A Catholic Homeschool Father Won't Bother to Review the Rest of the Harry Potters

Gloria Romanorum blog ^ | 10/25/07 | Florentius

[Antoninus]

In an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail we read the following about J.K. Rowling:

However, during the 15-minute media conference that preceded the public appearance, the author grew testy as reporters circled back to Dumbledore and Grindelwald. "It's very clear" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows how intense Dumbledore's feelings for the dark wizard are, she said, feelings that astute adult readers will recognize while children will simply construe as manifestations of friendship. The power of love is one of the major themes in the Potter oeuvre, she noted, and "certainly it's never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man [like Dumbledore] would never love other men.

"He's my character," she asserted. "I have the right to know what I know about him and say what I say about him."

Fair enough. But I have the right to say that I don't want your propaganda anywhere near my children.

I consider myself a fairly astute reader but I didn't pick up on any "butt lust connection" between Dumbledore and the Dark Wizard, Grindelwald. I assumed that Rowling was somehow connecting the wizarding world to World War II, considering one was English, the other German, and they had their climactic fight in 1945. This scenario also fit in neatly with the message of "tolerance" which becomes increasingly overt and preachy as the series goes on. Grindelwald (the Nazi) is all about "pure blood" and not mixing with the mudblooded muggles. Meanwhile, Dumbledore (the noble Englishman) is attracted to the dark side but turns away. However, given Rowling's statement above, I guess I wasn't astute enough in my reading here given that I'm generally not prone to assume that two male characters who are friends are actually doing more with their wands than just casting spells. But hey, maybe I'm just old fashioned.

And now, predictably "experts" are urging parents to use Rowling's admission as a "teachable moment." God only knows what such "experts" are really expert at--perhaps hand signals under the stalls in men's rooms.

Personally, I'm glad that Rowling decided to spout off her assinine opinions on disordered types of sexuality before I finished my reviews on the Harry Potter series. To this point, I have been impressed with her skills as a writer but repeatedly perplexed by her confused sense of morality. Well, the perplexity has vanished. The confused sense of morality in the Potter books remains unresolved to the very end because it springs directly from the author herself.

Before the whole "Dumbledore's a homo" flap developed, Rowling was merrily going around telling everyone about the "Christian themes" in the books. And from reading Deathly Hallows in particular, you wouldn't have to be particularly "astute" to pick them up. Let's see, the chapter near the end of the book where Harry 'dies' is called "King's Cross". When Voldemort thinks he's killed Harry, he sends Narcissa Malfoy to check the body, at which point Rowling writes: "He [Harry] felt the hand on his chest contract; her nails pierced him."

There are other hints as well but they are not particularly well thought out and in the end do not reveal any unmistakably Christian message, unlike The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings. Rowling's message seems to be amor vincit omnia which is nice, but it's not anything that a pagan like Virgil wouldn't also agree to. And given Rowling's somewhat loose understanding of what constitutes "love", perhaps the message means even less than what it did for your average virtuous pagan.

As for "tolerance", Rowling, the good, worldly, cowardly Christian that she is, clearly worships at the altar of weakness--unable to take a strong stand or speak the truth to power. And like most of her graying intellectual brethren, Rowling's "tolerance" includes tolerating intolerable things that have been expressly condemned and forbidden since the earliest Christian times and before. Rowling's version of tolerant-über-alles Christianity is that false faith offered by the Rembert Weakland/Shelby Spong/Ted Haggard brand of pseudo-christianity. It reminds me of the donkey dressed in a lion's mane at the end of the Chronicles of Narina. Its fruits to date have been scandal, outrage, division, abuse, disease, sterility, and ultimately, empty churches and lost souls.

Perhaps all this is not so surprising because Rowling, it seems, is also supremely confused about her own personal belief system:

"The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot," Rowling admitted. "On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books.”

Obvious within the books. Yeah. Moral confusion. Theological confusion. Personal spiritual confusion. Very obvious.

