Well, it’s going to be hard to have discourse about a book you have never read, or a movie you have never seen. Given that I have read the books, and you have not, your arguement that the book parallels witchcraft is based purely on heresay. I have read the book and affirm that it does not. I base that on interactions with the primary sources – not hearsay. Also, given that you have not read the books, I hardly think you can qualify them as trash by your own authority.
Were you aware that Father Gabreile Amorth, the chief exorcist of the diocese of Rome, has admonished parent’s against the HP books in an inteview with the ANSA news agency? He quite bluntly said that “Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of darkness, the Devil”. Moreover, he said that many of the ideas expressed in the books were from the realm of darkness, that they contain innumerable positive references to magic, “the satanic art”, and attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in point of fact no such distinction exists because “…magic is always recourse to the Devil”. He further censured the disordered morality presented in Rowling’s works, which he decidedly believes reinforce moral relativism. What he does not say is that “the books are based off of mythologies of other cultures”.
Are you aware that the Vatican newspaper has applauded the Potter films for their moral character?
- Do not promote occultism and are in fact mocked by people involved in the occult.
- Promote a clear sense of right and wrong, with only the villians of the books stating (and I quote) “There is no right, or wrong. There is only power.” and “In this case the ends justify the means” two ideas that are utterly condemned by the church. The novels themselves speak for a clear sense of right and wrong in an age when right and wrong are being blurred by this relativism you claim it preaches.
Again, you haven’t read the books. You haven’t seen the movie. You’ll forgive me when I can’t take seriously your appraisal of the book based on hearsay. I, however, have read the books. They are rich literature, and promote morality in an age where relativism runs rampant. There are far worse things we should be weeping about as catholics.
Back at you.
Dear Whitacre_Girl,
Cordial greetings and again thankyou for your reply to my post.
First, I should like to lay to rest once for all this mistaken and very modern notion that a man must read a book from cover to cover before he ventures to give any critical analysis of its contents. The whole argument that one must read a HP novel, or any other novel, in its entirety to have an informed opinion is, quite frankly, utterly risible and plainly wrong. Moreover, the people who assert this would never in a month of Sundays apply that to themselves in any number of other issues. They only say this to make cheap debater’s points in an effort to close someone down and marginalize any opposing viewpoint. It is a tactic employed soley for polemical purposes and until recent times would have been treated with the contempt that it rightly deserves.
The vast majority of people would accept that reading trusted reviews and in-depth analysis of any work suffices for the purposes of debate, after all one is engaging in a debate, not preparing to write a book review for a broadsheet newspaper. Similarly, I have never read Th
e Davinci Code, but I have read articles and reviews that clearly show it to be arrant nonsense of the first rank, so I just give it a wide-berth; why on earth do I need to waste my time reading such worthless fiction? Clearly, it is not a matter of regurgitating hearsay or being unsystematic, but merely leaning on trusted and respected reviews and articles, written by others, in order to better understand a given work. This has always been quite permissible until, so it seems, quite recent times.
Second, accolades concerning HP in
L’ Osservatore Romano cut no ice whatsoever with me; it is not the official organ of the Catholic Church, but merely a sort of quasi-official Vatican newspaper. At any rate it is not regulated by the Curia. Therefore just because something appears within its pages, that does mean that it has Vatican approval. The mainstream media frequently err in this regard also. So we ought to take what we read in this partisan newspaper with the proverbial grain of salt, especially in recent times under its new editor.
Finally, you state that the books “promote a clear sense of right and and wrong”, I strongly beg to differ. Nowhere, in the series is there any reference to a system of moral absolutes against which actions can be evaluated. True, there are “ethics” and “values” aplenty in the tales but in the final analysis they are little more than an ethos; a materialists sort of morality subsumed in the glamour of materialists magic. To put it quite simply what we have is materialists magic - magic as a naturalized human power. Both materialism and magic are (and historically have been) condemned by the Church and that does matter to some people.
There is much more that I could say but that must be all for now.
Warmest good wishes,
Portrait
Pax
uch:
