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After the Future

DaVinci Decoding

I expect the movie will be better than the book.  I read it when it first came out intrigued to see what the fuss was all about, and I could…

I expect the movie will be better than the book.  I read it when it first came out intrigued to see what the fuss was all about, and I could understand its appeal on the level of curiosity to know what the big secret was. But the delivery of the secret was so hamfisted and goofy,  I’m amazed anyone could take the book seriously–either as fiction literature or as Brown claims, a story that is based on fact.

The bottom line is that both Dan Brown and the feminist theologian Margaret Starbird base their whole story on a flakey piece of pseudo-scholarship, the 1985 Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, et al.  I read it back then, and had a good laugh.  I didn’t know it then, but the basis for that book was phony documents created by Pierre Plantard.  I won’t go into the details, you can read about them in this Wikipedia article.  The whole thing is a hoax from the get go. 

I haven’t heard what either Brown, Starbird, or Baigent have said about the Plantard hoax, and I’m not interested enough to spend time finding out.  The more important question is why this book and its premise about the marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus and their bloodline is so intriguing to so many people. I’ve said before that in the postsecular era into which we are entering, anything goes.  Whoever comes up with the most compelling narrative wins.  But please, you’ve got to come up with something better than this to be taken seriously.  Is it just the inclination to believe that the Catholic Church is so obsessed with power that it will do anything to keep people from knowing the truth?  Any other theories?

Comments

3 responses

  1. Matt Zemek Avatar
    Matt Zemek

    The whole foundation for the success/visibility/popularity/perceived legitimacy of this book-movie is based on two simple things that have BOTH (sadly) existed for a long, long time:
    1) Anti-Catholic bias defined by a combination of suspiciousness, paranoia and–legitimately–outrage at Catholic secrecies and hypocrisies;
    2) Vatican and episcopal defensiveness in the Church that is so demonstrative that those who are suspicious of the Church and its motives come to feel (understandably) that they must be right and are validated for having their worldview.
    The thing this sad spectacle (regrettably) affirms is how inept, stagnant and tone-deaf Church leaders are in reading the signs of the times and, more importantly, in effectively and clearly communicating meaningful messages that resonate with Catholics in the pews while not compromising theological/spiritual soundness.
    The fact that the Da Vinci Code is getting such press is a testament to the Catholic Church’s lack of leadership, which puts the Church in the same boat as the political realm of America. If Catholic bishops and priests were secure in the jobs they were doing, and were confident that the faithful were getting sound teaching and preaching on a consistent basis, they would not have felt the need to make emphatic, defensive statements about this trivial movie. Making all these statements, and–in the Vatican’s case–waging a big PR campaign create the obvious impression that lay Catholics don’t have a rudimentary knowledge/understanding/awareness of Jesus and Sacred Scripture.
    It’s all a very sad commentary on Catholic leaders. Dan Brown merely exploited long-running biases and tensions, and the longevity of the book combined with the buzz surrounding the movie prove how enduring said biases and tensions are. Fittingly (but sadly), Catholic leaders only wind up furthering these anti-Catholic attitudes with their actions and words. Pathetic.

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  2. amba Avatar
    amba

    I think there’s another reason: the strong attraction to Jesus of people who (either because they were not raised Christian, or because they’re scientifically minded) cannot believe that he was literally and uniquely fathered by God, born of a virgin, died for our sins, and ascended physically to heaven. There are many people who sense that Jesus came from God and is a/the Way to God in a less literal, material sense. They are interested in the Gnostic gospels generally because they sense that the official Church interpretation of Jesus’ life may be as much man-made and power-oriented as it is Godly.

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  3. forestwalker Avatar
    forestwalker

    Speaking for us Protestants, I think the book/film is perceived as a threat because we are so generally ignorant of ecclesiology. Our picture of the pre-Reformation Church is so ill-formed that just about any narrative, especially a narrative that plays to the fear of the RCC that still exists in some quarters, can be seen as true. That, combined with our general ignorance of the history of the formation of our doctrinal stances and their relationship to the history of the church, creates an environment susceptible to influence from this kind of pop culture pseudo history.

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