i don’t know Tatad, don’t know much about him, just know from googling that a lot of Pinoys hate him, but just reading this piece from him, i have to say i probably would be interested to read/hear other things he has to say.
Copying content here because it loads so slow on web archive:
Who’s afraid of The Da Vinci Code?
First posted 01:33am (Mla time) May 14, 2006
By Francisco S. Tatad
Inquirer
Editor’s Note: Aside from his usual involvement in public affairs, former senator Francisco Tatad reads, writes and corresponds with various specialists worldwide on philosophy, theology, Church history, Christian anthropology and public ethics. A published author and social critic, he sits on the executive and international boards of the World Youth Alliance in New York and the International Right to Life Federation in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has studied the structure and workings of the Church and Opus Dei, of which he is a member.
“THE Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown is now a much talked-about movie.
It is clearly fiction, and we should take it as such. But Sony Pictures, the producers, will not say so. And Brown will insist his “facts” are, indeed, facts.
We will assume the movie is faithful to the book. But not having seen the movie, we will have to talk about the book.
The thriller begins with the following claim:
“FACT:
“The Priory of Sion—a European secret society formed in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris’s Bibliotheque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous numbers of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci.
“The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei is a deeply devout Catholic sect that has been the topic of recent controversy due to reports of brainwashing, coercion and a dangerous practice known as ‘corporal mortification.’ Opus Dei has just completed construction of a $47 million National Headquarters at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City.
“All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”
Brown further says that Jesus was merely “divinized” by Emperor Constantine in the Council of Nicea in 325; that Constantine had the Bible limited to those gospels that portrayed Jesus as divine; that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter by her, from whom sprang a line of kings; that the Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene herself, not a mere chalice; that she is the one, not the apostle John, on Jesus’ right in Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper; that Da Vinci was a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, which was formed to protect the secret of the Grail from the Church which wants to destroy it.
Is there a Priory of Sion?
Extensive research made by the well-known sociologist Massimo Introvigne of the Center of the Study of New Religions in Torino, Italy, says that in 1099, Godefroy de Buillion (1060-1100), who became King of Jerusalem, founded an Abbey (not a Priory) of Our Lady of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. It was destroyed by the Muslims in 1291, forcing its surviving monks to flee to Sicily, where the abbey remained until the 14th century. In 1956, a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard (1920-2000) set up a “Priory of Sion” in Annemasse, France, whose primary concern was low-income housing in France. There neither is nor was a Priory of Sion, as described by Brown.
Did the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris “discover” parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets in 1975, which identified numerous members of the Priory, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Da Vinci?
Documents known as Les Dossiers Secret de Henri Lobineau and signed by one Philippe Toscan du Plantier were deposited with—not discovered by—the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1967—not 1975. These were texts rather than parchments which Plantard first handed over to Gerard de Sede, an author who described them in 1988 as “apocryphal,” inspired by “market sensationalism.” Plantard said they were fabricated by Philippe de Cherisey (1925-1985), an impoverished marquis-turned-TV actor, and by du Plantier himself. No parchments are in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
Was Da Vinci not a prominent member (Grand Master) of the Priory?
Brown lists 26 Priory “Grand Masters,” starting with Jean de Grisors, from 1188 to 1220, up to Jean Cocteau, from 1918 to 1963. But if Brown’s Priory never existed at all, how could there have been even one single Grand Master?
Did Jesus marry and sire a daughter by Magdalene, and is Magdalene the Holy Grail?
There is not a shred or scintilla of evidence to support this claim. And not even Les Dossiers Secrets make this claim. Most importantly, all those who had helped provide the sources of Brown’s claim have since confessed to the fraud.
It all began in 1969 or 1970 when Henry Soskin, an English actor in “The Avengers” TV series, decided to work with Plantard, De Sede and Cherisey. At the time, a book by Robert Ambelain (1907-1997) had claimed Jesus had a female companion named Salome. Soskin, who had changed his name to Henry Lincoln, favored Plantard’s story about Jesus and Magdalene.
