Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea Diocese of Port Moresby

The Secret Is There Is No Secret
On "The Da Vinci Code"
By Bishop Peter Fox.

Best selling books are not always the best written.  ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown has been read by millions and led to the publication of many other books and, most recently, a film starring Tom Hanks.  ‘The Da Vinci Code’ is not brilliantly written although it is readable enough (I quite enjoyed it) so why has it sold so well?

 

I think it is because it has set into an entertaining form a theory, constructed by others less profitably, that a secret society called ‘The Order of the Priory of Sion’ had been protecting a secret for centuries.  This secret is supposed to be that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a daughter from whom the Royalty of Europe were descended.  It is nonsense of course but it made an interesting novel.

 

The truth is that ‘The Order of the Priory of Sion’ was invented by a man called Pierre Plantard on the 7^th May, 1956.  A man called Philippe De Chrisey made fake parchments that pretended to be proof of Plantard’s own descent from Jesus in Paris in the 1960s and got them deposited in the French National Library (The Bibliothque Nationale)  soon afterwards.  There is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus was married to anyone let alone Mary Magdalene and for all we know she might have been eighty when Jesus met her!

 

So there really is nothing for Christians to worry about and I am sure Mr. Brown appreciates the extra publicity his opponents are giving him.  Even this article has probably led to the sale of a few more copies for him. 

 

If ‘The Order of the Priory of Sion’, had really existed they would be out of work now.  Dan Brown has made their big ‘secret’ a best-seller. 

Yours sincerely,

Bishop Peter.