www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Ten Arguments Against Harry Potter

Ten Arguments Against Harry Potter - By Woman Who Corresponded with Cardinal Ratzinger
Gabriele Kuby author of Harry Potter: Good or Evil

1. Harry Potter is a global long term project to change the culture. In the young generation inhibitions against magic and the occult are being destroyed. Thus, forces re-enter society which Christianity had overcome.

2. Hogwarts, the school of magic and witchcraft, is a closed world of violence and horror, of cursing and bewitching, of racist ideology, of blood sacrifice, disgust and obsession. There is an atmosphere of continuous threat, which the young reader cannot escape.

3. While Harry Potter appears in the beginning to fight against evil, in fact the similarities between him and Voldemort, the arch-evil adversary in the tale, become more and more obvious. In volume five, Harry is being obsessed by Voldemort, which leads to symptoms of personality disintegration.

4. The human world becomes degraded, the world of witches and sorcerers becomes glorified.

5. There is no positive transcendent dimension. The supernatural is entirely demonic. Devine symbols are perverted.

6. Harry Potter is no modern fairy tale. In fairy tales sorcerers and witches are unambiguous figures of evil. The hero escapes their power through the exercise of virtue. In the Harry Potter universe there is no character that endeavours consistently to achieve good. For seemingly good ends evil means are being used.

7. A (young!) reader's power of discernment of good and evil is blocked out through emotional manipulation and intellectual confusion.

8. It is an assault upon the young generation, seducing it playfully into a world of witchcraft and sorcery, filling the imagination of the young with images of a world in which evil reigns, from which there is no escape, on the contrary, it is portrayed as highly desirable.

9. Those who value plurality of opinion should resist the nearly overwhelming power of this peer pressure, which is being accomplished through a gigantic corporate and multimedia blitz--one which displays elements of totalitarian brainwashing.

10. Since through the Potter books faith in a loving God is systematically undermined, even destroyed in many young people, through false "values" and mockery of Judeo-Christian truth, the introduction of these books in schools is intolerant. Parents should refuse permission for their children to take part in Potter indoctrination for reasons of faith and conscience.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels - Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jul/05071301.html

I found the link at http://www.spiritdaily.com

I find it hard to believe that a series of fictional stories --the Harry Potter books-- will mentally, morally or spiritually corrupt an entire generation.

I usually like Pani Rose' posts very much. But I question this post of hers about the Harry Potter books.

I have never read a Harry Potter book, and I have not seen a Harry Potter movie. So, I do not claim any first-hand knowledge of what these books say. However, I have talked to some kids who have read Harry Potter books, as well as to some adults too, and they all seem unscathed by the experience. They all seem perfectly able to distinguish reality from fantasy. From what I hear, the Harry Potter books are simply a good read.

But, I do not *know* because I have not read them. Also, I do not doubt the ability of mass media to influence people and a culture. For example, I think the widespread presence of pornography and semi-pornography in modern society has substantially led to the corruption of chastity: in thought as well as deed. On the other hand, movies with violence have been around ever since movies were first made, and they haven't transformed the majority of viewers into killers. So, I conclude that media can influence, but it does not necessarily influence.

Hence my question (preferably to anyone who has actually read the Harry Potter books):

Are the Harry Potter books truly damaging to mind, morals and soul; or are they just well written and engaging stories which some people are making too much of a fuss about?

--John

As an avid reader who has read just about every book I've ever picked up, many of which were from the SciFi and Fantasy genres, including all of the Harry Potter books I have to say that the list is inaccurate.

As a Catholic Christian who used to be an atheist and friends of many practioners of Wicca and other occult practices ... I honestly don't see any real similarity between HP and the real deal.

In fact I have to laugh that while Christians are running around in a panic worried about how "real" the "witchcraft" in Harry Potter is and freaking out about how our kids will be drawn to the occult because of it ... Parents who are Wiccan or other neo-pagan discipline are saying they won't let their kids read it because it isn't nearly real enough.

Poor Harry. He can't please anyone.

The key with these books, as it is with ALL books that our youngsters read (from the Bible to Harry Potter) is to guide their reading and help them put things in perspective.

I mean really - do you want your children reading the story of Onan without parental guidance? Or what about Abraham and Hagar? So even in the Holy Scriptures there are those things which must be explained and where guidance is due.

The truth of the matter is that the Harry Potter books are no worse than thousands of other Fantasy genre novels that kids read. Yet you don't read article after article and book after book telling you how bad those are.

The truth of the matter is that Harry Potter books are much less realistic than other books (a couple series of books by the Romance genre author Nora Roberts spring readily to mind) where Wiccan practices are presented in a much more realistic and highly positive manner. But I've yet to see one Christian review take these books to task the way they do Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter books are reasonably well-written, entertaining stories that are fairly representative of their genre.

I've read much darker Fantasy novels. I've read much lighter Fantasy novels. Harry Potter falls somewhere in between.

The most common complaint that I run across is that people are upset that Harry breaks some rules even when he's trying to acheive a positive end.

