A reader writes:

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 1:29 pm by Mark Shea

A reader writes: 2014-12-31T13:29:38-07:00 Mark Shea

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I’ve been forcibly separated from the interwebs for the last few weeks, and only just saw your entirely reasonable article on NCR about HP and those who so determinedly assail the series.

Reading through the comments on your article has been – no exaggeration – one of the most spiritually and intellectually degrading exercises of my life (though it’s no fault of yours). It is hard to share in Chesterton’s delight in the common person and his belief in the fundamental alright-ness of ’em when confronted by what such persons seem to emit when given access to a soapbox. That the comments were being put forth under the guise of thoughtful, cautious holiness only makes them worse.

To put it bluntly, I have never seen such bile-inducing stupidity in my life – never. It’s a miracle that some of these people can tie their shoes, let alone function as competent adults.

I’ll be sure to mention that I said this during my next confession, but said it I have. Good grief.

All the best to you and yours,

P.S. Seriously, this whole thing has occasioned a very thorough remembering of what it was like to be purely secular and to encounter the appalling quality of thought present in some of those comments.
Back then, at least, I would have spent the next several days (even
weeks) following these people in their comments around the site and telling them exactly what they were. I am grateful to have been brought beyond such desires, anyway, even if only for the time that it saves.

It has been a depressing display as the comboxes have dragged on, but be aware of a couple of things. First, the general dynamic of a combox is that normal people have their say first and then, have said their piece, move on. This is particularly true when the subject is something as non-crucial as Harry Potter.

That leaves the zealots and fanatics to continue the discussion and they tend to carry it out until the edge of doom. The problem is, there seems to be no short supply of excommunicating inquisitors and fanatics when it comes to HP, and yes, they do say some uncommonly dumb things.

So, for instance, we find the curious contradiction at the heart of a lot of Harry Hatred: the charge that the books are “gnostic”. What kills me is how this charge is established. When you point to John Granger’s well-researched and thoroughly literate reading of the books which clearly demonstrates that they do not advocate salvation through “secret knowledge” (which is at the core of gnosticism), how do the Harry Haters respond? Basically, they complain that there’s more to the spiritual life than Granger’s fancy pants education, knowledge and training in reading literature. Michael O’Brien’s wave of spiritual nausea and the Harry Hater’s “gut instinct” are more to be trusted. In short, we are to trust in their intuitive “secret knowledge” and not in facts and actual understanding of the text (of which many Harry Haters are proudly ignorant since they “don’t read books on the occult” and so have never actually read HP.

Which brings me to the really fascinating thing: the amazing way in which, yet again, so-called “conservative Catholics” completely throw overboard the Church’s intellectual tradition (which has traditionally never feared to engage ideas from “outside the tribe” in order to get at the question “What is true?”). Thomas has no fear of Aristotle the pagan and Averroes the Muslim. Today, he would be denounced as Impure by many “conservative Catholics” for not getting his information from Truly True Catholic sources and for daring to read texts from non-tribal members.

Over at the Register blog, some people are seriously suggesting that there is something sinister about the fact that I disagree with some Catholic media folk about Harry Potter and are planning to complain that this disagreement is somehow scandalous. Their approach to the question is not “What is true?” but “Who are my tribal elders who tell me what I want to hear?” and “How can I muzzle ideas I dislike?” It’s pretty funny really. Especially since, yesterday, Fr. Brian Harrison, to my great surprise, weighed in on the “Harry is not a big deal” side and threw the Harry Haters into confusion. It is instructive to read, not just Fr. Harrison, but the response to him. First, Fr. Harrison:

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

Remember I was commenting to you during my visit about people who needlessly read deep, dark and diabolical meanings into Harry Potter?

Well, The Remnant has a new “exposé” of the terrible dangers of letting kids watch HP. Being a wizard, we are told, Harry is “a man of evil”, and so, along with friends Ron and Hermione, is careering along the road to Hell. On that basis, of course, there’s a vast and centuries-old literature of fantasy tales and fairy stories that will have to be excised from every Christian home. This actually seems to me rather like a kind of new puritanism. (In fact, I believe the anti-Harry Potter publicity started in conservative Evangelical Protestant, not Catholic, circles.)

