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IN THE WEEKS leading up to the release of the film The Da Vinci Code there was a firestorm of debate over how the Dan Brown novel and by extension the film, flies in the face of all that is holy. They say the novel - a work of fiction - calls into question Jesus Christ's divinity because it suggests that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and their union produced children.
The thing I don't get is that we all know that this book is a novel, a work of fiction i.e. prose writing, such as novels that describes imaginary people and events, so why is everybody getting their panties all in a bunch? Is it really because it suggests that Jesus was a man, as I alluded to earlier?
Just for a second, let us imagine that Jesus was in fact married to Mary Magdalene, are we to believe that Jesus would be less than divine because he had sex? Is it just me or is this like the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard? Ridiculous, because it all comes back down to one thing: sex, something that the Church has always had a problem with.
And if that is the case, then doesn't it make you question whether or not Dan Brown actually came too close to the truth and in so doing, made the religious fanatics nervous?
So Jesus had sex, how bad can that be, especially if he was married?
It wouldn't be like he was walking around Jerusalem looking out for easy 'meat' so to speak. Isn't marriage supposed to be a sacred institution within the Church? And since I don't think man figured out the contraceptive thing back then, chances are He would have got his wife pregnant if they were having sex. Is there anything really wrong with that? After all, the Bible does encourage man, who by the way is made in God's image, to take onto himself a wife.
As far as I can see these days it is the breakdown of marriages and family that has resulted in much of the social dislocation being experienced in the world today, so why would the Church be jumping all over Dan Brown's work of fiction the way they have been and are still telling people that the book is garbage and that they should not go see it. The funny thing is, all the hype is adding up to some very effective marketing for the film which has already made more than 250 million dollars worldwide.
But I believe the whole bunch of this noise about the book and now the film is that it did crush some corns. Dan Brown, whether inadvertently or not, must have cut too close to home with regards to certain things like how the church worked to relegate women to secondary roles in society. I mean, just look; has there ever been a female pope? Are there female cardinals? Do women command any position of power within the Roman Catholic Church and by power I mean real power; the power to make significant changes?
So perhaps Dan Brown's novel did hit a nerve that is making the Roman Catholics nervous. Why else would they be making so much noise and making Dan Brown a richer man in the process?
The biggest disappointment for me is that I did watch the film and it failed to capture the same pace and energy as the novel. But hey, good books hardly ever become good movies, do they?
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