"There's no code to decipher. Da Vinci is a dud -- a dreary, droning, dull-witted adaptation of Dan Brown's religioso detective story ..."   

    Rolling Stone

"Other film critics have talked about how there is no chemistry between Tom Hanks and the French actress who is in the Agent Scully role, but they're not telling you the half of it! I mean, these two characters are so emotionally inert that from now on the nuclear waste management agency will be using their relationship to insulate spent uranium rods."

Jimmy Akin

There are no good Catholics in this film. The monk-murderer is the militant representative of a Catholic organization that is portrayed as fraudulent and malignant. In a free society, we are entitled to portray Catholics as we please, and to debate their faith. As I have already hinted, anti-Catholic prejudice has an old though not very glorious history in this country.

But the reason I found the film depressing was not just that, in its blundering, ignorant way, it was making cheap gibes at Opus Dei, a devout group within the Roman Church. It was also openly stating that a free and decent way of life was possible only when we had spat upon our past, and kicked away the tradition that for 2,000 years was at the core of all that was most humane and decent in European history - namely the story that God humbled himself to become a poor human being.

Experts: "The roots of Catholic ritual are in Jewish worship. ... The Temple in Jerusalem had altars; the doxology is rooted in Psalms 8, 66 and 150; Communion had its roots in the Jewish Passover, celebrated by Jesus and 12 other Jews at the Last Supper," according to Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco.

"But that’s just the irresistible plot, Wormwood. It’s the author’s technique in so many other areas that is particularly worth our attention. For example, there is the manner in which the book seduces its reader with naked flattery, holding out the carrot -- or should I say apple -- of 'inside knowledge.' Make note of this, Wormwood; it worked wonders for us in Eden and works for us still. The author trots out the ageless fiddle-faddle about a parallel 'reality' beside the 'official' one everyone’s been sold. You know, the moth-eaten, bedraggled idea that all of history is a grand 'conspiracy' conducted by some hidden elites! But wait, the lucky reader is to be let in on it all, and for the mere price of purchasing this book! He’ll learn the 'real' story behind the 'official' story that all the other saps have been buying for lo! these many centuries. Heady stuff, eh, Wormwood? Transparent as it might seem to us, this temptation has always been been too great for the humans to bear. They ache to be part of that 'inside' group that knows what’s 'really' going on, and they fall for it every time. It’s not so different from their craving for gossip or 'dirt'; only better, since there isn’t the pesky nuisance of guilt to deal with. They cannot help themselves; they simply swallow it without a thought. That’s the key, Wormwood, for if actual thinking can be prevented, the humans are under our control."

...................................

In the end, Dan Brown has penned a poorly written, atrociously researched mess. So, why bother with such a close reading of a worthless novel? The answer is simple: The Da Vinci Code takes esoterica mainstream. It may well do for Gnosticism what The Mists of Avalon did for paganism—gain it popular acceptance. After all, how many lay readers will see the blazing inaccuracies put forward as buried truths? What’s more, in making phony claims of scholarship, Brown’s book infects readers with a virulent hostility toward Catholicism. Dozens of occult history books, conveniently cross-linked by Amazon.com, are following in its wake. And booksellers’ shelves now bulge with falsehoods few would be buying without The Da Vinci Code connection. While Brown’s assault on the Catholic Church may be a backhanded compliment, it’s one we would have happily done without. 

Against the Gnostics, Irenaeus retorted that the Christian faith was a public faith. Jesus had preached openly in the Temple precincts. His disciples proclaimed publicly all that they had experienced. The Apostles appointed as bishops men known in the community, and it was to these men and not some darkly mysterious gnostic figures that the Apostles entrusted the faith which they had received from Christ. "For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries," Irenaeus convincingly explains, "which they were in the habit of imparting to the 'perfect' apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves" (Against the Heresies III.3.1). There is nothing private, secret nor exclusive in the Christian faith. By Irenaeus' day in the second century, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were universally known in the Great Church (cf. Against the Heresies III.1.1). These were the Scriptures which the Gnostics set out to discredit either by means of manipulation or substitution in order to further their own esoteric cause. The Martyr-Bishop of Lyons knew their tactic well: "When...they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and assert that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For they allege that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but viva voce" (Against the Heresies III.2.1). In this regard, St. Irenaeus anticipated Dan Brown's ploy by 1800 years....

