Da Vinci Code: Jesus was just an ordinary man.
Truth: Jesus said He was God and proved it with dozens of miracles. He changed water into wine; cured the sick, the lame, the blind, and the deaf; cast out demons; brought three people back to life; and rose from the dead himself. Only an “extraordinary Christ who did extraordinary things,” said historian Paul Johnson, can explain the rise of Christianity during three centuries of persecution under the Roman Empire.
Da Vinci Code: Jesus' miracles were only “religious allegory” designed to help “millions of people cope and be better people”
Truth: If Jesus' dozens of spectacular miracles were only “religious allegory,” why were His Apostles and disciples so willing to suffer persecution and horrible deaths for their belief that His miracles were real and proved that He was God? People don't shed their blood for allegorical or symbolic expressions of divinity, but only for the real thing. And bear in mind that even Jesus' enemies did not deny the reality of His miracles. They could not deny what they saw with their own eyes, e.g., the raising of Lazarus from the dead, so they denounced Jesus for performing some of His miracles on the Sabbath.
Da Vinci Code: No one knew Jesus was God until the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.
Truth: Jesus is described as God or as God's Son more than 100 times in the New Testament. For example, when the Apostle Thomas was invited by Jesus after the Resurrection to put his fingers into Christ's wounds, Thomas fell to his knees and said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). And St. Peter, in his Pentecost sermon that led 3,000 listeners to ask for Baptism, said: “Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36).
Furthermore, in A.D. 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch referred to “our God, Jesus Christ.” In A.D. 150, St. Justin Martyr said that Jesus was “God, Son of the only, unbegotten, unutterable God.” In A.D. 177, St. Irenaeus called Jesus “true man” and “true God.” Not long after that, St. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215) said that Jesus is “quite evidently true God.” These statements came long before the Council of Nicaea.
Da Vinci Code: The bishops at the Council of Nicaea decided by “a relatively close vote” that Jesus was God.
Truth: Responding to the Arian heresy that denied the divinity of Christ, the bishops at the Council of Nicaea already knew Jesus was God and voted 218 to 2 (that's close?) to affirm that He was true God and equal to the Father. They approved the Nicene Creed we say every Sunday at Mass, that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father.”
Dan Brown's scholarship is really quite a fraud. / He even tries to tell us that Jesus isn't God. / Dan Brown's scholarship is really quite a fraud. / His lies go marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah / His sense of history is peculiar.
Glory, glory, hallelujah, His lies go marching on.

Da Vinci Code: That must be Mary Magdalene sitting next to Jesus in Leonardo Da Vinci's painting of “The Last Supper” because the person has long hair, no beard, and feminine features.
Truth: No, that's John the Apostle sitting next to Jesus, not Mary Magdalene. Leonardo explained in his Treatise on Painting that he painted people according to their age and status. Since John was the youngest Apostle and a favorite disciple of Jesus, Leonardo painted him as youthful, long-haired, and clean-shaven.
Da Vinci Code: That Leonardo was part of a secret conspiracy is shown by his painting of the “Mona Lisa” because when you shift the letters around, Mona becomes the pagan god Amon and Lisa the pagan goddess Isis.
Truth: Mona is a shortened version of Madonna, which means “My Lady.” Lisa was the wife of an Italian businessman, and Leonardo did the painting for him and called it “La Gioconda,” not “Mona Lisa,” which means “My Lady Lisa.”
Da Vinci Code: The Roman Emperor Constantine shifted the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday because that was the day that pagans worshipped the sun, and that's why we observe Sunday as the Sabbath.
Truth: In A.D. 321, Constantine did make Sunday a day of rest in the Roman Empire, but the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday nearly 300 years before Constantine (cf. Acts of the Apostles 20:7) because that was the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.
Da Vinci Code: Constantine created a “new Vatican power base” in the fourth century.
Truth: The Vatican was swampland in the fourth century and did not become the official residence of the Pope until a thousand years later.
Da Vinci Code: Constantine assembled the Bible and burned all those “gospels” that showed Jesus wasn't God.
Truth: The Bible was assembled by the Catholic Church about 150 years before Constantine and included only those Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that were written by persons who either knew Jesus (Matthew and John) or by persons who had talked with those who knew Jesus (Mark and Luke). That these four authors spoke the truth is proved by their willingness to give up their lives for what they wrote about Christ.
Da Vinci Code: Some of the gospels that Constantine tried to destroy were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 in a cave in the Judean desert.
Truth: There are no Gospels (none!) among the more than 800 scrolls found near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.
Da Vinci Code: The Dead Sea Scrolls are the “earliest Christian records” we have.
Truth: The Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish records, not Christian records. They were compiled by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who lived near the Dead Sea from about 200 B.C. to 100 A.D.
Catholic Replies (5/18/06)

