Harry Potter. Sin or no?

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Ah, this old chestnut…I was wondering how long it would be before a Harry Potter thread came up 😉

Can I ask what would make you think it was a sin to read/watch it, OP? If you’re asking because of its magic, other posters have made some good points as to why that isn’t really an issue.
 
Because typically fundamentalists will jump to conclusions concerning children’s entertainment (that they themselves are not even familiar with) as being associated with demonic forces.

You should read the books to answer this question fully for yourself.
 
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I side with the opinion of the late exorcist Reverend Gabriele Amorth, SSP. It’s a fine line that could lead a person to poke around in the wrong places. I’ve also discussed this same topic with an individual who lived in Salem Massachusetts. She was surrounded by witches and can attest that the books are popular in those groups. Real life witches have said that the books and movies, “have done wonders to bring witchcraft out of the realm of devil worshiping and into mainstream society”.
 
This reminds me of the visceral reactions to Monty Python’s Life of Brian back in the day, when you had Anglican ministers declaring it a blasphemous work, having never seen it. By Python, it was always going to be a bit cutting, but the film skewered political ideologies as much as it ever did a certain kind of “true believer”, and really in the end, it wasn’t in fact about Jesus at all. He only makes two appearances, at the beginning when the Three Wise Men pick the wrong manger, and then a very brief scene at the Sermon on the Mount before you get to the back of the crowd with the whole “blessed are the cheesemakers” and “the Greek shall inherit the Earth, Greek, which Greek?”

There is the nudity of course…
 
Absolutely not!

I was listening to priests from the youtube channel sensus fidelium - they said that 3 children who read the books became possessed.

They also mentioned a conference of exorcist priests discussing trends in the occult and Harry Potter came up.

Apparently JKR wrote HP under the influence of the occult.

I used to read and watch HP growing up, but no more.
 
A series about an elderly gay man who takes young children who are “special” off to his hidden castle, which is full of monsters and various cults, teaches them occult magic, engages in popularity contests, allows horrifically dangerous bullying/adventurism, encourages lying and cheating, wipes the memories of any legitimate authority who even questions the “hidden” world, and eventually manipulates large sections of the student population (all minors) into becoming soldiers in his war for supremacy over a genocidal maniac he “trained”.

Yeah! Sounds like a great thing to let your kids read!
 
Joe1 said:
Are Catholics allowed to read Harry Potter/watch the movies?

Is it a sin?
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This has been asked, answered, asked, answered, ad infinitum.

Yes. Cathoilcs are allowed to read Harry Potter and watch the movies. However, people should be required to read the books before watching the movies.
 
What next? Wonder Woman is a witch? Superman is satanic? Batman is Be’elzibub?
 
I disagree. It’s clearly a natural, innate power because you have to be born a wizard. It’s very key to the story that normal humans can’t practice magic at all. That’s the whole backstory behind Harry’s abusive aunt… she resented that her sister (Harry’s Mom) was born magical and she wasn’t. Ordinary kids can’t do magic in the Potter world.
 
Dark, amoral themes like self-sacrifice, loyalty, laying down one’s life for a friend, the supreme power of love, etc? Anyone who has read through to the seventh book can’t miss the clear Christian symbolism with Harry dying for his friends and rising again, defeating the dark lord. Rowling, who was raised Presbyterian, has acknowledged that the Christian themes were deliberate.
 
crownofswords said:
Absolutely not!

I was listening to priests from the youtube channel sensus fidelium - they said that 3 children who read the books became possessed.

They also mentioned a conference of exorcist priests discussing trends in the occult and Harry Potter came up.

Apparently JKR wrote HP under the influence of the occult.

I used to read and watch HP growing up, but no more.
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Yes! Fr. Chad Ripperger! I love him and listened to the exact same podcast.

He basically says that JKR is a witch; the spells used in the HP series are real spells; and that 60% of the names of the characters in the series are names of actual demons who have been cast out.

Fr. Ripperger also makes a good observation: the books are, on a literary basis, just garbage. They’re not good reads at all. I’ve heard this opinion from tons of people on both sides of the argument. The one universal that most people tend to agree on is that it’s not a well written book series. That being said, how is it that such a poorly written book has been able to generate billions in sales?

Just the very mentioning of Harry Potter always seems to cause an enormous amount of vitriol. That tells me there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

This is coming from an extremely intelligent and well respected exorcists and traditionalist. He doesn’t just make these claims up, he’s very well reasoned.

In the last few days I called into CA Live to ask Jimmy Akin his opinion on the HP series, and he gave an OK response. Although I think he straw-manned the claim of “Harry Potter is demonic” by being extremely literalistic. He also seemed to state that it could only be dangerous if one has a disposition toward the occult, instead of it being objectively dangerous material that should be kept away from children.
 
I remember watching a movie a while back about a guy whose wife and children were all killed except one, and that child was injured in the attack and suffered a disability from it for the rest of his life. A few years later, the child (now in elementary school) was kidnapped by Cthulhu-esque monsters and imprisoned with a bunch of much older characters. This kid ends up initiated into their weird cult-like organization and attempts to escape with them by sabotaging their own prison, but it ends badly and the kid almost ends up killed. Meanwhile, the father goes on a rescue mission, aided by a crazy amnesiac lady who would be more hindrance than help except that she’s the only one with information on the monsters. The erstwhile couple nearly get killed several times over by various abominations (most of whom are trying to eat them), are briefly aided by a group of serial killers, and only end up at their destination through the help of a Leviathan-like creature). The father briefly sees the son dead (actually playing dead to escape one of the Cthulhu-esques), panics, and starts heading home in despair, but the son manages to escape and run into the crazy amnesiac lady, who’s completely forgotten who and where everything is. She snaps back to a modicum of sanity and reunites the father and son, but ends up caught in a trap with several hundred other characters, who only barely escape. At the end of the film, the rest of the prisoners who were with the kid escape, but they botch the job and it’s implied that they all die. (Thankfully, the sequel proves this wrong.)

You know what movie this is?

Finding Nemo.

The inclusion or exclusion of specific elements of a work by themselves does not validate or invalidate them. A lot of it is contextual and depends on the genre, what’s expected of the genre, how the elements of the story world are put together, etc. I haven’t read any Harry Potter myself (I’ve never really been that much of a fantasy guy), but I know several (hundred) people who have read it as children and it doesn’t seem to negatively affect them.

Feel free to make your own judgment on the issue though.
 
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There is absolutely zero implication in the text itself that Dumbledore is gay. He is depicted as a celibate single man. The Christian themes are, on the other hand, very manifest and very deliberate.
 
Absolute lies. She has condemned these rumours. On the other hand, she has explicitly stated that the very obvious Christian allegorical elements were deliberate and inspired by her Christian upbringing. I assume you haven’t read them. Scripture is quoted.
 
Except with respect to the priest in question, those are all lies. It’s been completely and absolutely debunked. There are no real spells nor anything resembling real spells. The “spells” are made up Latin-ish words.
 
Harry Potter is Christian fantasy. Clearly and deliberately as stated by the author. I’ve read the series multiple times… the Biblical themes are not hard to pick out. There are absolutely zero occult elements as Rowling herself has adamantly clarified. Critics have never actually read the books in my experience. I think Satan wants Christians riled up against these good books that teach Christian themes so we ignore the real garbage our kids are consuming on the side…
 
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