Cardinal dismisses The Da Vinci Code

Cardinal Marc Ouellet responds with a call for new evangelization

Cardinal Marc Ouellet

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

Popular as the novel and movie The Da Vinci Code is, Cardinal Marc Ouellet would not give them two thumbs up, or even one.

Speaking at the Priests' Retirement Fund dinner Sept. 9, Ouellet, primate of the Church in Canada, called the novel a provocation and said its popularity is undeserved.

"The undeserved popularity of this novel demonstrates well the need for a new evangelization," he said to applause. "We should take this provocation as an alarm bell to wake up Christians and to require them to make again a personal choice of faith."

Ouellet spoke briefly on the subject, saying he could not ignore it because, "mediocre" as it is, The Da Vinci Code provoked what he called a cultural tsunami. In his view, the book illustrates the difficulty inherent in being a Christian today and the necessity for the ministry of the priest.

The fascination caused by the Da Vinci Code can partially be explained through the ability of the author, Dan Brown, to exploit certain explosive and highly symbolic ingredients, Ouellet said. "By combining these ingredients under the tolerant gaze of our liberal democracies the author has made a fortune at the expense of our religious traditions," he said.

Ouellet pointed to several critical assertions Brown makes in his "fictional novel while disguised as searcher for truth." First is the desacralization of the figure of Jesus, so important to hundreds of millions of believers; second, the ambiguous exaltation of Mary Magdalene at a time particularly sensitive to the role of women in Western culture; third, the gratuitous and insolent accusation of a cover-up against the Catholic Church, an institution with almost two millennia of authority; fourth, the defamation of Opus Dei, an association of faithful Catholics proposing sanctity of life to its members, denounced here as a criminal organization that would stop at nothing to obtain power.

"These claims are so enormous and so crudely out of line with historical truth that we are rightly astounded at the fascination surrounding this book and especially its scale," Ouellet said.

"Such a phenomenon would be unthinkable in a non-Christian country. How is it possible, then, where Christianity has been so predominant? Could this be a sign of decadence or mass apostasy? Could it be an indicator of the triumph of relativism and of the crisis of our institutions, above all those claiming to possess the truth?

"Does not the seriousness with which the novel has been taken reveal an unsettling degree of religious ignorance and at the same time an alarming credulity in the face of gratuitous hypotheses?"

Ouellet said the phenomenon is complex and cannot be reduced to an anti-Catholic propaganda made easier by globalization.

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