In 1982, Lincoln co-authored “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (Jonathan Cape, London), to elaborate on this tale. From it, Brown drew the “facts” for his novel. Even his fictional historian’s name, Leigh Teabing, is culled from the names of Lincoln’s two co-authors—Leigh, from Richard Leigh, and Teabing, an anagram of Baigent.
Did Da Vinci not paint Magdalene to Jesus’ right in The Last Supper?
Prof. Judith Veronica Field of the University of London, president of the Leonardo da Vinci Society, scoffs at it as “absurd.” A great many of us have been looking at this masterpiece for years. Have we all been played for fools?
If, indeed, Jesus had married Magdalene, should he not have left her in the care of a trusted friend, just as he left his mother in John’s?
If the alleged marriage had, indeed, produced a line of kings, why have they kept themselves away from the affairs of Christ’s Church?
Did not Constantine fix the contents of the Bible and “divinize” an otherwise mortal Jesus?
Nothing supports this claim.
Some 90 years before Constantine’s birth, the Church had already rejected the Gnostic texts and recognized the four gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark and John as canonical. Yet the Christian faith “is not a religion of the book,” as the Catechism (108) says. From the very beginning, it has always rested on Christ revealing himself as perfect God and perfect man, as the living Word. And from Nero to Diocletian, 54 to 305, the early Christians embraced persecution and martyrdom rather than renounce their faith in the divinity of Christ.
Constantine was instrumental in convening the Council of Nicea. But it was the duty of St. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, and the 220 bishops gathered there to clarify Church doctrine. It was they who condemned Arianism, which denied the three persons in one God, saying there was only one person, the Father, and that the son was like all other created beings. They also adopted the Nicene Creed which affirmed faith in Jesus Christ as “the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. Through him all things were made.”
Constantine, though already known as the Christian Emperor, did not formally convert to Christianity until he was dying in 337. But he converted to Arian Christianity, not to Nicean Christianity. Were Jesus merely mortal, the pagan Emperor could not have “divinized” him in any way.
Even the devil himself had no problem accepting the divinity of Christ.
In the third and final temptation, when Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the earth and said, “All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me.” To which Jesus replied, “Begone, Satan, for it is written, ’You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve’.” (Mt 4:8-10). And the devil, who is a liar and the father of all lies (Jn 8:44), “left him and angels came and ministered to him” (Mt 4:11).
Will Brown want it said that he is simply trying to outdo Beelzebub?
In his “fact” page, Brown assigns a hilarious role to Opus Dei. He calls it a sect and accuses it of brainwashing, coercion and corporal mortification. Then he brings in a monk-assassin, and a troubled bishop and brands them Opus Dei.
The result is an absurd caricature that completely deforms reality. But because of this, more and more people want to know the real Opus Dei. We’ll try to answer some of their questions here, based on what we’ve read and what we know.
What is Opus Dei?
Opus Dei (Latin for Work of God) is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church erected by Pope John Paul II on Nov. 28, 1982. Opus Dei was founded by a 26-year-old Spanish priest named Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer in Madrid on Oct. 2, 1928, as a way of spreading the love and mercy of God everywhere, and helping men and women, in the ordinary circumstances of their daily life, to respond to the universal call to holiness.
The founder died on June 26, 1975, and was canonized on Oct. 6, 2002. The relatively fast pace of the process is a happy consequence of the streamlining of the process under the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Using the same process, the Pope beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta in just six years after her death.
Who are in Opus Dei?
Opus Dei has some 85,000 members in more than 60 countries. Most members are laymen and lay women. About two percent (2,000) are priests, no monks. Of the lay members, 70 percent are married (supernumeraries), 20 percent are single and celibate members who live in residence centers (numeraries), 10 percent, though single and celibate, live by themselves or with their respective families (associates).
In the Philippines, there are some 3,000 members.
Is Opus Dei a personal prelature of the Pope?
Opus Dei is a personal prelature of the Catholic Church. It is not correct to say, as Brown’s novel says, it is a personal prelature of the Vatican or the Pope.
