Debating 'Da Vinci'
With the arrival of the movie, criticism of the Dan Brown blockbuster heats up
The debunkers have gone after other "howlers" in the book's historical representations. On the opening page, for example, Brown declares as "fact" that the Priory of Sion, depicted in the book as a European secret society founded in 1099 and the prime keeper of the Da Vinci Code secrets, "is a real organization" and that "parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets" and listing its members were discovered in Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale in 1975. Among the Priory of Sion's members: Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, the Priory of Sion's documents were conclusively proven in the 1990s to have been part of an elaborate hoax. The society itself, as Brown described it, never existed.
"Good information." So after all of the educating and debating, can a movie and a novel--no matter how popular or provocative--do serious damage to a church of a billion believers? "In the long run--no," says Msgr. Francis Maniscalco, communications director for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "But in the short run, a number of people will be confused. And if only one person were to come away with a distorted impression of Jesus Christ or his church, our concern would be for that person as if he or she were the whole world."
The better way of countering the potential impact of The Da Vinci Code on Christian believers, says Maniscalco, "is to give good information to refute the bad." It is what the bishops are attempting to achieve on their website. It is the same course that Father Skirtich is pursuing in his Pennsylvania parish. "We've been given an opportunity to teach our people what we probably should have been doing a better job of teaching them all along," he says. "Some good can come out of a bad situation, and for that I am thankful. Still, all things considered, I would just as soon it hadn't happened this way."
advertisement
