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S i d e b a r
No Catholic Consensus
By Tim Ryland
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This Rock
Volume 12, Number 6
 July-August 2001 
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Harry Potter is one of those topics-like boycotting Disney or practicing homeschooling-about which there can be genuine disagreement among thoughtful, prayerful Catholic parents. Indeed, all the weighing-in has made the proverbial mountain out of what is no better than a foothill.
Author Michael D. O'Brien maintains that Harry's wizard world, with its "pursuit of power and esoteric knowledge," is "a modern representation of a branch of ancient Gnosticism, the cult that came close to undermining Christianity at its birth" (Catholic World Report, April 2001, 55). Well, okay-except, using that definition, every kids' treehouse gang, with its passwords and closely held club secrets, is a mini-heresy. We're talking fictional wizardry here, not eternal salvation.
Homeschooling maven Laura Berquist notes the occasions where Harry not only gets away with ignoring authority but is praised when his disobedience results in good. "The overall message," she concludes, "seems to be that the end justifies the means used to achieve it" (The Latin Mass, Spring 2001, 67). This akin to the blind man touching the elephant's trunk and declaring a pachyderm is very like a snake: It infers too much from too little. There are plenty of times in the books when Harry gets caught breaking a rule and is punished. Any child from a good Christian family knows that sometimes, for good or bad, you get away with things. The employers of Amelia Bedelia, the wacky heroine in a series of children's books, allow her to get away with a host of egregious housekeeping blunders simply because she can bake a great lemon meringue pie. "The ends justify the means" isn't the message of Harry or Amelia.
In objecting to lack of moral authority in the Potter books, John Andrew Murray, writes, "In C. S. Lewis' Narnia, power and authority are welded together. That authority is Jesus, in the character of the great lion Aslan" (St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers, July/August 2000, 8; emphasis added). No, that authority is Aslan. Nowhere in the Narnian Chronicles is Jesus mentioned. Christians familiar with the Lewis books are also so familiar with Aslan as a Christological symbol that sometimes (apparently) they forget Aslan is allegory. This is not to discount the power of allegory; it is merely to show that arguments need to be framed on the facts within the pages.
As has been pointed out by others, the magic in the Harry Potter books is not magic of the occult (indeed, the author pokes fun at a teacher who purports to divine the future in her crystal ball). Evangelical author Chuck Colson calls the magic "purely mechanical as opposed to occultic" (National Liberty Journal, Dec./Jan. 2001, 19). Objecting to the yucky or frightening parts of the story seems more defensible than objecting to their magical elements. (For instance, Harry's friend Ron vomits slugs for several hours as the result of a spell gone awry, and the climactic chapters of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, were they a movie, would be rated a strong PG-13.) Here is where an unhappy paradigm shift in what is acceptable has occurred over the last two generations.
My brother, father of eight children, asked me, "Why read Harry Potter when there are so many other great things for kids to read?" That may be the most on-point question of the whole discussion. But if you do let your children read the books, consider using them as a teaching tool.
For instance, unlike his parents, who die trying to save him, the infant Harry does not succumb to the evil wizard Voldemort's killing spell. At the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the good wizard Dumbledore explains to Harry, "Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort [the Dark Lord] cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that a love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. . . . To have been loved so deeply, even though the person is gone, will give us some protection forever" (299). We can pose to a child a rhetorical question: How much greater is God's love for his children, through which the universe was saved from the power of Satan, the true Dark Lord?
There being no consensus even in the orthodox Catholic world, parents who might allow their children to read J. K. Rowling's books must read them themselves and decide. What we need to avoid is being judgmental toward those who decide differently.—Tim Ryland |
