The Dirty Papist

Criticism of the critique of The DaVinci Code:

• Dan Brown put a "Facts" page at the beginning of the novel....


• It's only fiction!


• People bought into made up stories two thousand years ago, and they're going to do so today, too.


• The male apostles covered it all up; there's no written evidence, just clues left in artwork


• I like the unearthing of a woman-respecting strand in Christian history

Responses:

• The only thing that is true on that page is that Opus Dei has a building in New York.


• Yes, it's fiction, but it doesn't stop people from believing it, and instructing the ignorant is a spiritual work of mercy. Whitley Strieber gets to couch alleged nonfiction in fiction, but at least he admits that he might just be psychotic.


• If it's all fiction to you, why do you care that we care if people can keep their stories straight?


• There's not even artistic evidence. You've got a youthful looking John, and what else? There's nothing at that English chapel from the end of the book. Where would be the sense in reading the canonical gospels and assuming they're strictly disinformation because of Dan Brown's bald assertions? It'd be like saying a crime suspect's claim to innocence is just what a guilty person would say, never mind that an innocent person would also claim to be innocent.


• Yeah, and it goes all the way back, from Dan Brown writing a Sophie who spends more time getting schooled by old white men than saving the day, to the Gnostic gospels where Jesus spent so much time with Mary Magdalene because she was even less fit for heaven than the male apostles were. Equal-time lip service is not the same thing as equality.

It's just the old lies dressed up in old clothes that happen to have been dry-cleaned and pressed. You can't be free, free from the truth, by trying to live a lie. Look at the more radical branches of feminism: women cannot adequately self-actualize until they overcome what makes them women and they stop having kids, start taking traditionally male jobs, and so on (not that childless independent women are bad; they're just untraditional, although a woman specifically trying to become more masculine isn't what I'd call healthy), except when what makes a woman obviously different from a man--her primary sex characteristics--are what makes her special, which basically means the glorification of her primary sex characteristics all by themselves, instead of her self or her Inner Man.

Maybe learning not to be ashamed of part of what makes you unique is the first step in developing a healthy, holistic self image.