HOW DARK THE CON OF MAN: SOME RESPONSES TO THE DA VINCI CODE
(THE NOVEL AND SOON THE FILM)

By Archbishop George H. Niederauer, D.D., Ph.D

“A lie is half way round the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.” Mark Twain

My first reaction to Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code”, was: “It’s a work of fiction, a thriller, a page-turner. Everybody knows that.” I was wrong. A young friend of mine met a classmate from Catholic high school who told him that she was seriously thinking of giving up her faith after reading “The Da Vinci Code”. My friend said, “You’d give up your faith because of a novel?” She answered, “Oh, but it’s all true!”

Oh, but it’s not! Soon the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” will open around the country. Carl Olson has shown us that this bestseller works on several levels: mystery novel, romance, thriller, conspiracy theory and spiritual manifesto. There’s a good chance that the movie will work in many of those same ways. As Amy Wellborn points out, “The Da Vinci Code” is fiction but the author makes assertions about history and presents them as widely accepted facts, introduced by such phrases as “historians say” and “scholars understand.”

Olson lists several claims made by Brown: Jesus was a mere man, and the earliest Christians didn’t believe he was divine; Christianity is a despicable sham; all claims to objective religious truth are to be avoided. These assertions demand a non-fiction response from Christian believers. Now some readers might say that the faithful are merely reacting out of fear and anger toward a book that challenges their faith. That’s why it is helpful to listen to critics writing from a literary perspective, without a religious slant. One such critic is Laura Miller, in The New York Times Book Review (“The Da Vinci Con,” February 22, 2004, p. 23): “ . . . what seems increasingly clear is that ‘“The Da Vinci Code”,’ like ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail,’ is based on a notorious hoax.” Miller says that much of the material about Mary Magdalen and the Priory of Sion depends on fabricated documents planted in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris by one Pierre Plantard, “an inveterate rascal with a criminal record for fraud and affiliation with wartime anti-Semitic and right-wing groups.” Miller concludes: “The only thing more powerful than a worldwide conspiracy, it seems, is our desire to believe in one.”

1 2 3 4 5 next page

view all pages

HOW DARK THE CON OF MAN: SOME RESPONSES TO THE DA VINCI CODE (THE NOVEL AND SOON THE FILM)

HOW DARK THE CON OF MAN: SOME RESPONSES TO THE DA VINCI CODE
(THE NOVEL AND SOON THE FILM)