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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