Watch Video #1 in my new 5-part series, “Why it’s Time for a Catholic Dumbledore’s Army (and Why You Need to Join)” (And get the rest of the videos at https://CatholicHogwarts.com)
Sadly, I’ve come to realize most Catholics are in the same situation as Harry Potter and friends in the bestselling books:
They face massive challenges and pressures but their institutions just aren’t preparing them. They’re not getting the practical skills they need.
So……
…..they must do something about it themselves.
Harry and his friends created Dumbledore’s Army.
But today, we need a **Catholic** Dumbledore’s Army.
To see why, just click watch this first video.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this new series:
– Harry Potter’s brilliant strategy for saving Hogwarts (and why Catholics must copy it today!)
– The critical skills our parishes are NOT teaching us, and where to learn them instead
– The simple 3-step process used by Harry Potter and St. Thomas Aquinas to become masters
– How to learn the practical conversation skills all Catholics need in just 15 minutes per week
PS. Be sure to visit https://CatholicHogwarts.com to get the other videos!
Three quick notes before I head out the door to Orthodox Nativity services this weekend and Monday:
(1) Vogt is a Serious Potter Fan — and a Gryffindor: He lives in Florida with his wife and six kids on a property they call the ‘BurrowShire’ after the Weasley’s home and hobbit-ville. In 2012 he included the Potter books on his list of ‘My Favorite Books of 2011’ and quoted something I wrote as part of his justification. For a Catholic evangelist married at the hip to several American Catholic bishops, none of whom have been bold enough to recommend reading the Hogwarts Saga because of Pope Benedict’s supposed disapproval of the novels in 2005, that takes no little confidence. And now he’s offering a course on CatholicHogwarts.com to teach lay Catholics the skills they need for their faith to survive the current controversy-tornado tearing through American Roman Catholic churches nationwide? Because the bishops and parish priests, like the Ministry and Dolores Umbridge in Phoenix, aren’t serving the laity? I don’t need a Sorting Hat verdict to know this guy is a Gryffindor with courage like that.
(2) Lawyers on Retainer: I really hope the guy has great legal representation because the barracudas who are being paid to stand-by in constant vigilance to protect the copyrights of Rowling, Inc., and Warner Brothers are not going to let this use of ‘Hogwarts’ go without at least a conversation. HogwartsProfessor.com has not been visited by the Knights of Walpurgis who serve the Unblinking Eye only because this is a literary criticism site protected by Fair Use and because I make no money on it (really, I don’t). If Vogt’s five part video series ends with an invitation to join him for a paid course, which it almost certainly does, again, let’s hope he’s run the idea by Rowling’s representatives first.
(3) It Took More than Ten Years: Remember the Potter Panic? Roman Catholics were on both sides of the grand fight for and against allowing children to read Harry’s adventures. Though men and women like Stratford and Leonie Caldecott, Regina Doman, Sandra Miesel, Mark Shea, Sean Dailey, and Nancy Brown argued brilliantly against the naysayers like Michael O’Brien, Fr Thomas Euteneur, and Fr Aguilar from 2000 to 2007, this is the first time I have seen a Roman Catholic with strong ties to the institutional Catholic church, i.e., the episcopacy, take it as a given that there is nothing wrong, suspect, or in need of explanation about taking the Shared Text of our time and using it for educational purposes.
I think we’ve arrived at last. If for nothing else, thank you, Brandon Vogt, for a sign that the Potter Wars are officially over and good sense has won out over LifeSiteNews and their misrepresentations in 2005 of what then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote about Harry Potter.
If you’re Catholic or just curious, please give Mr Vogt your email address and check out his five videos — and share with us via the comment boxes what you discover. It’s a bold new take on Dumbledore’s Army, one different in orientation and goals than the secular fundamentalists at Harry Potter’s Army, and it merits a closer look.
Just not by me! I’ll be with the Orthodox Christians at St Matthew’s in Jonesboro all weekend and Monday celebrating the birth of Our Lord and Savior. See you Tuesday!
Thanks, John! Will be sharing your thoughts with Brandon in the hope that he is prepared if the Rowling Ministry folks pay him a visit. 🙂
Merry Christmas!
Thanks, John! What an encouraging post to read. If it wasn’t clear already, I’ve benefitted *enormously* from your work and have read most of your books on HP. So thank you!
I’m hoping I avoid the “Knights of Walpurgis” 🙂 Honestly, that never struck me when creating this free video series, that I’d be violating some sort of copyright or trademark. After a quick bit of research, I’m pretty sure I’m fine since this seems to fall clearly under Fair Use: I’m just using a phrase/idea from the HP books as a literary analogy to describe what Catholics need to do today, offering something substantially different. Pretty sure that passes the Fair Use criteria.
This link describe four criteria for Fair Use:
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors
The first one is “the transformative factor”:
In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this…as being an important indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new or merely copied verbatim into another work. When taking portions of copyrighted work, ask yourself the following questions:
Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights, and understandings?
I think the answer is clearly YES in this case, and I think it fairs well according to the other three criteria.
(Spoiler alert: as you guessed, this free video series, unpacking the idea of a “Catholic Dumbledore’s Army,” will eventually invite Catholics into my ClaritasU membership site. But that paid site doesn’t use or reference anything HP-related. So it’s not as if I’m “selling” a HP-based course or initiative that uses HP imagery or language.)
Christina: Thanks for sharing!