Do I Like the da Vince Code?
I'm a timid SOB. I talk a lot, but I rarely tell you what I really think. That's because what I really think tends to elicit shock or blank stares. This is especially true about religion. Yes, I talk about it all the time, but I'm typically extremely careful about what I say. Which is why I take stuff like Doug's recent post on The da Vinci code as a bit of reprimand. Kudos on writing an honest and thoughtful post, Doug.
The Code is actually right up my alley: wild intellectual speculation, crazy high-speed adventures, improbable cliff hangers, conspiracy, double-crosses; I love all that stuff. Dan Brown's writing is only so-so (but much better in DVC than his previous work), but I don't hold that against him. Many of my favorite authors have strong whiff of the hack about them: Tom Robbins, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Hunter Thompson, and Andre Dumas to name a few.
I couldn't agree more, Doug, and bless your for saying it first [NOTE 1]. In fact it makes a rather nice story. So why don't I believe it?
This comes from the same guy who suggested test all things and hold to what is true [NOTE 2]. This means that it's OK and even encouraged to apply your skills and intellectual abilities to trying to figure out the truth.
This comes from a guy who had more than a few personal problems to sort out [NOTE 3]. It means that when you believe, things start to make sense.
Most of the people I've talked to fall on one side of this debate or the other, but I personally fall right in between. The relationship between belief and knowledge is a mystery, and not a mystery in the sense of "you can't understand this", but rather in the sense that the more you try to plumb its depths, the more you learn and understand.
So what's this got to do with the DVC?
First off, DVC is just a story, and is inherently BS, just as Edgar Rice Boroughs' Mars is a heap of BS. Nevertheless, DVC brings up a couple of virulent ideas, namely: 1) that Jesus settled down with Mary Magdalene and had kids, etc. 2) that the Catholic Church is an institution founded on falsehood.
Knowledge (and a little research) is sufficient to deal with statement 1.
Statement 2 is much thornier, and calls both faith and knowledge into the mix. Faith tells me that the Catholic Church is not founded on falsehood, but it tells me something else. It tells me that the Church is up to the intellectual challenge. It says that I should seek the answer to questions that vex me, including questions about the Church, and that the Church, which includes in its body Jesus, my friends and family, and a rich intellectual tradition, will be a bountiful resource in that quest. So I guess I'm saying that statement 2 has proven itself untrue in my life because if it were true, any quest for truth through the Church would eventually be doomed to failure.
As for DVC, the book itself doesn't bother me very much, and from Doug's post, I'm guessing he feels the same way. What does bother me, and what I fear, is a growing cultural and intellectual change in which I sense the possibility of violence directed at me and my children. To be Catholic is to know that the quest for Truth bears fruit, but it is also to know that the threat of systematic violence aimed at the body of Christ is a continual possibility in human history, and that I do fear.
NOTE 1: though it remains rather dubious scholarship at best and blasphemy at worst
NOTE 2: St. Thomas Aquinas
NOTE 3: I say continued because I was born Catholic. The reason I'm Catholic is that I was born so. The reason I continue to be Catholic is that my continued quest of faith and reason confirms my Catholicism rather than rejecting it. I've often joked that had I been born Zoroastrian, I might still be Zoroastrian. I mean that in full honesty. Then again, had I been born Zoroastrian, I might be Catholic by now anyway. Lately, I'm beginning to suspect this might be the case.
The Code is actually right up my alley: wild intellectual speculation, crazy high-speed adventures, improbable cliff hangers, conspiracy, double-crosses; I love all that stuff. Dan Brown's writing is only so-so (but much better in DVC than his previous work), but I don't hold that against him. Many of my favorite authors have strong whiff of the hack about them: Tom Robbins, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Hunter Thompson, and Andre Dumas to name a few.
The notion that Jesus settled down with Mary Magdalene and had some kids doesn't seem all that bad.
I couldn't agree more, Doug, and bless your for saying it first [NOTE 1]. In fact it makes a rather nice story. So why don't I believe it?
Know, so that you may believe
This comes from the same guy who suggested test all things and hold to what is true [NOTE 2]. This means that it's OK and even encouraged to apply your skills and intellectual abilities to trying to figure out the truth.
Beleive so that you may know
This comes from a guy who had more than a few personal problems to sort out [NOTE 3]. It means that when you believe, things start to make sense.
Most of the people I've talked to fall on one side of this debate or the other, but I personally fall right in between. The relationship between belief and knowledge is a mystery, and not a mystery in the sense of "you can't understand this", but rather in the sense that the more you try to plumb its depths, the more you learn and understand.
So what's this got to do with the DVC?
First off, DVC is just a story, and is inherently BS, just as Edgar Rice Boroughs' Mars is a heap of BS. Nevertheless, DVC brings up a couple of virulent ideas, namely: 1) that Jesus settled down with Mary Magdalene and had kids, etc. 2) that the Catholic Church is an institution founded on falsehood.
Knowledge (and a little research) is sufficient to deal with statement 1.
Statement 2 is much thornier, and calls both faith and knowledge into the mix. Faith tells me that the Catholic Church is not founded on falsehood, but it tells me something else. It tells me that the Church is up to the intellectual challenge. It says that I should seek the answer to questions that vex me, including questions about the Church, and that the Church, which includes in its body Jesus, my friends and family, and a rich intellectual tradition, will be a bountiful resource in that quest. So I guess I'm saying that statement 2 has proven itself untrue in my life because if it were true, any quest for truth through the Church would eventually be doomed to failure.
