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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nHarried a bit by the evil in the world?\u00a0 Make peace with Potter and his friends.\u00a0 Fr. Dan Rehill, priest at St. Edward Catholic High School in Nashville should have thought of that before announcing the school was banning the Harry Potter books.\u00a0 Apparently, after checking with some exorcists, Rehill believes that the books contain real curses that could spiritually damage young readers.<\/p>\n
O my gosh.\u00a0 I thought we had gotten over this decades ago when the books first came out. Do the books contain spells and incantations and discussion of magic so that the reading of the novels will turn our young to the Dark Side?\u00a0 No, nada, never, nicht!<\/p>\n
The priest and the school have only succeeded in setting themselves up for ridicule and presenting their state as populated by backward, superstitious southern folks.\u00a0 The Catholic faith deserves better and so do all Tennesseans. The Catholic Church has no official position on the Harry Potter novels.\u00a0 Gee, I wonder why?<\/p>\n
Years ago, I helped host a convocation on the rise of Satanism at a well-known secular university.\u00a0 It was a very popular and informative seminar, treated with respect by religious and secular officials.\u00a0 There, we dealt with the things that go bump in the night that are a real threat to young people.\u00a0 To take an innocuous series of childrens\u2019 tales and turn them into the Grimoire Munich Manual of Necromancy<\/em> (a 15th century tome of awful spells not to be confused with the fictional Necronomicon<\/em> by Lovecraft) or the Malleus Malefacarum<\/em> (a medieval inquisitional book about witchcraft that is dangerous) is just stupid.\u00a0 The Ouija Board Game is far worse in that one has to invite an entity into oneself to propel the little triangle that spells out answers.\u00a0 But Harry Potter evil?\u00a0 Not a chance!<\/p>\n There are problems with Potter.\u00a0 But the novels\u2019 very problems help show how facile the accusations against it are.\u00a0 Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n First,\u00a0 the spells invoke no deity<\/strong>.\u00a0 They are just words, sometimes in Latin.\u00a0 They have about as much effect as if a child said, \u201cAbracadabra.\u201d\u00a0 There is no force of magic\u2013black, white, neutral or otherwise behind them.<\/p>\n Second, a major<\/strong>\u00a0problem of the novels is that they are so Christian light<\/strong>.\u00a0 They have a veneer of Christianity in the fact that the morals described are conventional, western Christian morals.\u00a0 In other words, all show, but no real substance.<\/p>\n Third and following that statement, the worst defect is that there is no substantive rationale for the good or evil present in the novels<\/strong>.\u00a0 Harry is the hero, so he is the good guy and does good things.\u00a0 So do his friends.\u00a0 What makes them good?\u00a0 As far as I know, Christ or God the Father is never mentioned.\u00a0 Christmas is celebrated every year at Hogwarts without reference to Jesus.\u00a0 \u00a0Voldemort is the bad guy, and whatever he does is evil, because J. K. Rowling, the author, says so.\u00a0 We don\u2019t really know where Voldemort gets his evil from. What\u2019s his history?\u00a0 Why is he bad?\u00a0 What makes him different than the good kids?\u00a0 That\u2019s where the author\u2019s conventional Christianity breaks down.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t root goodness in the One God; nor does she root evil in the rebellion of some Satanic figure.\u00a0 Evil and good in her novels just are.\u00a0 Perhaps that is why St. Edward School draws the conclusion that the books are anti-Christian.\u00a0 I call the omissions mentioned above sloppy writing, vacuous modern morality, and representative of poor world building in a fantasy novel.\u00a0 Rowling doesn\u2019t give us enough foundation to make her fantasy world believable.\u00a0 That\u2019s just bad story-telling, not malice. One cannot equate bad writing with pernicious evil.<\/p>\n Four, that\u2019s what makes her books only relatively entertaining and not classics<\/strong>.\u00a0 A classic fairytale educates children on the nature of good and evil.\u00a0 Rowling does neither.\u00a0 She simply tells what young people often find to be an exciting adventure story, but that is as deep as it goes.<\/p>\n Five, the novels are so shallow in the philosophical area of good and evil that I am surprised any exorcist would be worried<\/strong> about them.\u00a0 There have been no reports of Satanists being inspired by these books, or young people converting to the practice of evil.<\/p>\n We priests, parents and religious educators waste our breath condemning peripherals when so much real evil that can corrupt our youth is slamming them in the face every day:\u00a0 abortion, euthanasia, unbridled greed, amassing of power, slavery, racism\u2013the list goes on.\u00a0 Satan and the realm of evil have far greater tools to use against the young than a rather harmless series of novels.<\/p>\n By the way, I like so many other priests, asked our parishioners last Sunday to pray for people in the United States worried about Hurricane Dorian that they might be delivered of its power.\u00a0 So far the storm has not pummeled the United States.\u00a0 Coincidence?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 The storm has caused much damage elsewhere but it could have been so much worse.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m the one that\u2019s truly naive, but I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always found the power of prayer to be stronger than any magic.\u00a0 Plus, I never needed a wand.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don\u2019t Worry About Harry Harried a bit by the evil in the world?\u00a0 Make peace with Potter and his friends.\u00a0 Fr. Dan Rehill, priest at St. Edward Catholic High School in Nashville should have thought of that before announcing the school was banning the Harry Potter books.\u00a0 Apparently, after checking with some exorcists, Rehill believes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447,450,55,441,432,438,162,251,84,435,444,1],"tags":[471,462,456,465,453,61,468,459],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-banning","category-catholic-schools","category-catholic-teaching","category-curses","category-exorcism","category-harry-potter","category-priests","category-religious-leaders","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","category-satanism","category-spells","category-uncategorized","tag-book-banning","tag-curses","tag-evil","tag-exorcists","tag-harry-potter","tag-ripped-from-the-headlines","tag-satanism","tag-spells"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy The Potter Novels Are Not Demonic<\/h2>\n
Worry About The Evil That Really Tempts The Young<\/h2>\n
Prayer Always Trumps Magic<\/h2>\n