What do you think about Harry Potter?

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BlessedBe13:
I posted the relevant part that I was replying to.

I do realize that there were more, but I was pointing out the meaning JMJ was supposedly using (although that should have been noted, since apparently it’s not the main definition) is not the only one.

So it is not incorrect to call the Catholic Church (or really any religion) a cult. I depends on what context you are using the word.
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Sorry, I did not make it clear that I was using the third meaning of the word. But even if I didn’t, the point I made was that “Just because some Catholics may try to get non-Catholics to attend their church, it does not make the Church a cult.” 😉
 
Well I’m a practising Catholic who, when I’m not at uni that is, I’ll only read fantasy novels! Now am I an evil person? or is Peter Pan or Cinderella realy that harmful?! LOL!

NOvels as are fairy tales are there for entertainment and an escape to somewhere totally different where you can safely enjoy by reading! Also there’s so many benefits if kids read and so what if they like the books we and the kids KNOW it’s not real but thats what makes these books all the fun because we can PRETEND that it is real for a short time!

And while at uni , I’m on hols now, but we did a few really good readings that agrues for parents to read their kids fairt tales as the kids know it’s not real but these stories help with the growing of the brain and developes a childs sense of reality and perseption. Also another good point is that it teachers the children who the goodies are and the badies and what society wants! So in these stories the goodies and badies are so clearly defined but kids need that to know the difference! So like HP they know that HArry and Herminone and Ron are good ppl and that they always try to help their friends like Hagrid and will try and always DO the RIGHT THING! What a moral to be taught! I mean you do want kids to do the right thing? And to know what is right and wrong?!
 
Sorry one more thing, reading fantasy novels the authors seem to love taking something from our history and add to it or take something away or whatever, but they use it for their story! So like Robert Jorden in his seriers, The Wheel of Time, he constantly uses things like the Year of the Hundred Wars which I understand happend in Europe and it went for more than a Hundred years yet he has used this fact to make his story SEEM more real and add substance!

Just because you may reckonise names from asomewhere in history I’m sure it’s just to add substance to the book and believe I don’t think the kids will pick it out or EVEN understnad what it really means, and who cares! LOL!
 
I just found this thread…**Disney’s World of W.I.T.C.H. ** when I was looking for my thread about being a Cath w/ a C.S question. There are a lot of interesting H.P opinions there. It is in the non-catholic forum. I was amazed!
 
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angel_crooks:
So like HP they know that HArry and Herminone and Ron are good ppl and that they always try to help their friends like Hagrid and will try and always DO the RIGHT THING! What a moral to be taught! I mean you do want kids to do the right thing? And to know what is right and wrong?!
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You might take note of the fact that the selfsame characters routinely break rules with little or no regard for them, and then get rewarded, as well as the vicious behaviour they evince towards the people they don’t like.
 
Although I can see that almost everything that CAN be said, has, I wanted to state that as a cradle Catholic, I think the Harry Potter books (and movies) are fantastic.

My eight year old twin daughters read them all last year in second grade and still re-read them. Because I had questions about them myself, I read one of them before I allowed them to do so. They’re fantasy, not witchcraft or occult manuals!

Many of those in our parish, adults and children, read and enjoy the books.

I am a eucharistic minister, a lector, and a teacher in our parish school of religion - hardly an uninformed idiot who would lead her children down the road of perdition.

I’m new to this forum and this is the only thread I’ve read in its’ entirety. Even so, I’m appalled by some of the most unkind slams at one another within the forum.

If we can do no better than this, why bother to go to Eucharistic?
 
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johnnysannie:
Although I can see that almost everything that CAN be said, has, I wanted to state that as a cradle Catholic, I think the Harry Potter books (and movies) are fantastic.

My eight year old twin daughters read them all last year in second grade and still re-read them. Because I had questions about them myself, I read one of them before I allowed them to do so. They’re fantasy, not witchcraft or occult manuals!

Many of those in our parish, adults and children, read and enjoy the books.

I am a eucharistic minister, a lector, and a teacher in our parish school of religion - hardly an uninformed idiot who would lead her children down the road of perdition.

I’m new to this forum and this is the only thread I’ve read in its’ entirety. Even so, I’m appalled by some of the most unkind slams at one another within the forum.

If we can do no better than this, why bother to go to Eucharistic?
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There ARE a lot of opinions bandied around here- and some of them are not delivered as we would if we were face to face with someone. Some are even downright rude.

I haven’t seen anything on this thread in particular that is too uncharitable or uncalled for. In fact, I find this thread one of the tamest regarding Harry Potter, that this forum has seen since it’s inception in May.

But you went on to add:
If we can do no better than this, why bother to go to Eucharistic?
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We all need the Eucharist. Even the most habitual sinners among us need the Eucharist desperately. But no more so than the purest. :tsktsk:
 
I love Harry Potter, but I also spent half of high school running around wearing all black. Black is fun to wear, especially when you see the look on someone’s face. If the Goth look worked for adults I might try it, but for now that fun phase of life has been left mostly behind. And yes I love toys.

But as some have said that that makes me a Jr High drop out, I also enjoy reading things like The Phantom of the Opera and War and Peace. I read many things as a child that most adults will not attempt.

Just because I like to read something that gives my imagination a chance to run wild and I don’t have to think makes me in no way stupid.

I studied occult religions for about five years and really haven’t found any direct correlation between the two, unless you do not have your feet planted on the ground. I think it would be pretty cool to be able to live in Harry Potter’s world though.