The reason that attempts by real-life human beings to engage in magic and wizardry are sinful is basically because they attempt to procure and wield supernatural powers that God has not given to human beings. They represent, therefore, a sin as old as the Garden of Eden, the presumptuous quest to “be like God”. But in Rowling’s fictional fantasy world, Harry and his friends are not committing that sin at all. The distinction between them and ordinary “muggles” like you and me is basic to the whole series of books, right from the first time our heroes vanish into the column of Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station in order to board the train for Hogwarts. Harry, Ron, Hermione etc., are not trying to arrogantly overreach themselves. For, unlike real-life human beings, they are depicted as being members of a distinct ‘race’ who are born as wizards, and so are just innocently fulfilling their own nature when they study and develop their inborn magical abilities. (Of course, Christian parents who let their kids read and see the HP fantasies should also make it clear, as part of their normal commitment to raising their children in accord with their baptismal promises, that we real human beings are not allowed to attempt magical feats, and should not be so gullible as to believe readily in claims of ‘supernatural’ effects of spells, potions, etc., made by New Agers, Wicca adepts, etc.)

I went to see the final Harry Potter movie the other day, and didn’t see anything “anti-Christian” about it. I guess that just shows how naive I am: I don’t realize I’m being subconsciously assailed by all the “symbols” that will weaken my faith and morals without my knowing it!

It reaches the point of absurdity when The Remnant’s writer claims that there are “symbols” that indicate Harry loses his virginity in the course of his adventures. Never mind that Harry never does anything more than kiss a girl (fully clothed and standing up)! For we are assured that supposed “phallic symbols” hovering in the background will all subliminally send the message to adolescent viewers that Harry is now sexually active and that teen sex is therefore the way to go! Actually, for by far the greater part of the series, Harry, Ron and Hermione are presented – as you well know – just as comrades or buddies, with occasional squabbles but always basically very loyal. Which of course is a perfectly good model of friendship between adolescent boys and girls who are too young to start entering into serious romantic relationships. In the last two movies of the series, when our heroes are evidently around 17-18 years old, Harry gets a girlfriend who makes an occasional appearance, and Ron and Hermione fall in love. And, yes, they too hug and kiss once or twice (again, fully clothed and standing). OK, so what? There’s no indication that they’re having premarital sex. And in fact the epilogue depicts these two couples, 19 years after the final destruction of the evil Voldemort, as respectably married and with small kids. So the whole Harry Potter saga in fact ends on quite a pro-life, pro-family and pro-marriage note. Not exactly the parting message that the Church’s mortal enemies would want to send to today’s adolescents!

At the bottom of this Remnant review you’ll find an excerpt from one of the books that the critic tries to make out is some sort of subtly blasphemous, contemptuous mockery of the Holy Mass. I find it very hard to believe any Catholic kid is going to take away from this scene any subliminal anti-Eucharistic assault on his/her faith. (And non-Catholic teens, who have little if any idea what the Catholic Mass is anyway, would be even less likely to draw any anti-Christian message out of this distasteful description of the rotting food at a ghost’s “death-day party”.) I’ll leave you to read the excerpt – which the columnist apparently considers Exhibit A for his case – and form your own opinion.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in this whole type of neo-puritan criticism of such modern fantasy books/films is that today’s kids are generally so ignorant of both Christianity and their own Western literary and cultural tradition that, even supposing the evil and perverse symbolism was deliberately intended by J.K. Rowling and L. Frank Baum (yes, even The Wizard of Oz is nefarious, occult propaganda, according to this Remnant columnist!), these modern kids would be quite incapable of recognizing it as such. Of course, the retort to this will be, “Ah, how naive you are! Of course they don’t recognize it! That’s why its so insidious and dangerous! For the symbolism will reach and corrupt them at a subconscious level!”.

The trouble is that you can only have buried in your subconscious something that you have previously consciously experienced and have now forgotten and/or repressed. But hardly any of today’s uncultured teenage viewers of Harry Potter would ever at any moment of their short lives have had any knowledge of these symbols! How many of these kids, for instance would ever have heard or read that a fish (Greek ‘ICTHUS’) was an ancient symbol of Christ? Therefore, how could a rotten fish at a “ghost’s party” possibly send such kids an insidious ‘depth-charge’ subliminal messsage that Christ is rotten and contemptible? And how many of these teenage viewers would ever have heard or known that a black cloth (like the one on the ghosts’ malodorous dinner-table) was used for traditional funeral Masses in the Traditional Latin Catholic rite? (I didn’t even know that myself till now – never having been to a funeral in the Traditional Rite!)

Finally, even supposing these “symbols” were recognizable at the subsconcious level by the young viewers, where is the hard evidence that they do in fact have a corrupting influence on the faith or morals of the young? The puritanical critics’ argument seems to be of an a priori nature: “the dark and occultic symbols are there in the Potter books and movies; therefore they must have a pernicious, anti-Christian effect on the young.” But what you need here is a posteriori evidence and reasoning: e.g., a statistically significant sampling of kids who have fallen away from Christian faith or practice under circumstances where there is some clear cause-and-effect evidence that this was a result of watching or reading Harry Potter fantasies. (We’ve had The Wizard of Oz around for more than 70 years now. Where are all the generations of kids whose faith and morals have been scarred for life by Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Woodman, the Wicked Witch of the West, and the anti-climactic little Wizard?)

