Amy Welborn's Amazon Blog

Sorry for the radio silence here. Things are heating up - I have tons of speaking engagements from here until early June. Fortunately or unfortunately? I'm not sure.

I've been talking about DVC for two years now, and I've changed my talk a bit - at first I was all about the stupid mistakes in DVC, listing errors and corrections. I still do some of that, but my emphasis has shifted to addressing the assumptions and foundational problems with taking The Da Vinci Code seriously, examining what the popularity of this book means and says about its readers, and trying to look beyond this phenomenon.

There are innumerable problems with the Da Vinci Code, but one of the more distressing is how it has functioned as a massive distraction and detour away from quality.

People say to me, "I really appreciate a novel that deals seriously with religion and faith."

Really? Then why do you like The Da Vinci Code?

Because honestly, DVC doesn't deal with issues of faith and religion in any kind of profound way.  If that's what you want, there's no lack of great literature that really

and truly grapples with real issues: Why am I here? Is there a God? What are the consequences for my life and the world if God exists? If he

doesn't? What about suffering? What about death? What about it?

  Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) 

  Walker Percy: Love in the Ruins 

  Graham Greene: The End of the Affair , The Power and the Glory, and so on.

  Francoise Mauriac: Vipers' Tangle

 Paul Horgan Things As They Are 

And so on, and so on...truth is, the nexis of faith and literature is unbelievably fruitful. Shouldn't surprise anyone who knows anything about either.

And movies?

  Mission 

  The Apostle 

  The Decalogue (Complete Set)  

Just the tip of the iceburg - not as large an iceburg as the "Literature" one, but still...if it's faith and film you're after, you can do better than Hanks racing around after a Code planted by an organization that doesn't exist about a set of events that didn't happen.

One of the most lasting bits of damage that DVC has wrought, I think, is the diminishment of our sensibilities. The "faith issues" it claims to grapple with are a crude, cheap gimmick. It's diminished the way too many of its readers view history, religion and art, as, in regard to the latter, the DVC devotees swarm over Europe, novels firmly in hand, looking for clues for secrets that were never told, much less kept, blinded to the real beauty and mystery right in front of them.

One of the more frequent memes you hear thrown about in regard to this whole DVC business is, "Wow, it's great because, you know...it's got people talking about these issues. That's the important thing..that there's dialogue and conversation!"

Is it really?

If Paris Hilton clips her toenails on Jay Leno, and lots of us talk about it, does that make it worth talking about?

If I wrote a book proclaiming that Joan Crawford was the true heir to the British Crown, and we all sat around discussing the merits of the theory, in the end, would you think that "dialogue" was worth it?

Probably not, because it's precious time wasted "dialoguing" about matters that either are irrelevant or have no basis in reality.

Same with this.

Conversations about early Christianity, the nature of Jesus' identity and ministry, the role of Mary Magdalene in all that - are all excellent conversations to have.

As long as they're actually based on something that's within the realm of possibility.

The conversation that's been inspired by DVC and that's fixated on a purported marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene and Jesus' purported ministry as a bland, platitude-spouting wisdom teacher is certainly a conversation. But it's like a conversation about wood stove safety that's inspired by Hansel and Gretel. I mean - we can do better than this, folks.

One of the weirdest claims of The Da Vinci Code is that Christian history has been marked by a determination to demean and demonize Saint Mary Magdalene.

Oh, did I say Saint Mary Magdalene? Yes, I guess I did. Feastday: July 22.

Odd way to "demonize" someone - making her a saint and all that.

Well, let's move on and try to make sense of this. The story goes that in order to diministh MM's role in early Christianity, she was "made" into a prostitute and that's what became the central focus of Christian conversation about her: Whore!

Er, not quite. I'm not going to go into massive detail here, because, you see, I wrote a book about it. But just start by working through the illogic at the heart of this claim:

-"They" (whoever "they" are - another mystery) sought to minimize her role in the Christian story....so they forgot to take out that part about her discovery of the Empty Tomb? In all 4 gospels? Nice job!

