Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels - Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online

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This article is a continuation/follow-up to this thread:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=62536

RIMSTING, Germany, July 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - LifeSiteNews.com has obtained and made available online copies of two letters sent by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was recently elected Pope, to a German critic of the Harry Potter novels. In March 2003, a month after the English press throughout the world falsely proclaimed that Pope John Paul II approved of Harry Potter, the man who was to become his successor sent a letter to a Gabriele Kuby outlining his agreement with her opposition to J.K. Rowling’s offerings. (See below for links to scanned copies of the letters signed by Cardinal Ratzinger.)

As the sixth issue of Rowling’s Harry Potter series - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - is about to be released, the news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressed serious reservations about the novels is now finally being revealed to the English-speaking world still under the impression the Vatican approves the Potter novels.

In a letter dated March 7, 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger thanked Kuby for her “instructive” book Harry Potter - gut oder böse (Harry Potter- good or evil?), in which Kuby says the Potter books corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy.

“It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger.

The letter also encouraged Kuby to send her book on Potter to the Vatican prelate who quipped about Potter during a press briefing which led to the false press about the Vatican support of Potter. At a Vatican press conference to present a study document on the New Age in April 2003, one of the presenters - Fr. Peter Fleedwood - made a positive comment on the Harry Potter books in response to a question from a reporter. Headlines such as “Pope Approves Potter” (Toronto Star), “Pope Sticks Up for Potter Books” (BBC), “Harry Potter Is Ok With The Pontiff” (Chicago Sun Times) and “Vatican: Harry Potter’s OK with us” (CNN Asia) littered the mainstream media. . . .
Full article
 
Swell, another opinion by someone who’s probably never read one of the books.

Honestly, doesn’t the Vatican have something better to do with its’ time?:rolleyes:

Scout :tiphat:
 
I wish more Vatican officials, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests would speak out like this. It used to be that Catholics were supposed to feel like “strangers in a strange land” (especially in US and other predominately non-Catholic countries). Now most Catholics feel it is ok to embrace every gimmick Lucifer throws to the world.

I wish there would be more talk about rock & roll (Lucifer’s music). I remember over 10 years ago, before I became Catholic talking to a Catholic about rock music and satanic influences (I have since heard this same respoonse from other Catholics). The response was, “It{s only a gimmick they use to sell their albums”.

ONLY a gimmick. What corrupted idiocy has entered into a Catholic’s mind to say that using satan to market a product is ok because it is only a gimmick. I know there are many Catholics who do not think this way, but I see this mentalilty on many issues with Catholics, from accepting Harry Potter novels, to rushing to read the Da Vinci code, etc.

The diabolical disorientation Martin Malachi talked about has truly overwhelmed the average Catholic. Silence out of fear of loss of church goers (or other factors) on the part of the Vatican and clergy adds to the disorientation. Leadership is needed NOW.

I hope that Pope Benedict XVI can turn this around, but I am still waiting for something big to happen. So far I only hear a few rumors, a couple of subtle statrements, etc. I truly hope and pray he stands up for Christ and speaks directly to Catholics with clarity and authority. It is much needed, and as far as I can tell has not yet occured (though there are signs it is coming).

Mark
www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com
 
*In a letter dated March 7, 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger thanked Kuby for her “instructive” book Harry Potter - gut oder böse (Harry Potter- good or evil?), in which Kuby says the Potter books corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy. *

“It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger.

These books do not corrupt the hearts of the young. This women has most likely not even read the books. The farther you get into the series the better understanding you have of the complex nature of good vs evil. These childern have to learn to think for themselves and make deicsions about what is right vs wrong and which side to stand on versus evil. They also learn about punishment for doing things wrong. Thes books are not all about witch craft. The best wizard in the world could easily be killed by those who can think on their feet. Being a witch/wizard is not a cruch in life. People will still love, have their hearts broken and some will die. And just having the ability to be a witch does not make you powerful…EDUCATION does.
Yes relgion is not mentioned as a plot but they do honor christianity. Rowlings could have left things out completely by getting rid of Christmas break and easter break but she didn’t. I believe she is not trying to force relgion into people by not making it a plot but that it is there to give some substance to the childern.

