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The Da Vinci Code: A Few Answers

Associate Pastor's Column

Sunday, May 21, 2006

            In both Catholic circles and general-public media circles this weekend has caused a splash: The movie, The Da Vinci Code, has come out. What’s the big deal? Why so much news and coverage? What do I as a Catholic need to know about this work of the cinema? Today’s bulletin article will answer these questions.

            Before it was a movie, The Da Vinci Code was a book released by Doubleday in 2004. Since then it became a huge bestseller and was translated into dozens of languages, I think more than forty. Before we start patting the author, Daniel Brown, on the back for his huge success, however, we need to get something clear: it is a serious and dishonest attack on the fundamental truths of Catholicism.

            Without retelling the whole story, the basic thing goes like this: a Harvard professor of symbolology (note: there is no department of Symbolology at Harvard) accidentally stumbles upon evidence that the whole of Catholicism is a hoax, hell-bent on deceiving the world in order to assert its authority, to keep women down, and repress the goods of, shall we say, conjugal intimacy. The novel is then a bit of an action novel, while the “hero,” with others risks his life to uncover the “truth.”

            What does Leonardo Da Vinci have to do with all this conspiracy, fabricated by Mr. Brown for his novel? Nothing in reality; yet in Mr. Brown’s imaginative book, he claims that Da Vinci has a certain role of prominence in guarding and protecting this secret. Da Vinci, nonetheless, reveals the secret to the world in some of his works, including the painting of the Last Supper. In this painting, he claims that the “John” character is not John but Mary Magdalene, and that she carried Jesus’ child, a daughter.

            In this book, Dan Brown asserts points of raw paganism. He states clearly and directly that Jesus Christ is not God; that Mary Magdalene should be worshipped as a goddess; that the scriptures were formed by a pagan Roman emperor; that the Church is really out to get everybody and over the centuries has even perpetrated murder to keep these and many other lies secret. This is basically what the serpent said to Eve in the Garden, that God did not love her, that he was out to get her, and felt threatened by Adam and Eve as if they were competition.

            I have met Catholics who have read this book and then asserted to me, “You should read this book, it would open up your horizons.” Well yes, in fact I have read the book, and the only horizon it opened to me was that of seeing more clearly the well orchestrated assault on the Catholic faith in our own day and time. The devil has always instigated persecutions in the Church, and in our day he is evidently stirring up Christians against Christians, Catholics against Catholics, to create a form of persecution not yet seen in history. This book falls right into line with that strategy.

            The errors, of course, in Mr. Brown’s book are manifold. Some are theological, as when he defines the “Immaculate Conception” as if it were the “virginal birth.” Some are artistic, as when he asserts that there are frescos in Notre Dame in Paris (there are none); or that there are 13 cups in Da Vinci’s last supper painting, a point of proof for Brown of Da Vinci’s “code,” when there are in fact only 12. He has mountains of historical errors, for example, regarding Constantine and the early Church councils. The gravest of all are the religious errors: the negation that Jesus Christ is God, that he rose from the dead, that he gave us the Catholic Church, and so on.

            To open up new intellectual horizons, rather than read Dan Brown’s fantasy and errors about how the Church is out to get everybody, I encourage all to read good historical books full of seriously researched and documented evidence. Bihlmeyer and Teuchle’s History of the Church, Laux’s Church History, Johnson, Hannan and Dominica’s The Story of the Church, Crocker’s Triumph, Belloc’s books, and other such books are full of honest work, including the sadder parts of our Catholic history, and not full of false data construed to prove a point.

            Dan Brown opens the book proposing to the reader at great length that everything in the book is true and factual. Yet the evidence is against him, for the book is riddled with errors, all of which are organized to form a harmonious attack on the Catholic Church and on Christianity in general. You can find further information on this book from my own web site, and from many others such as Catholic Answers. These web sources will lead you even to entire books that have been published to refute Brown’s false accusations.

            No children should read the book, due to some of its sexual content, some of it even ritualistic. You, Gentle Reader, if you are an adult, should not read it nor see the film unless you have a good reason (such as preparing for a formal or informal debate), and have sufficient resources at hand to investigate and uncover the many clever errors which are orchestrated to destroy the reader’s or viewer’s faith.

Picture: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), The Last Supper, dining hall at the Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, 1498.