"I am primarily interested in the novel's impact as cultural phenomenon. It has been at least 30 weeks on The New York Times' best-seller list. What interest or need is it touching in so many readers?" -- Religion professor Leo Sandon of Florida State University, in the Tallahassee Democrat.
OLEAN -- As Christmas approaches, the esteemed professor Sandon asks above a very relevant question about the man whose birth the holiday celebrates.
Sandon is referring, of course, to the runaway best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," an artfully written novel by Dan Brown (Doubleday, 454 pages, $24.95) that raises questions about the true nature of Jesus Christ.
It has rattled the Roman Catholic Church and other branches of Christianity. Almost four million readers have purchased the intricate religio-thriller, and it has spawned a separate genre of articles and analyses about the book. It was a repeated topic of conversation at my Thanksgiving gathering, and probably at thousands of others across the country.
Brown's novel, writes Sandon -- one of the wisest of America's theological academics -- has let readers "participate in the adventure of historical debate on matters religious and cultural. Apparently large numbers of people are pondering theology and engaging in cultural criticism. Not a bad outcome for a popular thriller."
That is one optimistic interpretation. Others are less appreciative.
Joseph De Feo, policy analyst for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told Gary Stern of my old outfit, Gannett News Service, that Brown has simply tapped into anger over recent pedophilia scandals involving Catholic clergy to cultivate widespread skepticism among the formerly faithful.
De Feo terms the novel "exploitative because Brown is capitalizing on an atmosphere when people will believe anything about the church."
The Catholic magazine "Crisis" accused the author of making "phony claims of scholarship" and asserted the novel "infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism."
"Christianity Today" says the book is composed of "spurious claims from a man who poses himself as a historian even as he writes a novel."
What's all the fuss about?
Well, if you grew up a Catholic, and went to catechism classes, and served as an altar boy, and got confirmed, and took Communion, and dutifully confessed your sins to a priest hidden behind a screen, and attended Mass faithfully, and listened attentively to endless sermons on the divinity of Christ -- this book turns upside down everything you once believed as a core part of your being.
It is that powerful.
The author spins a plot that is hypnotic. The reader is drawn into a series of coded mysteries based on the famous artwork and inventions and hobbies of the celebrated Leonardo da Vinci. The quest -- key to any successful novel -- is an old subject line: the search for the Holy Grail.
Along the way, the reader encounters various murders and kidnappings, appealing cryptologists and brave heroines, a ruthless and scheming Vatican, eminent historians who result to bribes as catalyst for the truth, enough bloodshed to make Clive Cussler happy, and warring secret societies, both ancient and modern. They include the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians and Opus Dei, the controversial, clandestine and conservative Catholic sect currently in favor with the Vatican.
We also meet the Priory of Sion, an ancient club of powerful figures (Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Botticelli, da Vinci himself) whose job it was to collect and protect the secrets of the Holy Grail.
The book advances themes from ancient Gnostic texts, which were rejected as church canon in the early centuries after Christ. If you are a traditional Christian of fundamental stripe, "The Da Vinci Code" will startle you as pure blasphemy.
Its serially revealed themes include the suppositions that:
All of this might be treated as the mental meanderings of a crafty writer who took some kernels of religious fact and recent discovery, and popped them into asserted church history.
But author Brown sets the scene for the ensuing hoohah over his book by a mere sentence in his foreword: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."
It is this blending of proven, yet hidden, history and believable supposition that gives the novel such credibility and force.
Mary Magdalene, for instance, HAS been exonerated by the Catholic Church. The Vatican did it in 1969, but few Catholics seem aware of the historical cleansing. She is not the devout and penitent whore weeping at the foot of the cross, as I was brought up to believe. She didn't suffer the bum rap of being a prostitute until the end of the sixth century, when Pope Gregory I delivered a famous sermon in which he tagged her as the unnamed "sinner" in the Gospel of Luke.
In fact, Mary Magdalene is mentioned prominently in all four official New Testament gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- and is universally described as the human who was first to see the Risen Christ depart the tomb. Hmnnnnn. Might that lend a little weight to Brown's suppositions? Wouldn't a chaste, unmarried and divine Christ allow his beloved mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the honor of being first to glimpse the greatest miracle of all time? Why some reformed whore, no matter how loyal? Or was Christ merely trying to stamp his message of redemption, of love for the sinner, of eternal hope no matter how bad you've been?
The flap over all this will grow, especially as we approach Christmas. ABC News has already aired a well-watched special on the book. Brown's cultural influence was evident.
Respected Harvard divinity professor Karen King noted that the stable and inflexible mental image that religion, including Christianity, has traditionally reflected -- one which requires the contemplator to either accept or reject it -- seems to be changing: "Religious traditions, and certainly Christianity among them, are very diverse, very filled with possibilities."
Might it be possible our entire religious culture is evolving?
Might this new age of information -- in which we are absolutely saturated with fact, fiction, theory, outrage, fulfillment and perceived truth on an hourly basis -- be nudging us toward a "natural" skepticism in which we automatically question everything we are told? In which we take nothing on faith or for granted? In which we rely on instincts and intellect to forge personal theories of history and present?
After all, Catholics have always been somewhat leery of Rome's "infallible" dicta and orthodoxy. Witness a two-millennia history of alleged anathema and inquisition following accusations of heresy.
Charles McGrath nailed this in a recent issue of the "New York Times Sunday Magazine." He writes that American Catholics in particular -- because of our unique national experience -- may be drifting toward an institutional skepticism of religion because we in this country "believe that everyone has the right to discover and interpret the truth for himself."
McGrath notes that, while it's true religious fundamentalism is growing in America, there are millions of us -- as evidenced by the success of "The Da Vinci Code" -- who "are willing to bring to organized religion the same skepticism and distrust we bring to government."
Now that's a paradigm shift.
Rome, be concerned -- be very, very concerned.
As for me, I'm going to buy me some more books on Mary Magdalene. She deserves some good press.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 2 2003 |