Church handled 'Da Vinci' well, says
UDM prof
Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published June 2, 2006
Detroit — There were no excommunications or top-down, Church-wide boycotts to oppose "The Da Vinci Code," the movie now playing that bleeds spurious fact into malicious fiction to distort the legacy of Jesus Christ.
With a ready-made audience owing to huge sales of the novel of the same name, not to mention copious advance publicity, the movie had one of the strongest openings box offices around the globe have ever seen.
But according to University of Detroit Mercy marketing professor Michael Bernacchi, such a tempered response from the Church was exactly what the situation called for.
 'Da Vinci' resources
Catholic and other Christian groups have produced resources to counter false claims made in "The Da Vinci Code." Here are a few:
• www.opusdei.us is the official U.S. Web site of Opus Dei, and gives the institution's response to false claims made about it in "The Da Vinci Code."
• The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has posted an open letter to the film's director, Ron Howard, on its Web site, www.catholicleague.org.
• CTND will air Cardinal Adam Maida's "Dialogue" program discussing "The Da Vinci Code" at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, June 2, and 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 3. It will air a documentary, "Jesus Decoded," as a rebuttal to the fiction movie at 1 p.m. on June 2 and 8:30 p.m. on June 3.
| "The Church as a formal, institutional body could not have handled it any better," Bernacchi said after the movie's first week in theatres. "I think they're at the top of their game."
The movie – which was rated as "morally offensive" by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – has been seen by millions and made more than $77 million in its first weekend, according to movie industry Web site BoxOfficeMojo.com.
"The Da Vinci Code" is centered on a "religious symbologist," played by Tom Hanks, uncovering a Church-facilitated conspiracy to hide the "fact" that Christ had children by St. Mary Magdalene, resulting in a continuous bloodline that has survived to the present day.
A highly touted adaptation of a best-selling novel by author Dan Brown, the movie got off to a rocky start at the popular Cannes Film Festival in France, where it was jeered by some critics, but that was because of its artistic execution rather than its anti-Christian content. Locally, The Detroit News carried a review in its May 18 edition boldly headlined "'The Da Vinci' dud" and calling the film a "total snore."
But despite the bad press, BoxOfficeMojo.com reports that the movie had the second-largest opening among pictures geared for adults, trailing only Mel Gibson's 2004 movie, "The Passion of the Christ" – ironically considered by many the most pro-Christian film to hit theatres.
Still, Bernacchi said, if the pope had spoken strongly against "The Da Vinci Code" or had the Vatican pleaded with Catholics to boycott the film, it might have prompted more people to see it.
"Any time you pronounce you're against anything, inevitably that has some impact on the folks who are on the edges," he said.
As it is, Catholics and other Christians here and there have organized opposition to the movie, including some prelates, pastors, Catholic television and radio hosts, and especially the personal prelature Opus Dei, which was grossly mischaracterized in Brown's novel and the subsequent film.
For example, Opus Dei formally requested a disclaimer notifying the audiences that the movie is, indeed, fiction. Also, Church of England officials in London banned the movie's producers from filming scenes in Westminster Abbey.
In his weekly newsletter, "Under The Microscope," Bernacchi wrote of the film, "We think that the Catholic Church has taken the correct approach in its counter-marketing strategy. There have been spurts and sputters and pockets and pieces of Code resistance but 'all in all' there has been no real beach-head, no singular Normandy-type frontal and continuous assault on the 'enemy.'"
So why the smashingly profitable start for "The Da Vinci Code?"
Bernacchi said vocal opposition to the film did help make it more popular – but it didn't help too much. Brown's fiction already was popular.
"Inevitably, it probably helped the box office a little bit – but there's very little box office that needed help," Bernacchi said. "The fact remains that 60 million books were sold."
A USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,013 adults, however, indicates that most who see "The Da Vinci Code" don't plan on letting it shape their religious perspective. Most adults polled – 72 percent – said they see such work as entertainment rather than commentary on religion. Seventy-two percent also said a movie wouldn't affect their religious beliefs.
In an episode of Cardinal Adam Maida's talk show, "Dialogue," aired on Catholic Television Network of Detroit, the cardinal urged Catholics to adhere to the truth of Christ.
"In many ways, this is a good opportunity for us to catechize, to evangelize, to explain," Cardinal Maida said. "These questions brought up in the novel have been with us for 2,000 years. What we need to understand is that… in the end… these are matters of faith, not fiction… and faith is a gift given to those who can see Jesus as the Son of God. That's our reality."
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