austraLasia 1568
Cook's Tour of The Da Vinci Code
ROME: 30th May 2006 -- This should have been May 19th, but
it was
impossible for technical reasons. austraLasia has received not a
few
comments, requests and general information regarding the newly released
film The Da Vinci Code. There's little doubt that it has
raised important issues for discussion the world over.
Recently in Nairobi, with people from the Catholic
University of East Africa, and members of the Don Bosco YES Outreach
Team, together a formidable group of intelligent and deeply
committed Africans, I was broaching some journalistic approaches to
public messages and dealing with a 'press release' of a supposed visit
by Pope Benedict XVI to Nairobi to announce an important message to
humanity - despite an acknowledgement that issues like IVF (newly
tried in Kenya) and married priests (also topical in Kenya!) were
occupying local prelates' minds, The Da Vinci Code was
consistently offered as suitable substance for a papal statement!
There will be no papal statement on this one, we can
be sure. You will have to bear with austraLasia's version.
But rather
than hike the tried and possibly unfruitful path of fierce rebuttal, I
have decided to tackle what Salesians have been saying in public
forums, at least in the English-speaking world (which lets one off the
hook a little, since in the Italian Press, the road of fierce rebuttal
by such as the Cardinal archbishop of Genoa, and the second-in-charge
to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is already
well-trodden).
It is not enough to read the book. Dealing
with The Da Vinci
Code as if it is the novel ignores the fact that Dan Brown might
have
learned something from the debate - even if theologically and
historically the film
scores about the same as the book. No matter how positive one
might
want to be, TDVC is an historical and theological disaster, though
reasonable entertainment. That does not stop one from being positive
about the film for other reasons, including the minor shift in Dan
Brown's
(or was it Ron Howard's?) views. In Chapter 55 of the book,
the
aristocratic grail hunter Sir Leigh Teabing serves as the mouthpiece
for Brown’s fanciful take on Jesus as he explains to cryptologist
heroine Sophie Neveu the ‘secret’ origins of Christianity – Magdalene,
Constantine, canon and all. In the novel, Teabing’s exposition enjoys
the willing concurrence of Brown’s hero, the Harvard symbologist Robert
Langdon. But in the corresponding scene of the film, Langdon is
given
new lines which present him as actively questioning Teabing’s theories.
Indeed, he challenges those theories by counter-quoting the
orthodox
line – especially with regard to the deity of Christ, which he rightly
points out was promulgated by the Church and its leading theologians
well before the fourth century. Here, at least, Ron Howard and script
writer Akiva Goldsman have sought to reflect both widespread scholarly
criticism of Brown’s 'research', and mainline Christian understanding
of
Christ.
Not enough of course. The questions remain,
and one of the
pleasing things about a number of Salesian responses to the film/book
(granting that these responses are mainly about the book, not the film)
is that they have taken up the questions not as a dire threat to all
that is holy but as a prompt to present the true Gospel and the
authentic Jesus. Praised be the Lord! Of interest too, is
the work of Fr Charles Velardo in Thailand - recall the item on his
appointment as chaplain to an online group of Chefs? Charles pops
a leading question to the group from time to time, and chose to make
mention of The Da Vinci Code. One respondent has
reflected thoughtfully on the matter and given us, I suppose you could
say, a cook's tour of Christian belief! "The book is a novel, the film
a hotchpotch (a meatloaf, literally) but the theme is compelling", he
says, then reflects on why Marias and Magdalens are all the rage at the
moment: "The role of woman and the feminine was relegated to the
margins...so what happened to cause Mother Earth to end up with
prophets and masculine divinities in the three great monotheistic
religions?" The writer reflects on the 'minestrone' that was the
Council of Nicaea and, indeed, a good part of Christian history,
leaving enough unanswered questions. He concludes by saying that the
novel/film will not destroy a believer's faith but if it opens up some
Catholics' minds just a crack, it will not have been made in
vain. There's more happening in the world's kitchens than watery
soup, it seems!
So - you thought this would be a review in
itself. Sorry. But a
brief trip to Bosconet homepage 'What's new this week' will reveal
all. Malta has done it well, I
feel, but full marks too, to Sr. Louise from the USA. You can
find
them both by clicking here.
_________________________
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