According to CBS' “60 Minutes” a key aspect of Dan Brown's “The Da Vinci Code” is a hoax. That's right, the Priory Of Sion doesn't really exist, or at least it didn't exist before the middle of the 20th century. Why does this matter, you ask. After all, it's just a work of fiction. Yes, except that Brown begins the novel by positing the existence of the Priory back to the 11th century as a fact.
Alright, so it took 60 Minutes three years to catch onto something that all other sane people have known for decades. The story is still significant because 60 Minutes is an incorrigibly dishonest news program with strong secularist preferences, yet it debunks one of the central tenets of the anti-Christian The Da Vinci Code. If there is no Priory of Simon, most of the symbology that Brown recounts ad nauseum and that bolsters his book's credibility in the minds of the ignorant fail.
