Let me state it upfront. I am against banning Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, or the film based on it. I am puzzled by the hysterical media hype over it. Perhaps this tells more about ourselves than about the work. We do not seem to have outgrown the inability to distinguish reel life from real life. But the Church, especially the Catholic Church, has reasons to feel aggrieved. The Da Vinci Code is a poorly veiled challenge to the Church. It also questions an important aspect of the scriptural image of Jesus who, according to Brown, had a relationship with Mary Magdalene and sired a child by her, establishing a clandestine royal lineage of which Sophie, in the film, is the last remnant.

This is complemented by the insinuation that Jesus was only a human being, with no pretension to divinity, which eventuates into the allegation that the church suppressed the truth about Jesus’s relationship with Mary Magdalene and established itself on a willful lie. This is incendiary stuff! But, as a Christian priest and theologian, I would not advocate banning the film for several reasons. First, I must have faith in truth. The faith that truth, and not untruth, will prevail is an article of faith that Christianity shares with Hinduism. Jesus said: “I am the truth”. To relate to him is to come under the obligation to seek the truth. Basic to this is confidence in truth, proved by tolerance towards the flights of fantasy that those who seek the truth erroneously may evolve. It is a spiritual offence to suppress the quest for truth and nothing demonises this urge more than dogmatism about truth. But the tolerance that honours truth insists on the distinction between truths and myths, between research and fantasy masquerading as research.

... contd.