The 'Da Vinci Code' Movie Ban in Sri Lanka

All righty, I'm utterly, completely sick and tired of being asked this question which a lot of people seem to find some thrill in asking me. Therefore I will say what I think on the issue with a warning: do not bloody ask me what I think about this EVER again.

The Question: Was it right to ban the Da Vinci Code movie in SL?

First let me put this into context. The Catholics Bishop Conference, in its letter to the President said

"The movie attacks the very roots of Christian faith and hurts the sentiments of all Christians," and that “it matters greatly to us as it adversely affects the most sacred beliefs of our people when it levels the charge that the Catholic Church is essentially a vast network founded on maintaining the lie of Jesus' Divinity…"

They also said the film must be banned urgently because “the book version has caused confusion between fact and fiction. It is manipulative and is an odious, false, unjust and irreverent portrayal of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. It attacks the very roots of our Christian faith and hurts the religious sensibilities of all Christians."

So what the Catholics Birshops Conference is saying is basically that Christians would take the film to be fact instead of the fictional garbage that is so often released by Hollywood and they would assume that Dan Brown’s novel, on which the film is based, is actually a book of fact – akin to a gospel. This is a fictional book, AKIN to Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” and Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series.

Do the religious leaders of SL really believe that the SL Christian community is made up of complete duds who cannot tell the difference between gospel and fiction? I have many, many Christian friends who would not give up or change their faith because they read something otherwise in a book or saw it in a film. What it comes down to is, can you not trust your followers to keep their faith?

In fact, the Auxiliary Bishop Marius Peiris of Colombo, the secretary general of the Bishops' conference, told Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News) the film "depicts sheer blasphemy and outrageous interpretations of the Catholic faith…. [and said it was]an attempt by Hollywood to achieve ratings by using the Catholic Church."

The keyword here is “Hollywood.” Not BBC, not CNN, not even the Daily News (though the facts in that paper tends to relate more closely to what is a now a genre of writing known as “faction” – fiction based on a few facts..but that’s a different story altogether). There are very people who would take what Hollywood churns out to be the word of God - and those people who do, are not worth addressing in this time and space.

The most interesting statement on this issue, however, came from none other than the director of communications for the Colombo archdiocese, Father Sriyananda Fernando,when he told UCA News that "whenever the church is attacked by such sacrilegious books and films, it is up to the hierarchy to take the best possible action to protect their people {and on the issue of the film being allowed to be screened in Sri Lanka} it would have made the church an easy target of lies and deceit." All right that’s his opinion and I guess we must respect that.

The contention that banning the film in SL would stop the church from being made an easy target and the arguments of the Bishops Conference that the film would confuse the audience between fact and fiction not only underestimates the public’s level of intelligence, but more importantly their faith. But why I found the above statement by Father Fernando interesting (what I mean when I say interesting is that it made me laugh hard enough to fall off my chair) is this further statement from him. In regard to causing the curious to buy the book or watch the film on video, he said “we cannot stop people from reading the book or watching it on video disc. They must be mature enough to differentiate between fact and fiction," he said.

So only those buying the book or watching the film outside of the local cinema would need to use their maturity (not to mention intelligence and faith) to differentiate between fact and fiction?

The question often put to me at this stage of the argument is but what else could they do (other than banning the film) to make sure that those who MIGHT believe the film does not? It's a simple little concept called educating the public. They've made use of the media to express their reasons for banning to film - why not use the media (and more importantly churches) to emphasize the FICTIONAL quality and content of both the book and the film?

My final answer on this issue is merely this: if I were a Christian I would find it extremely insulting to think that the leaders of my religious faith think that my faith is so feeble and insubstantial that they feel they need to ban a fictional film to make sure I keep my faith.

Now, please don't ask me what I think on this matter again! Understand??

(Sorry this is so long!)