Nun says Da Vinci filming ‘a desecration’

A CATHOLIC nun said yesterday she staged a 12-hour protest against filming of controversial best-seller The Da Vinci Code at Lincoln Cathedral because it was heretical.

Sister Mary Michael, 61, also said the cathedral committed the sin of simony - conducting financial transactions involving spiritual goods - by taking €150,00 in ‘donations’ from the film company.

“The church should not be accepting money for something that is not a true story. They should be praying more, and then the money would come in.”

She said she believed the book by Dan Brown contained a heresy: “To a believer, any believer, what is happening is blasphemous.”

The nun knelt in prayer for 12 hours outside the building where scenes for the blockbuster starring Tom Hanks are being shot.

Asked if she thought the people making the film would care about her protest, she said: “I don’t suppose they do, but that doesn’t matter tuppence to me. It matters to me what God thinks, not what the film crew think.

“When I face Almighty God, at my final judgement, as we all will, I can say, I did try my best, I did try my best to protest.”

Sister Mary, a former Discalced Carmelite who now belongs to Our Lady’s Community of Peace and Mercy in Lincoln, said a storyline that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that she bore him a child was based on a gnostic heresy she first became aware of 50 years ago.

“It is an old error, derived from the mystery faiths of the east. It is not a new story,” she said.

Dean of the Cathedral Very Rev Alec Knight and the cathedral chapter are said to have agreed to let filming take place after the film’s producers made a €150,000 donation.

Sister Mary began her protest at 5am.

“It was cold and dark. I was outside the cathedral, facing towards the altar, and the ground was very hard.

“I prepared myself by going on a three-day St Patrick’s Purgatory pilgrimage in Ireland earlier this month.”

The Donegal pilgrimage involves privation, lack of sleep and exercise.

“It helped me make my protest, which consisted of praying for an hour or an hour and a half, then walking around the cathedral, then praying for another hour, until 5pm.”

The dean said the book was described as blasphemous because it argues that Jesus’ humanity included an element of sexuality.

“My view is that the book isn’t blasphemous, it doesn’t denigrate God in any way, but it is speculative, far fetched and heretical. It has clearly touched the public imagination, and the church needs to open up a debate about it rather than throw one’s hands up and walk away from it.”

Sister Mary said she agreed with the dean that the book had publicised the debate within the church.

“I believe he is sitting on the fence with this arrangement.

“By all means have the debate but not have this thing taking place in the cathedral.

“It is desecration.”