You know what teaching lesson that provides for me to share with my daughter?

That good people mess up. That no one is perfect except Christ. That we ALL sin. We ALL fall short of the Glory of God. And Harry Potter is no exception.

People expect a lot from poor old Harry Potter. They expect him to be the perfect paragon of virtue - people expect him to be what they are not.

Let's say your child is injured and you have to take him to the hospital. Will you sedately drive the speed limit every moment? Will resist the urge to roll through the stop sign? Will you obey every single traffic law? Or will you exceed the speed limit and perhaps take that short cut through the parking lot to avoid the traffic signal? Will you perhaps roll through the stop sign?

The truth of the matter is, and J.K. Rowling knows it, is that everyone is guilty of breaking some rule or some law in order to accomplish something else at least once in their life.

That doesn't make it right. But it makes the book realistic.

Harry Potter isn't the first protagonist to be less than perfect. He won't be the last. He is, apparently, the most famous.

My advice is, if your children are interested in reading the books (mine isn't) then use Harry Potter as a chance to teach your children something other than paranoia.

There is only one reason for me, all of the hoodoo, degrading, etc. and "inner messages" aside - it is simply bad (i.e. highly inferior) literature. Why bother when there are so many classics that go unread today?

I have never read Harry Potter, I posted the original post just to see what folks thought. My kids have never read them, but just because they have no desire to (they are all young adults though). However, my daughter and one of her friends hit WalMart the other night at midnight for her friends copy, you know the --- RELEASING HOUR

Her friend, a young woman with a very strong faith, loves them. Her mom had the same quams when she started reading them years ago, but still tells her to be careful. However, Sarah is an English major in college - totally a Shakspearean person - with a double major in Socioligy, both in honors, so I could well see how she would really love the Potter series.

I thought these were similar statements, yours and from the Denver paper.....

"For Harry Potter fans who do not claim to be Christians, anti-Harry Potter rhetoric from Christians at any level will not encourage them to consider faith in Christ," said Weston, who leads a parish in Minnesota. "I personally think the rhetoric is more harmful to the Christian faith than the Harry Potter series is."

But not all Christian reservations about Rowling and Potter relate to theology.

Some family-oriented Christian groups, including Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, praise parts of the books while questioning Harry's periodic defiance of authority. Focus on the Family's "Plugged In" website, which reviews pop culture books, movies and music, notes that Potter's "cool" teachers at Hogwarts wink and nod at Harry's lies, rule- breaking and power grabs.

Though the Archdiocese of Denver has not commented directly on Ratzinger's letter, Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote a fairly neutral commentary on Potter mania a few years ago.

Whether children should read the books or see the movies, Chaput said, is "a matter for parents, not bishops, to decide."

"I think Harry Potter can be happily enjoyed as a children's fantasy movie," he said. "Nothing in the film attacks the Christian faith, and good does win out over evil.

"At the same time," Chaput wrote, "unfortunately, characters in the Potter books do sometimes accomplish good things by doing bad things, like lying. In other words, J.K. Rowling is a very different author from C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. If you're looking for Christian allegory, Harry Potter isn't it."
http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_2867226

Just wanted to clarify that the paranoia to which I referred was not a reference to Pani Rose - but more to the article's author and others who are so worked up over Harry Potter.

I'd have to agree with Carole on this one.

There is a lot of paranoia, some warrented, most not.

+Chaput probably has the correct view. It is up to the parents to preview ANY content their children read, and Harry Potter is no exception.

Another example would be Star Wars. It is clearly Pantheistic Gnosticism, but that doesn't present it from being an entertaining story that I enjoy with my children.

-Brendan (yes Carole, THAT Brendan )

Windows 95 was released at midnight. Which proves to me that it was the work of Satan.

John

JOHN

:p

I'm with Diak.
I decided a while back that I couldn't have an opinion without reading the books. I read the first fifty or so pages, and could go no further. Now my opinion is that they are poorly written...
-Daniel

Howdy! Nice to see ya!

John I often think so too, but it has nothing to do with it being released at midnight!

Hiroshima '45
Chornobyl '86
Windows '95


Σώσον, Κύριε, καί διαφύλαξον η�άς από τών Βασιλιάνικων τάξεων!

If Chritian had made sure about that true Christian education their children should have had, no one would have worried about Harry Potter.

I mean,
I have seen, watched and read even more discusting books and movies than HP, even such books that teach you how to have satanic powers, they never had any influence on me...
Those who build on THEE ROCK need not to feer winds and rain. But those who build on sand, well, they will probably drawn.

After all the controversey about the Harry Potter movies I went with my children to see them.

I have no moral reservations about Harry Potter movies. I saw them as fantasy, good vs. evil.

As in the past, the current fabricated controversy is designed by the book publishers to sell books. "Controversal books sell!"

Use the Pope's name and publishers sell even more books!!

Paul

As one of my third-grade students (read 8-years-old) said about the Potter books, "it's not real."
Out of the mouths of babes....comes greater wisdom than many adults seem to possess.