The DaVinci Heresy

It is a scene often shown on the news in the last few years.  A religious cleric is offended by something said or done by a person or organization.  He calls for righteous adherents to take action and soon there are images of massive protests, people marching in the streets, and in the most extreme circumstance, violence and destruction.



The most recent example of this reaction is not the threat of death against Salman Rushdie for his “Satanic Verses” work.  Nor is it the street riots occurring after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.  It is a Catholic Cardinal calling for legal action on the part of Christians worldwide against a fictional novel and the resulting movie.



Cardinal Francis Arinze, once a leading contender to be the next Pope, recently declared the makers of the film “The Da Vinci Code” should be taken to court in order to force them to “respect the rights of others”.  He did not specifically say what kind of action this would be, nor did he state what outcome would force anyone to respect the rights of any others.  What he merely asserted, however, is a right for the Catholic Church to declare a heresy “fatwa” against anyone or anything it does not agree with.



The charge of heresy is one intimately tied with Christianity’s beginnings.  Taken from the Greek word haireses, it literally means a choice of belief or to choose one’s beliefs.  Used by St. Irenaeus in the early days of Christianity, it came to mean anything with which the Church did not agree.  This very specific definition is one still used by the Oxford English dictionary of modern times.



In this sense, heresy literally paints a line between good and bad beliefs.  Following the stated Church position is good.  Everything else is bad.  This would include, it seems, works of fiction, which depict Biblical characters in a different light than they are commonly viewed.  To describe something as a heresy also implies a view of Catholic adherents not being able to discern between what is real and what is fantasy.



It is a view not grounded in reality, it would seem, as predominantly Catholic countries around the world are selling out of tickets to the film before it is even released.



At its core, “The Da Vinci Code” portrays Jesus as far more mortal than divine.  He struggled in the political upheaval of his time, fought against dissension among his



followers, and ultimately married a woman the early Catholic Church baselessly described as a “whore”.  This would ostensibly make him somewhat more accessible to modern followers, allowing them to relate to him on a uniquely human level.



However, the Catholic Church will have none of that.  While most of the clergy are not as extreme in their declarations against the work, most still are calling for some type of boycott against the film, just as they did against the original book.  That book has now sold over 80 million copies worldwide.



Ultimately, this is a fight in which the Church has engaged since its beginnings.  Whether it was Irenaeus’ “Contra Haereses” or the Nicean council’s attempt to pound out a vulgate Bible, the Church has a long history of telling people not only what to believe but also what they should read.



In that light, the current Church position toward outright fiction like Harry Potter or Dan Brown’s work would be comical were it not for the very real implications that position might have for non-believers.  If Cardinal Arinze has his way, the makers of “The Da Vinci Code” would face legal peril for nothing more than the production of a work the Church considers offensive.  Such a legal precedent, while highly unlikely, would chill writers and moviemakers around the world.  No longer would the Church merely have jurisdiction over its own internal affairs.  It would once again control the expression of thought for the rest of the world.



Cardinal Arinze defends his statements by invoking those same Muslim riots over depictions of their prophet.



"There are some religions which if you insult their founder - they will make it painfully clear to you.”



The Cardinal’s thinly veiled threat along with his justification for his own brand of religious intolerance is the final piece of the heresy charge.  To merely declare something a heresy is not enough unless one is prepared to apparently enforce the charge through whatever means are available.  In this way, the Cardinal has given his tacit approval to the rioters who caused so much damage because of a cartoon even as he has made it clear his church is now in the business of censorship for the rest of us.