Harry Potter and the half-baked pope

July 23, 2005

Guest Post by Morbo

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans all over the land, I had a friendly postal worker knock on my door Saturday afternoon and hand me a box containing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My 11-year-old daughter grabbed the package, dashed upstairs to her room and was not seen for the rest of the day.

The next day, someone mentioned to me that Pope Benedict XVI had come out against poor old Harry. I found it hard to believe, and as it turns out the version I was told was somewhat garbled. Nevertheless, the claim is essentially true.

The Associated Press reported that the pope, back when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, criticized J.K. Rowling’s best-selling books in a letter sent to a writer who had penned an anti-Potter book.

According to the account, Benedict wrote that the Potter books “erode Christianity in the soul” of young people. In a March 7, 2003, letter to Gabriele Kuby, a German Roman Catholic sociologist who authored a book criticizing Rowling’s tomes, Ratzinger wrote, “It is good that you are throwing light on Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions that work imperceptibly, and because of that deeply, and erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly.”

Benedict later gave Kuby permission to cite his letter in promoting her book.

I hate to keep beating on Benedict and the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but if they’re going to act like morons I have no other choice.

I expect this kind of dumb behavior from the fundamentalist Protestants of the Religious Right. After all, these are the same people who believe SpongeBob SquarePants is gay. There is no hope for them. But the leadership of the Catholic Church can allegedly read and write. Given that, there’s no excuse for this.

The AP story noted that in her book, Harry Potter — Good or Evil, Kuby charged that the “Potter novels blur the boundaries between good and evil and impair young readers’ ability to distinguish between the two. She also asserts that they glorify the world of witches and magicians at the expense of the human world.”

Oh, please. At least half of all children’s literature is about witches, giants, ogres, elves, trolls, unicorns, talking animals and other magical creatures. Have these people never read a Roald Dahl novel? Or Dr. Seuss for that matter? (A talking cat in a top hat and Thing One and Thing Two seem awfully unbiblical to me.)

Rowling’s idea isn’t even original. In 1974, Jill Murphy published The Worst Witch, a novel about girls training to be witches at “Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches.” Several sequels followed.

My point here is not to accuse Rowling of plagiarism, but merely to note that her theme is nothing new. Children love stories about magic and fantastic creatures, and the idea of a scorned, picked-upon kid besting his tormenters through magic has obvious universal appeal. That’s why there are so many books like that out there. If I had to guess, I’d say it all started with Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Are we supposed to toss them too?

I have to admit, I’ve never read a Potter book all the way through. I’m much too big of a literature snob to read genre fiction. But as I noted, my daughter is a fan, and I’ve read portions of each one to her. I know the basic outline of the story and have seen bits and pieces of the movies.

And guess what, it’s a tale as old as time. Far from condoning evil, the Potter books make it clear that at the end of the day, bad deeds will be punished. It’s a simple morality play: Harry and his friends and supporters are good. Voldemort and his backers are evil. Evil may score some wins along the way, but it won’t triumph in the end. In the final book, Harry and Voldemort will meet and fight. Does anyone seriously think Harry is going to be seduced by the dark side or that Voldemort is going to win their cataclysmic showdown? These books don’t confuse good and evil in anyone’s mind. The lines are clear.

The pope needs to get a grip. Harry is no threat to the faith. I will concede that reading books can be a threat to faith — but it has to be the right kind of books. That’s not the Potter books.

Christians these days — of all stripes — feel under threat and siege. They understand society is changing, and they know in their hearts of hearts that they’re powerless to do anything about it.

Paranoia will destroy them in the long run.

  • I’ve read 3-1/2 of the Potter books, and since Book 6 has arrived I’ve been *persuaded* by the young fans in my household to pick up where I left off in Book Four.

    I’ve also long been puzzled by the so-called “Christian” objection to Potter–partly for reasons you’ve identified–I see no difference between Potter and countless children’s stories. How about the Wizard of Oz, for example?

    I’ve also long been puzzled by what’s so “Christian” about Narnia. I read six of the seven Narnia books. The difference between Narnia and Potter, so far as I can tell, is that in Narnia the heroic children protagonists are selected really randomly to fight the good fight, and at critical moments are aided by the intercession of “divine” power, i.e., the Lion (as the protagonists in Oz are rescued by the Good Witch putting them to sleep in the poppy fields). Also there is absolutely no explanation for evil, i.e., the White Witch. In contrast, in Potter, while Harry’s selection to fight the good fight is a matter largely of mystery, Hermoine and Ron select themselves, and when they succeed they succeed by going to the library, by using their brains, by figuring things out. And while Voldemort’s motivations are not clearly defined, they are clearly about power, and the desire to rule the world.

    I understand C.S. Lewis was a conservative Christian, and there’s lots of biblical allegory in Narnia, but hardly any spirituality, as contrasted for example with Skellig, a (great) children’s book explicitly about the mystery of God, or even, arguably, The Eye the Ear and the Arm.

    O.K., I know this is a political blog, not a children’s literature blog, so I’ll stop here.

  • Since we’re on the subject of Harry Potter, does anyone remember the name of the woman from Florida who claimed that she was in the same room as a Harry Potter book and an evil spirit came out of the book and possessed her. I think that it might be Katherine Harris but if it’s not her it’s definitely a Republican in the Bush adminstration.

  • I read ‘The Half Blood Prince’ on the plane Saturday and Sunday last week (I don’t sleep on planes). Rowling does not really advance her ‘theories’ of good and evil in this book, but she does give us more insight into Voldomort’s motivations.

    I think Rowling’s take on good and evil are best described in ‘The Goblet of Fire’ and ‘The Order of the Phoenix’. In these, she shows how the Ministry of Magic, supposedly the side of Good, is full of questionable characters not motivated by the noblest of intentions (Fudge, for instance). Even James Potter, Harry’s dad, is shown to have been quite a self-centered and egotistical jerk.

    Josef Cardinal Ratzinger may have a point about the books ‘eroding’ christianity, or at least Catholicism. The Catholic Church wants to teach children what is good and evil, not provide children the tools to make that determination themselves. One of the subtle points the director of the first movie makes is Harry’s ability to recognize ‘the wrong sort’ when Draco Malfoy offers his hand on the steps outside the main hall.

    C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles pretty much demonstrate that Fantasy can be an acceptable for of children’s literature. Lewis, of course, uses the stories to write about sin and redemption, such as that of Edmund in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. The only character Rowling seems to have ‘redeemed’ is Professor Snape ???? Rowling writes more about the shades of good and evil, showing for instance many of the Death Eaters (in Goblet of Fire) as vicious anti-muggle bigots who run in fear as soon as Voldomort’s Death Mark is shown.

    😉

  • So a former Nazi youth member who has lived in a Vatican villa for twenty-five years and now wears a white dress and a triple-crown tiara and sits on golden thrones — who has infallible knowledge about the nine Heavenly choirs (seraphim, cherubim, etc.) and such things as guardian angels and devils who lay traps for us and exorcisms and miracles and saintly intercessions and virgin births and assumptions and (sans science background) can pontificate on the work of Galileo and Darwin — feels the need to point out that some of what goes on in the Harry Potter novels (all of which I’ve read and enjoyed) involves some fictional super-natural stuff?

    • Comments are closed.