The Da Vinci Doubt

A doubt can be pow­er­ful. The devil used it against Adam and Eve in the gar­den of Eden. He tried to make them doubt that God loved them. It worked. We’re pay­ing for it. The Da Vinci Code, writ­ten by Dan Brown, may not be as smart a hoax as the devil’s lie in the gar­den, but it has con­fused many people. Now the novel is com­ing out as a movie. The good thing is that many Chris­tians are unit­ing in a strat­egy to respond: edu­ca­tion on what our faith in Christ is really about. In this les­son we present a few ideas you can use to edu­cate oth­ers about some of the The Da Vinci Code’s mixed-​​up ideas.

 

THE CONSPIRACY PLOT

Every­one loves a con­spir­acy story, and the book imme­di­ately cap­tures the reader by open­ing with a mys­te­ri­ous mur­der. The clues to this puz­zle are hid­den in the paint­ings of the Renais­sance artist Leonardo Da Vinci, and are revealed lit­tle by lit­tle to keep the reader’s inter­est. In the mean­time, an expla­na­tion unfolds of a secret plot by the Catholic Church to cover up the “true” story of Jesus through mur­der and deceit. Ulti­mately, Brown uses this story to present his idea of the “real Jesus”. This Jesus was a prophet, but not God, and was mar­ried to Mary Mag­da­lene. He wanted to start a new reli­gion ded­i­cated to appre­ci­at­ing the “sacred fem­i­nine” in the world, and he intended Mary to head it up. Brown claims that Jesus never rose from the dead, and that he could do noth­ing when Peter stole the power from Mary Mag­da­lene, and forced her to flee. Thus, the apos­tles built the Church on their own ideas, mak­ing up a story about Jesus’ divin­ity and cov­er­ing up the mar­riage. Da Vinci was one of the few who passed on Mary’s secret through the ages through codes in his paintings.

FACT OR FICTION?

Dan Brown’s book has a strong effect, because the open­ing page of the book claims that all of the descrip­tions are true. The main char­ac­ters, Robert Lang­don (played by Tom Hanks in the movie) and Dr. Leigh Teabing (played by Sir Ian McKel­lan) , use phrases through­out the book such as “his­to­ri­ans have always known …” and “schol­ars know …” to make the reader think that the ideas are the fruit of seri­ous research. Yet, many of the “facts” are actu­ally dis­proved by schol­ars in art, his­tory, archi­tec­ture and the­ol­ogy. Some “facts” are so eas­ily dis­proved that you hardly have to be a scholar at all to fi nd the fl aw. For exam­ple, the story claims that Jesus does not have a cup (chal­ice) in Leonardo’s paint­ing of the Last Sup per. But if you count the chal­ices in the paint­ing you will see that Jesus does have a cup. How­ever, the aver­age reader is not going to spend time look­ing up the details, and Dan Brown banks on this. Brown did use sources for his research, but they are mostly make-​​believe sto­ries which twist the truth in an inac­cu­rate or hypo­thet­i­cal way.

IS JESUS REALLY GOD?

The Da Vinci Code claims that early Chris­tians saw Jesus as only a mor­tal, but they voted 300 years later to call him God, only for the sake of polit­i­cal unity under Emperor Con­stan­tine. Not true. Look at the Gospels. The Gospels were writ­ten between AD 50-​​100, shortly after the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus (approx­i­mately AD 30). They show in many dif­fer­ent verses that Chris­tians always believed Christ was the Son of God, equal to God. One cen­tral exam­ple is Peter’s pro­fes­sion of faith in Jesus: “You are the Mes­siah, the Son of the Liv­ing God,” (Mt 16:16) Christ confi rms that Peter has under­stood cor­rectly when he says “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For fl esh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heav­enly Father” (Mt 16:17) The Coun­cil of Nicea was actu­ally called in AD 325 by Con­stan­tine in response to Arius, one man who was cre­at­ing tur­moil by propos­ing his own idea that Jesus was not really equal to God. He had a clever way of phras­ing things that con­fused some peo­ple. But he was going against what the Church already believed. 

Brown claims that it was a close vote. In fact only two bish­ops voted for Arius, while at least 218 voted to affirm what Chris­tians had always believed. Close? Check your facts, Mr. Brown.

The fruit of the Coun­cil was the “Nicene Creed” which Catholics recite every Sun­day, pro­fess­ing that Jesus is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” The Coun­cil sim­ply clar­i­fied what the New Tes­ta­ment teaches and the Church always believed. The Coun­cil didn’t invent anything.

