Sometimes I tell people they should learn about Christianity, if for no other reason, then at least so they can understand their own cultural background. I still think that’s true, but I’ve just been reading St. Thomas a Kempis, and now I wonder, if your cultural learning about the idea of Christ doesn’t lead you to worship the man Christ, what was the point?
I grumble about Chapters, Starbuck’s and Walmart as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t prevent my appreciating a clever turn of physical marketing when I see one. For example, when you enter the Barnes & Noble on Broadway in Manhattan, the escalators are lined up in sequence to shoot you straight to the fourth floor cafe and magazine section. On the way down, though, the escalators are disjointed, so that you have to walk past a few hundred feet of bookshelves to get to the exit. Brilliant.
After two months of arduous labour, I have finished writing my second MCAT, and I just discovered that the Bard himself once wrote the same exam. Here’s what he did with his prep materials:
“I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I’ll drown my book.”
That collar wouldn’t have suited him as a doctor anyway.
Still not impressed with the DC? Visit an airport bookstore! When I was on hold-over in Minneapolis, not only was the book itself on the front table and under “Famous Authors” and “Best Sellers”, but most of the other sections featured related wares. Fodor’s Guide to the Da Vinci Code and The Da Vinci Code Travel Journal were prominent, the spin-offs section was full of books like The Templar Revelation, The Last Templar, The Jesus Papers, and The Gospel of Judas, there was a little volume called Jesus, CEO under business, and even the food section offered The Diet Code. (The only section seemingly devoid of DC books was labeled “Simply Good Books.”)
Now of course a lot of this is because of the lemming phenomenon of pop hysteria, but I offer another explanation as well, beginning with the fact that as fiction goes, The Da Vinci Code is actually pretty lame. The tangled-up puzzle of plot is pretty well put together, but the only trick Brown knows to induce suspense is to break every chapter at a critical juncture, the little surprises he tries are utterly predictable, and worst of all, he has the vocabulary of a smart grade 5 student.
Here’s a related fact: a lot of crummy fiction gets published and read by Christians simply because it’s Christian. Such works are read not because they tell good stories, but because they make a point. The same thing works for an un-Christian message: why is the Code so popular in spite of being poorly written? Because, I fear, there are a lot of people who are less interested in the story than in the denial of Christ’s kingship. Don’t know how to conclude this post, so I’ll leave it at that.
In a way, it’s fitting that The Da Vinci Code should have come out. The lines between those for Christ and those against seem to be sharpening these days, and the sides are asserting themselves. The Christ camp briefly uncovered its usually hidden muscle in the popular forum with “The Passion.” Now the other side is rearing its head. So what’s our move? First of all prayer and the sacraments, and then studying our own history, starting with the Gospels. In this battle for fence sitters, let’s counter the Code’s unsubstantiated assertions with solid historical research, and let the hearer decide.
Viva Christo Rey!
OK folks, here’s the rundown: The whole novel is summed up on page 288:
Yes, the clergy in Rome are blessed with potent faith, and because of this, their beliefs can weather any storm, including documents that contradict everything they hold dear. But what about the rest of the world? What about those who are not blessed with absolute certainty? What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? … What happens to those people, Robert, if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the Church’s version of the Christ story is inaccurate…
Just replace “persuasive scientific evidence” with “insistently worded fabrication” and I think we get the purpose of the book.
When I first heard the basic plotline, I thought “So what? It’s a fictional work, and no rational human being would let a novel alter his beliefs.” The book was a damnable work of blasphemy, but couldn’t be an effective mass marketing tool of anti-Christ propaganda. Then I read it.
Novel or not, the Code is written to sound as much as possible like fact. Brown begins the volume with a half page listing the seven or eight details of the book that he is confident are true, such as the actual existence of Opus Dei and their new headquarters in New York. I’m sure this list is supposed to make the reader take the rest of the story in a more factual light. In the most anti-Church portions of the book, the two most educated characters are constantly saying: “It’s a matter of historical record,” or “Sophie, the historical evidence supporting this is substantial.” Your first instinct is to trust the person speaking to you, so when Brown suggests that Constantine invented Christ’s divinity, your personal devil whispers worriedly in your ear: “Oh, what if that’s true?”
To top the whole thing off, Brown implies all over the place, none too subtly, that if we’re willing to deny Christ’s divinity, we’ll all get to have lots of sex. And of course he subscribes to that most notorious lie that the Church is the enemy of sex. Having first tempted the mind, he now appeals to the body. Go ahead and try to come up with a better combination for apostasy.
*Conclusion to follow*
“Excuse me, my plane doesn’t leave for an hour. Do you mind if I just look around for a while?”
“Certainly sir. Would that be blasphemy or non?”
If anyone is wondering what the big deal is with classical music, and whether maybe everyone is just pretending to like it, while in fact it’s just boring, I have a cure. Classical music is like beer: Some people think they don’t like it, but it’s just that they’ve only tasted Coors. So here are two stout draughts that have very much increased my own thirst for classical music: Pablo Casals’ recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, especially the first prelude (featured in Master and Commander). I think EMI sells it. Casals practised these pieces for 12 years before he played one publically. And Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, Op. 6. Master and Commander plays the adagio from the eighth concerto. While we’re at it, if there’s anyone who can’t see the virtues of the English language, (and I think there are more of these than either of the first two), go out and buy Master and Commander, and read it. The only way you can despise the language of your birth is if you haven’t learned to speak it. This book will begin to teach you.
Well, Portia, I’m honoured, but I don’t think my answers would be sufficiently interesting to be worth posting. Since the books and movies bits don’t really have to do with me though, and since I don’t want to be a complete codger, here goes:
Good books (In no particular order):
1. The Divine Names Pseudo-Dyonysius
2. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3. The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis
4. The “De Deo” section of the Summa Theologica St. Thomas Aquinas
5. Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. The Cypresses Believe in God Josemaria Gironella
7. A Song for Nagasaki Fr. Paul Glynn
A gratuitous eighth: Master and Commander (and from what I hear, the rest of the series too.) Patrick O’Brian
Good movies:
1. Life is Beautiful
2. The Milagro Beanfield War
3. Hero
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
5. The Passion (almost too good and too prayerful to list as a movie)
6. Strictly Ballroom
7. Pulp Fiction (heh, heh…)
All right, you’ve all got to read “The Way,” by this guy:
It’s a small collection of aphorisms designed to help us all live our lives to the greater glory of God. A lot of them are so blunt that you can almost see the author’s finger pointing out of the book at you. Reading a few pages has the feel of scrubbing the sinful crust off your heart with a wire brush. Or a belt sander. I think I’ll be quoting from it on a semi-regular basis, but for now, I’ll leave you with the picture.