Thus a headline "Pope Knocks Down Harry Potter" could just mean he knocked him down on the best seller's list.
Not saying the Pope likes HP. Just saying we don't have a credible source to believe he doesn't.
ResonanceThis is a link to the google translated pageJoseph cardinal Ratzinger, Praefekt of the Glaubenskongregation, letter from 7 March 2003
"thank you for the instructive book. It is good the fact that you clear Harry up Potter in things, because these are subtle seductions, which work imperceptibly and straight thereby deeply and which decomposes Christianity in the soul, before it could grow at all quite." (cardinal Ratzinger refers to my contribution in the book in the meantime out of print: The Gabriele Kuby and Michael Hageboeck: Harry Potter the master of the rings. Distinction does emergency. It wrote me 27. 5. 2003: "I permit you gladly to appoint itself to my judgement over Harry Potter.")
To find "legitimate sources" do a google search on
Ratzinger, Gabriele Kuby
Apparently, on March 7, 2003 then-Cardinal Ratzinger praised Bavarian author Gabriele Kuby's anti-Harry Potter book.
http://www.gabriele-kuby.de/resonanz.html
Kubys Warnungen folgte sogleich hoher Beistand aus Rom. Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger, Präfekt der katholischen Glaubenskongregation, verdammte die" Potter"-Geschichten als "subtile Verführungen, die unmerklich das Christentum in der Seele zersetzen, ehe es überhaupt recht wachsen" könne.
Ignatius Press has the rights to sell several of the Pope's books. They were just inundated with orders last week!
The main thrust of Kuby's objection to Potter is that the books corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy.In the Zenit interview, Kuby quotes from the letter she received from Cardinal Ratzinger. In the letter, then-Cardinal Ratzinger specifically pointed to the fact that the danger in the Potter books is hidden was greatly concerning. "It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (the Faith) could properly grow," said Cardinal Ratzinger.
Kuby's Potter criticism also received recognition in Germany from the city of Munich's office of Youth affairs, which at the time made headlines for indicating that the Potter books were not fit for children.
Regarding the harm to children from the Potter books, Kuby says, "That they (children) are being cut off from God, the source of Love and Hope , so that they in sorrowful life conditions are without a foundation that supports them -that they lose the spirit of discernment between good and evil and that they will not have the necessary strength and knowledge to withstand the temptations to evil."
The most prominent Potter critic in North America, Catholic novelist and painter Michael O'Brien commented to LifeSiteNews.com on the comments of now-Pope Benedict saying, "This discernment on the part of Benedict XVI reveals the Holy Father's depth and wide ranging gifts of spiritual discernment." O'Brien, author of a book dealing with fantasy literature for children added, "it's consistent with many of the statements he's been making since his election to the Chair of Peter, indeed for the past 20 years - a probing accurate read of the massing spiritual warfare that is moving to a new level of struggle in western civilization. He is a man in whom a prodigious intellect is integrated with great spiritual gifts. He is the father of the universal church and we would do well to listen to him."