Square Zero

Insert Da Vinci Pun Here

Posted by Eric (April 3, 2006 at 1:40 pm)

Mona Lisa (detail, posterized)Looks like all the clever Da Vinci Code puns are taken—”Decoding Da Vinci,” “The Da Vinci Con,” “The Duh Vinci Code,” etc.

No, I haven’t read it. Life’s too short. I tend to agree with Barbara Nicolosi that “we should all just agree to ignore it, and put our efforts into praying for the people who hate Jesus and us, His disciples, so much that they would make this film.”

My entire commentary on the Da Vinci phenomenon is this: that having failed to “prove” that Jesus never existed, that the Gospels are a fraud, that Christianity is a plague upon mankind, and all the rest, the enemies of the Church have resorted not just to making stuff up out of thin air, but to declaring that, really, this whole “truth” business, this slavish submission to “facts” and “historical data” is just so narrow and, let’s face it, intolerant of “alternate views” and “new ways of understanding.”

Dan Brown’s book blurs—delberately—the line between fiction and non-fiction, a line that writers and publishers appear more than willing to ignore. Simply put, Truth is not on the side of those who want to attack the Word Who Is Truth, and so they must instead undermine the very concept of Truth itself.

So I wonder how much impact the massive campaign underway to “debunk” the falsehoods of the Da Vinci Code can actually have. Anyone willing to believe the movie’s tagline that to watch it is to bravely “seek the truth” has already got a malfunctioning concept of truth to begin with; I’m not sure showing them the truth will help—I doubt they’ll recognize it when they see it.

We really have to go back to Square Zero with these folks and start over with the most basic concept of all: that there are some things which are simply true, aside from our feelings or preferences, and that failure to acknowledge these basic truths ultimately leads to death and despair.

How do we do that? I wish I knew.

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