What if Hollywood had written the script for the Gospels? It would be a studio exec’s dream: the young rebel with the devoted single mother, coming in from the small town in the hill country to the big city to stand up to all the authorities of His time and throw their narrow-minded fanaticism in the faces of the fat-cat religious elite.
The crowds flock to Him as He preaches revolution, and all that violence in the Temple and the scenes of sumptuous dinners with surprise visits from prostitutes make for scriptwriting heaven.
But the story doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The protagonist dies terribly young, seemingly from political ineptness. He handles the Sanhedrin brilliantly up until the final week of His life, and then they flip the tables on Him. All His disciples run away, everything crumbles, and the horrifically gory execution scene is stomach-turning. And then it’s just plain over.
It doesn’t work. The audience would throw their popcorn buckets away in disgust as they tramp out of the theater. The last thing Hollywood needs is another movie in the red. The whole thing sounds like “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”
But maybe it can be salvaged. The love interest is missing, but He can get attached to one of the prostitutes. He’s going to need a sugar-coated triumph, too. Since the Romans kept ruling Palestine for centuries after the screenplay’s date, manufacturing a political triumph won’t fly. Perhaps something along the lines of a dramatic martyrdom, screaming “Freedom!” against the Roman oppressors as He dies, with some sort of long-term redemption in the shape of a dynasty ruled by His descendants, say the Carolingians of the Holy Roman Empire.
The spirituality overtones can’t be too heavy, either. If it sounds like He’s really preaching something with overtones of absolute truth, it’ll all have to be toned down into vapid semi-occult mysticism. But certainly lots of medieval sources can be helpful here, like the Templars. Truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction sells.
For better or worse, we don’t have to wait much longer to see the result. Sony-Columbia’s The Da Vinci Code hits the silver screen in May. Newsweek has already hailed its release as the most important event of 2006. And meanwhile, as we all hold our collective breath, another drama is playing itself out behind the scenes.
Opus Dei is one of the great villains of Dan Brown’s book, and there is every reason to expect that the movie will deal as many undeserved blows to the prelature as the book has. The big question, of course, is how Opus Dei will respond to such blatant mistreatment.
On January 12, for the first time, an Opus Dei spokesman gave the answer in an interview with ZENIT News Agency. According to Marc Carroggio, legal action is out of the question. As much as the producers may want to harvest extra pre-release publicity by picking a fight in public, “It takes two to fight and in this case we lack a quorum.” It seems impossible to believe: someone in a liberal democracy who doesn’t “look out for number one” when reputation and revenue are on the line. It’s absurd. But truth is stranger than fiction.
The truth is that Opus Dei lives the Christian charity that Saint Paul wrote about. “Love is patient, love is kind… It is not rude, it does not seek its own interests,… it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.”
“I can assure you that Opus Dei’s only response will be a declaration of peace,” said Carroggio. “No one is going to make threats or organize boycotts or anything like that. We would have been happy if the producer had given us some sign that they would respect us. I would call their response so far ‘polite but noncommittal,’ with little indication that they intend to respect religious beliefs.”
That lack of respect won’t stop Opus Dei from being respectful, even in the face of a work that tramples on Catholic belief. The studio execs rubbing their hands over a messy public confrontation won’t get it. Like the '60s adage ran, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
Ironically, interest in Opus Dei among American Catholics has surged thanks to the whole flap. Carroggio talks about making lemonade from lemons, and speaks of how many people will turn to read the Gospels and consider the great themes of faith in light of the movie. Truth is stranger than fiction.
It is the same scenario replayed over and over, beginning with the Sanhedrins and the Roman emperors: persecution always backfires. As Nietzsche put it, “What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger.” Although that’s patently false in the case of an individual, it most certainly applies to the Church. No one has come up with a way to destroy the Church yet. Try as they may, it seems vaguely like mosquitoes trying to bring down an elephant.
Paradoxically, as Carroggio notes, “This event gives us a wonderful chance to talk about Jesus Christ. After all, it is the figure of Jesus Christ that explains, to a large degree, the popularity of the book.” Christ is fascinating and the Church is for real, unlike the movies.
Truth always wins out in the end. And that, given the odds that the Church always seems to be up against, is stranger than fiction.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Legionary Brother Shane Johnson studies for the priesthood in Rome.
