Copyright: University of Saint Mary of the Lake / Mundelein Seminary, All Rights Reserved.

 

Read copyright notice

University of Saint Mary of the Lake

Ministerial and Continuing Education

Dialogues on DaVinci:

Catholic Scholars Respond to the DaVinci Code

 

By Thomas A. Baima

In 2003, author Dan Brown published his suspense novel, the DaVinci Code.  Very quickly it moved up the various lists of best-selling novels until it came to rest at the very top.  And it stayed there.  At the same time, I started to hear about the book from women in my parish and among the staff of my university.  What struck me at once was how they were confused about basic Christian doctrine because of reading this book.

 

Gradually, more and more priests and ministers I know began speaking about the effect the book was having on members of their parishes.  The book was raising questions and the faithful were looking for guidance.  A couple of the priests chose to preach sermons which mentioned one or another of the issues in the book and at once they were confronted, usually at the end of the service, by many people asking them to “say more about this book.”

 

Dialogues on DaVinci: Catholic Scholars Respond to the DaVinci Code emerged out of these requests.  Over a period of months in 2003 – 2004 I used my radio program, Mundelein Seminary Presents: Speaking of Theology, to interview experts in the several topics of controversy raised by lay people after reading the book.   No sooner had we produced the first show, than a local pastor called and wanted to reproduce hundreds of cassette tapes for his parish.  Clearly, there is an interest on the part of lay Catholics to engage this topic.

 

To that end, we transcribed the entire series of Speaking of Theology along with two other presentations and then we complied them into this little book.  In keeping with the honor which Renaissance writers, like Leonardo DaVinci himself, held for the classical authors, we are imitating Plato, by offering the presentation in the form of dialogues.

 

 The book begins with an essay by Lawrence Hennessey which touches on each of the controversies in Brown’s book.  This first chapter summarizes the book in brief.  It was originally a lecture delivered at Saint Norbert Parish in Northbrook, Illinois.  With the second chapter the dialogues begin.  I interviewed Fr. Robert Barron, the host of the popular Word on Fire radio program.  This interview received such strong feedback, that I decided to extend the topic into a series.  My colleague Dr. Graziano Marcheschi next interviewed Francis Cardinal George on the topics raised in the DaVinci Code.  This originally appeared on the monthly television show, “The Cardinal, the Archdiocese and You.”  Chapter three continues the monthly dialogues from Speaking of Theology.

 

While this book is complied from separate sources, all of these materials are interrelated.  I read Fr. Hennessey’s talk before planning the first Speaking of Theology program.  Similarly, Dr. Marcheschi listened to the tape of my program with Fr. Barron before interviewing Cardinal George.  Catholic Scholars Respond to the DaVinci Code, therefore, was an actual dialogue between the various contributors before ever taking shape in the radio programs or in this book.

 

The point of this short book, then, is to present the conversation which Dan Brown’s book provoked among my colleagues, which we shared through lecture, radio or television, in order to answer pastoral questions from Christians.

 

 In the bookstore where I bought my copy of the DaVinci Code, there was a large sign over the counter.  It read “Adult Fiction.”  That’s truth in advertising.  I described the book by four words: “Nice story, not true.”  I enjoyed reading the book.  It is a fast paced mystery, a page turner.  What I have not enjoyed is the confusion which the book has produced in some Christians.  Because, while it is fiction, it resembles “historical fiction” people are confused between fact (of which there is little) and fiction (of which there is quite a lot).  I hope this small book will help Christians to separate fact from fiction and protect their faith from doubt.

 

I want to thank the contributors for their participation in these dialogues.  Each responded to the call of so many people to “say more about this book.”