Decoding DaVinci Silliness

Well, The DaVinci Code has opened in Cannes, France. The same people who squawked loudly about the book are now squawking about the movie. I found myself in agreement with Tom Hanks' take on the central controversy:

The screen adaptation, like the novel, suggests that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered a child. One reporter asked the cast if they believed Christ was married.

Star Tom Hanks quipped, “Well, I wasn’t around.”

For the record, I am a devout Catholic; I believe that Christ lived, preached the Gospel, and redeemed us from our sins through His Passion, death, and Resurrection. But, like Tom Hanks, I wasn't around for the details.

Would it change anything for me if Jesus had been married and had children?

No. The central point of the Gospel is Jesus' salvific work, not whether or not He was married. His marital status is irrelevant to His divine mission. And I know that He has healed many people from His days on Earth to the present; indeed, He has healed me in mind and spirit. In the end, I know that my Savior lives and reigns, and that, like Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers, we're all on a mission from God, whether or not we choose to accept it.

("Good morning, Ken. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to preach the Gospel by word and deed. If caught, the Father will not disavow knowledge of your actions, and shall be with you unto the end of time. Good luck, Ken! This message will not self-destruct in five seconds, unlike Tom Cruise's career after he took on South Park.")

I read The DaVinci Code a couple of years ago. It's a formulaic thriller that is moderately entertaining. It may be more entertaining if you haven't read anything else by Dan Brown (he has written four novels, all with the same plot; only the details change). But it's based on a forgery that had been debunked a decade before the book was published.

Twenty years from now, the DaVinci Kerfluffle will be largely forgotten, except for gazillions of copies of Dan Brown's book quietly decomposing in used bookstores, attics, and library stacks, and another gazillion or so DVDs of the movie will be in video stores, libraries, and home theater cabinets. They will be seldom read or viewed, and the world will have moved on many times over.

Twenty years from now, the Church will be continuing onward in her glorious mission.

"Second star from the right, and straight on till morning."