-"They" spoke of Mary Magdalene as a sinful whore? Really? Have these folks even read any of the devotional material about Mary Magdalene produced during the Medieval and early Renaissance period? Obviously not. Her identity as a repentant sinner (historically problematic, yes, but not the subject of this post) was certainly central to the imagery and devotion - but the emphasis was on the repentant and forgiven part, and if you ever read the homilies and so on that were preached in her honor, or her hagiography, you find that she's not criticized - she's held up as a model for all Christians, male and female.

Again, "they" sure had a funny way of demonizing and marginalizing. Unprecedented, I'd say.

The United States Council of Catholic Bishops has a website up responding to common questions people have about DVC. I have an article on the website and it can be found here. 

(Another well-designed website has been put up to advertise a series of talks I'm giving in South Carolina the first week of April. Check it out, and stop by if you've a mind to! )

In addition, for those of you suspicious of anyone with any religious association at all critiquing DVC, you really need to go read Laura Miller's very thorough, to-the-point Salon article of a year or so ago: The Da Vinci Crock . So...is Salon part of the conspiracy, too???? Hmmm....

Over the next couple of months, I'm going to post quite a bit on The Da Vinci Code and responses to it. It's not because I especially want to - I'm working on a novel myself that I hope to get done before summer, so deconstructing DVC (that's my shorthand - get used to it!) and its impact is not my preferred activity. But I find that the questions keep coming and coming, so this is just one more opportunity to address them.

I'm going to begin by answering the #1 most frequently asked question about my own work. It goes like this:

Got it. Thanks.

I'm in 100% agreement with you actually. DVC is totally, throughly fiction. It's fully of fictional nuggets on every page - including nuggets that are presented as "fact." Isn't that interesting?

There are several points to be made here:

1) There are many on-the-record statements from Brown and his publisher, especially early on, to the effect that they were rather pleased to be able to present these "alternate" or "hidden" or "lost" historical ideas to a new audience.

2) The way in which the book was written leads a reader who may be ignorant of history to believe that DVC is, indeed, presenting credible historical material. There's that infamous "fact" page. There's a bibliography, briefly, in the novel, and more extensively on Brown's web page. The characters, especially Teabing, discuss issues like the purported marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene alluding to real texts (the Gnostic writings) and with statements like "It's in the historical record."

As I said, for someone who doesn't know any better, that sounds awfully authoritative.

3) A recent survey of Canadian readers found that of those who had read DVC, a third of them believed the historical assertions within the novel to be true.

Try this on for size: 

4) My own email box, as well as discussion boards on the Internet, show very clearly that a good proportion of people  - that 1/3 percentage in the Canadian survey sounds right to me - either believe the most preposterous theories outright or, at the very least, believe that they certainly "could be" true, and so what?

5) I've had numerous, startling experiences to point to how some people receive the material in DVC. I was at an exhibit once which had a small reproduction of Leonardo's Last Supper as part of a display. Two women stopped and looked at it. One said to the other, "You know that's Mary Magdalene at Jesus' side, right? Everyone knows that now" ...and they moved on.

Perhaps you don't care about truth. Perhaps you don't care that history is taken seriously, and that the great artistic achievements of someone like Leonardo are respected and valued for what they are, rather than squeezed into some whacko conspiracy theory. Well, too bad, then. But there are some of us out  here who do care. I was a teacher for 9 years,and you know that teachers are all about correcting mistakes, right?

5) Finally - and this is really, really important. I haven't gone out seeking to speak on DVC. I am invited, as are all of the other speakers who deal with this issue. I am invited and in a mid-sized Catholic parish,  600-800 people come to listen to me. No one forces them to. They are interested, they are curious and they have questions. They may not believe DVC outright, but it is presented in a manner that leaves questions in their minds, and for some, concerns. The work I do has happened because readers of DVC have asked questions about it, and those questions merit an answer, and especially more of an answer than "It's just fiction, idiot - get over it!"

Yeah, DVC is fiction. Please. Tell your friends. It's fiction.

My new book, De-Coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legends and Lies is available from Amazon - and from your local Catholic booksellers as well. (Hint, hint...)  

De-coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legend, And Lies 

I'll have more to say about this later, as well as a whole series of posts on The Da Vinci Code.

Once a follow-up to the Loyola Book of Saints was proposed, the question was...what should it be? Just more saints?

We didn't think that would work, and the suggestion was made to write more of a history - the high points of Christian history for this same, late-elementary, early-middle-school age group.

Sounded like a good idea until I tried to figure out how to write it. I couldn't even picture doing it in a way that wasn't boring and dry, given the type of book it was to be. If it were more graphics-heavy, yes...but 40 chapters or so running through Church history? I couldn't see it, and I have an MA in Church History, and revel in it. The problem wasn't just potential dryness - it was - how would a book like that be read? If it were a real history, it would have to be read from beginning to end, but what I needed was a book in which the chapters were more or less discrete, and could be read in any order.

So I finally came up with the idea of organizing the book according to the virtues - faith, hope, charity (the theological virtues) and then fortitude, temperance, prudence and justice (the cardinal virtues). Each section begins with a chapter on Jesus living out and teaching that particular virtue. The second chapter in each section takes a story from the early church, sometimes from Acts, sometimes later. The rest of the chapters skip all over the place.

(Here's the link to the Loyola Kids Book of Heroes, in case you're not already there as you read this) 

This gave me a chance to do history and celebrate figures and events I think young people should know about, but I wasn't limited to discussing canonized saints. So, I could tell the marvelous stories of American religious women and the frontier - stories that are outrageously ignored in the teaching of American history, even in Catholic schools. It ticks me off even thinking about it, when you consider what these women accomplished, and how much of whatever education, health care and charitable work that happened on the frontier in the 19th century only happened because courageous, strong Catholic sisters did it.

And...I could talk about Albert the Great, then spin off into medieval Christianity and science. I have a chapter on medieval mystery plays. Canonized saints play a part, but so do the (as yet) uncanonized like Matt Talbot  (in the temperance chapter, naturally), Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Dorothy Day .

I am so convinced of the importance of forming the faith of young people in a deeply historical context. Some people say it's important because we need to reinforce "Catholic identity." I think it goes deeper than labels. I believe in the Communion of Saints as a reality, not an ID badge. Children come to faith with all of the worries, questions, suffering and struggles we wish they didn't experience, but do. By forming this faith in the context of the worries, questions, suffering, struggles and ultimate triumph and hope of men, women and children of the past, we help them see that they are not alone. They are not the first to ask these hard questions, they are not the first to suffer loss, frustration and fear. It is the texture of life on earth, and the lives of these companions from the near and distant past provide essential witness: Jesus lives; Jesus comforts; Jesus listens; Jesus leads - and the fruit of following him is joy.

And knowing that, living that out?

That's what heroes do.

Pardon the radio silence (although if you read my other blog you know it's not been total. I'm talking over there) - over the past few weeks, I have been preparing for, taking, and recovering from a trip to Rome - my first. If you check over at the other place, as well as at my husband, Michael Dubruiel's blog, you'll find trip reports galore. We had a great, albeit exhausting time. Here's a page with photos - I'm adding to it slowly. 

The trip had its origins in a book proposal that a publisher thought was a great idea, but eventually turned down. Rats. but out of those conversations last fall emerged the conviction that now was the time to make this trip, even with little kids in tow - perhaps especially with little kids in tow.

And perhaps we'll get a book out of it yet...who knows!

Today, I taped a segment of a new podcast series created by Loyola Press - "Spirited Talk Today" . The interview should be posted later this week.

The focus of the interview, aside from my squawking 1-year old who has already learned the lesson "Mom's on the phone so I can tear stuff up" - was Catholic Woman's Book of Days, my most recent book for them.

The book was suggested by Loyola folks who noticed that among the scads of 365-day devotionals out there, none had been published specifically for Catholic women. So they asked, and I said sure.

Which seemed okay until I reached the 100-entry mark, and was feeling rather pleased with myself, and then realized with a sinking heart...265 to go....

But we made it! The entries are fairly brief, beginning with a Scripture passage, and continuing with an average 130 word reflection. Many of them are stories, some are simply questions or reflections. There are many challenges in writing a book like this:

1) Avoiding preachiness and platitudes. Just tell a story or pose a question...and let it speak for itself.

2) Allude to the liturgical year without committing to it. Since this had to have life beyond 2006, I had to write entries that evoked the liturgical time, but not too specifically. So, while December 25 is always Christmas, Advent begins on different days each year. But you're safe assuming December will be Advent, so it was okay to evoke Advent themes for those entries.

3) Not repeating oneself. Even though I thought I was extra-super careful, much to my chagrin, I wasn't. The editor was nice about it, of course, but it was kind of startling to see I'd repeated the use of Scripture verses more than a couple of times.

4) Making sure the book as a whole would be helpful to all women - not just married women with children. After all, this isn't a "Mother's Book of Days" or a "Married Woman's Book of Days." So no overload on the marriage or baby stories, although as children get older, it's easier to involve their stories because they tend to be more applicable to all of us.

So there you go. I hope those of you who have this find it a helpful starter to daily prayer.

Today, I'll tell you about the writing of The Loyola Kids' Book of Saints . It's not a pretty story, although it turns out well.

Loyola asked me to do this book in the fall of 1999. I signed the contract, which specified a delivery date of March 1. This was early fall, I was finishing up writing Prove It: Church , so, figuring in a little break, I decided I'd start writing the book on November 1, which would give me four months, and I could pace myself at doing one entry about every five days. (There would be about 40 saints' stories to tell.)

Well, November came, and with it...some holidays. And then it was December, with more holidays. And then, much to my surprise, it was mid-January, and I hadn't written a word. To put even more pressure on, I was preparing to move, so I was needing to get my house ready for sale...and I had one kid getting ready to graduate from high school, one about to get confirmed and one making her First Communion, all in the spring.

And I had now six weeks to write this book.

It was grueling. I had to do two entries every day, which is more than just putting words on paper. I was writing a book for a late elementary, early middle school range, so I had to pitch the voice just right, and most of all, make the book something that stood out from the rather crowded field of saints' books for children.

I find that once I have a structure and a voice established, I can write fairly easily. Coming up with the structure to this one was the hard part, and to give myself a bit more credit than I have so far, that's actually what I had spent some of that previous fall doing. I didn't want to organize it chronologically, either according to where the saints' feast days fell or according to their place in history. Not alphabetically. What would engage a reader? What would be different?

One day, this idea came to me of heading up sections with titles that began with "Saints are people who..." I started thinking of all of the qualities of saints that would be helpful for children to know. Saints are people who....help others. Who teach us to pray. Who love children. Who come from all over the world. Who are creative. Who are brave.

Some of the placements are trickier than others. For example, Although Miguel Pro could easily be put in the "brave" category, I decided to put him in the "creative" category because...he was. He wrote, he performed in plays in school, and after he was ordained and serving in Mexico, where Catholicism was oppressed, he used that creativity to disguise his doings, avoid the authorities, and serve the people.

And it happened. I had to do two entries a day. I'd sit down at my computer, close my eyes, and imagine I was telling the story of this saint to a group of children gathered in front of me. What aspect of the life could I draw out and apply to their lives today? What about this saint would be helpful to them right now?

Amazingly, the manuscript got turned in on time, the book was beautifully designed, and it's something I'm pleased with in every way.

But believe me, every time I'm tempted to procrastinate, I think back on the intensity of those weeks. Sometimes, it even works. Sometimes.