Rowling has also said in response to some of her Christian critics: "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion.” Sounds pretty intolerant to me, but setting that aside, I'm guessing by that she'd put in the "lunatic fringe" the guy who said:

Be ye therefore followers of God, as most dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not so much as be named among you, as becometh saints: Or obscenity, or foolish talking, or scurrility, which is to no purpose; but rather giving of thanks. For know you this and understand, that no fornicator, or unclean, or covetous person (which is a serving of idols), hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

That of course, would be St. Paul (Ephesians, 5:1-5) who also said directly following the above:

Let no man [or woman in this case] deceive you with vain words. For because of these things cometh the anger of God upon the children of unbelief. Be ye not therefore partakers with them. For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth; Proving what is well pleasing to God: And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. But all things that are reproved, are made manifest by the light; for all that is made manifest is light. [Words in brackets mine]

So that's it. I won't bother reviewing books 6 and 7 in detail because the author has settled the matter for me. According to Rowling, I am a "lunatic fringe" Christian. If I'm going to be accused of being such, then I might as well play the role--I don't want my kids reading anything that would allow her type of lukewarm gobbledeegook but ever-so-mainstream christianity into our home. Thankfully, I didn't buy a single one of the Potter books and my children are still too young to care. The books will now go back where they came from and I'll make sure to fill their places with better literature for kids which exists in abundance if parents will only take a minute and look around for it.

[Antoninus]

Good that Rowling said it. Ironically however, it probably was not at all obvious from the book and one gets the impression that this is just a stunt thought up after the fact, for whatever reason. Of all the books' criticisms, nobody seems to have picked up on this.

It wasn't at all obvious from the book. Apparently one had to be an "astute reader" to put it together. I'm forced to assume that they mean the kind of astute that assumes that two men eating dinner together in a restaurant will later go home and sodomize each other. That kind of mindset is far from astute--it's poisonous. And I know plenty of people who are infected with it. It's the fad, you see.

The reaction to Rowling's statement seemed rather low key to me....more like a stunned silence.... and I get the distinct impression that the Potter fad is on the wane.

Yep. And notice that Rowling only brought it out after she made her fortune. Now she can alienate the good people who bought her books for their kids and not suffer from it financially. That money is already in the bank. In fact, the Potter books will now have a new core audience--and one that will happily promote it alongside the Rocky Horror Show and other such wholesome family entertainment.

You did heroically well to wade through it all.

Thanks, but I don't feel particularly heroic at the moment. Nauseated is more like it.

[Antoninus]

And if memory serves, while you weren't praising him to the rafters you didn't seem all that upset with Rowling's books...until her recent comments.

That's what's known as giving a work the benefit of the doubt or keeping an open mind, capiche?

So that one comment changed everything in your opinion and turned the entire series from so-so to pure evil?

It's not just one comment--it's a media cause celebre and Rowling knew it would be. I feel like I've been had and that the whole thing was a set-up for a "teachable moment."

Is it wrong to be upset when someone deceives you?

[humblegunner]

As is clear from the article above, I've already read them.

Good for you, so have I.

I thought they were great books.

Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books, only after the fact
did this emerge, perhaps as an afterthought. Plus, he's dead.

And fictitious.

[Antoninus]

Where's the simple acknowledgement that having a cultural atmosphere less like debauched Corinth, and more like Mayberry, would make the world a pretty darn decent place to live?

For the gaystapo and their sycophants, Mayberry is every bit as bad as the Third Reich. Heck, they think what we have right here and now is as bad as the Third Reich. Until they have unfettered access to all the Oppies in the world, they'll think society is Nazi-like. There can be no compromise with such people.

[HKMk23]

So that one comment changed everything in your opinion and turned the entire series from so-so to pure evil?

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

[Antoninus]

Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books, only after the fact did this emerge, perhaps as an afterthought.

That's not what Rowling said. She said she envisioned him as a homosexual from the beginning.