As for DVC, the book itself doesn't bother me very much, and from Doug's post, I'm guessing he feels the same way. What does bother me, and what I fear, is a growing cultural and intellectual change in which I sense the possibility of violence directed at me and my children. To be Catholic is to know that the quest for Truth bears fruit, but it is also to know that the threat of systematic violence aimed at the body of Christ is a continual possibility in human history, and that I do fear.
NOTE 1: though it remains rather dubious scholarship at best and blasphemy at worst
NOTE 2: St. Thomas Aquinas
NOTE 3: I say continued because I was born Catholic. The reason I'm Catholic is that I was born so. The reason I continue to be Catholic is that my continued quest of faith and reason confirms my Catholicism rather than rejecting it. I've often joked that had I been born Zoroastrian, I might still be Zoroastrian. I mean that in full honesty. Then again, had I been born Zoroastrian, I might be Catholic by now anyway. Lately, I'm beginning to suspect this might be the case.
10 Comments:
I do hold Dan Brown's bad writing against him! Bad, bad, Dan Brown. Get a ghost-writer already, you hack.:)
In the show-biz world, even bad press is better than no press at all. With the onset of the controvery over the Da Vinci Code, people are calling upon Biblical Scholars to ask them what they think. People are interviewing Magdalene scholars to ask them what they think.
Back in the 1980's, I read Mists of Avalon for the first time, and awhile, I held onto the hope that there really was a matriarchy that was stomped out (but would rise again). After the initial excitment followed by grounded research, I took away something more profound: the feminine in God. Male and female created he them. Amen.
I'm glad you liked the post, Tony.
I had been thinking along these lines when the book was big; again, not because of the book itself but because of its popularity and what that popularity suggested about general views of the Catholic Church.
Mark D. Roberts has a good report of the facts and fallacies of DVC. In the 1960's, there was a book called "The Passover Plot," which challenged fundamental tenets of Christianity. The book was a raging success at the time, but no one thinks about it today. I hereby predict that 40 years from now, people will marvel at the number of people who read DVC and accepted it as true.
Tony,
Not only did I love your post here, but I greatly enjoyed Doug's post, which I never would have found if not for this one. isn't the internet grand?
Up until now, I had totally ignored the whole thing, and knew nothing about the plot or the "phenomenon." So, I'm glad to have my eyes at least a little bit opened.
Katie (yeah, that Katie :)
I don't know. I was born Catholic and am not anymore although I have lots of friendly feeling for the Church. I haven't read the book or paid much attention to the phenom. so I may be missing the point, but I think the view that the Church is deceitful and the view that it is good are not mutually exclusive views. Obviously, the Church has been highly deceitful in very dangerous ways about quite recent things, historical fantasies aside. And probably it has been deceitful about a lot of the things people murmur about in the past as well, even if a lot of the murmurings are also just silliness and fiction, as most of them probably are. It is, on the one hand, a really ginormous bureaucracy, an ancient, ancient one, and such organizations almost always have some really awful components. But that does not change its beauty, the way it brings many people close to God, its work for peace and justice...do you feel like there are people (other than those who just always were and are probably dying out) who are against Catholics? I have met people who are mad at the Church for a lot of reasons, many of which I agree with but choose not to line up against my friendly feeling for Catholicism (I am comfortable with that sort of contradiction), but I do not know anyone who is mad at Catholics. Have I missed it? I hope there is no movement afoot....
Hi Lone Star! You're right to point out that the Church has some good parts and some bad parts. But there's also a way in which, as a matter of Faith, I beleive that the purpose of the Church is essentially good. Like any organization, naturally, there are people who hate and would like to see the church destroyed.
Is Dan Brown an agent of some secret society dedicated to destroying the Church? Who knows? If he were, history would start to sound a bit like a Dan Brown plot itself.
But then again, once you beleive that the Church is somehow founded by God's providence, then you tend to see history as a drama that pitts the Church against its enemies. You could certainly quite easily interpret the Church's battle against Soviet communism that way. As such, you're always wondering where the next attack will come from.
But here's the strange part of this story - the "real" drama is the battle between Christ and Satan. This isn't the same thing as being a battle about the political fortunes of the Church. We tend to think of the Church's "influence" as being in God's service, but there's no guarantee that God's plan doesn't include that influence decreasing!
Hi! I agree about not knowing what God's plan is...I am not one to try to know myself, except in terms of what God's plan is for me...the rest seems too vast. I really can't imagine anyone wanting to destroy Catholicism these days...maybe reform it in some ways (I tend to think reform is always healthy, of reigions and most everything) but destroy? I hope not.
How do you know that any quest for truth through the Church is NOT doomed to failure? IMO, it is.
Well, that's the faith part. But you end up needing some of that no matter how you look for truth.
wow i SERIOUSLY hope you're kidding. even if you are you really shouldn't kid about stuff like that man. as a fifteen year old girl i'm sad to say i've done more research on the "novel" than you have. it may be a "thriller" but unfortunatly it's extremly NOT true. i would highly recommend being less "chill" about such serious issues.
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