Hog’s Head PubCast #2: Hogwarts and Narnia, part 1

i could not find your podcast on itunes. just wanted to let you know.

I listened from the direct link on your website. Good job!

As for the “Pope’s exorcist” in the news:

John L. Allen, Jr., a reporter who covers Rome for The National Catholic Reporter made the following points in a recent column:

“For the record, Amorth is not ‘the Vatican’s exorcist.’”

He is instead one of nine approved exorcists in the Rome diocese, a ministry he has carried out since 1986. He works out of a small office in the headquarters of the Pauline order in Rome, receiving people who seek his help 365 days a year.

On the subject of Harry Potter, it has become a favorite indoor sport of Roman journalists to bait anybody even remotely connected to the Holy See into making comments, which can then be played up into headlines like “Vatican condemns Harry Potter” or, conversely, “Vatican praises Harry Potter.”

Once again for the record, the Vatican has never officially taken a position on J.K. Rowling’s work.

End John Allen

As the Leaky Cauldron is now reporting, the remarks Rev. Gabriele Amorth supposedly just made were pulled from an interview he gave in 2001 and were included in a recent article as if he had just spoken them.

Rev. Amorth, now 81 years old, was widely misquoted in 2001 as saying Harry Potter was “the king of the darkness, the devil. It’s the most common Potter/Amorth quote on the Internet.

I don’t have a full transcript of his remarks from 2001, but here are a few of the things he said then: “You start off with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the devil. There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books.” “By reading Harry Potter, a young child will be drawn into magic and from there it is a simple step to Satanism and the devil.”

From his point of view, the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction, he said, “does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil.”

His remarks were not out of line with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which lists the following under “Magic”

“2117: All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.”

From Amorth’s point of view, the Harry Potter books make magic look attractive and because of that, they could lead to interest in the Occult, use of things like Ouija boards, participation in New Age practices or Wicca, etc. Many parents across faith lines agree with him as we know. Rev. Amorth did say in a follow-up interview that he didn’t see any harm in a child accompanied by his or her parents going to a Harry Potter movie, so I have to wonder if his earlier remarks were qualified in some way that isn’t apparent in the way they were quoted in various articles. Yet his “slippery slope” concerns concerns about the Potter books are likely to be genuine, and many parents share those concerns; they either insist on reading the books with their children to make clear what they believe or they don’t want their children exposed to the books.

German author Gabriele Kuby wrote a book titled Harry Potter – Good or Evil? That I’m guessing had a view of the books similar to Rev. Amorth’s. Kuby sent a copy to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). The cardinal appeared to sympathize with the content of the book and sent a letter to Kuby saying, “It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly.”

According to the UK Times in a July 14, 2005 article, “The Cardinal, who had been sent the book by Kuby, encouraged the writer to send her work to another member of the Church who had made an announcement on behalf of the Vatican praising J. K. Rowling’s books. Mgr Peter Fleetwood, a British priest who helped to draft an official document on New Age phenomena in 2003, said that the Harry Potter books were moral stories that taught children about the importance of making sacrifices to overcome evil.”

So the bottom line is that no official position has been ever taken by the Vatican on the subject of the Potter books. As for the public comments of Rev. Amorth warning against the “slippery slope” potential danger of the books and Msg. Fleetwood speaking in favor of the books as wholesome moral stories, those remain each man’s private opinion despite how the press may try to portray them as official statements. Neither of those men speaks for the Church.

It seems to be working for me now as well.