As she is his creator, that means he is a homosexual in the books. And this subject will be brought up with kids who have read the books. It was mentioned on the local news around here. I find it revolting that an author would purposely introduce other people's children to such a disgusting topic as homosexuality on the sneak like this. But hey, it's done every day in the public schools.

[Non-Sequitur]

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

[Antoninus]

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

Tell you what. I'll just avoid those works where the author comes out and says: "This particular heroic character of mine is a homosexual."

Deal?

[trisham]

I thought it was kind of dull and was pretty disappointed with the whole thing.

***************

Nothing worse than a boring pro-homosexual movie, I agree.

[Non-Sequitur]

Nothing worse than a boring pro-homosexual movie, I agree.

Nothing worse than a boring movie, period.

[Claud]

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

ROFTL!!! And this is exactly how the Enemy furthers his ends.....mixes 1 cc of poison with 100 gallons of sweetness and then gradually ups the dose.

[Non-Sequitur]

Tell you what. I'll just avoid those works where the author comes out and says: "This particular heroic character of mine is a homosexual."

Ah, but what if you read one by mistake?

[Claud]

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

I think you make a fatal mistake here...in that you can't separate the treatment of a subject with the glorification of it.

Aristophanes's Lysistrata is supposedly all about sex, it's rife with sexual innuendo and jokes that college kids just love to twitter about--ha ha, wink wink, nudge nudge. And yet, what is the play about....in the end it is about the sanctity of the *family*. There's a profound moral in it.

A movie like Brokeback is a piece of slick propaganda, designed to teach a "moral" that is in reality a massive lie. I didn't see it and never will, but even if it were *far* more restrained in its obscenities than Lysistrata, it still wouldn't be as moral.

[trisham]

Nothing worse than a boring movie, period.

************

I see.

[Antoninus]

Ah, but what if you read one by mistake?

So what if I do? I can warn others about it. If I read it by mistake, the fault is not mine.

[HKMk23]

Why would I avoid steak and eggs over ricin being somewhere else?

You’re foundering in the middle of your all-or-nothing mentality. Furthermore, this discussion isn’t about a work shot through with images of debauchery, which I’d naturally avoid, but about a work that was just fair, on it’s own being tarnished after completion by its own author; her dropping the ricin into the tank, if you will.

So, what once I’d have consumed unhesitatingly has now been rendered non-potable.

Tewnty thousand Leagues Under the Sea was pretty good writing, and I don’t recall any subsequent discussion by the author about Nemo’s sexuality.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been a lasting favorite, despite the fact that Twain never explored the sexual relations between Tom and Huck, Tom and Becky, or Huck and Jim.

Only in a modern University could you even remotely hope to find the kind of twisted minds that would go back and do such things all these years down the road; there’d be some class like “Hidden Homosexuality In World Literature: Coming Out of the Library”.

Who needs it? Why take a completed work and go back to try and sully it with repulsive suppositions?

Yet, here we have, not some voyeur of a Lit prof, but the author, herself, introducing the poison into her own inkwell, or, perhaps as she more likely intends, revealing that it was there, all along; at least in her mind.

So, you’re there with the half-empty glass at yourlips, and I come around the corner and tell you, “Oh, by the way, there’s Ricin in that water.”

Now what do you do; keep drinking?? Invite others to imbibe with you?? Malign the one who hangs the “NON-POTABLE” sign at the spigot??

I’d think you would do the first, yet you are here, on this thread, doing the last.

[Non-Sequitur]

I see.

Do you?

[Non-Sequitur]

Where does it end? You say you read the entire series. So obviously there is nothing in the books themselves that triggered any sort of warning. Nothing Dumbledore did or said gave any indication. But suddenly the whole series is vile and evil, not because of what is in it, but because something said outside of the books.

Where does it end? First Rowling and then Capote and Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal? Do you ban your children from listening to Elton John? How about Tchaikovsky and Copeland? No "Nutcracker" or "Rodeo"? Do Disney's "Lion King" and "Fantasia" become prohibited? At what point does it become a danger?

[trisham]

Yes.

[Non-Sequitur]

Yes.

I doubt it.