It seems to have occurred to no one else so I'll stick my head out and say it....
The Da Vinci Code has provided many with support for their rejection of Scriptural and ecclesiastical authority. And what is the most viscerally powerful argument in The Da Vinci Code's arsenal?
Not the apocryphal gospels of Thomas and Mary (otherwise the book's title would have reflected them), but the idol piece by Leonardo Da Vinci known as "The Last Supper."
Had the church of Jesus Christ not embraced that idol for centuries, had we not reproduced it time and again, implicitly stamping it with Christianity's imprimatur, the presence of that girly disciple to Christ's right would never have amounted to a hill of beans.
Dan Brown was able to make a viscerally (if not logically) powerful argument for Mary Magdalene as Christ's premier disciple not simply because Da Vinci painted an idol, but because the church has embraced Da Vinci's idol for centuries.
The attempt to distinguish between liturgical and non-liturgical use of icons is a distinction without a difference. Sooner or later icons will enter worship. But the commandment is not simply not to worship icons. The commandment is not to make them.
