The Da Vinci Code

 
                THE DA VINCI CODE

            WHAT CATHOLICS NEED TO KNOW

FIRST POINTS

Q. What is The Da Vinci Code?

A. It is a fictional work by Dan Brown. The plot is about solving a murder mystery. It turns out the murder was carried out to protect secret knowledge about Christ and the Catholic Church. The great secret is that Leonardo da Vinci belonged to a secret society called The Priory of Sion, and he encoded a hidden message in his art, namely, that Jesus was just a mortal man, not God, and that he married Mary Magdalene and chose her to be the leader of his spiritual movement, not really a church but a restoration of the feminine divine. The real Holy Grail was not the legendary chalice Christ is supposed to have used at the Last Supper, but Mary Magdalene's body, because she carried his blood in his child in her womb. The Church, though, brutally suppressed the truth in order to gain patriarchal control, and through the ages killed anyone who discovered the secret truth. It was the Roman Emperor Constantine who first proclaimed that Jesus was divine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

Q. If this is just a made-up story, why the concern?

A. Brown claims at the beginning that all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate. Brown claims, in other words, that the shocking secrets revealed in the book are facts, not fiction. Brown is an avowed New Ager, and this book is anti-Catholic propaganda that smears Christ and the Church. The book and movie prey upon the minds of the ignorant and invite them to turn against the Church. They leave the impression that Christianity is a spiritual path, that the Catholic Church is a fraud, and that since there are many different ideas of who Jesus really was, and many conflicting views of the origins of the Church, we should all pick the version and the spiritual path we prefer. But what matters is historical accuracy. The facts are not matters of faith; they can be established through investigation. Brown says hes done that, but his story is full of made-up facts and distortions.

Q. What were Brown's sources?

A. He says the Gnostic gospels (gospels containing secret knowledge) written in the early centuries are an important source. He never explains why these should be trusted, and not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Gospels he never mentions). He has been sued for plagiarizing other works of fiction as source material. Experts he says he consulted have denied ever talking to him.

Q. What should we do?

A. Our responsibility is not just to reject error and be faithful, but witness the truth to others. To instruct the ignorant is a spiritual work of mercy. We should expose the errors of The Da Vinci Code and use its popularity as an opportunity to teach others the truth about Christ and the Church.

Q. Should we see the movie or read the book first, in order to better know what's wrong with it?

A. No, and we should discourage others from doing so. No one proposes we should view pornography or take illicit drugs in order to better understand what's wrong with them. We should not reward those who produced The Da Vinci Code by spending our money on it at the bookstand or movie theater. We should send a clear message that we reject anti-Catholic propaganda.

ERRORS AND DISTORTIONS

Here are 14 of the book's many errors and distortions:

1. A claimed source of important information about the real Jesus are the Gnostic (hidden or secret) gospels, which are suppose to be over 80 in number. Actually, while there were many Gnostic writings in the early centuries of Christianity, only a few were called gospels. Fifty two ancient texts were found at Nag Hammadi in 1945, but only four of them bore the name gospel. The Nag Hammadi texts were either based on earlier heresies or are Coptic translations of them.

2. Brown refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls as some of the earliest Christian writings, but they were Jewish writings that make no mention of Jesus or Christianity.

3. Brown claims Jesus was a mortal man, and his first followers knew it. It was not until the 4th century that the Roman Emperor Constantine, at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A. D., proclaimed Jesus was divine. But Constantine did not participate in the Council of Nicaea. More importantly, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, written within the first 100 years of Christianity, attest to Jesus' divinity, as do the other New Testament writings, which are cited innumerable times by other early Christian writers before the 4th century.

4. Jesus was supposed to have married Mary Magdalene. But there is no evidence for this. It is a complete fabrication. Not even the Gnostic gospels, on which Brown relies so much as sources, ever say such a marriage took place. Brown argues Jesus would not have been accepted as a religious leader by his contemporaries if he had been celibate, but only if he were married. Yet other celibate religious figures were respected by the people of Jesus time, including John the Baptist and the celibate men of the Essence community.

5. Brown claims that the Church suppressed the important role of Mary Magdalene in the life of Jesus, and suppressed women, in order to seize and maintain patriarchal control of the Church. But if the Church wanted to suppress Mary Magdalene, how is it that record of her person and activity was carefully preserved in the Gospels? Why was she proclaimed a saint in the early Church and called "apostle to the apostles" for announcing Christ's resurrection to the Apostles? Why would there be many churches named after her throughout the ages? And if the Church wanted to suppress women, why would the Church proclaim the Blessed Virgin Mary the greatest of all saints, and call men and women to imitate her?

6. Brown routinely refers to the Vatican as the seat of corrupt power in the Church, and says it was the Vatican that was responsible for suppressing women and the divine feminine in the early Church. But the seat of Church authority was not located at the Vatican hill in Rome until the 12th century.

