Meditation 493
It's not the book that's their problem
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Members of the English branch of Opus Dei commissioned a survey to determine the impact of The Da Vinci Code on the faith of English Catholics. This was before any of them had seen the movie.
Over a thousand English Catholics were surveyed and it was found that those Catholics who had read the book were twice as likely to believe that Jesus had fathered children than those who had not read the book. Consequently those who commissioned the survey concluded that The Da Vinci Code has undermined faith in the Roman Catholic Church and badly damaged its credibility.
But hold on!
30% of those Catholics who had not read the book believed that Jesus had fathered children, while 60% of those who read the book believed it.
30% is an astonshing number to hold a belief fundamentally contrary to Catholic doctrine.
Perhaps it can be argued that some of this 30% are influenced by the prevailing zeitgeist, but still, it is a significant number.
It strikes me that if this is the case, the faith of English Catholics and the credibility of their Church was already extremely weak. Or perhaps English Catholics are just amazingly credulous.
It is not the book that's the problem. The problem lies in the Catholic Church and its followers.