 

CAN WE TRUST THE SCRIPTURES?

Another claim that The DaVinci Code makes is that Con­stan­tine destroyed “thou­sands” of other reli­able texts that show the human Jesus, and that there were 80 other Gospels that showed a dif­fer­ent truth about Christ. In other words, our New Tes­ta­ment is not the truth about Christ, but rather someone’s per­sonal opin­ion in a sea of other opinions.

It is easy to con­jec­ture. But The DaVinci Code “schol­ars” don’t seem to have stud­ied very seri­ously. Over 200 years before Con­stan­tine, Chris­tians were already refer­ring to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the only reli­able ones. They were the ones used in Mass, and they were the ones quoted by the bish­ops and saints. 

One ele­ment in the Gospels that inspires trust is their hon­esty about the weak­ness of the apos­tles. They show clearly how the apos­tles aban­doned Christ dur­ing his suf­fer­ing. If the apos­tles were going to fake their author­ity they would not have said this. Yet the Gospels are hon­est in telling the story as it really happened.

OTHER GOSPELS?

The other texts that The DaVinci Code calls gospels were writ­ings pro­duced by groups that did not believe what the Chris­tians believed or mixed Chris­t­ian ideas with non-​​Christian ones. They were hereti­cal texts. Many were pro­duced much later than the Gospels. Recently some of these texts have made pub­lic­ity again, such as the “Gospel of Judas.” They do not show the true Jesus, and they are being used again today to con­fuse peo­ple about Christianity. 

MARY MAGDALENE 

The DaVinci Code claims that Mary Mag­da­lene was hated by the Church, and was there­fore thwarted in her mis­sion to begin a dif­fer­ent reli­gion to honor the “sacred fem­i­nine”. In fact, the book pro­poses that we should aban­don Chris­tian­ity and adopt a more pagan wor­ship of the crea­ture rather than the Creator.

But it is hard to say that Mary Mag­da­lene is hated by the Church if she is hon­ored as a saint. She has her own feast day. She has inspired devo­tion through­out the cen­turies. She is men­tioned in the Gospels as the first per­son to see the risen Christ. She is sent to tell the apos­tles about the res­ur­rec­tion. She has a promi­nent place. She is not hated.

WAS JESUS MARRIED?

Although he has no real evi­dence, Brown con­cludes that Jesus must have been mar­ried because Jews and Jew­ish rab­bis had the cus­tom of always marrying.

A real Scrip­ture scholar would be able to name sev­eral men in the Bible who did not marry in order to ded­i­cate them­selves to God: Jere­miah, John the Bap­tist, St. Paul. A Scrip­ture scholar would also tell you that around the time of Jesus there was a Jew­ish group called the Essenes whose mem­bers did not get mar­ried. Celibacy (not get­ting mar­ried) did exist, and gained more pop­u­lar­ity through­out the his­tory of Christianity. 

It is in the exam­ple of Christ that a priest takes the solemn promise of celibacy, to be fully ded­i­cated to God’s work and to serv­ing oth­ers as he was. 

IS THE CHURCH TRUSTWORTHY?

The DaVinci Code accuses the Catholic Church of being a type of mur­der­ous mafia that despises women and sex­u­al­ity and is only con­cerned with keep­ing its power.

It is one thing to accuse a human orga­ni­za­tion of being cor­rupt, but in accus­ing the Church as a whole, Brown is for­get­ting the mil­lions of mar­tyrs who gave their lives for oth­ers, the his­tory of female lead­ers and saints, and the sta­tus given to the sacra­ment of mat­ri­mony. The Church has an amaz­ing his­tory. Becom­ing famil­iar with Church his­tory and doc­trine can inspire a sense of awe at its great­ness, and can be a con­vinc­ing tes­ti­mony of God’s hand work­ing within it.

And it is hard to say that the Church despises women if Mary the mother of Jesus has such a strong role in the Church. She is already present in the Gospels. She had to say “yes” in order for Jesus to become a man. She and Mary Mag­da­lene are among the few brave souls that do not aban­don Christ when he is cap­tured and con­demned to death. She is treated with tremen­dous ven­er­a­tion by every Chris­t­ian gen­er­a­tion through­out history.

DECODING DA VINCI

The real-​​life con­spir­acy of The Da Vinci Code is a plot to chal­lenge Chris­tian­ity, make some peo­ple lose their faith, and con­fuse many who do not know otherwise. 

