Harry goes to Hell
Oh dearie me... The top Vatican exorcist Gabrile Amorth has condemned J K Rowling's Harry Potter novels for leading poor innocent little children into the waiting arms of Lucifer:
"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," he said.
What century does this fuckwit comes from? Presumably a couple of hundred years ago he would have the Inquisition rounding up Potter readers and torturing them for the good of their own soul. It is nice to see the Catholic church still has that mature and informed viewpoint that equates any form of magic with Satan: I doubt most Wiccans and other magical practicioners would agree (especially since Pagan-based magical rituals predate Christianity and therefore can't owe any allegiance to Satan since he is a Christian invention, or at least adaptation from older belief systems).
Also seems odd to me since the Bible is full of events which appear to be the working of magic - that neat trick with the loaves and the fishes, raising someone from the dead, water into wine, transubstantiation and of course the time Jesus escaped from a water filled tank in under two minutes. Oh, I think Yvonne is going to have something to say on this...
Mind they added The Da Vinci Code to the Index a while back. If only it had been on literary grounds, I could've got behind them.
ReplyDeletewell silver eel, if they'd got Harry Potter on literary grounds I would back them to, is it just me or is JK Rowling not a terribly good writer? She just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and was vastly overhyped.
ReplyDeleteWhen will these people realise that, by inveighing against something, they actually make it more popular?
ReplyDeleteI had no plans to go and see The Last Temptation of Christ when it came out, as I thought "oh it's just another Jesus flick" but then when Christians started banging on about how blasphemous it was, I thought perhaps I would go after all (actually I never got round to it, but the principle is the same). And I was already into Salman Rushdie's work when The Satanic Verses came out, but I'm sure a lot of people must have read it because of the controversy who wouldn't otherwise have been aware of his work. And so on, and so on. You'll be pleased to know that there are some Catholics who like Harry Potter, as it has a moral worldview they can relate to.