DaVinci Code hype provides forum for correcting ‘religious illiteracy’
By Mary Beth DeLisi
Correspondent
BRIDGEWATER — Father Joseph G. Celano would like to tell The DaVinci Code author Dan Brown a thing or two.
“I’d like to tell Dan Brown thank you for writing the book,” said the pastor of St. Bernard of Clairvaux Parish. Referring to the media’s hype of Brown’s book and the recently-released DaVinci Code movie, Father Celano said, “We live in a culture which tends toward religious illiteracy, with many people no longer knowing the fundamentals of religious belief, never mind the complexities of theology and religious history. This is a time when the historicity of Christian faith is being discussed in a public forum, and we as a Church have something to contribute to that discussion. [The Da Vinci Code] has given us a chance to engage people in a new way.”
Calling the buzz surrounding The DaVinci Code a “teachable moment,”
Father Celano took the opportunity to engage the faithful in discussions of religious belief and history. The series began May 15 in St. Bernard Church with Father Celano leading a session on setting the context for Brown’s book. In the following session held a week later, Father Celano discussed gnosticism and its influence in early Christianity.
Setting the context
Addressing a nearly-filled church in session one, Father Celano summed up the foundation of Brown’s bestseller. “The premise of the story is this: Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered at least one child by her. This knowledge has been suppressed by the Catholic Church in one of the most elaborate conspiracies of all time, but was preserved through the centuries by a secret society which guards the truth. This modern day search for the Holy Grail is not the quest for the cup of Christ, but to unmask the conspiracy and discover the truth about the bloodline established by Christ and Mary Magdalene,” Father Celano explained.
He noted that even though The DaVinci Code is sold in bookstores’ fiction section, the idea of a conspiracy on the part of the Catholic Church to conceal the truth about Jesus has gained new notoriety due to such works as The DaVinci Code, Holy Blood Holy Grail and the current re-examination of the gnostic gospels, the so-called “lost books of the Bible.”
Father Celano spoke of the 19th century biblical deconstruction movement, the search for the “historical Jesus” and Mary Magdalene’s prominence in the New Testament and early Christian tradition.
He discussed the four canonical Gospels as “documents of faith” that proclaim the church’s faith in Jesus. “History and biography are secondary details in light of faith, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing historical in these writings,” Father Celano pointed out. “Events were witnessed, remembered and passed on — the sayings of Jesus, where he went and what he said.”
When questioned about the accuracy of these records of Jesus, which had been passed on orally before being written down, Father Celano explained that before history was ever written down, people established forms that would ensure their stories could be repeated and passed on accurately.
He noted that the Gospels say nothing about Jesus’ marital status. That this silence, however, does not mean a presumption of marriage. “Those who make the case for Jesus being married insist that the first-century cultural expectation was that Jewish men marry and father children and that an unmarried or celibate man was considered shameful. This is simply untrue,” Father Celano stated. He offered biblical references as evidence, such as Matthew 19:12, where Jesus teaches that celibacy is a witness to the Kingdom of God, and I Corinthians 7:7 in which St. Paul, a Pharisee by education, alludes to the fact that he was a celibate man. In first-century Judaism, Father Celano noted, at least one Jewish sect — the Essenes — was a monastic order of celibate men.
“To argue in favor of the marriage from the silence of the Gospels is shaky at best. Further, when the weight of Christian history and tradition upholds the Lord’s celibacy, the burden of proof lies with those who would contest it,” Father Celano reasoned.
He cited reasons for Mary Magdalene’s prominence in the New Testament, saying that she was part of a company of women who traveled with Jesus and his disciples and that she was an eyewitness to the death of Jesus. “She becomes prominent in the Gospel story because she and at least one other woman were the discoverers of his empty tomb on that Sunday morning and she was the first to see and speak with the risen Christ. This event was so deeply embedded in the tradition that by the time the Gospels were written, Mary’s name was listed first — the place of prominence — among the women from Galilee,” Father Celano said, adding that we “simply don’t know with any certainty” what happened to her after she disappears from the New Testament.
Gnostic gospels
Formally entitled Gnosticism and Its Influence in Early Christianity, session two, Father Celano joked, could have also been called Everything You Wanted to Know about Ancient Christian Heresies But Were Afraid to Ask.
Father Celano said that gnosticism plagued the early church during its formative centuries, and it remains a problem today, so it’s important to know what it is.
Gnosticism is a catchall term, he said, used to describe many different religious systems, and while it has taken various forms and belief systems, it has several
common threads. Gnosticism teaches that salvation is achieved through a special knowledge and that this knowledge is only gained by initiation into the sect. It sees the world in terms of radically opposing dualities, such as light and darkness and spirit and matter, and generally regards all created matter as evil, a corruption of pure spirit that is perfection. In addition, it conceives of God as an impersonal spiritual force whose light only reaches creation through progressively lesser spiritual intermediaries, such as deities, angels or aeons. Finally, salvation is achieved by the soul’s use of the secret knowledge to ascend through the different spheres of creation and the battling aeons to that pure spirit which is God.
The gnostic gospels were rejected by the church, he explained, because gnosticism borrowed elements of existing religious and belief systems, such as Christianity, and tweaked them to fit its purposes.
“It must be understood that these strains of gnosticism do not represent an alternative form of the parent religion but are a complete reinvention of it,” Father Celano emphasized.
He said the various gnostic communities produced documents, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Gospel of James, and the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, during the second and third centuries and that their primary value is historical, not theological. Father Celano also said the media has been wrong in its assertion that a new gospel, the Gospel of Judas, has been found.
“These things are not new in the church. St. Iranaeus refers to [the Gospel of Judas] in his Against the Heresies in 180 A.D. What is exciting is that now we actually have it,” Father Celano said.
Father Celano believes that understanding gnosticism gives the faithful a new way of learning how our faith was established, “Bishops, priests and lay people fought throughout the first five centuries for what was authentic and what was not. The Nicene Creed represents three centuries of debate and controversy; don’t take it for granted,” he said.
Father Celano said he hopes people attending any or all of the sessions come away with three things: “I hope they become better educated about their faith. People need to understand that we don’t come from an intellectually impoverished tradition. Even those with rudimentary sense of history know the church has produced great
thinkers. I also want them to be able to talk intelligently about their faith so that they
themselves become equipped to enter into intelligent conversation with others for the
reasonableness of faith. Lastly, the hope of all catechesis, is that they come to know Jesus better, which will be a stepping stone to their own growth in spiritual life.”
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law