Debating the correct response to 'that movie'

By Paul Schratz

In a few years we’ll probably look back on the wars over "that movie" as nostalgically as we now remember the panic over Y2K. "Da Vinci Code ... what a lot of fuss that was, eh?"

However, there is a time to be silent and a time to speak, and now would seem to be the time to speak.

How much to speak is another question, and when it comes to Da Vinci, it’s one of many questions for which there seem to be no clear answers.

For every person who simply can’t understand what the fuss is all about, there is someone else who has been embroiled in a frustrating debate over whether Mary Magdalene could, in fact, have married Jesus, and Opus Dei might be employing special forces in a conspiracy to cover it up.

At a recent communications conference in Rome, the debate intensified in the weeks approaching the release of "that movie," with communications experts on opposing sides calling for, respectively, turning that lemon into lemonade, or throwing the lemon into the nearest compost pile.

(One Rome church bafflingly thought it would be a clever idea to lease space on a renovation scaffold outside the building for a Da Vinci ad, until it came to its senses after hearing loudly from bewildered church and civic officials.)

There would appear to be no perfectly correct response to the book and now the movie. There’s a fine line between thoughtful review and forceful confrontation. Ultimately it depends on the strategy, skills, and comfort zones of the people doing the responding.

This is a long way of saying the varyied responses of Church entities to the Da Vinci Code will for some people be too much, and for others inadequate.

For example, one Vatican official is being quoted as calling for a boycott of the film. In fact he didn’t. What Archbishop Angelo Amato did say was he hoped the Catholic communicators he was addressing would stay away from the film, but he pointedly did not call for a world boycott of the movie.

Should he have? For some religious groups that’s been the strategy, and one some people have urged the Archdiocese of Vancouver to spearhead. Others, like Campus Crusade for Christ, are actually encouraging people to go and dialogue with others about the movie.

Still others have produced study guides, sponsored discussions, and targeted media with responses and op-ed pieces. Yet others are urging an "othercott" of the film by going to a different movie on opening night.

This archdiocese and this newspaper have chosen an educational approach, providing no shortage of articles and seminars in which the issues raised by the book and the movie are dissected. For some this is providing too much limelight for something that hardly merits the attention, yet DVC is of immense interest to much of our readership, and anytime there’s a book with religious themes in the hands of every second person at the airport, you’ve got a teaching moment being handed to you on a platter.

That’s what Da Vinci represents: an enormous teaching opportunity, not just for Opus Dei, which has responded brilliantly to the challenge, but to the overall Church.

Da Vinci can be seen as a diabolical attack, or as a simple example of ignorance run wild, but the best course of action is surely that response that best serves the Gospel.

Is it avoidance? Sometimes silence is called for, such as when a transgression is so small that drawing public attention to it would only fuel it.

At other times, an issue – an attack, a heresy, a blasphemy – becomes such a part of the cultural consciousness that to not address it would not only mean letting an assault on the Church go ignored, but also mean missing an opportunity to share our faith with those being exposed to the falsehood.

Defending the faith is important; promoting the faith even more so. Da Vinci represents an amazing opportunity to do both.