Why is Harry Potter hated by some Catholics for magic when lord of the rings has Gandalf who was a wizard?

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Tolkien deeply disliked allegory (and said so in the Forward of the Second Edition of LotR). His mythological cosmography is certainly Christian in form, and he viewed his mythology as fundamentally Christian. What the Ainulindale, the Silmarillion, the Akallabêth, and the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were were a sort of mythological account of creation and the first ages of the world. They were not allegory, but rather invention to sit in some unspecified epoch in our world’s history.

Indeed, in the last revisions of the Silmarillion he did in the mid-1960s, he enlarges the account of the origin of Men (as opposed to the other sentient races; Elves and Dwarves), and makes as plain reference as he ever did of The Fall, with the first Men being turned from Eru Illuvatar (God) by the intervention of Melkor (who was essentially Satan). That’s not allegorical allusion, but pretty much the Genesis account with names switched (he more wisely didn’t make it that explicit in earlier versions).

I find Lewis’s Narnia a bit more hackneyed, in part because it is allegorical, and in part because it does not have the internal consistency Tolkien struggled his adult life to impose on his mythos.
 
Speaking only for myself, I neither hate Harry Potter for magic, nor love the Lord of the Rings with its Gandalf.

Harry Potter is pretty insipid in the first couple of books, and I know it is a children’s adventure type book, but I am more bothered by the morality of the series. If little Harry Potter would stop blatantly lying to the faces of the adults he trusts, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Voldemorted would have been easily prevented from returning to power. 🤦‍♂️

And The Lord of the Rings just puts me to sleep. 😴
Every single book.
Every single movie.
Every time.
 
One thing that bothers me are the orcs.

Tolkien himself changed his mind several times on their origins.
 
It’s a story and like all fiction and all media can teach us things. I heard the whole thing about evangelicals ‘burning Harry Potter books’ true or not, and its silly. We are adults. Decide what you read, listen to and think about. It’s on your conscience and for you to decide what is right for you, as a Catholic, to listen to.
 
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deMontfort said:
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Wesrock:
Sauron, too, is actually a Maia
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As are the Balrogs, and, possibly (there’s a lot of debate), Tom Bombadil.
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Indeed, though I prefer to think of Bombadil as some other enigma. Tolkien, to my knowledge, always avoided categorizing him. Even Bombadil could handle the Ring without issue, where Gandalf feared to use it and Saruman was consumed with lust for its power.
Sarcelle said:
One thing that bothers me are the orcs.

Tolkien himself changed his mind several times on their origins.
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Yeah, this irked me a bit, too. But it’s his world.
 
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Not trying to hijack the thread, but since Tom Bombadil has been mentioned: one of the many disappointments for me in Peter Jackson’s films was the omission of TB and Goldberry. I think the filmmakers were quite right to excise them, seeing as how their aim was to focus the plot trajectory as firmly as possible on the Ring quest. Still, I can’t help missing that relaxed, pastoral, oh-so-English episode.
 
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Because Gandalf is a Servant of the Secret Flame 🙂

When asked what that meant, Tolkien replied that it was the Holy Spirit.

When writing, one of his editing passes was devoted to Catholic theology.
niceatheist said:
I find Lewis’s Narnia a bit more hackneyed, in part because it is allegorical,
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Aslan is not an allegory or a Christ-figure; he is literally Christ.

hawk
 
I grew up Assembly of God, and the church and associated school I went to were really against Harry Potter, but that was really just the start of it. They were also against Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Dungeons and Dragons, and Star Wars. Basically, anything popular was fair game if it was at all fantastical and not explicitly Christian. I think Lewis and Tolkien got passes for their Christian beliefs, but honestly, I really never heard about either of them at the church. My mom’s Anglican friend introduced us to Lewis, and it wasn’t until we started attending a Nazarene church that I heard about Lord of the Rings, after The Return of the King movie had already released.

That said, my family was rather consistent and we got rid of anything Narnia and LotR related. I did eventually get into a lot of the stuff later, though, as did my family.
Titivillus said:
And The Lord of the Rings just puts me to sleep. 😴
Every single book.
Every single movie.
Every time.
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The movies were a bit difficult for me. I can handle most long movies, but I felt that the LotR movies were just meandering aimlessly around, feeling both rushed and too long at the same time. I did enjoy The Two Towers a lot, and there’s a bit of end-of-journey enjoyment at the end of The Return of the King, but on the whole, that’s a trilogy of movies I don’t care much for.

