DaVinci Silliness
Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship
Heartland Parishes of Ellis County
I recently borrowed and read The DaVinci Code. Although pretty engaging, its facts were anything but factual. Really, it’s a bunch of nonsense weaved into an action-packed story.
So, what’s the big deal? The real concern is that the author, although admitting it is fiction, is trying to increase ticket sales by intimating that the facts are well researched.
Christians, as a general rule, have not done a particularly good job catechizing our faithful in recent years. Conversely, the secular media has become very effective at packaging its own “damn the facts,” anything goes, agenda. They have sold Christians the secular agenda better than we, the Church, have catechized them to the faith! In a backhanded sort of way, one has to give them some credit.
A number of months ago, a Catholic friend told me she was reading the DaVinci Code. “Did you know that the Emperor Constantine decided which books made up the Bible?” she asked. I chuckled a little and gave her a brief synopsis of how the Bible came about. “I don’t think you’re right; that’s not what this book says,” she said, looking at me just a little bit suspiciously.
That’s when I realized this book might become a problem, or maybe better spoken, an opportunity for the Church. Many Catholics do not really know their faith even though they are committed to it.
The world learned from the Nazi propaganda machine that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it’s true. In this novel there is a whole series of contrived facts to deceive the gullible.
The story line, as best I can summarize it, is that an art “expert” and a detective are examining clues to a murder, where the person murdered has, himself, left a good number of those clues. They are related to DaVinci’s Last Supper painting.
What they reveal is that Jesus was not God and did not hold himself out to be. Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute who later became a disciple, but was in fact the woman whom Jesus married. Together, they conceived a daughter. The child, a goddess, represents the sacred feminine. Jesus directed Mary Magdalene, not Peter, to establish the Church. And, the Bible was compiled by the emperor Constantine.
Most importantly, the Catholic Church is aware of all this and has been fighting for centuries to keep it suppressed. In fact, it has not hesitated to murder people to do so when the good guys (sacred feminine worshipers) come out of their holes. It even happens right in front of your eyes in the novel. So you get a front row seat to ongoing Catholic treachery.
I realize the movie may be a little different than the book, but I have a couple of questions. If neither Jesus nor Mary Magdalene were divine, as the book explains, how the heck does the daughter become a divine manifestation of the sacred feminine?
The authors seems to have conjured up his own nativity miracle for us!
And, if this sinister Catholic Church has edited the Bible to cover-up the true facts and to do a “smear job” on the character and person of Mary Magdalene, why do we Catholics venerate her as one of our great saints, replete with a beautiful Church in her honor in Jerusalem? Those apostles truly must have been a bumbling, incompetent, group.
If Christians didn’t believe Jesus was God until the time of Constantine around 315 A.D., why did all those foolish martyrs feed themselves to the lions and die in a multitude of other cruel and painful ways? Silly people!
The nonsense goes on and on. According to the author, missing in DaVinci’s Last Supper is one cup. It represents the “holy grail,” the purported chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. But we soon learn that the holy grail is not really a cup holding wine, but it is the blood of the she-child who is to come from Magdalene’s V-shaped (i.e. cup-shaped) womb that is the holy grail (holy chalice/sacred blood). You see, the apostle next to Jesus in the picture is not really the apostle John, but Magdalene. That’s why he (or, she, according to the author) doesn’t have a beard like the rest of the apostles.
Now, I’m no mathematician, but when I look at DaVinci’s last supper, I count 13 cups. If we add the V-shaped womb of Magdalene, that adds up to 14 cups for 13 people by my count. Who knows, Andy Rooney would probably suggest that the child in the womb is imbibing too; but I can’t honestly draw that conclusion.
So, should you go to this movie? Under normal circumstances, I’d say go ahead. But if the box office scores well on this, you are going to see a deluge of anti-Christian, particularly anti-Catholic, movies flooding the market. It seems that Hollywood enjoys nothing more than trying to overturn long-held Christian values and replacing them with the “trash for values” of our modern day culture. So, I suggest you skip the movie.
I do recommend that you read a book such as “The DaVinci Deception.” It’s pretty informative and will help you learn a little more about our Catholic faith. Then you may be better equipped to spread the true Gospel message…and that’s good stewardship.