Commentary: the Da Vinci Code [redux]

by J. Michael Bestul, That Crazy Guy Who Sleeps in Theater #13

Guess what?! The church is right! This film is heretical! Over 60% of people who read the book actually believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene got busy! It's in the news!

Wow, that was a lot of exclamation points. I might need to take a breather. Okay, I think I'm better now.

The aforementioned 60% was the result of a survey on the book version of The Da Vinci Code. Of course, it's time to hand out grains of salt when we realize who conducted the survey: Opinion Research Business was commissioned by a "prominent collection of English Roman Catholic monks, theologians, nuns and members of Opus Dei." So there was no bias going into the survey, whatsoever. None.

The issue these theological types have with Dan Brown's story is that they fear people will not see it as a work of fiction. Then again, that's half the fun of speculative fiction or pseudo-nonfiction. It's exciting to watch how writers weave in fact, theory, and fiction into a "realistic" story. Then again, I've been reading this kind of fiction for years (go Lovecraftian Mythos).

And, really, the Church might want to be careful about throwing stones so close to its own stained-glass windows. As Heather Cloete's previous commentary pointed out, the historiography of the Christian religion isn't exactly founded on rock-solid facts. Ideas such as Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, Judas being the ultimate evil, or transubstantiation are all sepculative history. The main difference between these theories and the ones in Brown's book is that these have a millennium of official sanction (well, eight centuries for transubstantiation).

As Cloete mentioned, many of the "wild" theories in Brown's book have basis on centuries-old scrolls and gospels that were not sanctioned by the Church. But people believed in them. The only reason they aren't as prevalent any more is because important people quashed them.

Really, the Church needs to be careful about proclaiming the danger of people "believing" The Da Vinci Code. It might cause people to look into the history of the Church and wonder, "Wait a minute; you believe what?! How the hell did St. Augustine of Hippo get so much of his crazy ideas turned into doctrine?!"

Or some such thing...