From Hype To Tripe – "Da Vinci Code" Opens To Scathing Reviews

Critical reception for the film version of the Da Vinci Code has been almost unanimously unfavourable, (“wooden acting”... “a bloated puzzle”... “plodding”) much to the pleasure of the Catholic League, which has been campaigning against it. The League issued a press release crowing about the bad reviews and saying that director Ron Howard had “failed”. But it will take more than bad reviews to stop the film becoming a major money-spinner.

As the crowds flock to see the movie, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, the head of Opus Dei says he prays every day for author Dan Brown and the people behind the film. Bishop Javier Echevarria Rodriguez said in an interview published on Wednesday that he had not read the best-selling novel and believed its success showed modern society needed “proper spiritual and religious education.” A key figure in the story is an Opus Dei member, the murderous and masochistic albino monk Silas. Echevarria told the Catholic newspaper La Croix, “I pray every day for the writer and also for those people who made the film, because they may not realise that what they say could hurt people and that they are blaspheming.”

But does the Catholic Church have cause to be concerned that its own fantasies are being superseded by someone else’s? Yes it does, according to a new poll published by the Church this week. The poll shows that people who have read Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code believe its version of events rather than the official Christian version. Two thirds of Britons who have read the book believe that Jesus fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, a claim rejected as “baseless” by religious historians.

Fans of the book are also four times as likely to think that Opus Dei, whose members include the Cabinet minister Ruth Kelly, is a murderous sect. Seventeen per cent of readers are convinced that the lay group, whose founder was canonised by the late Pope John Paul II, has ordered or carried out a murder, compared with four per cent of those who have not read the book.

The poll found that more than one in five British adults have read the book, which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and that a large proportion believe its central claims. Sixty per cent of the adults polled said after reading the book that they believed there was truth in the suggestion that Jesus had children and that his bloodline survives, compared with 30 per cent of those who have not read it.

Just under a third, 27 per cent, think that the Catholic Church is covering up the truth about Jesus, and the figure rises to 36 per cent among those who have read Brown’s novel.

The poll adds fuel to the crazy Catholic hysteria over the film, which opens nationwide today, and a massive, worldwide campaign of vilification has been launched against the movie by the Vatican.

Austin Ivereigh, the director for public affairs for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, accused Brown of dishonest marketing and said the film should carry a “health warning”.

He complained that Brown and Sony Pictures, the film’s distributors, “have encouraged people to take it seriously while hiding behind the claim that it is fiction. Our poll shows that they should take responsibility for their dishonesty.” (Murphy O’Connor himself was exposed as a “sickening hypocrite” last week by the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association here, and, of course, has a history of covering up a paedophile scandal in the Church, see this).

But hope for the Church comes in comments from Sir Ian McKellen, another star of the film. He told a press conference at the Cannes film festival that the Vatican should be happy that at least Jesus wasn’t portrayed in the book as gay. Sir Ian told reporters: “I am only too happy to believe that Jesus was married. I know that the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay.”

See also: Dan Brown’s resurrected heresy rattles the church

Of course, it could be that neither Dan Brown nor the Bible are right about Jesus – it could be that the ‘saviour of mankind’ never existed at all. Look at the evidence in The God Who Wasn’t There – the controversial documentary makes a very convincing case. Exclusively available on DVD from the NSS shop www.secularism.org.uk or by post for £16.99 from NSS GWWT Offer, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL.