Back with Leonardo

Ok, so in my previous post I basically berated Dan Brown and his novel. I would like to take a step back here and talk about what is good about this thriller. Like it or not, Brown brings to the fore a much more important question that the veracity of the Bible or an old conspiracy theory. The most valuable issues he raises are: the place of women in the Church and the questioning of faith. I went to Focus on the Family for my answers regarding what the Christian right has to say about this (by Greg Hartman). It seems to me that the greatest message of all is "don't question anything."

I would like to point out that the writer of this article does not seem to have read the book very closely: "The Da Vinci Code belongs with the most lurid anti-Catholic tracts and comic books: Jesuit assassins; secret societies that pull governmental strings all over the world; a 2,000-year-old Vatican conspiracy to pervert the Bible." The assassin was in Opus Dei, there were no governmental strings being pulled, and, well, as for that last claim, I think it depends on where you're coming from. And to compare it to comic books? I have to say many comic books are of far greater literary value than The Da Vinci Code, but that's besides the point. It just seems like a cheap shot to me, completely unrelated to any part of the argument.

Why is it that some Christian groups are so threatened by the possibility that a woman may have been chosen to be the rock on which God's Church is built? It is a matter of fact that women greatly presided over the earliest masses. Those masses were held in living rooms and family rooms, traditionally the realm of the feminine, and not in public temples since the religion was illegal. Women are the rock on which the Church was built until Constantine made it legal, so men could once again lay claim over leadership since the religion was now in the public realm. This, the public versus the domestic, is where the debate for female empowerment began (read Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women). Women were placed in the domestic realm and men in the public. When Christianity moved to the public realm, female leadership was relinquished in favor of men, who (at the time) were more equipped to lead in the public realm (this is all based on the idea that women were called the weaker sex because, given their situation at the time, this was true). Unfortunately, this antiquated idea still persists in much of the Christian church today.

There really seems to be nothing opposable in a female priest. Women are just as equipped as men to understand theology and preach to their congregations. Furthermore, the male priesthood is a matter of discipline and not a matter of dogma. It is traditional to have male priests, and nothing more. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that a woman is forbidden to lead a congregation (if you can find a verse that says a woman is incapable of understanding the will of God, or is unable to communicate the message of Jesus, please, show it to me, and then I'll be convinced that the Bible was written by misogynists bent on keeping women out).

Even though reading The Da Vinci Code was somewhat of a painful experience, Dan Brown's incompetence as a writer aside, it raises questions that should challenge a Christian's faith. There is no other more rewarding experience than to have that faith challenged! If one never challenges her faith how will she ever know that it is solid and real? The idea that women deserve a greater role in church leadership is not one to be scoffed at, and needs to be taken seriously. If the idea that a woman may have been the rock of the church makes you double over with pain, then it's about time you dissected your faith instead of blindly following what generations of men have said about what you should believe.