has been on paper. What is more, it will convince many more people than the novel has done that it blows a seemingly convincing and apparently conclusive hole through just about everything that we believe has been revealed to us. What should we keep in mind when the hype and blarney wash over us?
It’s easy first of all to blame the media and its power to influence and manipulate. Everyone does it. Yet it is hard to deny that there is an eagerness around within media circles to seize on anything that seems to invalidate the claims that the Catholic Church makes in pursuit of the mandate it has been given to make disciples of all nations. For those who bear either disguised or undisguised hostility to Catholicism, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has dropped into their laps like some kind of poisonous manna. Well-informed experts suddenly abound ready to refute and to question while sometimes counter statements are often weak and unconvincing. There is no reason why we should be caught on the back foot or lack any confidence when we state publicly that The Code is a pack of nonsense.
‘The Da Vinci Code’ has a certain appeal for a minority of Catholics who find themselves dissatisfied with traditional Christianity. Always eager for new trends in doctrine, they sniff after the trail of the different, even though what the book spins and the movie brings to life have little or no relation to the reality of the Gospels. ‘The Da Vinci Code’ has failed to draw out any support from reputable historical or scriptural scholars but what it has done is to cover and darken the impact of the Good News for many of its readers and viewers.
How many have picked up the book or will buy the cineplex ticket and end up with doubts in their minds that the whole Christian picture they have received and in which they have invested different levels of belief, is a false one, and that there is no use going back to the Scriptures to find out because the Code says they are faked anyway? No point in asking any priest either, because they are all liars who have hidden the truth from you. CS Lewis’s old devil Screwtape in his Screwtape Letters, suggested that this was the absolute summit of tempting – to take away everything and leave nothing in its place. What the Code does leave is a gap and a void – and the information that only a small group of people know and have Truth and that you are not one of them.
People might think that too much fuss is being made over the Da Vinci Code. Shrug that one off. The Code is a spellbinding story that bears no resemblance to the truth. What it has done is to bewitch its readers in its spell.
