| A Flawed Book |
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| Wednesday, 10 May 2006 11:10 | |||
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Why is it that, in the midst of almost a golden age of authentic information, packaged and ready in attractive formats, whether in books or periodicals or on computer screens, anyone would waste time with shallow, distorted myths like The Da Vinci Code?
Now that the movie is about to open, the secular media is mindlessly overagitated about the book again, and, more precisely, about some of the book’s allegations, especially its absurdities surrounding the Personal Prelature known as Opus Dei, one of the most popular lay movements in the Church today with a membership of about 87,000 worldwide, and whose founder, Msgr. Josemaria Escriva, was canon-ized by Pope John Paul II in 2002. Why are the secular media so hostile toward Opus Dei? One reason, so commonly employed that it could only be borrowed from a widely disseminated list of “talking points” for writers who simply do not (or cannot) think, is that the Prelature “has close ties with the Vatican.” The phrase is obviously meant to insult; surely every loyal Catholic hopes that he or she always thinks with the Church. Opus Dei has close ties with the Vatican in the same way that every bishop, every priest, every Catholic layperson desires to be allied with the Vatican, which Good Pope John XXIII formally described as Mater et Magistra (“Mother and Teacher”). Another nonsensical allegation usually made by the media is that Opus Dei is superse-cretive. Supersecretive? About what? Witnessing to Gospel truth in a contrary world? The adjective is meant to belittle, even though it is not true; and it is well known that it is not true. Don’t secular reporters do any research on their own? What about allegations that some members of Opus Dei have been “controlling” (whatever this means) or reactionary in their views? Do not “control” problems arise wherever human beings function: in classrooms (including uni-versities), in courts of law, in various profes-sions, in families, in offices, businesses – any-where, again, where real flesh-and-blood people interact, even in Church-related climates? For a reporter to pillory Opus Dei on the testimony of a few bad experiences, makes no sense. The world, after all, is still affected by Original Sin. On the other hand, the secular media seem overly exercised about Opus Dei because of its success in a confused and erring world. The Prelature, like the Church, of which it is but a microcosm, is moving in the opposite direction of the world, in accordance with solid Biblical principles. The hostility it experiences through books like The Da Vinci Code and its disciples, is not unlike that recorded of some of history’s most magnificent movements: the Mendicant Orders like the Dominicans and Franciscans, for example, who were ridiculed when they were first launched; or the Jesuits, who were even suppressed for a while and whose name is still in the Dictionary intended as a pejorative. The book, The Da Vinci Code, is largely but a mix of anti-Catholicism, extreme feminism, sensationalism, emphasis on the occult and revived vestiges of Gnosticism – in a seriously flawed story line. As The Transcript’s book reviewer put it in the January 2004 issue: “He [the author] has in mind nothing less than the complete deconstruction of traditional Christianity.” It is as if he is suggesting that “traditional Christianity has been a fraud from the beginning.” To what end, then, would any person seriusly in quest of truth, waste time reading such a volume (or seeing the movie)? For a com-mitted Christian it is somewhat comparable to queuing up to buy an admission to an event which militates against almost everything the Church stands for.
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