Religion and The Da Vinci Code
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -

Yet, despite the urging by the Church to be prepared for difficult questions and to encourage discussion of the points raised by the best-selling book and film by author Dan Brown, few local churches seem to have encountered any problems.

"I was happy to agree to hold this event in our church," said the Rector of St Edmund's, Fr James Mather.  "It was an exciting opportunity for discussion on the background of the Christian Faith.  And although we asked the Lecture Society simply to keep in mind that this is a sensitive subject for some people, we actually haven't had any argument or opposition to the event at all."

The main concerns with The Da Vinci Code lie in the storyline of the book which hangs on the hypothesis that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that there were children as a result of the marriage and that the 'bloodline' has survived to the present day.

These are all ideas which the Christian Church has never supported, and for which there is no actual evidence.  The Church stands firm in its belief that Jesus never married - Mary Magdalene or anybody else.

The book capitalises on the supposed existence of the Holy Grail, a chalice taken into our folklore by the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  However, the original Grail of the legends was not the chalice of the Last Supper, nor Jesus' descendants, as is popularly believed.  The original Grail was in fact the bowl in which Joseph of Arimathea gathered Jesus' blood at the cross.

The name of the book refers to the claim that there are coded messages woven into the paintings of mediaeval artist Leonardo da Vinci, which lead a trail to the hiding place of the Holy Grail.

The Church of England has issued guidelines to parishes on the kind of questions they should expect from people who have been influenced by the book and the film, and has also suggested that some of the problems might have grown from a general lack of understanding of, and about, the Church's early writings.

In his Lecture, "Religion and The Da Vinci Code - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" Dr Meggitt suggested that these strands might be found in:

THE GOOD - an increased awareness of, and willingness to speak about faith matters and religion.

THE BAD - the amount of plain wrong history included in the book, upon which the plot is totally dependent.

THE UGLY - the author's tasteless need to depict the villain - the psychopathic assassin monk Silas - as an albino, perpetuating established sterotypes of people with disabilities or 'unusual' appearance as 'baddies'.  ("How Columbia Pictures intends to deal with the protests from the National Organisation for Albinism and Hypo-pigmentation over the depiction of Silas, the albino assassin, I don't know" (Observer review, 26th May 2006).