The Da Vinci Code Effect
  by Janet Brazill

The best-selling novel of all time! That's the status of Dan Brown's mystery, "The Da Vinci Code," about to be made into a movie. This fictional narrative has found an avid readership, many of whom may be seeking the truth about the Christian faith.

That makes the Catholic Church very nervous. Genoa Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone made news recently by making a plea to the public: Don't read and don't buy it. He was sufficiently alarmed to use the old stand-by, telling Vatican Radio that the runaway success of the Dan Brown novel is proof of "anti-Catholic" prejudice.

As any student of psychiatry can attest - or indeed, any mother of a rebellious teenager - such admonishments NOT to buy the book are guaranteed to increase its sales. They will also add to readers' suspicions that the "secret" of the story - that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and gave rise to the Merovingian dynasty of France with present-day heirs, and that the Church is going to great lengths to hide this secret - has some basis in fact.

The poor Cardinal could have saved himself much agitation if he had just read the June/July 2004 issue of the secular humanist magazine "Free Inquiry," which presents convincing evidence for doubting the book's premise. Robert M. Price, a member of the Jesus Seminar and professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, reviews the book, showing that this "secret" is considered by scholars to be based on a hoax.


This hoax (of which Dan Brown may be a victim, not an accomplice, in Price's opinion) was made popular twenty years ago in a pseudo-documentary tome called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Its authors wrote that the Priory of Sion sent the Templar Knights on a secret mission to retrieve the legendary treasure of Solomon's Temple - the Holy Grail - which turned out to be not a chalice, but rather the secret of the royal blood-line of Jesus. Throughout the book the authors recount their attempts to authenticate the Priory Documents. Brown took his title from the fact that Da Vinci's name was listed in these documents.

Price writes that there actually was a medieval monastic order called the Priory of Sion, but it was absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617. In 1956, the name was appropriated by a far-right French political faction led by Pierre Plantard, an anti-Semite and Vichy sympathizer who fancied himself the rightful Merovingian heir to the throne of France.

Price describes the Priory Documents as the hoaxes planted by Pierre Plantard's sect to prove his blood-line.

Hoax or not, the wildly popular Da Vinci Code is considered a threat by Cardinal Bertone. The idea that Jesus could have been a mere man, appreciative of the company of women, cannot be accepted by Church officials, even though Mark 15:40-41 tells of Mary and many other women following him to Jerusalem. The apocryphal Gospel of Philip says, "Now Mary was the favorite of the Savior, and he often used to kiss her on the lips."


Perhaps Cardinal Bertone, considered to be a possible successor to Pope John Paul II, realizes that in the modern, scientific world, people are beginning to doubt the supernatural aspects of their faith.

Perhaps Bertone is worried that the "authority" of the Papacy may be discovered to be the biggest hoax of all.

 

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