There are indeed plenty of people in the media today who want to corrupt and destroy Christian faith and morals among the young. But I think they are smart enough to realize that the best way to do this with today’s kids is by unsubtle, unambiguous ‘full-frontal’ propaganda: TV shows and movies like South Park, Sex and the City, HBO, internet porn, blasphemous “art ” works, shows that openly present priests and serious Christians in general as nerds, cowards, hypocrites and ‘homophobic’ bigots, and openly anti-Catholic books and movies like Last Temptation, The Da Vinci Code and Philip Pullman’s noxious children’s books (in which the villains are cloaked like Knights of Malta and turn out to be child-abusers belonging to a group entitled “The Magisterium”), shows that present active homosexuals as heroes and regular, lovable folks, etc., etc.

The real enemies of the Church, of our Lord and Savior, and of the natural moral law wouldn’t waste their time dreaming up characters like Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore, who they would regard as very tame and ineffective emissaries for their cause, or indeed (more likely) as emissaries for the opposite cause and values springing from J.K. Rowling’s own professed Christian faith. This is especially true, given that the message comes through loud and clear throughout the series that the Luciferian side in this struggle, represented by the diabolical Voldemort and his minions, is precisely the side Harry constantly battles against, and finally defeats.
God bless,

Fr. Brian Harrison

Now, the telling response:

Fr. Brian Harrison:

Since you seem to have some spare time… and since you seem to have spent much of your precious time on HP, would you please consider helping one of your fellow priests (Fr. Richard Heilman) understand HP?

Obviously, he has some serious concerns about HP and hasn’t had the luxury of time to spend reading/watching/writing that you have apparently had. Please, my friend, take some of your excessive free time and help him. I’m sure he will be very grateful to you. Thanks… and God Bless.

Fr. Richard Heilman: [I have to admit that up until I invited a very holy priest, Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea, to my parishes to give a Lenten Mission on the Four Last Things (listen here), I simply had never heard any of the warnings in regard to Harry Potter. And so, like any good pastor who is concerned for the spiritual well-being of his flock, I did some checking (via google). There it was � with little more than a ten minute search on the internet, I found concerns raised by none other than Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger), Cardinal Arinze, Cardinal Burke and the chief exorcist to Rome, Fr. Gabriele Amorth. See previous post).
Moreover, I was not prepared for the inordinate intensity of push-back on this topic. I was simply stunned by the over-the-top outrage toward someone who simply wanted to warn others about the potential spiritual dangers of HP. Frankly, it was in the realm of creepy to me, because it was so very intense. It left me wondering if the supernatural was involved here.
Fair warning to pastors � your choice to broach this subject will, in all likelihood, bring assaults that are severe and personal. For me, I simply chose to pick other battles for now � I did not feel it was worth going to war over this while there are seemingly endless things to warn our flocks about. In the meantime, I plan to do more research to see why these most prominent Roman Catholic Church figures are warning us about HP.]

What’s interesting to me is how the person posting the note from Fr. Heilman makes no effort whatsoever to engage what Fr. Harrison says. He simply appeals to several authorities whom he deems to be tribal elders of the Harry Hater faction and thinks that’s enough. What strikes me is how postmodern it is. There is no faith at all in the Church’s intellectual tradition and the believe that you can actually get at the truth of things by means of evidence and argument. Instead, the approach is to appeal to bogus authority (the bunkum that Benedict “condemned” Harry Potter), dubious authority (Fr. Gabriele Amorth’s sketchy pontifications of books of which he is wholly ignorant), Cardinal Burke (who relies completely on Fr. Amorth), and Cardinal Arinze (who likewise relies completely on what he’s picked up through the grapevine). Beyond that, we have an appeal to Fr. Heilman’s “creepy feeling”. It’s an interesting picture of Catholics relying on hunches, but that’s about it. What’s interesting is that the reader who posts it seems to think that (as with Granger, who has actually taken the time to read and analyze the books and not just go on hearsay) Fr. Harrison is the one at fault for knowing what he is talking about and not just falling into line and parrotting the hearsay.

In short, there seems to be an actual celebration of anti-intellectualism and a hostility to using one’s brain to *think*. This is not, obviously, a problem that is strictly limited to Harry Potter and is a troubling symptom. And pointing it out is dangerous in current tribal climate, since to mention it is to invite cries of “elitist” from ignorami and postmoderns who abandon the possibility of discovering truth through argument and evidence while trusting their “gut” or the argument from authority (the weakest of all arguments, according to St. Thomas) as the basis for their views on things much weightier that HP.

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