Over the years I've read plenty of commentary on Harry Potter. Some folks think the series was spawned in hell; others love it and think it's filled with great Christian imagery. I read the first few and thought they were okay for a child to read with close adult supervision, but I found some things in the books troubling. I think the series can be a real danger for kids in troubled homes or who have little wise adult guidance. I think they can also be a danger for badly catechized adults, the same type to be taken in by The DaVinci Code. (I was appalled how many ignorant Catholics believed it.) When I got to the fourth Potter book that started with a brutal murder I knew it definitely was not for twelve-year-olds. And yet how many parents pay attention to what their children are reading?What do you think? Here are a few articles looking at both sides.
Voting YEA --
HARRY POTTER, PAPIST? , a review of The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide by Nancy Carpentier Brown
Not the Power of Success but the Humbleness of Giving Himself (This link also pulls up the first article below.)
Voting NAY --
A Wrong Image of the Hero
Harry Potter: An Entry Point into the World of the Occult / New Age Movement
See a list of nays at Steve Wood's website. Wood has experience with the occult so his opinion carries some weight I think.
Wood also goes into Pullman's series, His Dark Materials. Pullman portrays the Catholic Church as the enemy and the demonic as the good. The series is the fulfillment of the prophecy that there will come a time when good is called evil and evil good. We're there big time. Is Harry Potter the "entry drug" into the occult?
Harry Potter: Agent of Conversion by Toni Collins This last article I found particularly interesting because the author came out of the occult and shares her views both yea and nay about the series. This is a defiinite must read for parents.
The concerns about Harry Potter reading turn on several points:
ReplyDelete1) introduction to the occult ... if you read Harry Potter with the mindset that what is described is "real" and can be worked out in the real world, then you're in trouble since that is only true if you make a pact with the devil.
2) On the other hand, if you see the Harry Potter narratives as fun fantasy stories about a world in which magic is like a special ability (say like being really good at math and science) and when you learn you can do things then the magic is like all technologies, available for either good or evil. There you're in relatively little danger.
It is important to emphasize that a) Harry Potter is a fictional character in a fictional universe that is not the same as ours.
b) magic doesn't work in our world at all. What appears to be magic is either illusion, delusion, or demonic interference. The last is what we may have to worry about.
Harry Potter touches the darkness with the magic of the "Dark Arts" and here I think there is the possibility of confusion and being led astray by those who seek to possess power over others.
I've read them all. I think they are well done and not particularly dangerous for those who take them as fantasy along the lines I've mentioned. Those who take them as real possibilities are already in trouble before they ever read the books. The books in that case do become somewhat enabling by encouraging an already poor perspective and motivation.
4 thumbs up and 2 thumbs down.
Cheers, Ray
Taking Harry Potter away because some will abuse it is like saying let's take away religion because some people have abused it.
ReplyDeleteI agree in large part with Ray.