Mass grave of history: Vatican’s WWII identity crisis

Please note that ‘Looking for God in Harry Potter’ has been updated and revised and re-issued as How Harry Cast His Spell. If you recommend folks read ‘Looking,’ I won’t get a cent because it is out-of-print.

John, I really have to thank you for writing about Harry Potter, especially “Looking for God in HP.” As a former Harry-hater, I often recommend your books to people who make anti-HP comments based on the magic in the books. I had many of the same concerns about the books, but in that book you did a fabulous job of explaining the various uses of magic in fiction, which was my biggest stumbling block. At this point, I would even say that HP baptized my imagination

As for Michael O’Brien, his book “Father Elijah” is actually pretty good, but his other fiction I thought was pretty boring. Making him the representative of Catholic thought on fiction goes too far though. He and Sandra Miesel had several debates about Harry Potter on Ignatius Press’ website, with Miesel representing the “pro Harry” viewpoint.

In the linked article, what I found really disturbing about O’Brien’s introduction was this: “I have read books containing clearly evil elements. In terms of contents alone, Harry Potter is rather tame” and yet he blasts the books based on what he perceives as spiritual attacks that coincide with his reading of the books. Almost all of the Catholics that I know who are Harry-haters base their opinions on Mr. O’Brien’s opinions. He makes very strong appeals to the emotions through his experiences, but has nothing that is based on reason or the books themselves (What seems so absurd to me is that if this is the criteria for judgment, then almost every Catholic saint *must* have been doing evil instead of good because of the spiritual attacks they suffered).

I would really like to see O’Brien and his followers explain how the magic in HP is evil, but the Narnia books are good Christian books, even though there is a lot of magic practiced, especially in both “Prince Caspian” and “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”

One variation I hope to discuss (briefly!) this afternoon is Cinna as the mastermind of the Pearl Plot. Stay tuned.

And, despite recent events, I do still recommend Plugged In as a great resource, especially for parents who are trying to decide on films for the kiddies. The reviews are usually very objective, with a nice breakdown of concerns like profanity (who would have guessed Avatar was littered with F-words?)