Evil And The Da Vinci Code
Henry here. Dan brown weaves a scenario where the Historic Roman Catholic Church has maliciously, manipulatively, and cynically covered up the great secret that the Holy Grail is not the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper but the Holy bloodline resulting from his marriage to Mary Magdalena.
This cover-up, Brown asserts, would be, if true, a profound expression of the shadow of the R. C. Church. Lord Acton, one of the greatest students of church history, made the following comment about the church. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
There is no doubt that all of us and all of our great institutions, even the church, have a shadow. The better we are, the greater our shadow is. The greater the institution is, the larger is its shadow as well.
Despite the fact that his novel is fiction, Dan Brown may have done us a favor in pointing out some of the shadow of the church. Dr. C.G. Jung tells us that one of the great struggles which we all need to undertake is to admit to, integrate and learn to live with our shadow in an honest way, to accept the darker side of ourselves and our institutions, so that they don’t overwhelm us. Perhaps Brown and other mystery writers can help us in this integration.