If it is going to show someone that reading can be fun why would you want to say it isn’t right? My husband refused to read anything before reading Harry Potter, he decided that reading was hard and if it was any good there would be a movie. Since reading the series he is enjoying reading more.
Kat
 
My kids (13 and 16) understand and have always understood that fiction ( books, TV and Moives) aren’t real. Harry Potter, Star Trek, Unfortunate Events, National Treasure, Planet of the Apes, and Jurassic Park are all entertainment and nothing more. In the same vein we are selective about what fiction we watch. When it comes to “reality” we don’t watch Survivor, etc. The news is real enough.
 
‘Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, Proust, Nabokov, Shakespeare’

wow - good list! though it surprises me that you listed nabakov in place of say hugo or dostoevski. i know it’s not an exhaustive list - but it still surprised me. i love nabakov - but he’s not on most people’s top 100 list.

oh, but to address the harry potter issue - i’ve read all the books and seen all the movies. it’s entertaining. i don’t like the fact that harry lies and cheats and steals his way through every book, and is rewarded for it. and as long as kids know that witchcraft is anti-christian (expressly forbidden in the Bible, in all its forms - wiccan or ‘white’ or whatever), then it’s pretty good story telling.
 
think J K Rowlings is a pretty good writer desperately in need of an editor, the books keep getting longer without getting better.
 
i appreciate the length, myself. i wish the earlier ones were longer.

but then again, i enjoy a long read. i hate it when i finish a good book. “NOW what am i gonna read???”
 
Harry potter rocks 😃 I and my girls have read and watched them all 🙂
It’s only a fantasy story after all , as long as kids are told this by their parents , that’s all that matters surely .
 
Tom of Assisi:
Well, speaking artistically, the books are pretty silly and, I would say, poorly written. The first book reads like some welfare mother wrote it on a napkin in a restaurant while waiting for her case worker to show up and give her some more money…oh wait…that’s exactly what it is.

It’s one thing for children aged 7–10 to read Harry Potter. I roll over laughing when adults read it. Instead of Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, Proust, Nabokov, Shakespeare, etc, etc, etc… they read a children’s novel and think it’s literature…

:rotfl:

I was reading Kafka’s Transformation the other day at the park, and some woman came up to me and said, “oh you’re a reader. I read too. I am reading th 5th Harry Potter book now. Hee hee.” I just smiled at her and nodded.

.
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I love to read classical literature. 🤓 Most of Dickens. The Bronte sisters, Austin, Francis Burney, Wilkie Collins(Wrote the first detective story but **Armadale **is his best), Dostoevsky’s **Crime and Punishment,**Fielding’s Tom Jones, Steinbach, Victor Hugos Les Miserables, I hated Flaubert’s Madmae Bovary but admired his writing style and my list could go on. Guess what? I love the Harry Potter series. So a great big raspberry to you. PBBBBT…😛 Oh, correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t Kafka’s Transformation also called Metamorphises? I read it a very long time ago and it seems like they are the same stories.
 
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JMJ_Pinoy:
Harry Potter’s cool. Plus, the U.S.C.C.B. has said it’s ok. I’m looking forward to the the release of the 6th book. I’m buying it when it comes out. 👍
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Me too. My son has outgrown Harry Potter but I haven’t :o
 
Gee, finally something I can comment on “first hand”:

As nighttime “winding down” activity with my son from about age 6 thru 10, we read together:

-All the Harry Potter books

-All the Chronicles of Narnia

-Lord of the Rings (just the first one)

and last, but not least (well, maybe least)…

-about 20 numbered episodes of
Hank the Cowdog!

When the first Harry Potter movie came out, it was humorous to hear 6 & 7 year olds in the lobby “The movie was OK, but I liked the book better!”

We were several books deep before the movie was out, so it was a surprise to learn that
a. “Hermione” doesn’t have a"silent E" on the end!
b. “Hagrid” is a “short A”, not a “long A”!

By that time, my son and I were locked in on the pronunciations, so we agreed to call them the “old way” in the future books…

So, HP has fond memories for me, because it was “father/son share time”.

Discussion of our Christian faith DID come up directly when reading Chronicles of Narnia, because it’s a little difficult even for a young boy to miss the connection between:
-a hero lion offering to sacrifice his life to save his friends, and…
-our savior Jesus Christ

But for the others, HP included, it was all just fun fantasy reading, with no philosophical or religious connections ever brought up by my son.

Harry’s parents did, however, love their son enough to sacrifice their lives to save him. (At least that’s how I remember it being brought out). This sacrificial love is even what caused Voldemart’s powers to end up residing in Harry, rather than killing him.

As for Hank the Cowdog, the better episodes are “total hilarity”, sometimes the laughing was so hard we had to take a break just to calm down!

And now, for my first time animated experiment…
http://artie.com/gifs/n0v/arg-collie-url.gif
Later…
God Bless Us All!
 
just had a long phone conversation with 3rd grade grandson. he explained to me the over-arching cosmology of the HP series, along with his opinion of the plots of the next 3 books and what how they will continue the saga. He kindly did the same for me when the second set of Star Wars movies started to come out. He and his sisters have the entire SW series on their internal TIVO. He also reads chapter books about boy sports heroes, Narnia, and Captain Underpants. he also has read Jungle book, Kim, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Howard Pyle’s Pirates & Robin Hood, and a host of other children’s classics. He tests at an 8th grade level for reading and math, but does poorly in school because of ADHD and a propensity for playing fantasy football with himself during much of his school time. He likes HP, but agrees with me that JKR is an author desperately in need of an editor, and analyzes why.
 
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