For those who can decode it, who can pick out the impor­tant details and the inac­cu­rate half-​​truths, it is a chance to evan­ge­lize. It is a chance to start up a con­ver­sa­tion around a hot issue and talk about Christ and his Church. It is a chance to edu­cate our­selves so as to edu­cate oth­ers. Peo­ple need to know what the Gospels teach. They need to know about Christ, the real Christ. 

We can start by read­ing the Gospels. We can con­tinue by read­ing some of the other resources avail­able. We can be espe­cially effec­tive by try­ing to be like Christ: both bold and hum­ble, lov­ing yet courageous.

He is here to help us. With him on our side, we have noth­ing to fear.

Bible Blurbs

“I too have decided, after inves­ti­gat­ing every­thing accu­rately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, … so that you may real­ize the cer­tainty of the teach­ings you have received.” (Luke 1:3-4)
“Mary of Mag­dala went and announced to the dis­ci­ples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.” (John 20:18)
“Now I am remind­ing you, broth­ers, of the Gospel I preached to you… Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.” (1Corinthians 15: 1-​​2)
“I am amazed that you are so quickly for­sak­ing the one who called you by the grace of Christ for a dif­fer­ent Gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are dis­turb­ing you and wish to per­vert the Gospel of Christ. (Gala­tians 1:6-7) 

Pope Quotes 

“Jesus yes, Church no”, is totally irrec­on­cil­able with the inten­tion of Christ. This indi­vid­u­al­is­ti­cally cho­sen Jesus is an imag­i­nary Jesus. We can­not have Jesus with­out the real­ity he cre­ated and in which he com­mu­ni­cates him­self. (Pope Bene­dict XVI, March 15, 2006)

“The Jesus of the Gospels is quite dif­fer­ent, demand­ing, bold. The Jesus who makes every­thing okay for every­one is a phan­tom, a dream, not a real fig­ure. The Jesus of the Gospels is cer­tainly not con­ve­nient for us. But it is pre­cisely in this way that he answers the deep­est ques­tion of our exis­tence…” (Joseph Car­di­nal Ratzinger (now Pope Bene­dict XVI), On the Way to Jesus Christ, p. 8) 

Cat­e­chism Quotes 

“The Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, whose his­toric­ity she unhesi­tat­ingly affirms, faith­fully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eter­nal sal­va­tion, until the day when he was taken up.” (n. 126) 

“What Christ entrusted to the apos­tles, they in turn handed on by their preach­ing and writ­ing, under the inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Spirit, to all gen­er­a­tions, until Christ returns in glory.” (n.96)

Saints and Heros

ST. MARY MAGDALENE: 

Con­trary to Dan Brown’s claims that she is despised, Mary Mag­da­lene is hon­ored as a saint. Her feast day is cel­e­brated on July 22. She was healed of seven demons by Christ, and stayed close to Christ dur­ing his cru­ci­fix­ion, when almost all the apos­tles aban­doned him. She was the first one to see Jesus after he rose from the dead and was then sent to tell the the apos­tles. Tra­di­tion has it that she lived with Mary, Jesus’ mother, in Eph­esus until she died. Cen­turies later her relics (her bones) were appar­ently brought to France. 

ST. PETER CANISIUS: 

(1521-​​1597) St. Peter lived in a time of con­tro­versy. He helped bring back much of south­ern Ger­many to Roman Catholi­cism after the spread of Protes­tantism He was born into an impor­tant fam­ily in Hol­land. While he was doing uni­ver­sity stud­ies in Bel­gium he went on a retreat directed by St. Peter Fabre, a Jesuit priest, and decided to become a Jesuit him­self. He gave every­thing to the poor and ded­i­cated him­self totally to his voca­tion. Dur­ing his life­time he trav­eled con­stantly, preached many retreats, founded Catholic schools and col­leges, par­tic­i­pated in many debates with Protes­tants, and wrote a very large num­ber of books. His most influ­en­tial book was a Cat­e­chism which was very highly read and was reprinted numer­ous times. He is often called “the Sec­ond Apos­tle of Ger­many.” He was declared a Doc­tor of the Church in 1925.

