Vatican attacks Harry Potter
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Thursday January 17, 2008 13:07
by + "ora pro nobis"
This week's Vatican Observatory newspaper has fielded two articles on Harry Potter explaining to whomever bothers that the popular kids' series of novels & movies is really doing what the mad sicko fundamentalist Americans already said it is. Yep. Sending your kids to Satan.
....."J.K. Rowling's successful character Harry Potter is the wrong model of a hero, says the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano in its Monday-Tuesday edition. In an article signed by Edoardo Rialti, L'Osservatore says that many have tried to establish a parallel between Rowling's main character and "the great fantasy masterpieces of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Clive Staples Lewis, the Christian authors of the most beloved fables of the 20th Century............"
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The author recalls Tolkien's essays about fables, in which he says that "fables can depart from the physical world and the universe created, but not from the moral order: we can imagine a universe illuminated by a green sun, but we cannot bulk to the temptation of presenting as positive a reality in which the moral and spiritual structure are inverted or confused, a world in which evil is good."
"And this is exactly what happens in Harry Potter," L'Osservatore says. "Despite several positive values that can be found in the story, at the foundations of this tale is the proposal that of witchcraft as positive, the violent manipulation of things and people thanks to the knowledge of the occult, an advantage of a select few: the ends justify the means because the knowledgeable, the chosen ones, the intellectuals know how to control the dark powers and turn them into good." "This” –the article continues- “is a grave and deep lie, because it is the old Gnostic temptation of confusing salvation and truth with a secret knowledge." L'Osservatore admits that Harry Potter is "rich in Christian values," for example, "he is an industrious and scientific magician." "But the main characters of the great fables never become magicians, and the seductive power of magic has always had grave and destructive consequences: the stories of Tolkien and Lewis describe the rejection of magic and power, not of a certain magic and a certain power, but of power and magic as such."
Therefore, the author of the article argues, "There is nothing more antithetical to Harry Potter than Tolkien's young Frodo or Lewis' Pevensie siblings........."
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=11441
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This of course isn't new for JK Rowling. Attacks on her work have been sufficient to ensure a whole wikipedia entry : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_opposition_to_th...eries She's been accused of encouraging witchcraft, homosexuality & teenage snogging before now. But nobody had yet ratcheted the attacks up to the level of G-n-o-s-t-i-c H-e-r-e-s-y Now as some readers might have noticed we're all off on an "anti-clerical" buzz at the moment in Europe. So I'd suggest the excommunicate yourself the canon law way forms should be sent to every person on "Facebook" who professes an interest in the Harry Potter universe.
In fairness RC criticism of the series isn't new. One of their stalwart writers Michael O'Brien has published no less than ten essays no the topic building on the success of his very popular Catholic family publication "A Landscape With Dragons: the Battle for your Child's Mind". He's quite a professional when it comes to telling parents they've sent their kids to Satan. Here's his very thought provoking essay "Harry Potter and “the Death of God”" - & there was I thinking that was Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Of course it's not all bad news. The general impression one gets this week watching fascist HQ which is Rome under Ratzinger is that JRR Tolkien is OK - got that? Gandalf & Frodo are cool. Lewis Carroll (suspected paedophile) is also very dandy. Sooner or later they'll get to MP3's.