Stephen Colbert recently criticized books for containing too much "truthiness," but there is one extremely popular book he doesn't have to worry about. You know what I'm talking about. The one that's been on the news every night for a week. The one that has become a major motion picture (though, according to the critics, "motion" is overstating the case). The one that has either entertained or offended tens of millions of readers and possibly hundreds of millions of bystanders worldwide.
I'm in the offended bystander category, committing the cardinal sin of disliking a book I haven't read. I tend to agree with the minister who said of the movie, "Christians are not called to reach in their pocket and pay $9.50 so we can be slapped in the face for 90 minutes straight." Why read a book that insults my Church and misrepresents my God, and then has the nerve to say it is based on scholarly research?
The usual defense of the book is that it is "just fiction," but that is not entirely accurate. The main characters are certainly fictional, but the scandalous theories that Brown puts forward in the book are not fictional. They are real (though easily refuted) theories that Brown has taken from non-fiction (to use the term loosely!) sources. The book can and should be criticized for repeating theories that are false and that defame the Church. If those theories were antisemitic or racist, the public outcry would be loud and long, but since the Church is an acceptable scapegoat, The Da Vinci Code has been an unparalleled success.
I look on this as an opportunity for Christians (especially Catholics) to educate others about Church history and Christianity (and the deeper issues of scandal and scapegoating). Dan Brown claims that he wrote the book to inspire debate about religion and history, and he has got his wish. There are dozens of books, websites, and articles debunking the theories he put into his book. I would like to recommend two of them. One is Cracking the Da Vinci Code, a succint, point-by-point criticism of the book from Catholic Answers. The other is The Da Vinci Hoax, which is said to be the best book on the subject from a Catholic perspective. Many more links can be found at Wikipedia. I urge anyone who has read the book or seen the movie to take a look at some of the criticism of the book just to make sure you know exactly what parts of the book are fact, what parts are fiction, and what parts are fiction masquerading as fact.
UPDATE: The authors of The Da Vinci Hoax have a blog.