Vocab­u­lary:

Celibacy – Not hav­ing sex­ual rela­tions; usu­ally done in order to ded­i­cate one­self more com­pletely to God and others

Clar­ify – Make more clear and explicit

Devo­tion – Reliance on or invo­ca­tion of a saint or holy person

Doc­trine – Offi­cial teaching

Edu­cate – Teach; instruct; develop the knowledge

Evan­ge­lize – To teach and spread the good news of Christ to others.

Hereti­cal – Reli­gious teach­ing that is incor­rect or opposed to Church doctrine

Hoax – Deceit, decep­tion, lie

Hon­esty – Speak­ing and act­ing in the truth

Hypo­thet­i­cal – Only in the­ory; make-​​believe

Mat­ri­mony – Mar­riage; sacra­ment in which a man and a woman give them­selves to each other out of love.

Pagan – Non-​​Christian; ungodly 

“Sacred fem­i­nine” – Wor­ship of women as goddesses 

Dis­cus­sion Questions

1. Where would you fi nd sources of fact, fi ction, or some­thing in between? How do you know, for exam­ple, if some­thing you read on the inter­net is fact or fi ction?

a. First we need to ask our­selves if the author/​source is claim­ing to be fact or fi ction. In the case of the book the Da Vinci Code, you will fi nd the book in the “fi ction” sec­tion of libraries and books—although on one of the 1st pages of the book, Dan Brown presents a “facts” page, which itself has untruths. The devil can take a ker­nel of truth and spin/​manipulate it as a tool of deception.

b. As for how do we know if some­thing we read-​​ whether it be on the inter­net, news­pa­per, etc. is actu­ally true and not a slanted version/​half truth, here are sev­eral tools to deci­pher a writing’s credibility:

i. Is it a trust­wor­thy source? If you don’t know for sure your­self, ask some­one who you trust and who has in depth knowl­edge on the topic

ii. Cross check the infor­ma­tion with other reli­able sources

iii. If pos­si­ble, go to orig­i­nal docu ments/​sources (in this case the Bible and Cat­e­chism, for exam­ple) to fi nd the raw data, or orig­i­nal material-​​not some­one else’s reporting/​interpreta tion of the mate­r­ial iv. Don’t assume just because you read some­thing, that it is true.

2. How can you say that Jesus is really God?

• a. He did miracles
• b. He taught with author­ity. He claimed to be God.
• c. He for­gave sins, which only God can do.
• d. He was totally unselfi sh, dying for us on a cross
• e. He was holy, not com­mit­ting any sin f. Death could not defeat him. He rose from the dead. He has power over life and death, which only God has.

3. How do we know that we can trust the Scriptures?

• a. Because God guar­an­tees their truth­ful­ness through the Church
• b. Because the Gospels are hon­est about the fail­ings of the apostles.
• c. Because the teach­ings of the Bible, espe­cially the New Tes­ta­ment, help to make us the best human beings pos­si­ble: more com­pas­sion­ate, unselfish, holy, coura­geous, cen­tered on God and the impor­tant things, gen­er­ous, etc.

4. What kind of a per­son was Mary Mag­da­lene, and what kind of rela­tion­ship did she have to Christ?

a. Mary Mag­da­lene was cured of seven demons by Christ. After that she fol­lowed him wher­ever he went. (Luke 8: 1-​​3) She was con­stantly learn­ing from Christ and she was faith­ful to him even when he was aban­doned by the oth­ers. (Matthew 27: 55-​​61; Mark 14: 40-​​47; Luke 23: 49-​​56)

b. Some saints thought she might have been the same woman in the Gospels who was caught in adul­tery (John 8:1-11) or who cleansed Jesus´ feet with her tears. (Luke 7:36-50) Some thought she might also be Mary, the sis­ter of Lazarus and Martha.(Luke 10:38-42) This is pos­si­ble, but the Gospels don’t explic­itly say these women were Mary Mag­da­lene, so one is free to think either way. The Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion from the Mid­dle East and from the Ortho­dox Church does not iden­tify her with the adul­ter­ess or the woman who cleansed his feet with her tears. 

c. Mary Mag­da­lene is called “the apos­tle to the apos­tles.” She was given the task of telling the apos­tles about Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion before the apos­tles actu­ally saw the risen Jesus.(Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-11; Luke 24:1-11; John 20:1-18)

d. Her rela­tion­ship with Christ was one of faith. She believed in him. She loved him in a spir­i­tual way, not a phys­i­cal way, since she under­stood that he was holy, the Son of God.