I would like to point out from all the quotes in this article and reports that i have seen that the Pope doesn’t say one can not read the books (let me know if i am mistaken). I believe he is saying those that are not prepared mentally should not read them. That means that parents need to teach and make sure their kids are ready emotional to read and understand the books and that they relaize it is FANASTY and not reality series.It is the same for adults when we watch movies or read books that do not hold the principles of our faith (sex,violence, etc). We have to be mental prepared and mature enough to know that these things are not real or right in the real world.

I personal would recommand these books to anyone.

Got to get back to work…

God Bless,
Beckers
 
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Scout:
Swell, another opinion by someone who’s probably never read one of the books.

Honestly, doesn’t the Vatican have something better to do with its’ time?:rolleyes:
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Swell, another opinion by an idiot who makes assumptions about what the Pope has or hasn’t read.

Honestly, doesn’t Scout have anything better to do with his/her time? How about “scouting” for some research information before making grand sweeping general assumptions about the Pope’s life?
 
Do people think? Think about what it is. This is talking about a private letter from the Cardinal to an author, not about a public statement. If you are going to try to claim that the Catholic Church, or even the Pope, is opposed to Harry Potter atleast find a good statement by him that means something.

Papal infallability does not mean that we are supposed to find out every little word the pope has ever said or written. Ratzinger was a liberal during Vatican II, are you going to go back and read everything he said at that time?

Now, for some good sources that support Harry Potter, look at the USCCB site and search through their movie reviews for Harry Potter. You will get good results. You can also look on the Vatican website too for Harry Potter. There is only one mention of Harry Potter and it is a favorable one.
 
Pre-16 on Harry Potter
by Jimmy Akin

Pope Benedict XVI, or B-16 as many have begun to affectionally call him, wrote a lot of things when he was still in his Pre-16 days as Cardinal Ratzinger.
Among them were two letters that have now surfaced in the English press and been EXPLOITED BY LIFESITENEWS to convey the impression that, in their words, "POPE BENEDICT OPPOSES HARRY POTTER NOVELS".

Now, before we go any further, let me issue THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: I am not a fan of the Harry Potter novels. In order to be able to comment apologetically on the Harry Potter phenomenon, I read the first novel and watched the first two movies. I was not at all impressed with them as literature, and I recognize that they can have a harmful spiritual effect on some readers, especially among the young. I also recognize that they are not an apologia for paganism and that a reader who is secure in his faith will not be magically turned into a neo-pagan by reading them.

What is a Catholic to make of these letters? What weight do they have? Well, let’s look at them. Here is the complete text of two English translations as offered by LifeSite. They are written in response to Gabriele Kuby, the author of a German anti-Harry Potter book which she sent to Cardinal Ratzinger:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Vatican City

March 7, 2003

Esteemed and dear Ms. Kuby!

Many thanks for your kind letter of February 20th and the informative book which you sent me in the same mail. It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.

I would like to suggest that you write to Mr. Peter Fleedwood, (Pontifical Council of Culture, Piazza S. Calisto 16, I00153 Rome) directly and to send him your book.

Sincere Greetings and Blessings,
  • Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
=======================

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Vatican City
May 27, 2003

Esteemed and dear Ms. Kuby,

Somehow your letter got buried in the large pile of name-day , birthday and Easter mail. Finally this pile is taken care of, so that I can gladly allow you to refer to my judgment about Harry Potter.

Sincere Greetings and Blessings,
  • Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
As you can see, the bodies of these letters are a grand total of five sentences long, only three of which have to do with the Harry Potter novels. The first is basically a thank you note for her book and the second allows her to refer to what he said in the first note.

The only thing that the cardinal said in regard to the Potter novels themselves was:

It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.

You’ll note that there is a grammatical mistake in this sentence. We have a noun-pronoun agreement problem, because the apparent subject of “those” is “Harry Potter,” but “Harry Potter” is singular, not plural as the word “those” would suggest. Although the German originals have been scanned and placed online (HERE and HERE–WARNING! Evil file format! .pdf]), I don’t know German and can’t tell if the problem is there in the original. If it is, it suggests that the letter was dashed off hastily and is not the product of extensive reflection. If it isn’t then the translation is problematic and I don’t know what weight can be put on the details of wording in it. Either way, it’s reason for caution.

Another reason for caution is that there is no way to tell from this whether Cardinal Ratzinger had even read a Harry Potter novel. He may have skimmed Mrs. Kuby book (he refers to it as “informative”), he may have heard things about Harry Potter from others, but there is no indication that he has ever cracked the cover of one of the novels, much less read it from cover to cover so as to get an impression of the whole and how it might affect people.

