On May 19th the notoriously successful novel The Da Vinci Code will make its screen debut in this country and no doubt all the discussions about the authenticity of its contents will once more receive a public airing. Archbishop Rowan has already preached about it in his Easter sermon. Winchester Cathedral is putting on an exhibition showing how real Christianity is both different and superior to Dan Brown’s version. There is currently a struggle going on in Rome between the church and city authorities because a huge advert for the film has been put up on the scaffolding erected to restore the façade of a church in the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Cardinals, bishops, parish priests and pastors are brushing up on their church history (perhaps with the help of the numerous websites which have sprung up to help you sift the facts (almost none) from the fiction), while Tom Hanks, the star of the movie, has suggested that the film could be good for the churches. If they put up a sign saying, This Wednesday we’re discussing the gospel,’ 12 people show up. But if the sign says, This Wednesday we’re discussing The Da Vinci Code,’ 800 people show up.’ Perhaps we should try it.
The novel has a preamble in which everything is claimed to have an authentic historical foundation. Brown admits that his readers must make up their own minds. He hopes that the story will serve as a catalyst and a spring board for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion and history’. He himself is convinced this theory makes more sense to me than what I learnt as a child.’ Basing his researches on the familiar yet reasonable observation that history is written by the winners, he believes that in gauging the historical accuracy of a given concept, we should first ask ourselves a far deeper question; How historically accurate is history itself?’ Clearly he is a somewhat confused historian.’ When reading Dan Brown on his own novel, I can’t help wondering whether what he says is what he really thinks or whether it is all a clever marketing ploy. If I had time I would like to write a fabulously successful novel about a novelist whose block buster novel threatens to shake the foundations of Christianity’ (or why not Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, or Paganism) but is then taken up by the dark forces of a media baron and a Hollywood mogul. Conspiracy would emerge behind conspiracy like those Russian dolls within a doll.
Of course the most commercially interesting question will be whether the makers of The Da Vinci Code repeat the preamble about the historical authenticity of the story or whether the increasing influence over the film industry of the Christian Right in America results in a disclaimer. But perhaps that wont be necessary. Will the film make the book seem more incredible? Are we more likely to believe something we read in a book than if we see it on a screen? We have become used to dramatised documentaries on television (often to do with the English Monarchy) where it becomes very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Do we have that problem in the commercial cinema? An interesting parallel example is Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven a film about the Crusades which describes itself as fantastic epic entertainment’ but which made me dust down my copy of Runciman’s History of the Crusades to see how much of the film was based on fact.
I have assumed so far that you know the plot of The Da Vinci Code which may not be the case. Briefly, it concerns a conspiracy spearheaded by the conservative Catholic order Opus Dei to prevent the world from hearing that Jesus was not the Son of God but a proto feminist, who believed in the sacred feminine’ and the balance of male and female spiritual principles in nature, and who married Mary Magdalen and entrusted his message to her and to their children; the official’ (patriarchal) church did its best to obliterate this tradition by destroying its gospels’ but the truth survived in a secret society presided over by Jesus’ descendants, which included Leonardo (who hints at the secret in his painting of the Last Supper where the figure normally taken as John, the beloved disciple, is really Mary Magdalen). Other descendants include Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Jean Cocteau and the Curator of the Louvre who is murdered in the first chapter of the novel the rest of which unveils’ the secret through the unravelling of numerous riddles, codes and anagrams by the two leading characters who are both experts in symbology.’
If you like a novel which can be read at one sitting on a long flight or train journey and which has the energy to make you curious to know what happens at the end without paying too much attention to how you get there it’s worth reading. Its astonishing popularity has nothing to do with the quality of its writing or characterisation; it seems to appeal to a modern taste for conspiracy theory and a prevalent cynicism towards authority. As the Archbishop succinctly expresses it in his sermon the modern response to the proclamation, Christ is risen!’ is likely to be, Ah, but you would day that wouldn’t you? Now what’s the real agenda?’ Of course such suspicion is a valuable tool it is one of the spurs to historical research, investigative journalism and the legitimate exposure of deception and corruption. The crucial difference between valid and penetrating research and conspiracy theorists like Dan Brown is the extent to which suspicion extends to your own motives and reasons for wanting to believe something is true.
In an article in the Mail on Sunday the Archbishop seeks to account for this cynical taste for unmasking a conspiracy in all expressions of authority. He sees it as a way of avoiding the challenge of a more complex and difficult reality which might take us by surprise with something genuinely new and transforming. In part I think that might be true but I suspect there is another reason for such cynicism. It arises from the experience of being hurt. There is a strong and natural element of expectancy and hope in all of us. Parents, teachers, priests and politicians can promise us many things they encourage us to believe, they feed our hopes, they hold out exciting or inspiring possibilities. But we are very lucky if we have never experienced the failure of a hope, or the realisation that we have deluded ourselves. Sometimes the fault lies in us but sometimes the teacher, parent, priest or prime minister has contributed to that illusion not out of malice or deceit but because they too have wanted to believe it for themselves and can only do so by getting others to share that belief. Wanting to believe something can be just as effective a way of avoiding reality as cynicism.
If finally we come back to the gospels we find Jesus teaching his disciples how to preach good news, how to build faith and encourage hope, but we find also the hard discipline which alone prevents us from getting carried away by our own rhetoric and our desire that grace wont cost us. And that discipline consists in radical honesty about the self, the humble hard work of confession and reconciliation, giving time to silence, to loving one’s neighbour as oneself, accepting our vulnerability yet taking risks, avoiding the temptation to mock or condemn. This alone is the basis of a faith which is honest, courageous and truthful. It is not the style of mystery men or gurus preaching an exotic mysticism to a select group of insiders who alone hold the key to unlocking the great conspiracy of life. Real faith is both very challenging and very ordinary which is perhaps why it rarely gets onto the screen.
With my love and prayers,
Fr Stephen
The Vicar writes
Stephen Tucker