Da Da Vinci Hype

by tristero

There’s a a couple of interesting things in this shameless New Yorker puff piece for a Hollywood film that probably cost more to make and market than the 10 year income of all the residents of Darfur combined.* Let’s start with a strange sin of omission.

Nowhere in this article does it mention the genuinely troubling ties between Opus Dei and the Scalia family or other American rightwing theocrats who have more influence in the American government than they should.

The other is a discussion of the mortification practices enjoyed…oh, I’m sorry, I meant employed… by Opus Dei members. Many of the Opus folks wear a barbed rope called a celice around one of their thighs for two hours a day, and also regularly beat themselves with a knotted rope.

This is true, ladies and gentlemen, they whip themselves, just like in that parody of a medieval procession in a Monty Python movie, except in Opus Dei, they do it for real. Dan Brown – who, by comparison, makes John Grisham look like the American Flaubert – doesn’t have enough interest in his characters to come up with something like that.

Now if the thought that a justice of the Supreme Court in 2006 might be flagellating himself in the name of his religious belief** makes you not a little nauseous, then, well, I’ll let the article explain it:

[Opus Dei member Father William Stetson] and others frequently point out that corporal mortification, which may seem a throwback to medieval mysticism, was not uncommon even among recent exemplars of spiritual piety. Mother Teresa of Calcutta wore a cilice and used the discipline, telling her Sisters, ‘‘If I am sick, I take five strokes. I must feel its need in order to share in the Passion of Christ and the sufferings of our poor.”

Y’see? If Mother Teresa did it, then it’s perfectly ok.

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*But looked at another way, the film certainly cost less than 24 hours of shocknawe in Iraq, so we can think of Da Vinci Code as mere bargain basement entertainment by Bush’s standards.

**Surely someone in comments will describe the rationales behind the medieval practice of mortifications of the flesh, writing in a dispassionate voice that implicitly urges tolerance for religious practices that seem fucking sick to normal people living in the early 21st Century – and in the most technologically advanced society on the planet to boot. In response, I’d like to point to my dear friend, Ms. Joan of Arc, born 1412, who to the best of my knowledge never beat herself, and had a taste, if not a flair, for clothes that were both practical and very fashionable. She wouldn’t be caught dead in anything like a celice. She’d experienced enough real pain from her war wounds not to go out and seek it.

Finally, longtime readers of mine know that Joan speaks to me as directly as God speaks to the Wondrous Fisherman of Crawford. Therefore, I can personally assure you St. Joan of Arc thinks torturing yourself to get close to God is just about the stupidest thing anyone could do.

[UPDATE: Hat tip to commenter yam for the link to the celice jpg.]