Dear Catholic Exchange:
Thank you for your book reviews! As a lover of art the Da Vinci Code looked like a good read…too bad I only looked at the title! My husband (who also just knew the title) got me the book for my birthday.
I just returned it…especially after reading the review on your website. My worst fears were confirmed. This is 450+ pages of junk. I was nervous to return the book to Border's (I had no receipt) but I was happy to have received a store credit. The kicker is that I was helped by a young man wearing a cross who agreed with me that the book is ridiculous! God works in mysterious ways.
Thanks again,
Jennifer Harrison
Davis, California
***
Dear Catholic Exchange:
Our book club recently read “The DaVinci Code”. I have many concerns about the book, and would like your feedback if possible. It centers around
claims that the Vatican deliberately put forth false doctrine. It claims that Jesus is not divine, that he married Mary Magdalene, and that the Church is knowingly suppressing documentation regarding this. It also demonized Opus Dei, a respected order. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
On another note, I have attended a BSF group for several years, but was longing for a more “Catholic” perspective. Our church now offers your bible study, and I have done the James study this summer. Thanks!!!
Ruth Brocato
Dear Ruth:
The book is unmitigated garbage, regurgitating outright lies, bogus “scholarship” and junk history. Only a culture as illiterate as ours could take it seriously. For one fun review of the book see this one.
For a quick summary of how newly minted “real Jesus'” show up in regular cycles in popular culture (this is by no means the first time a “real Jesus” has popped up to shock unwary readers), see my essay The Latest Real Jesus.
Likewise, the absolutely ridiculous claim of the Da Vinci Code that Constantine invented the divinity of Jesus is contradicted by the Biblical text itself (John 1:1 for instance) and by gobs of patristic writing from the apostolic period and over the next three hundred years, all written long before the birth of Constantine. A brief search of Google would show that the novel's preposterous claims of a huge Vatican coverup are ridiculous. Jesus has been acclaimed as God in the Church from the very beginning.
Some will, of course, say that the Church doctored the Scriptures. The problem with this stupid claim is that they usually point to other passages of the New Testament as evidence that he was not God, forgetting that if the Church was all that cunning, it might have occurred to somebody to get rid of those passages (“The Father is greater than I” “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God.” etc.) which appear, on the surface to deny his divinity. The fact that these passages were carefully preserved makes it clear that the Church was not tampering with the record. Meanwhile, the fact that the Da Vinci Code is either ignorant of or wilfully omits the enormous body of patristic and biblical testimony to the deity of Christ shows quite clearly who is *really* tampering with the record.
The biblical and patristic witnesses to the deity of Christ endured horrific martyrdoms for their faith in Christ. The author of the Da Vinci Code faces nothing but enormous monetary rewards and a movie contract for his shoddy collection of falsehoods, historical idiocies, and detraction. Who do you think might *really* be covering up the truth for personal gain?
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
P.S. Glad you are enjoying the bible study! If you want to challenge your reading group to try an alternative viewpoint, you might suggest they take a look at my book Making Senses Out of Scripture: Reading the Bible as the First Christians Did or else a decent history of the Catholic Church such as Paul Johnson's History of Christianity.
Editor's Note: To contact Catholic Exchange, please refer to our Contact Us page.
Please note that all email submitted to Catholic Exchange or its authors (regarding articles published at CE) become the property of Catholic Exchange and may be published in this space. Published letters may be edited for length and clarity. Names and cities of letter writers may also be published. Email addresses of viewers will not normally be published.