The word “personal” does not mean “personal” to the Pope. It simply means that the prelate’s jurisdiction is “personal” rather than “territorial.” While a diocesan bishop’s territorial jurisdiction extends to the length and breadth of his diocese, the prelate’s personal jurisdiction extends to all the members of his prelature, wherever they are, without in any way altering their membership in and duties to their respective parishes or dioceses.
Opus Dei members remain under the authority of their diocesan bishops. Opus Dei itself may not initiate any activity within a diocese without the prior consent of the bishop of the place.
Is Opus Dei a sect or not?
The term “sect” usually refers to an organized body of dissenters from an established or older form of faith. It cannot possibly refer to an institution that believes what the Church believes.
How accurate are “reports of brainwashing, coercion and a dangerous practice known as “corporal mortification” which Brown refers to in his “fact” page?
No such report can possibly come from anyone who knows Opus Dei and its spirit. They usually come from ill-informed sources. No one becomes, and no one remains, a member of Opus Dei, except by his or her own free will, in correspondence of course with a much higher will. One is normally brought into Opus Dei through the prayers and “personal apostolate” of a friend in Opus Dei. It is an “apostolate of personal friendship.”
But no one may commit oneself permanently to become a member of Opus Dei unless he or she is at least 23 years old, and shall have completed six and a half years of systematic and comprehensive instructions and studies on what such membership entails. And no one may commit oneself even temporarily, unless he or she is at least 18 years old, and shall have undergone the necessary instructions and studies on his or her professed or perceived vocation.
“Corporal mortification,” as described in the novel, has no relation whatsoever to the practice of corporal mortification in the Church.
What numeraries and associates practice cannot possibly resemble, to any degree, what is done by the assassin Silas, who punctures his back with a heavy discipline and his thighs with a spiked cilice.
Were Brown’s portrayal even just half accurate, it would be hard to find anyone wanting to become an Opus Dei numerary or an associate. The spirit of Opus Dei has a lot more to do with divine filiation, which recognizes one’s nothingness before God. Corporal mortification is but a very small part of it.
In his triptych—The Way, Furrow, The Forge—St. Josemaria has so much more to say about prayer, love, friendship, virtue, work and so many other things than mortification. And he insists on mortification that does not mortify others.
“The appropriate word you left unsaid; the joke you didn’t tell; the cheerful smile for those who bother you; that silence when you’re unjustly accused; your kind conversation with people you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in those who live with you … this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.” (The Way, 173)
Should the movie be shown or not?
This is a matter of law. We need not tell the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board what to do. They only have to follow the law. The law provides, among other things, that, using contemporary Filipino cultural values as standard, the board should take extreme care in allowing films that contain elements contrary to good custom, or are libelous or defamatory to the good name and reputation of any person, living or dead. Is Christ or the Church or anybody else libeled or defamed in the movie? If yes, the board must act accordingly. Otherwise they should not do anything that might produce the very result we are all trying to avoid.
Will this movie not create the kind of crisis which Brown predicts for the Church?
We’ll see. In his book, Brown says that once it is revealed that Jesus married Magdalene, the Church would face its worst crisis in 2,000 years. Well, Brown’s shocking claim is out, and what do we see? An unprecedented Church crisis? The people are not easily duped.
The greatest heresies that ever confronted Christianity have always come from within the Church. We have seen them roll out—Arianism, Pelagianism, Donatism, Nestorianism, Albigensianism, to mention some of the best known. The heresiachs tried to poison the well from which Catholics drank their faith. They could never succeed, just as the Roman emperors could not extinguish the early Christians from the face of the earth.
Dan Brown is an outsider trying to recycle some of the old junk, not so much to wage a war against Christianity as to make a big buck, at our expense. It may be giving him more credit than is his due to put him on the same rank as Arius, Pelagius or Nestorius. He is making his pile, and he will not be denied his 15 minutes of fame. But whatever he does, he will not bring down Christ or his Church.
Jesus is Lord who keeps his promises. And he has promised Peter, “on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).
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