Abandoned Altars

The film version of The Da Vinci Code is upon us at last. Moral outrage being apparently insufficient, some critics have resorted to casting stones unjustly with bad reviews as well. Anything to keep the sheeple safe from ideas, I guess. However, from the media coverage in general, one would be tempted to think this is the greatest threat against the Christian faith since Muhammad chatted with Gabriel.

It’s a fun read, a good movie, but it’s not the greatest story ever told. Why should people be so shocked? It’s a NOVEL, a thriller; which is why one should not take any claims of fact seriously. Is there any reason to be alarmed?

I suspect a lot of the thunderous outrage, the dramatic calls for boycotting, the flood of books trashing the novel’s thesis, mainly coming from the Evangelical camp, is simply due to it providing such a convenient target for preachers who might otherwise have to deal with real issues. Whipping up popular indignation is a time-honored way to rally the troops and increase donations, after all. But with all their hypercritical debunking books and DVDs, they’re just riding the gravy train.

However, as a writer who has spent a lot of energy futiley trying to get a novel critical of the Catholic Church published, I confess to a twinge or two of envy myself for Mr. Brown, who rakes in more wheelbarrows of cash with each denunciation.

It’s enough to drive a poor, frustrated researcher insane with jealousy, and apparently has. Brown did indeed appropriate a lot from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, as well as from other writers, and with the fast pace of the story, didn’t always bother to get the details right, either. And indeed, judging by the recent failed lawsuit against the novel by two of the authors of that book who have now quixotically announced they will appeal their loss, that gravy train must be very hard indeed to let pass by.

Anyway, now that I’ve seen Ron Howard’s film version, I’m very impressed. The performances of Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou are rock solid even if Sir Ian McKellan can’t help upstaging everybody, the spectacular settings are very well used, and the pace is good. The script works hard at making all the clues understandable to anyone unfamiliar with the book.

Most interestingly, the script actually goes beyond the book in some ways. Maybe it was just an unsuccessful attempt to get Opus Dei off their backs, but the evil in the Catholic Church is ultimately blamed on a Council of Shadows devoted to keeping the awful secret that Jesus and Mary Magdalene got it on by supressing witches with the Inquisition and other nasty tricks.

However, all of them: the book, movie and their enraged critics are laboring under the same misconception. Marital status doesn’t say anything one way or the other about Jesus’ divine status. It sure doesn’t bother MY faith any, and neither that of most theologians who’ve I’ve seen interviewed. It would only prove Jesus was fully human as well as being divine. Further, Jesus as a family man would be a better boost to the modern embattled father figure than his dad, poor doddering old St. Joseph, who after all, according to the Catholic Church never got any sweet lovin’, either.

Though the Protestants seem to be just milking it for their own ends, there’s no mystery as to why the Catholic hierarchy is so rabid. For The Da Vinci Code is indeed a direct threat to the Roman Church’s very foundation: the sacred “boys only” club. Simply put, a sexual Jesus screws the basis for a male, celibate priesthood.

Here’s what the Catholic Encyclopedia says:

…it was plainly fitting that this virgin Church should be served by a virgin priesthood. Among Jews and pagans the priesthood was hereditary. Its functions and powers were transmitted by natural generation. But in the Church of Christ, as an antithesis to this, the priestly character was imparted by the Holy Ghost in the Divinely-instituted Sacrament of Orders. Virginity is consequently the special prerogative of the Christian priesthood.

Hmmm. This implies that if hereditary priesthood was the norm, only Jesus kids’ could be priests. Well, how convenient for the bishops that Christ was more celibate than most of them.

The key is that Rome nails the whole hierarchical power system to the celibate priesthood. Priests must be like Jesus, who, they say, was a man who remained a spotless virgin his whole life. If Jesus was married, wouldn’t that imply married men could be priests? After all, Peter, the first pope, was married, and Jesus didn’t seem to mind that. (And one wonders, what about all those sexual predators? How can they be priests?)

Further, if married men could serve as priests, why not women? That’s a prospect to put terror into the heart of any misogynistic prelate.

