In Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1986 thriller The Name of the Rose, Sean Connery stars as a spirited and independent medieval Franciscan friar, William of Baskerville, investigating the deaths of monks in a remote Italian abbey. He is accompanied by a youthful novice named Adso, played by Christian Slater. They discover much devilment going on within the hallowed halls of the monastery, which is also a scriptorium for copying sacred texts and a library for storing them.
William, a sagacious scholar, was originally called to the monastery to take part in a debate on heresy but found himself called to ferret out "Satan's work." All of this is happening during the time of the Catholic Church's inquisitions, when skeptics and questioners were harassed, driven out or burned in the name of God.
One fascinating aspect of both the film and the novel, written by puzzle-master Umberto Eco, is the maze of stairs that is the heart of the monastery, connecting the various stacks where the books are stored but rarely distributed or read. Only a few librarians can navigate the stairs.
What a wonderful metaphor for religious and political institutions that use byzantine dogma to confine followers and confound outsiders. They are unholy bedfellows, aren't they?
Those of us who are serious and sane and trying to make sense of GOPer religio-politico plans and messages might find ourselves looking at a nonsensical web of half-baked concepts, fully baked falsehoods, circular reasoning, contradictory claims and hypocrisy. Venturing in is not for the faint-of-heart, and if we're not up to the challenge might find ourselves overwhelmed.
Those familiar with the film know how it ends -- the real culprits are revealed, the human devils are struck down and the structure built to sustain all of this deceit destroys itself, reduced to ash and rubble.
Amen.
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