In Good Company

Dan Brown must be making a fortune off of his novel The Da Vinci Code, the conspiracy theory book that attempts a revisionist history of the Catholic Church. A premise of the book is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that their bloodline exists to this day, carefully guarded by an esoteric group of the enlightened.

One of Mr. Brown's main sources is a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which I happened to read back in college. The book says that the bloodline of Jesus and the Magdalene exists today, and that this secret was guarded by such luminaries as the artist Leonardo Da Vinci and scientist Sir Isaac Newton, members of a secret society called The Priory of Sion. I must admit to being somewhat disturbed by that book, but providentially at the same time I ran across in my college's library a huge dusty multivolume collection of documents of the early Church. This was even more of a revelation for me than the Holy Blood -- many alternative Gospels, including Gnostic writings, Roman documents, and so forth, in scholarly and dispassionate volumes officially produced by the Catholic Church. Being at that time a Lutheran, knowing nothing but the Bible, this was a gold mine of early Christian history. But of greater importance I found out that ancient non-biblical writings of Christianity were not suppressed by the Church, nor were they preserved and protected by secret societies, but instead were a well-known part of the patrimony of Catholicism. The introductory paragraphs to the writings told something about their authenticity or correctness, but they still printed the works, heresy or not. I found that to be intellectually honest and refreshing. (I must add that I read parts of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica at that time and immediately gained tremendous respect for Catholicism -- although it took me twenty years to convert). Today, you can read many of these ancient documents online in the orthodox Catholic website www.newadvent.org. Dan Brown should reconsider his reliance on the Gnostic gospels, considering that they were preserved by the Vatican.

Back to Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Sadly for the authors, after the publication of this book it turns out that the secret society the Priory of Sion was a hoax. Not that this prevented them from coming out with another book on the same subject. One thing that I noticed was that the authors had initials after their names, kind of like members of Catholic religious orders. However, these initials showed Masonic membership. I didn't know what to make of it at the time, although much later I found out that many books that I later read on esoteric history, like the lost civilization of Atlantis, were also of Masonic authorship; in fact, that group seems to have a great fascination with alternative history. After watching a particularly annoying presentation of an alternative life of Jesus on PBS -- put out by the Jesus Seminar -- I did a little research and found out that many Seminar members had scholarly specializations in subjects such as Masonic ritual, Wicca, and other such non-Christian fields.

The Masons have a fascination with the Holy Grail, as does Dan Brown, but in Holy Blood and the Code, the Grail is not the Cup used by our Lord in the Institution of the Eucharist, but is instead Mary Magdalene, as the vessel containing the bloodline of Jesus. Mr. Brown's interesting take on the subject is a feminist reinterpretation of the Magdalene as a strong, independent goddess figure, who was oppressed by the chauvinistic Apostles.

Masonry is an easy target for outlandish conspiracy theories, but the 19th and 20th century Masonic revolutions in Spain, France, Mexico, Portugal, Italy, and other places killed huge numbers of Catholics and led to intense persecution and outlawing of the Faith. A comparison of bodycounts between Catholic abuses and these Masonic atrocities are illuminating.

But the Masons and Dan Brown are not the only folks attracted to the Magdalene Grail theory. In the mid-19th century, various strains of non-Catholic German Romanticism and Rationalism, fascinated by such diverse ideas as Darwinism and the occult revisionist history of the Knights Templars, led to the notion of a race of men, superior all other races, descended via the Magdalene Grail. This of course is the Aryan Race of Germany and other parts of Northern Europe; impurities in this bloodline from other degenerate races weakened this Master Race. And we all should know about what happened to the Nazis and Hitler, who actually implemented what this theory suggests, by starting an efficient eugenics program and who attempted to eradicate racial impurity by the force of the law and arms. By the way, feminist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, also embraced this program of racial purity: read the book Architects of the Culture of Death for more information.

More adherents of the Magdalene Grail theory can be found in Elohim City, a settlement associated with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. This group is nominally Christian, but they believe in the same pure bloodline of race descending from Mary Magdalene.

Dan Brown and his theories are in good company. His closest allies appear to be feminist academics, who support abortion on demand; and whose abortions kill millions every year in the name of the Sacred Feminine. This abortion mentality is leading to the even more deaths among the sick, depressed, and elderly, through doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Dan Brown and his fellow Grail theorists have a very bloody past and present. May God Forbid an even bloodier future.