The last such work to raise such a stink was Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ way back in 1988. It was also reviled for suggesting - though it ultimately rejected the idea - that Jesus could’ve had a relationship with the Magdalen and might have wanted a family. Though it did suggest his visions might have come from a brain disease, the film actually was a passionate refutation of the notion (held by some Christian heretics and enshrined in the Koran) that Christ did not die on the cross after all.

The Da Vinci Code doesn’t go that far: though there’s talk of a mysterious sarcophagus, it supposedly contains only Mrs. Christ, not her hubby. In this way as in others, the story only barely touches the possible extent of the mystery it is based on.

Enter the Antichrist?

Yet, there could be another conceivable reason for the Catholic Church’s condemnation of the movie. The problem might not be with Jesus’ marriage, but with his kids.

The first Church historian, Eusebius, mentions the family of Christ, “humanly speaking”, as he is careful to say. They were called the Desposyni, and held an honored leadership position in the early Church for at least the first century.

Their ultimate fate: extermination by the Romans as possible claimants to the throne of Israel, natural extinction, displacement by the bishops or deliberate self-concealment, is not known. However, with so many against them, Roman and Jew, and informers lurking everywhere, an early exit into the mists of history might well have been the best strategy.

And it might have happened very early, too, even long before the martyrdom of Jesus’ brother James.

Originally, Mary Magdalene was quite significant among the apostles. She was the first one to see the risen Christ, and he forbad her to “touch” him. Why? Hadn’t he solidified? He sure had by later that day, it seems, and it didn’t affect his ability to get around. Maybe it was a more intimate contact he forbad; the sort natural between reunited lovers.

Dan Brown is correct: one Gnostic text, the Gospel of Philip, does indeed say that the Magdalene traveled with him along with his Mom and aunt, and that she “was called his companion”. And the Gospel of Mary Magdalene states that the Apostles’ were envious because Jesus loved her more than them.

In any case, there’s nothing to indicate she was of any influence in the Jerusalem Church after Pentecost. It seems, then, that she was written out of the story as soon as Jesus left. And then slandered for two millennia as a whore and madwoman.

The Magdalene was said to have fled to southern France; and the “mythos” developed in Holy Blood, Holy Grail is that her descendants ultimately married into the ruling line of the invading Franks, the Merovingians. And off we go from there into a whole wonderland centered around, of all things, an obscure village in southern France called Rennes-le-Chateau and a priest in the 19th century whose last name is that of the murdered curator in The Da Vinci Code. And believe me, Dan Brown didn’t even scratch the surface…

But what if it is basically true? What if direct descendents of Jesus yet persist, and what if that bloodline was carefully preserved and documented among the crowned heads of Europe?

Geneticists think that given normal distribution patterns, anyone whose kids survived 2,000 years ago enough to create 20 offspring might have descendents in the millions by now. And any “special” DNA the Son of Man might have had would be diluted by a factor of trillions. So if Jesus’ powers had a genetic component, they would not have been passed down for very long.

However, any such descendants would most likely not breed randomly but in a closely controlled program, much like the movie itself suggests. Who knows what such a descendent would be like — and what would that person believe he or she is entitled to?

The Vatican would indeed have a real problem if anyone takes such a claimant seriously. The last thing they would want would be some aristocratic pretender of the black nobility to, say, the Holy Roman Empire and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem popping up - especially one who might also claim the titles of Heir of Christ and Messiah of Israel to boot! By comparison, Christ’s Vicar might seem like a mere butler.

Interestingly, there are already possible shadowy claimants rumored about, such as Prince Michael of Albany. And The Da Vinci Code goes so far as to dare to name one of the surviving families descended Jesus and Mary: none other, it seems, than the Sinclairs of Scotland.

Could one of them be the Antichrist? Hey, what a terrific story that would make…

Hmm. Don’t tell Dan Brown – I think I need an agent!

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t bother, just in case. After all, it wouldn’t do to get on the bad side of the future Prince of this World…

Ah well, at least I can console myself that if Rome is irritated by The Da Vinci Code movie, Mr. Brown will make them even be more unhappy. It was recently announced that the prequel, Angels and Demons, has also been purchased for the screen.

In this one, Robert Langdon and a babe chase down the Illuminati, who want to blow up the Vatican with an antimatter bomb. Yes, another total fantasy but one can dream…