 

Da Vinci Code: Jesus made Mary Magdalene, not St. Peter, the first head of His Church.
Truth: The reason why the Da Vinci Code tries to discredit the four true Gospels is because Matthew reports that Jesus changed Simon's name to Peter and told him: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19). It is Peter, not Magdalene, who is recognized as the head of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles, which is the history of the first 30 or so years of the Catholic Church and which is never mentioned in The Da Vinci Code.
Da Vinci Code: Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a child.
Truth: There is no evidence anywhere, not even in the phony “gospels” promoted by those who believe this falsehood, that Jesus and Magdalene were married. The Da Vinci Code cites as evidence the following passage from the bogus Gospel of Philip: “And the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth.” Not only does this say nothing about marriage, but here is how the passage appears in the original manuscript, which has many holes in it: “... the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [...] loved her more than [...] the disciples, and used to kiss her [...] on her [...].” Fill in the blanks any way you want, but Jesus and Magdalene weren't married.
Dan Brown says that Magdalene was really Jesus' wife. / Though there is no evidence of their married life. / Dan Brown says that Magdalene was really Jesus' wife. / His lies go marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah, / His sense of history is peculiar.
Glory, glory, hallelujah, His lies go marching on.
Da Vinci Code: The Catholic Church was so afraid of the power of Magdalene that it outlawed speaking her name.
Truth: Mary Magdalene is mentioned a dozen times in the four Gospels. She was the first person to see Jesus after He rose from the dead. She is one of the most famous saints in the Catholic Church and has many churches named after her. Her feast day has been celebrated on July 22nd ever since the eighth century. Does that sound like outlawing the mention of her name?
Da Vinci Code: Pope Clement V burned to death hundreds of Knights Templar and tossed their ashes into the Tiber River in Rome.
Truth: That would have been difficult for Pope Clement V to do since he spent his entire papacy (1305-1314) in Avignon, France, and never set foot in Rome.
Da Vinci Code: Opus Dei is “a deeply devout Catholic sect” that engages in “brainwashing, coercion, and corporal mortification” and has monks to carry out its dirty deeds.
Truth: Opus Dei does not have monks. It is not a sect but rather an association of 2,000 priests and 80,000 lay people that was founded in 1928 by St. Josemaria Escriva to help lay people live out their call to holiness in the workaday world. Whatever mortifications some of its members may inflict on themselves for spiritual reasons don't come close to the punishments that, for example, marathon runners and Olympic athletes inflict on their bodies when preparing for an event.
Da Vinci Code: Dan Brown said on his “FACT” page at the beginning of the book that “the Priory of Sion – a European secret society founded in 1099 – is a real organization” and that Leonardo da Vinci was one of its “grand masters.”
Truth: It is true that there was a Priory of Sion founded in 1099. However, it was not a secret society but rather a religious order that was established to serve St. Mary's Church in Jerusalem. When the Muslims reconquered Jerusalem and destroyed St. Mary's Church in 1217, the priests of the Priory fled to Italy and served there for 400 years, when the last members of the Priory became Jesuits and the order ceased to exist. There is no evidence that Leonardo da Vinci or any other famous person was ever connected with the Priory of Sion. And by the way, the head of a priory is a prior, not a grand master.
The latest manifestation of the Priory of Sion turns out to be a hoax invented in 1956 by a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard. He planted false documents in French libraries to propagate the myth that he was a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. His fake society and his fake list of famous members were exposed in a BBC television documentary in 1996, seven years before the publication of The Da Vinci Code. How did “brilliant researcher” Dan Brown miss that?
Da Vinci Code Defenders: Why get upset about this? It's only fiction.
Truth: Fiction can have a powerful influence on the views of people who are not well-informed about the subject matter of a book or film. For example, Jaws was only fiction, but the killing spree by the fictional great white shark kept some people from going into the ocean. Furthermore, Brown insists that everything in the book, except the characters and the plot, is “historical fact,” which leads people to believe what his characters say about Jesus and the Catholic Church.
Much of the discussion surrounding the book has not been about the plot or the characters, but rather about whether Jesus was married to Magdalene and whether the Catholic Church has tried to kill everyone who might expose their alleged marriage and Magdalene's alleged leadership role in the early Church.
Rather than see The Da Vinci Code as a problem, however, Catholics should use this opportunity to let people know who Jesus really is, namely, the God-man who died for our sins, rose from the dead, and is with us always, until the end of the world, in His Church and in the Holy Eucharist.
Suggested Resources for Additional Information:
De-Coding Da Vinci by Amy Welborn
The Da Vinci Deception by Mark Shea and Edward Sri
The Da Vinci Hoax by Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel