What women want DaVinci’s “sacred feminine”

May 23, 2006

The DaVinci Code.

We’ve all heard how this book and soon-to-be blockbuster movie inaccurately portrays the Catholic Church. Its inconsistent themes undermine the divinity of Christ. Its erroneous “facts” weaken the legitimacy of the Church. And, it’s attack on the Christian faith demoralizes many who seek to be a disciples of Jesus Christ. Along with this litany of deceptions, the book’s discussion of the “sacred feminine” is disheartening. What is the “sacred feminine?” Why does Brown repeatedly reference it throughout his story?
To catch everyone up to speed, author Dan Brown claims that “the Catholic Church has suppressed the truth about Jesus by covering up the fact that He married Mary Magdalene and meant to establish worship of ‘the sacred feminine,’ not a Church that worships Him as the Son of God.” 1 While cracking the Code, readers discover that Mary Magdalene is the true “holy Grail” because, as Jesus’ wife, she carried His bloodline in her womb.In understanding this plot, we begin to see Brown’s agenda unfold.

To start, Brown is capitalizing on the secular misunderstanding that the Church is a patriarchal institution that oppresses women. In The DaVinci Deception, Catholic apologists point out that “Brown sees the ‘sacred feminine’ as a kind of religious affirmative action program” that aims to put women in the same starting line-up as men at the Vatican. Brown aggravates the confusion regarding the role of women in theChurch by denying the truth about the complimentarity of men and women in order to pursue his own skewed notion of “real equality.”
In addition, Brown connects the worship of the “sacred feminine” to the practice of
paganism. During his bizarre quest for equality between the sexes, Brown promotes society’s biggest lie that we must worship creatures and not the Creator. He advances the notion that we should make God fit into our own imagination, forgetting that we are products of God’s imagination.
Once we recognize these two deceptive points about the “sacred feminine,” we can then contrast it with authentic femininity found within the Church.
First of all, the Church refers to herself in the feminine form. The Church is our Mother.

She is the Bride of Christ. Her femininity comes from her willingness to receive the love of God and bear it forth for the world to see. This feminine receptivity is something to be prized. Both men and women are called to imitate the Church’s receptivity to God’s love.

We can also look at the Church’s devotion to Mary as proof of her appreciation for the feminine. Mary too is our Mother and Mirror of the Church. She is the Queen of heaven and earth. Mary models perfect obedience, exudes the feminine genius, and is an image of holiness for all of her children.
Finally, the Church honors the feminine by recognizing the numerous female saints found throughout Church history, most especially Mary Magdalene! The Church sees her as one of the greatest female saints in Catholic tradition. Originally possessed by seven demons, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as one of the individuals most tormented by sin.

With sincere repentance and God’s grace, she experiences a profound conversion and remains faithful to Christ up until His death on the Cross. The Church even refers to Mary Magdalene as the “apostle to the apostles” since she was the first to see the resurrected Christ and take the good news to the others.
As we can see, there is no need to re-create some false feminine ideal like the “sacred feminine” when the Catholic Church has valued femininity since her inception. Readers beware that the “sacred feminine” is a new age attempt to manipulate the authentic feminine tradition of the Church and re-erect it in terms of a power struggle between the sexes.

1 Shea, Mark and Edward Sri. The DaVinci Deception, p. 5.