5. How can we really say that Jesus was not married?

a. Because he was totally ded­i­cated to his Father and to the spir­i­tual good of souls.

b. He taught clearly that some peo­ple can choose to remain celi­bate for the sake of God and for ded­i­cat­ing all their heart and soul to save souls. It is clear by his lifestyle that he chose this.

c. If he were mar­ried, the Gospels would have said this. They tell about the other peo­ple who were close and impor­tant to him. They never talk about a spouse because his spouse was the Church.

d. He needed to be totally open to every­one, so he did not have an exclu­sive relationship.

6. How do we know that the Church is trustworthy?

a. Because so many mar­tyrs have given their blood to defend the truth she teaches.

b. Because so many saints have given such tremen­dous exam­ples of char­ity and holiness

c. Because the Church has not been afraid to pro­claim the truth even when this has brought her mis­un­der­stand­ings and persecutions.

d. Because the Church has pre­served its doc­trine down through the cen­turies with­out changing.

JOURNAL WRITING:

1. Nobody likes to be lied to and to be seen as gullible. Describe a time when some­one took advan­tage of your igno­rance, and how you felt after­wards. Or, describe a time when a movie you saw affected your life and the way you thought about things.

2. Imag­ine that you are in the Gospel scene with Jesus when he asks his Apos­tles “Who do you say that I am?” Write about who Jesus is for you. Do you know the real per­son of Jesus? Write at least one way you can get to know him better.

ACTIVITIES:

1. Plan a movie night as an alter­na­tive to The DaVinci Code. Take a group of friends to see another movie, and go out for pizza to dis­cuss it. (Over the Hedge is a good one).

2. Put together a class­room spe­cial reserve col­lec­tion of books in the school library related to these top­ics: Con­stan­tine, the Coun­cil of Nicea, Lives of the Saints (with Mary Mag­da­lene, etc.) Offer extra credit for the stu­dents who read one of these books and present a short sum­mary report to the class.

3. Invite a vis­it­ing speaker to the class to bring a copy of Leonardo DaVinci’s paint­ing of “The Last Sup­per” and to talk about the artis­tic sig­nif­i­cance of it. Or, have some­one bring the paint­ing in, and present the facts from the USCCB web­site (below) about the artist and his inten­tions behind the painting.

4. Estab­lish a weekly time in which stu­dents can ask ques­tions about the faith and receive answers. Encour­age the stu­dents to bring up the ques­tions that oth­ers may have asked them, even if they think that they gave a suf­fi­cient response, so that the rest of the class can ben­e­fit from know­ing the answers. The teacher can invite a guest speaker or the pas­tor to answer the ques­tions, or cor­re­spond by email to other schol­ars if necessary.

FURTHER FORMATION

From the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church 

126 “We can dis­tin­guish three stages in the for­ma­tion of the Gospels: 

1. The life and teach­ing of Jesus. the Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, “whose his­toric­ity she unhesi­tat­ingly affirms, faith­fully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eter­nal sal­va­tion, until the day when he was taken up.”99 

2. The oral tra­di­tion. “For, after the ascen­sion of the Lord, the apos­tles handed on to their hear­ers what he had said and done, but with that fuller under­stand­ing which they, instructed by the glo­ri­ous events of Christ and enlight­ened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed.”100 

3. The writ­ten Gospels. “The sacred authors, in writ­ing the four Gospels, selected cer­tain of the many ele­ments which had been handed on, either orally or already in writ­ten form; oth­ers they syn­the­sized or explained with an eye to the sit­u­a­tion of the churches, the while sus­tain­ing the form of preach­ing, but always in such a fash­ion that they have told us the hon­est truth about Jesus.”101 

RESOURCES:

• Amy Welborn, 

- De-​​Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fic­tion of the Da Vinci Code 

- De-​​Coding Mary Mag­da­lene: Truth, Leg­end and Lies, 

- The Da Vinci Code Mys­ter­ies: What the Movie Doesn’t Tell You

all from Our Sun­day Vis­i­tor Publications.

• Steven Kellmeyer, Fact and Fic­tion in the Da Vinci Code, Bride­groom Press

• Carl Olson and San­dra Miesel, The Da Vinci Hoax, Ignatius Press

• Mark Shea and Ted Sri, The Da Vinci Decep­tion: 100 Ques­tions About the Facts and Fic­tion of The Da Vinci Code, Ascen­sion Press. (www.DavinciAntidote.com) 

• www.JesusDecoded.com (USCCB web­site about the book and movie)