There is a story about a monastery in Europe perched high on a cliff several hundred feet in the air. The only way to reach the monastery was to be suspended in a basket which was pulled to the top by several monks who pulled and tugged with all their strength. Obviously the ride up the steep cliff in that basket was terrifying. One tourist got exceedingly nervous about half-way up as he noticed that the rope by which he was suspended was old and frayed. With a trembling voice he asked the monk who was riding with him in the basket how often they changed the rope. The monk thought for a moment and answered brusquely, "Whenever it breaks.".

Dear Father Joe:
I recently read a book called "The Da Vinci Code" and am very confused and upset. Have you read it? The author states in the beginning that everything he says in there is true. If so, how can we pretend that our faith is real? Help!

Thanks for writing! I have gotten more inquiries about this than almost any other topic. I hope this article is the beginning of a restoration of your faith. Have I seen the movie? Not yet. Did I read the book? Yes. To date, I have read every book written by Dan Brown and enjoyed most of them. When I read The DaVinci Code, I never anticipated the book would cause such a firestorm.

I want to state that some of what I am going to write in this article comes from Miesel's article, and the rest comes from my own research. I'll try to give you some references to help you do research on your own. For the rest of you, let's establish some key ideas.

First of all, let me start off by saying it is an absolute must to read Dismantling The Da Vinci Code by Sandra Miesel. You can find it at: www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/
feature1.htm

Premise one: The book The Da Vinci Code can be purchased in just about any local bookstore. In order to find it, you need to go to the fiction section. That's right, folks. It's fiction. By labeling his book as such, Brown absolves himself of any need to be realistic or truthful, despite his claims of veracity in the beginning of the book. That is an essential premise to keep in mind.

Premise two: The author is clearly no fan of organized religion, particularly Catholicism. In one section of the book, a character explains that " ... every faith in the world is based on fabrication." No opportunity to let the reader know his opinions is passed up by Brown. He preaches as if he has the kind of authority that he despises in the church. The hierarchy seems to bear the brunt of Brown's rage. He describes the leaders of the Catholic Church as corrupt, misogynistic and violent. I understand that it is politically acceptable to ascribe all sorts of moral horrors to Christian leaders, but I urge readers to remember that judging others so harshly can have bad implications for our souls.

Premise three: Brown's research is suspect. Again, assuming he was simply attempting to write a fictional novel, there should be no problem here. The issue seems to be that people are taking his fiction and embracing it with faith that it does not demand. If you look at Brown's sources, you can see a great many authors and books that most scholars – both Christian and non-Christian – give no credibility. The best example of this would be Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln.

OK, the rest of this article is going to contain some "spoilers," so if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, you may want to come back to this later.

Let's look at some of the more outlandish errors Brown made:

The Priory of Sion is a central focus of The Da Vinci Code. In the book, the Priory of Sion is an ultra-secret group that meets regularly to preserve, study and keep secret the great mystery – Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. For a great article on the myth of the Priory of Sion, please go to www.alpheus.org/html/articles/esoteric_history/richardson1.html. It's a good explanation of how the myth came about, and it would take too much space for me to cover here.

Now clearly, the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married is something that the church isn't big on. Let's look at the source of this myth in order to debunk it. The primary source(s) for this are the Gnostic gospels. The book contends that the Gnostic gospels contain "the truth" about Jesus, and the church worked hard to suppress them. If this is true, then half of the world's Christian population is in trouble. Check out this lovely exchange between Jesus and Peter in the Gospel of Thomas: "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)

In the words of the great philosopher Bill (of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), "Dude. I so don't get it."

Make no mistake; the Gnostic gospels were condemned by the Apostles and their successors immediately after they were written. There was and is no cover-up here. As you will read in the next paragraph, the church had no power to cover up anything in the first 300 years.
Brown contends that the Emperor Constantine forced the church to claim that Jesus was divine. This one can't survive a logical attack. Remember, for more than 200 years, Christianity was a capital offense in the Roman Empire; a great many people suffered and died rather than reject Jesus' divinity. Among those under the reign of Constantine were a great many Christians who had been mutilated and tortured by the Romans for belief in Christ's divinity. Also, wouldn't at least some of the Christians alive at the time notice that the entire focus of this new religion had changed, and resist that change? The way Brown writes it, Constantine changed the entire belief structure of Christianity and somehow destroyed every book and killed every person who fought the change. That is not a realistic idea of the fourth century.

I could continue, but I am running out of space. I hope that this article has been helpful. In the meantime, let's remember to rejoice in what has been handed on to us by the Apostles.

Enjoy another day in God's presence!

Originally Published: March 2004

Okay, your question basically has two parts. Let's take the first one first. (How's that for prioritizing?)

"Firstborn" was a significant title in Scriptural times. As Jews, there were laws and prescriptions that Mary and Joseph followed for Jesus' dedication that are in line with the firstborn male son. (cf. Luke 2:23) It doesn't mean that Mary had other children. It just means Jesus was the first male born to her.

In terms of Joseph's death, I quote at this time Samuel Clemens who said, "I quote others to express myself better." Thus, I will give you the section from the Catholic Encyclopedia on that one:

"This is the last we hear of St. Joseph in the sacred writings, and we may well suppose that Jesus' foster-father died before the beginning of the Savior's public life. In several circumstances, indeed, the Gospels speak of the latter's mother and brothers (Matthew 12:46; Mark 3:31; Luke 8:19; John 7:3), but never do they speak of His father in connection with the rest of the family; they tell us only that Our Lord, during His public life was referred to as the son of Joseph (John 1:45; 6:42; Luke 4:22) the carpenter (Matthew 13:55). Would Jesus, moreover, when about to die on the Cross, have entrusted His mother to John's care, had St. Joseph been still alive? According to the apocryphal "Story of Joseph the Carpenter," the holy man reached his hundred and eleventh year when he died, on 20 July (A. D. 18 or 19). St. Epiphanius gives him ninety years of age at the time of his demise; and if we are to believe the Venerable Bede, he was buried in the Valley of Josaphat. In truth we do not know when St. Joseph died; it is most unlikely that he attained the ripe old age spoken of by the "Story of Joseph" and St. Epiphanius. The probability is that he died and was buried at Nazareth."

Enjoy another day in God's presence!

Originally Published: March 2003