Da Vinci Code: Truth or Fiction?

If you're confused, just ask the Catholic League.

On Monday, the arch-conservative Catholic League, placed an ad in the New York Times, urging Ron Howard to put a disclaimer at the beginning of The Da Vinci Code noting that the movie is a fictional account. As a reward, the organization's far-right president, William A. Donohue got to appear on the Today Show on Wednesday.

After Donohue appeared on the Today Show last November and claimed that the Catholic Church's pedophilia problem could be resolved by routing out all the gay priests, I was surprised he'd get another invitation. I would have thought Mr. Donohue would be relegated to Fox News and The 700 Club where inflammatory, malicious rhetoric has found a cozy home.

For the movie's producers, the Times ad is nothing less than great publicity. Hell, Sony Pictures might just slap a "Coming This May" banner on top and run the ad a few more times themselves. Keep talking, Mr. Donohue, and we might be looking at a record opening weekend.

I read The Da Vinci Code just recently. I found it fascinating that there were many more than four gospels, more than four accounts of the life of Jesus. Mortal human beings ultimately decided which ones would make it into the New Testament. The novel says that some of those gospels portrayed Jesus as a wise, noble, but mortal man.

I don't know how much of Dan Brown's story is true--the fictional narrative is interspersed with some measure of historic truth--but it did inspire me to learn more about the historical Jesus and the early Church, beyond what has ended up in the Bible. Alas, the juicy proposition that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a thing going on doesn't seem to hold water.

Donohue's gripe is that fable is mixed in with story lines that could be confused as fact. I understand his concern. Donohue is correct that "the consequences are real" when people are led to believe that a fable is incontrovertible fact. Indeed, graveyards around the world are filled with the fallen victims of zealotry rooted in fable. It follows that Donohue would agree that the Book of Genesis warrants a similar disclaimer, knowing all we know now.

The missing disclaimer may be why a majority of Americans believe that "God created man exactly how the Bible describes it" according to a Gallup report released Wednesday. How this majority explains away dinosaurs, carbon dating and fossil records is beyond me. Evolution needs its own set of evangelists. But those of us in the minority have better things to do with our time than to argue with people who start and end every philosophical argument with "I believe it because the Bible says it's so."

The pollster concludes that "several characteristics correlate with belief in the biblical explanation for the origin of humans. Those with lower levels of education, those who attend church regularly, those who are 65 and older, and those who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe that God created humans 'as is,' than are those who do not share these characteristics."

I have no doubt that humans have evolved, but it looks like the process has come to an abrupt halt.