As a result, we have no way of knowing that this is anything more than a comment made as part of a polite thank you note and expressing a general impression of the subject based on second-hand information. There is no indication that the Cardinal had any significant first-hand knowledge of Harry Potter.

To be continued…
 
This also fails to go beyond the status of a personal opinion expressed in personal (not professional) correspondence. It thus has no binding force for Catholics.

Also, note what the Cardinal didn’t say:

  1. *]He didn’t say that nobody can read Harry Potter.
    *]He didn’t say that people who are secure in their faith can’t read it.
    *]He didn’t say that young people of any particular age can’t read it if their parents read it with them to help them understand problematic bits.

    Now, what about the statement in the second note that

    I can gladly allow you to refer to my judgment about Harry Potter.

    LifeSiteNews made a lot out of the word judgment, even putting it in quotes for emphasis (and simultaneously misspelling it as “judgement”). This word serves their purposes well as it conveys an official impression (i.e., the Cardinal has issued a “judgment”!). But the word is notoriously problematic when translating across languages. Many languages have terms that can be rendered either “judgment” or “opinion” when translated into English. Here the latter may be preferable, as the Cardinal manifestly was not making a formal judgment on the matter. He was clearly expressing a personal opinon, as is evident from the fact that this was personal rather than official correspondence.

    Also, we are missing an important fact: We don’t know the exact question that Mrs. Kuby asked him to prompt this response.

    In his previous note he had suggested she send a copy of her book to Fr. Peter Fleedwood. One wishing to see in this a slap at pro-Potter forces might suppose that the Cardinal wanted one sent to Fr. Fleedwood to set him straight on the Potter matter, but it may mean no more than that he’s the Vatican’s guy who’s keeping tabs on the Potter phenomenon and Cardinal Ratzinger didn’t want him to be unaware of a new book dealing with the Potter phenomenon. There might even be in this a recognition that Fleedwood is the real “expert” on the Potter phenomenon and that Ratzinger hasn’t paid a great deal of attention to it. Since the Cardinal doesn’t say why he suggested that Fr. Fleedwood be sent a copy, we can only guess.

    I mention the Fleedwood situation in particular because Mrs. Kuby may have simply asked the Cardinal something like “May I mention to Fr. Fleedwood the opinion you expressed in your previous note about Harry Potter?” If that’s the case then it casts a significantly different light on his giving her permission to refer to his opinion than the one conveyed in the LifeSite story.

    In any event, the Cardinal–still over two years away from when he would (to his consternation) be elected pope–most certainly did not intend his permission to mean “Should I ever be elected pope, I would be very pleased to have you use what I said in my thank you note to create an international media frenzy that causes many people to believe that the pope has officially condemned Harry Potter.”

    To be continued…
 
Yet that’s exactly what LifeSite has done. Millions of people will see the headline “Pope Opposes Harry Potter” or “Pope Criticizes Harry Potter” or some variant and never read the story or they will read it but lack the skill at parsing such stories to see how misleadingly the matter is being framed. Millions of people scan the Drudge Report alone every day and read its headlines (like the one on this story) without ever clicking them. Their impression of many of its news stories is formed entirely by the headlines.

Some of the people seeing the LifeSite-inspired headlines on this subject will be non-Catholic fans of Harry Potter, and in their estimation the Catholic Church will have the Church’s credibility lowered one more notch.

Thanks, LifeSite.

“It is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’” (Romans 2:24).

Source : jimmyakin.org/2005/07/pre16_on_harry_.html
 
Fidei Defensor:
Swell, another opinion by an idiot who makes assumptions about what the Pope has or hasn’t read.

Honestly, doesn’t Scout have anything better to do with his/her time? How about “scouting” for some research information before making grand sweeping general assumptions about the Pope’s life?
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First of all, I’m not an idiot, so don’t call me one. :mad:

Second, I said “probably”, because, in my personal experience, it is those people who have never read the books that have such a big problem with them.

Third, it wasn’t a “grand sweeping general assumption” about the Pope’s life. It was one comment about this particular situation. And I find it hard to believe that the Pope, with all he has to do, has actually sat down and read one of these books. Nothing in the article or anywhere else I can find says that he has read them.

So, you can just keep your “grand sweeping general assumptions” about my life to yourself. :mad:

Scout
 
“The pope” never opposed the novels. At the time of the letters, John Paul II was the pope.

