I saw the film last night, and it was more tolerable than the book. At least it didn’t take as long.  But I have to say, I still don’t get it.  I do believe that there is a hunger for what is really at the heart of the Mary Magdalene story, which is the sacred feminine.  All the Marys in the Gospels point to this much diminished dimension of Western religious experience, and I suspect that we are well on our way to redressing the balance. But this movie is hardly blazing any trails toward that place of genuine spiritual renewal that would come with a true breaking in of the sacred feminine.

Maybe if David Lynch made the movie rather than Opie–or even the
writers of TV’s  "Lost".  Or maybe anybody who understood religion from the inside. The movie and the book instead have the kind of
gee-whiz,flat-footed sensibility of that show with Robert Stack
exploring unexplained mysteries. It’s an adolescent sensibility that doesn’t
understand mystery or understands it the way we were first introduced
to it around campfires as kids trying to one-up one another with weird
believe-it-or-not type stories.  It’s tedious.

At the end, does it really matter if Mary Magdalene’s sarcaphagous would be found.  What difference would it make, even withing the fictional context of the book/movie?  It’s just goofy. The story of the Magdalene, whom I believe to
be a great, great woman needs to be tackled by someone who could get at
the strangeness that is associated with the alternative reality that is
associated with the "sacred" wherever it breaks through into our
ordinary experience.  Would it make a difference to me if it were proven that Jesus married her or anyone else?  I don’t see why it would.  I think it unlikely, but it’s the kind of thing that only appeals to those who think that the only thing that works in the Church is power politics and that, as the movie explains, the Council of Nicaea was just power politics as usual.  I, for one, think the good guys won at Nicaea.  And the Nicene creed, which came out of it, is a perfect expression of my faith. Documents like that don’t come out of mere political maneuvering.

That being said, I think that the Cathars and the Albigensians and the Templars were probably onto something and that they were brutally suppressed for all the wrong reasons.  But does that mean that crude power dynamics are the only force shapes how things work in the church?  Well, the bad guys often do win.  But sometimes they lose.  Sometimes truth and grace and human courage play a role in shaping ecclesiastical outcomes. 

It’s not all bad. The Second Vatican Council was a truly  grace-filled moment in church history.  The Brazilian bishops in the 80s were the good guys who beat back the power of the Vatican when then Cardinal Ratzinger tried to suppress Liberation Theology movement causing so much trouble to the oligarchy in Brazil.  Organizations like Opus Dei do exist, and they are in fact creepy and cult-like, even if not fulfilling its stereotype in the film.  That’s the human condition.  Unfortunately religious organizations are not immune from it.  And as much that is dark and just plain evil in the historical experience of the Church, there is also much that been good, especially in the grassroots level, where people actually live out the spiritual dramas that are their lives.

I would have to say that right now that Christianity, particularly in its Catholic manifestation is at one of its historical lows.  There is not much going on that is visible that is cause for celebration.  It’s easy to feel alienated and discouraged, even if you are, as I am, inclined to want to think positively about it as a force for good in the world. 

Daniel Berrigan once said of the Church, She’s a whore, but  she’s our Mother.  It aptly captures the ambivalence that anybody with faith and any historical knowledge feels about her.  She’s a corrupt old girl, but she’s not all bad–she’s given us something we would not have had if she did not exist, and she’s always capable of changing her ways.  She often pulls herself together, only to fall back into bad habits.  But what a boon for the world it would be if she could just get it together and keep it together.