Dan Brown Versus Catholicism
The Da Vinci Code and its Theories on Christianity
The release of the movie The Da Vinci Code staring Tom Hanks enraged some sections of the Catholic Church. Here is a look at why.
The Da Vinci Code was written by author Dan Brown who describes himself as a Christian with a lifelong quest to understand his spirituality. His book was published in 2003. In 2006 it was released as a movie staring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tatou and Ian McKellan, who has also recently been in the movie the Golden Compass, another film that has come under attack for anti-Christian themes.
The Story
The Da Vinci Code is an action thriller about secret masonic-style societies, religious conspiracies and the theory of the Catholic Church hiding basic facts about Jesus. In the book a Harvard symbologist finds himself in this world after the murder of a museum curator who he had been invited to meet. He finds himself in a race with time running away from various religious organisations and the police whilst trying to solve the murder and more importantly the religious secret pertaining to Jesus and kept hidden by the Catholic Church and the murderous branch called the Opus Dei for centuries. In the story, Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have been the head of the organisation protecting the secrets at one time and put secret messages in many of his works to hint toward the truth.
The Catholic Concern
Much of the research done for this book was inspired by the equally contentious books The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and several works by the author Margaret Starbird, a Roman Catholic scholar who has written often about the theory of Jesus and Mary Magdelene being married and also Mary's heavy involvement in the birth of Christianity. Due to the level of research done and the accuracy of much of the factual religious and art world background information produced in The Da Vinci Code,many people made the expected jump in logic to begin to assume that there were also elements of truth in the main premise of Jesus being married to Mary Magdelene and having had a daughter. The descendants of Christ therefore being the Holy Grail. The book also brings up other inflamatory ideas:
- Mary Magdelene as a goddess who should be worshipped
- There still being a bloodline of Jesus today
- Jesus was a normal man until being deified by Emporer Constantine in the 4th century
- The gospels have been edited to remove information about Mary Magdalene and in particular that she was directed to establish the Church
- That a secret society exists called the Priory of Sion which worships Mary Magdelene
- That the Catholic Church knows all of this and commits murder to prevent the secret being revealed
- That the Catholics assasinate decendants of Christ to stop the bloodline from growing
It is no wonder that the release of the book and, to a much greater extent, the release of the film caused a lot of concern among those of the Catholic faith.
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