In his work Against the Heresies, Irenaeus relates the gnostic Basilides' version of the Passion:

[Jesus] appeared, then, on earth as a man, to the nations of these powers, and wrought miracles. Wherefore he did not himself suffer death, but Simon, a certain man of Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him, that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified, through ignorance and error, while Jesus himself received the form of Simon, and, standing by, laughed at them (Against the Heresies I.24.2).

It is enough to read these passages to understand why the ancient Church rejected them. They directly contradict the public revelation of Christ who came among us to heal and save, not to blind and slay. They turn the compassionate Christ into a morbid comic. The works quoted above are among the many apocryphal gospels which, according to Dan Brown, the 'Vatican' in cahoots with Constantine allegedly spirited away in the fourth century and which the 'Vatican' to this very day does not want revealed. But the truth of the matter is that one can find them for sale in the religion section of any local bookstore.

In addition, there is the misleading notion that the Gnostic writings are consistently pro-woman, while the New Testament writings–and thereby the authors of those books–are anti-woman. This idea also arises in The Da Vinci Code. After quoting from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, where Peter complains about Mary’s closeness to Christ, Sir Leigh Teabing states: "I daresay Peter was something of a sexist." (p. 248). He then remarks that "Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene" (p. 248).  But Brown never bothers to have his characters quote from the final verse of the Gospel of Thomas, the most famous of the Gnostic texts. That verse states: "Simon Peter said to them: ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven" (v. 114). This passage and others like it do not fit well with the feminist view of the Gnostics, just as the Church’s positive treatment of women throughout history does not compare well with the negative picture often depicted by feminist groups.

FROM PART TWO:

As we pointed out in Part 1 of this critique, the "gnostic gospels" aren’t gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical Gospels, which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures, political activity, and details about social and religious life. Contrary to the assertion that "the early Church literally stole Jesus" and shrouded his "human message . . . in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power," the Church was intent, from the very beginning, of holding on to the humanity and divinity of Christ and of telling the story of his life on earth without washing away the sorrow, pain, joy, and blood that so often accompanied it. "It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . . insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical realities," writes Philip Jenkins, "rather than the random mythologies reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless never-never land" (Hidden Gospels [Oxford University Press, 2001], 211).

No, in fact they do not mention anything about this. The part about the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene originated between 1969 and 1970, when an English actor, Henry Soskin, who was mostly known for his role in the TV series The Avengers, became interested in the Priory of Sion....  Lincoln decided to re-write the story of L’Or de Rennes in a more suitable way, adapted for a British audience, presenting it first in three documentaries aired by the BBC between 1972 and 1979 and later in a book published in 1982 with the help of Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Jonathan Cape, London). Lincoln realized that the identity of the person who was the legitimate heir to the throne of France was not very interesting for his British audience. At the same time, Plantard introduced him into the microcosm of French esoteric organizations where he met Robert Ambelain (1907-1997), a well known figure in this milieu. In 1970, Ambelain had published Jésus ou Le mortel secret des templiers (Robert Laffont, Paris), in which he affirmed that Jesus Christ had a partner, while not being legally married, and identified this «concubine» as Salome. Lincoln meshed Ambelain’s story about the marriage of Jesus with that of the Merovingians suggested by Plantard, and «revealed» that the Merovingians protected by the Priory of Sion were important, not because they were the heirs to the throne of France, as much as because they were the descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The latter suited Lincoln better than Ambelain’s Salome because both of her connection with the parish church in Rennes-le-Château and of the Medieval legends claiming that she escaped persecution and eventually settled and died in Southern France (sans «husband» and children, however, which were never part of these legends).

But wasn’t the Priory of Sion an organization founded by Godefroy de Bouillon (1060-1100), as claimed both by the Dossier secrets and by Dan Brown in the «Fact» page of The Da Vinci Code?

During the 1960’s, when he was preparing the Dossier secrets hoax, Plantard - who, as we know, originally borrowed the name «Priory of Sion» from a hill in Annemasse where he intended to build a center for spiritual retreats - discovered in the history of the Crusades (by which he was often inspired for his fantasies) an «Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion» founded in 1099 in Jerusalem precisely by Godefroy de Bouillon, who later became King of Jerusalem after the First Crusade. The community of monks of the Abbey (and not «Priory», as the superior was called Abbot and not Prior) in Palestine continued to exist until 1291, when it was destroyed by the advancing Muslims. The few surviving monks took refuge in Sicily, where their community was extinguished in the 14^th century. This was a very normal community of Catholic monks, without any ties to the Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene or esoteric secrets: the «recovery» of which by Plantard was simply the use of their name, and nothing else.