7. Leonardo is supposed to have belonged to a secret Priory of Sion. This priory never existed, though. It was a hoax contrived by an anti-Semitic Frenchman in the 1950s, and publicly exposed in the 1970s. Repeat: the Priory of Sion never existed.

8. Brown discusses Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks painting, claiming it was commissioned by nuns. It was actually requested by Franciscan brothers. Brown confuses Jesus and John the Baptist in the painting, describing Jesus as kneeling in submission to Johns authority. But Leonardo painted John submitting to Jesus authority.

9. Brown claims Leonardo's Mona Lisa painting is an anagram for the pagan gods Amon and Isis. Leonardo, however, called his painting La Giaconda, after the subject, who was the wife a Florentine businessman, Francesco da Giacondo. (Mona is a contraction of Madonna, and Lisa was Francesco's wife's name.)

10. Brown wrongly locates Leonardo's Last Supper on a wall of Santa Marie delle Grazie in Milan. It is actually on the refectory wall of the Dominican convent annexed to the church. The person sitting at the right hand of Jesus in Leonardo's painting of The Last Supper is supposed to be Mary Magdalene, according to Brown. But if this is so, where is the Apostle John? Also, Leonardo, like other Florentine painters of his time, often portrayed young men with beautiful, almost feminine, features. Jesus and Philip are portrayed with the same features in that painting. So is St. John the Baptist, in Leonardo's painting of him.

11. Brown claims that the body of Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail, because she carried the blood of Christ in his child in her womb. But the Holy Grail (a special chalice Christ is supposed to have used at the Last Supper) was a medieval legend.

The fact that no special chalice appears in Leonardo's Last Supper (a fact Brown uses to argue Mary Magdalene's body was the Holy Grail) means nothing, because none of the many other paintings of the Last Supper by Leonardo's Florentine contemporaries showed a special chalice in them. He imitated them.

12. Brown makes the main character of The Da Vinci Code a professor from the Department of Symbology at Harvard. But Harvard has no such department.

13. The character murdered at the story's beginning is the curator of the Louvre Museum. He cannot escape, were told, because a drop-down gate is blocking him. But the Louvre has no such gate.

14. The murderer is supposed to be a monk of Opus Dei (work of God). Opus day is not a religious order, though, and has no monks.

FINAL POINTS

If someone wants us to believe his claims are true and accurate, he needs to provide evidence. No historical or scientific evidence is ever produced by Brown to support any of his books preposterous claims about Jesus or the Church.

The truth about Jesus Christ, his saving death and resurrection, and his divinity are matters of the utmost importance, as is the truth about the origins of the Church and her doctrines.

No other great religious figure in history ever made the kinds of claims about themselves that Jesus made of himself. The others said only that they were servants, seekers, or prophets of God. Jesus said in many ways that he was God: "I am the light of the world (Jn 9:5)... I am the way and the truth and the life (Jn 14:6)... No one comes to the Father but through me... He who sees me sees the Father? I and the Father are oneI am in the Father and the Father is in me (Jn 14:6, 9, 11)... Whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty; no, the water I give shall become a fountain within him, leaping up to provide eternal life (Jn 4:14)... I am the bread of life.. for a man to eat and never die. If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the lift of the world... If you do not eat my body and drink my blood you have no life in you (Jn 6:48ff)...Full authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth... Know that I am with you always, until the end of the world (Mt 28:18, 20)."

Jesus not only claimed to be divine, he showed divine power in his many miracles. He cleansed lepers, expelled demons, made the blind see and paralytics walk, and raised the dead to life. He calmed the wind and waves, walked on water, and multiplied loaves and fishes.

If Jesus was not divine, he was a liar or a lunatic. But a liar would be a self-interested man, and would not have freely handed himself over to death on a cross. No magician could have performed by illusion or trickery the miracles Jesus did.

If Jesus thought he was God but was only psychotic, he had no miraculous power. He might have said strange things, but not deeply wise or true things. Yet, people came to him in great numbers to be taught and healed. He held them spellbound by his teaching, and he healed them. He foretold his resurrection, and rose on the third day, leaving the tomb empty and appearing to hundreds. He could not have been a liar or a lunatic. He must, therefore, have been God. 

The truth about Jesus and the Church must be pursued responsibly. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code offers no help, only scurrilous distortions and fabrications irresponsibly passed off as fact.

The Da Vinci Code

is a sign of the times, the latest in a long series of writings that attack Catholic faith. To free others of the confusions of our age about Jesus and the Church, we need only direct them to follow Jesus' instruction: If you live according to my teaching, you are truly my disciples; then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (Jn 8:31).
Brenda Nettles Riojas,Diocese of Brownsville
Message from the Diocese of Brownsville
May 19,2006