da vinci code

Went to see it last night. It was pretty insufferably tedious. I fell asleep toward the end. They tried to ameliorate the offensiveness of it by having the Tom Hanks character talk about how its okay to pray to Jesus even though he was just a man.

Which brings up my main question about the Da Vinci Code: if Jesus was just a man, albeit a special one, then what's so special about his bloodline? How are his female descendents ("Sophia" in the book / movie) supposed to be the repository of the divine feminine?

Yet another weird anomaly of the book / movie is the central claim that the Church suppressed devotion to Mary Magdalene. But of course the Church did not. In fact, outside the Catholic Church, there was no devotion to Mary Magdalene at all. And within the Church there was plenty.

Lastly, there was a moment in the movie (which I don't remember in the book) where the Ian McKellen character says something about how the Church wants to supress the truth that sex is really the vehicle through which humans come to God. Apart from being a baseless, appetitive fantasy, this kind of suggestion belies the liberal accusation that conservatives are obsessed with sex. One hears this all the time from liberals (at least I have): "you conservatives are just obsessed with sex! Its all you can think about!" The truth is, I can't tell you how many "Sex Weeks" and condom give-aways, and what not I've witnessed being organized by the same people who accuse me and my party of being obsessed with sex.

Oh, well. The book was a lot better than the movie. Though both will just serve to confuse people and further erode an already eroded confidence in the Church's teachings in the West.