What’s Missing from The Da Vinci Code

By Monsignor Francis J. Maniscalco

The Da Vinci Code has gotten lot of attention because of its hero championing the “sacred feminine” and a return to paganism as the religion of nature with its supposedly healthier view of sexuality. A modern celebration of a fertility rite is an important element in the book. Needless to say the Church is portrayed as snuffing out these “healthy” tendencies.

In its disparaging of the Church for suppressing the “sacred feminine” and the sense of the natural good of sex, Catholics would find missing from the novel at least two aspects of our faith which contradict its thesis.

I do not recall the author ever mentioning Mary, the Mother of the Lord. How strange! There is no greater exaltation of the feminine than the Blessed Mother. Faith-filled maiden who responded to an extraordinary request with the words, “May it be done to me according to your word (Lk 1.38),” when she could have only partially understood all that was being asked of her. A woman of powerful prayer in whose “Magnificat” the words, “He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly (Lk 1.52),” are said to have caused at least one medieval monarch to tremble as he prayed them. Mother, wife, widow, witness to her own child’s death, mother, by her son’s dying wish, to his disciples as well, comforting presence with his disciples as they awaited and then received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, honored by the Church with the daring title, “Mother of God.”

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