The Blue Voice

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The Da Vinci Code willies

Lisa asked in a recent post, "What's so scary about Da Vinci?" She was wondering what it is about about a work of fiction could be so threatening to Christian believers.

I can't pretend to give a definitive answer to that question. From my own religious viewpoint as a Catholic Christian - who's very fond of the Second Vatican Council - I'm a little embarassed that the Catholic Church even bothered to grump about it. I suspect the main reason in their case is not the Gnostic teachings about Mary Magdalene or the legends about the Priory of Sion or the Knight's Templar. My guess is that the unflattering portrait of Opus Dei was what bugged them.

Opus Dei is a reactionary Catholic group that is probably the most influential single group in the Catholic Church today, thanks to John Paul II and his successor Ratzinger I. (He's really Benedict XVI, but his given name is so identified with rightwing Catholicism that I'm not quite ready to give it up yet.) I posted about this in at the beginning of Ratzinger I's reign in More critical views on John Paul II's papacy 04/05/05.

As I said there, Opus Dei is a "personal prelature" (a type of official Catholic organization similar but not identical to religious orders), composed of both clergy and laity, that is normally described those who are not its partisans as ultraconservative. Now based in Rome, it was founded in 1928 by the Spanish prelate Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer; it is currently headed by bishop Javier Echeverría, who John Paul II selected for that position.

Over the years, Opus Dei has managed to find it within their brand of Christianity to actively support Francisco Franco's Fascist government in Spain and Augusto Pinochet's notorious military dictatorship in Chile. They actively helped John Paul II and Ratzinger suppress the Latin American "liberation theologians". More recently, they played an active part in promoting the abortive 2002 against the elected government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, in cooperation with the Bush administration and the conservative Spanish government at the time of José Maria Aznar.

For Protestant fundamentalists, part of the outrage is to piggyback on the movie publicity to proselytize. And part of it is just plain dismay over seeing their dogmas questioned, even in a movie in which "heretical" Christian ideas are used as a backdrop. For instance, the editorialists of the Christian Post wrote in Da Vinci Code Obsession is a Symptom of American Christian Ills 05/19/06:

However, the popularity of the best-selling book and the likely box office hit confirms another fact that we also know but try to avoid: American Christianity has become lukewarm and stale, and believers are starting to look elsewhere for answers they haven’t found in our churches.

According to the Encyclopedia of World Religions, about 75 percent of Americans claim to be Christian. However, other polls consistently show that only 36 percent of Americans regularly attend Sunday Services and only 33 percent believe the Bible is inerrant.

The editorial somewhat nervously asserts that the movie won't shake any genuine Christian's faith. But they also write:

The same book by Professor Marsden also quoted a 1987 survey revealing that up to 95 percent of pastors in certain denominations do not believe in the Bible as inerrant and inspired. While a more recent poll by Barna Research resulted in less extreme figures (the highest unbelieving pastors were among Episcopalians at 78 percent and Catholics at 74 percent), it shines some light as to why such a baseless attack against the Christian faith became the best-selling fiction novel in the world’s largest Christian nation. Once the Bible becomes a relative story open to analysis, there will be no end to questioning the veracity of God’s truths.

Therefore, as leaders of our faith, we should take this chance to go beyond merely debunking or decoding the Da Vinci fiction. Instead, we must make an offensive strike, hitting at the heart of our arrogance toward the Word of God and reassessing our own faith in the greatest Truth ever told.

Now, I can't vouch for the particular poll numbers they use.

But the point is that this editorial gives us a look at the chronic sense of uncertainty and fear of being overcome by the forces of the Devil that is part of the Christian Right atmosphere.

On some of the historical issues, I liked this article, A runaway bestseller that is far closer to pure fiction than to historical fiction Biblical Archaeology Review May/June 2004, that I've discussed in a different post. (Yes, heathens, Biblical Archaeology Review is one of my favorite magazines.) That article discusses more the historical issues around the Biblical texts, not the medieval stories about the Templars and so forth. Witherington also has out a book on The Da Vinci Code (in response to the novel), titled The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci (2004), which I haven't read but it appears to deal with some of the later legends, too.

The US National Conference of Catholic Bishops also has up a Web site call Jesus Decoded that seems to be fairly decent. It mostly has short articles for a general readership, so don't expect scholarly footnotes or detailed discussions of Greek grammar. Their Opus Dei article is strictly apologetic. But the article by Kate Blain on The Witch Killing Frenzies isn't bad as a general introduction. (Some people familiar with it only from other popular accounts may be surprised at their estimate of the number killed in the witch craze as being in the tens of thousands rather than considerably higher. But that's probably not a bad estimate.) The site is worth a look for some general information on unfamiliar topics that may be touched on in The Da Vinci Code.

Mary Magdalene made the cover of Newsweek in the 05/29/06 editon: An Inconvenient Woman by Jonathan Darman. He writes:

Indeed, for all its revolutionary claims, "The Da Vinci Code" is remarkably old-fashioned, making Mary important for her body more than her mind. In the movie, we see a stricken, shadowy Magdalene with swollen belly being spirited out of Jerusalem by a crowd of attendant men. But we never hear her voice. "The Da Vinci Code" seems to think that the secret tradition of Mary Magdalene speaks to the carnal. In reality, it tells of something far more subversive: the intellectual equality of the sexes. The current Magdalene cult still focuses on her sexuality even though no early Christian writings speak of her sexuality at all. "Why do we feel the need to resexualize Mary?" wonders Karen King, author of "The Gospel of Mary of Magdala.""We've gotten rid of the myth of the prostitute. Now there's this move to see her as wife and mother. Why isn't it adequate to see her as disciple and perhaps apostle?"

Several other related Newsweek stories are linked from that one.

Beliefnet.com has a lot of articles on the Da Vinci Code discussion. It's a good site in general, but the navigation is sometimes a challenge.

U.S. News and World Report has out a special edition called Secrets of the Da Vinci Code, which is apparently based on the book Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries of the Da Vinci Code (2004). They have a Web site of the same name with short bits of information on some of the issues discussed.

And, yes, I saw the movie. I enjoyed it. It was entertaining. Not enough sex, though. We did get a hint of nekkid pagan dancing in the Roman flashbacks. And one of the characters is also seen briefly in a flashback in the middle of some kind of fertility ritual.

posted at 10:15:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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