Dan Brown on television

There’s no mistaking we live in a different world to be able to watch Dan Brown, the best selling author of the controversial Da Vinci Code discussing his book on television. There was a time when that would have been impossible. He would have been burnt at stake if he were in Europe. Or executed in Bagumbayan, if he had lived in the Philippines. Truly, it would have been impossible even to conceive such blasphemous departure from Christian orthodoxy.

Therefore, to me, the news is not about his theories on a married Jesus but that he is able at all to be seen or heard in the living rooms of millions of Filipinos. Suddenly, whether we like it or not, an entire world has been opened to us. It is no longer possible to be insulated from other ways of thinking other than what is handed down to us by authorities, be they of the church or state, as it had been in the time of Jose Rizal, et al. What happens now?

Long before Dan Brown’s TV interview, his books were widely available in Manila’s bookshops. My husband was an avid reader of such books. We used to scour London’s second hand bookshops when we lived there looking for rare out of print titles on the Gnostic Gospels, Hammadi texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. But not in Manila! Or so I thought, until I looked over a shelf on religion and found the books being openly sold and excitedly told my husband. "It is not just us reading those books here in Manila, others are." From time to time, the books were written about, but always discreetly, in some newspaper articles.

No matter if the Da Vinci Code is only a novel, and therefore a work of fiction. It has upset comfortable ‘truths’ we have been used to. Why? Because the author weaves his story’s plot in the real world and gives it the authority of verisimilitude. "The plot is about a renowned Harvard symbologist who is summoned to the Louvre Museum to examine a series of cryptic symbols relating to Da Vinci’s artwork. In decrypting the code, he uncovers the key to one of the greatest mysteries of all time… and he becomes a hunted man." It is a good example of fictional journalism or journalistic fiction whichever you wish to put it. The book’s characters and their actions may not be real but they move around in familiar places and real things.

The artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in the novel all exist (for example, Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintings, the Gnostic Gospels, Hieros Gamos, etc.). We know them and know them to be true. Indeed, when the book first came out, tourists of every nationality thronged the Louvre museum in search of the room which housed the famous Mona Lisa painting. Not that it had not been popular. As if there were not enough tourists in the Louvre, the book jacked up the number of those who queued daily in the thousands, some doing so all day long just to see for themselves ‘the reality’ of Da Vinci’s painting and what it said in the book about it.

In the book, the Mona Lisa was a crucial clue to unraveling the mystery. Not surprisingly, those who read the book now see the Mona Lisa ‘differently’. It is not just a work of art but a clue to the mystery. The author claims he wrote the novel so "the story would serve as a catalyst and a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history." He has enormously succeeded. For example, he includes a ‘fact’ page which lists down documents, rituals, organization, artwork, and architecture that are real. That does not make what the characters of the novel talk about and discuss real. That is up to the reader to find out for himself.

Interestingly, among those interviewed in the television documentary were priests and they did not seem disconcerted about talking on the possibility of a married Jesus or that his wife may have been Mary Magdalene, the sinner, or that they had descendants still living today. The inference is that it is possible to discuss such ‘sacrosanct’ issues without defaming the central theory of Christianity – that Jesus was man-God.

There are even priests who defend the book. saying: "This novel is not a threat. This is an opportunity. We are called to creatively engage the culture and this is what I want to do. I think Dan Brown has done me a favor. He’s letting me talk about things that matter." But the author has his detractors. More orthodox Catholics will not have anything of it and condemn the book as anti-Christian.

"No," says Dan Brown. "This book is not anti-anything. It’s a novel. I wrote this story in an effort to explore certain aspects of Christian history that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate. Instead of turning people away from religion it has created the opposite effect. It has sparked renewed interest in important topics of faith and Christian history. It is important to remember that a reader does not have to agree with every word in the novel to use the book as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith."

You’ll have to read the book yourself to make any judgment. Like any debate on any topic, Dan Brown’s book has a liberating effect. This is even more true of the Philippines, where intellectual stimulus has been discouraged for centuries. I suspect that there is an ulterior motive for the suppression of debate. Dan Brown’s book may do for Filipinos what Noli Me Tangere did for Filipinos in Rizal’s time. Rizal was not anti-Christian when he wrote about the evils of abusive friars then. Indeed, he adamantly refused to be labeled anti-Christian. He welcomed his death as his passage to a place where religion does not tyrannize. Unfortunately, he was ahead of his time. There were too few both among Spaniards (at least those in the Philippines) and his own kind who would have understood his spirituality.

It would be different now in the age of cable television and internet. Like Dan Brown, Rizal might have had a better chance to express those views in the spirit of an age unafraid of controversy. Dialogue and debate are sought to reinforce one’s own spirituality rather than a blind obedience to ‘gospel’ truth. The trouble is that once those religious gates are opened, it may not be so easy to control minds and that can upset the status quo of power holders. But with cable television is there any way out except for those gates to be opened? I am afraid we will have to face that uncomfortable truth and it not be enough to say. "I am Catholic because I was baptized." That is a lazy way of being Christian.

Dan Brown has this to say "Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious – that is, that we are all trying to decipher life’s big mysteries, and we’re each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress. " That is certainly food for thought.

My e-mail: [email protected]