Gilbert

ARCHBISHOP Edward Gilbert yesterday said the controversial movie, Da Vinci Code was merely a film based on a book and therefore was not based on theology and Church history.

In a full page advertisement in today’s newspaper headlined “The Da Vinci Code, The facts behind the Fiction,” the Archbishop issued a brief statement because “I have received many enquiries about the release of the film.”

He said he suspected that “those who told me that their faith was challenged by the book will be even more upset by the movie,” adding, that no doubt the movie will reach more people than the book.

The Archbishop stressed “the movie is based on a novel, this is what the author intended.

“The movie will not change its nature. It will never offer anything other than a novel.

“It is not a book on theology and Church history.”

The Archbishop also noted there have been a number of scholarly critiques about the novel. He said the most incisive and objective critique he had seen was the “printed text of the address given in Washington by Father Gerald O’Collins SJ, a systematic theologian who teaches in the Gregorian University in Rome.

Archbishop Gilbert further said “as a help to affirming those whose faith have been shaken, I am supporting the publication of the text” by Fr Mark George, a priest of Opus Dei who lives and serves in the Archdiocese of Port-of-Spain.

That text uses scripture, facts and history to dispel certain key points in the book, which Gilbert said he assumes will appear in the movie.

On the issue of celibacy in the times of Jesus, the text said the book says celibacy did not exist in those times, whereas history says John the Baptist was celibate and so were those belonging to the group of the Esseenes and St Paul lived and advocated it.

On Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the book says “one particularly troubling theme kept recurring that in the (Gnostic) gospels. Mary Magdalene ... more specifically her marriage to Jesus Christ (p. 244), whereas history says the Gnostic Gospels, a collection of anonymous writings that blended pseudo-Christian ideas with esoteric spirituality, say nothing about Mary and Jesus being married. Furthermore, the four gospels and early Christian literature say nothing of Jesus being married. The best conclusion is that he simply was not.

And on feminism, the Da Vinci Code says Leonardo’s worship of the goddess and the feminine can be seen in his Mona Lisa painting.

That name comes from two Egyptian deities: the god Amon and the goddess Isis, whose “ancient pictogram” was once called L’ISA. The title Mona Lisa, then, is really “an anagram of the divine union of male and female” (p. 121). But Fr George says in history Leonardo Da Vinci did not even name this particular painting.

None of his works, in fact, were titled by him. The Mona Lisa was catalogued by author Giorgio Vasari in his book Lives of the Artists (1550). It was he who first called the Monna Lisa, which in English was shortened to Mona Lisa. It simply means Madame Lisa, and refers to the likely subject: Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Gioncondo.

The movie opened last Friday to sold out audiences both locally and abroad.

(See page 28A)