Initially, I really didn’t like the books either. I felt Tolkien was too verbose and took way too long to get to the point, which detracted from the characters and world for me. Recently, I decided to retry reading them, considering my literary and storytelling tastes have changed a lot in the last 5-6 years since I first tried. While I’m still really early in The Fellowship of the Ring, I’m enjoying it immensely more than I did the first time around.
 
I don’t like either of them, for obvious reasons about witchcraft and wizardry and the such.
 
For those familiar with Potter, it is more obviously Christian than Tolkien… you have to really “get” LOTR to understand its Catholicism. Rowling’s Christian imagery hits you like a bat by the time you get to the seventh book.
 
Except they’re NOT ordinary boys and girls. That’s where the polemic always breaks down. Harry is special. It’s a major plot point that normal boys and girls CAN’T do magic. That’s why Harry grew up abused. She despuses Harry for his natural gifts because when she was a little girl it was explained to her that she could never do magic.
 
Gandalf is a REAL wizard. Harry Potter is just a wannabe.

In all seriousness I think both are fine from a moral perspective, although I understand others complaints against HP for trying to integrate it into our world, whete LotR is more a world of fantasy.

For a young reader I have to give a nod to HP. Tolkien, especially in LotR, is a much more challenging read; better suited to high school level.
 
Some people have trained their brains that anything that wasn’t around when they were kids must be evil.
 
Gandalf is an angel in Middle Earth, sent by the God of Middle Earth, to guide the consciences of people, and only use his powers as a last resort.
So he is like an angel doing God’s work, such as an archangel.

Harry Potter unfortunately, if you read Jk Rowlings latest book ‘A History of Magic’, draws strongly on occult history. And if you read her latest book mentioned, about where she got the ideas for Harry potter, much of it is taken from actual occult history.
Such as Divination is a class in Harry Potter (which is forbidden by the bible),

Satanists have said that since the Harry Potter books and movies, requests to join them, by children, went up by 300%.

Harry Potter is just a story but unfortunately SOME people cannot just leave it as fiction but investigate actual spells/ occult,

Criticism against the books also comes from one of the official exorcists of the Archdiocese of Rome, Gabriele Amorth, who believes that, “Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil.”[44] He further told the Daily Mail that the books make a false distinction between black and white magic, while, in reality, the distinction “does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil.” Amorth believes that the books can be a bad influence on children by getting them interested in the occult

 
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YoungCatholicGuy said:
Satanists have said that since the Harry Potter books and movies, requests to join them, by children, went up by 300%.
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IF that’s true, then you’d have to ask their parents where these children learned about Satanism, because it wasn’t from the Harry Potter books or movies.
 
Jeremiah Films, a Christian video company largely known for its Clinton Chronicles release, also released a DVD entitled Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged which stated that "Harry’s world says that (Spirit possession - Wikipedia) that contacting the dead, and conversing with ghosts, others in the spirit world, and more, is normal and acceptable.

"One of the easiest ways to know whether a fantasy book or film has real world magick in it is to just ask a simple question, ‘Can my child find information in a library or bookstore that will enable them to replicate what they are seeing in the film or the book?’ If you go to The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings what you see in, story magic and imagination, it is not real. You can’t replicate it. But if you go to something like Harry Potter , you can find references to astrology, clairvoyance, and numerology. It takes seconds to go into a bookstore or library and get books on that and start investigating it, researching it, and doing it.
 
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I think Zachary King’d made comments to the effect that the HP books entice people by making the occult look appealing and harmless & in that way can lead some into the occult.

I’ve read all of the books in the series, & they’re all very well written, but admittedly the storylines do grow darker as they progress.

I love the LOTR movies. I cried when…Oh, I better shut up so to not spoil it for anyone never having seen the films…
 
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  • Survives an attack by a powerful ruler as an infant due to the sacrifice of his parents
  • Displays an uncanny knowledge and awareness beyond his years at the age of eleven
  • Defends people believed by society to be evil because he understands they are not
  • Faces persecution by those who fear his message and believe it will undermine their power
  • Chooses to sacrifice himself to save the world from evil
  • Returns from the dead to defeat that evil
Honestly, the only way to make it more obvious would be to add a footnote saying “PS - Harry is supposed to represent Jesus”
 
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