For those people opposed to Harry Potter who try to use this obscure letter and as if it had authority: If you have a legitimate point, why exaggerate the truth into a lie?
 
Ten Arguments Against Harry Potter


http://www.catholicexchange.com/ius/vm/ahd_pinline.gif
  1. Harry Potter is a global long-term project to change the culture. In this generation of youths, inhibitions against magic and the occult are being destroyed. Thus, forces re-enter society which Christianity had overcome.
  2. Hogwarts, the school of magic and witchcraft, is a closed world of violence and horror, of cursing and bewitching, of racist ideology, of blood sacrifice, disgust, and obsession. There is an atmosphere of continuous threat, which the young reader cannot escape.
  3. While Harry Potter appears in the beginning to fight against evil, in fact the similarities between him and Voldemort, the arch-evil adversary in the tale, become more and more obvious. In volume five, Harry is being obsessed by Voldemort, which leads to symptoms of personality disintegration.
  4. The human world becomes degraded; the world of witches and sorcerers becomes glorified.
  5. There is no positive transcendent dimension. The supernatural is entirely demonic. Divine symbols are perverted.
  6. Harry Potter is no modern fairy tale. In fairy tales, sorcerers and witches are unambiguous figures of evil and the hero escapes their power through the exercise of virtue. In the Harry Potter universe there is no character that endeavors consistently to achieve good. For seemingly good ends evil means are being used.
  7. A (young!) reader’s power of discernment of good and evil is blocked out through emotional manipulation and intellectual confusion.
  8. It is an assault upon this generation of youth, seducing it playfully into a world of witchcraft and sorcery, filling the imagination of the young with images of a world in which evil reigns, from which there is no escape, on the contrary, it is portrayed as highly desirable.
  9. Those who value plurality of opinion should resist the nearly overwhelming power of this peer pressure, which is being accomplished through a gigantic corporate and multimedia blitz — one which displays elements of totalitarian brainwashing.
  10. Since through the Potter books faith in a loving God is systematically undermined, even destroyed in many young people, through false “values” and mockery of Judeo-Christian truth, the introduction of these books in schools is intolerant. Parents should refuse permission for their children to take part in Potter indoctrination for reasons of faith and conscience.
catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=36&art_id=29398
 
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TPJCatholic:
Ten Arguments Against Harry Potter
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Interesting, but there really isn’t a single argument in any of the ten. Instead, it is just a somewhat repetitive list of assertions made without any effort toward supporting the assertions with facts or examples.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
mlchance,

The article was not intended to go into detail, yet I do think it poses sound arguments.

IMO, those ten, coupled with the biblical statements about sorcery and our Holy Father’s statements…those together are enough for me to not allow my kids to read that junk.
 
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TPJCatholic:
The article was not intended to go into detail, yet I do think it poses sound arguments.
Click to expand...
How so? Everyone of the ten is, at best, a thesis statement. There is no such thing as an argument without support. For example, I can say, “The Catholic Church was founded by Christ Jesus.” This is a true statement, but it isn’t an argument. Someone not convinced of its truth has no reason to change their mind without further explanation.

Likewise, “Harry Potter is a global long-term project to change the culture.” This might be true, but, in and of itself, it isn’t an argument. It is a mere statement with no more validity than, “Harry Potter is not a global long-term project to change the culture.”
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TPJCatholic:
IMO, those ten, coupled with the biblical statements about sorcery and our Holy Father’s statements…those together are enough for me to not allow my kids to read that junk.
Click to expand...
Biblical statements about sorcery condemn the practice of sorcery. They do not condemn reading about sorcery, whether real or imagined. They do not even condemn the academic study of sorcery, whether real or imagined.

Benedict XVI’s statements as reported in the OP are likewise rather modest: “It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger. (Note: Not “wrote Pope Benedict XVI.”)

This statement, in of itself, doesn’t forbid anyone from reading Harry Potter. It does counsel (in a very incomplete and indirect way) not doing so unless aware of the alleged “subtle seductions.” But what are these “subtle seductions”? The then Cardinal Ratzinger doesn’t say. He wasn’t issuing an encyclical to the universal Church. He was writing a two paragraph letter to an author.

A two paragraph letter of private correspondence between an author and the then Cardinal Ratzinger hardly constitutes condemnation of Harry Potter delivered from the Chair of Peter.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
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