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]

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

Some people would continue to drink the poisoned water on principle and say it was delicious as they breathed their last.

[Antoninus]

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?

It becomes a danger when an author/artist writes something ostensibly for children to read that inserts their pernicious, vulgar, and insipid worldview into my kids lives.

I've never read Tennessee Williams. All the works of Gore Vidal and Truman Capote could be accidentally dropped in the sewer and the world would be no poorer. Elton John is a hack who writes trite pop ditties that will be utterly forgotten in 50 years.

As for Copeland, he didn't come out and say later that he was in love with Billy the Kid, nor did Tchaikovsky rename his work Romeo and Julio.

If you can't see the difference between that and what Rowling did, I can't help you.

[cothrige]

I must congratulate you on reading this entire series in the first place. I read the first five I believe, but could go no further. The first book I will gladly concede was very nearly fantastic. It was fun, exciting and heroic in all the right ways. I honestly loved it, and could easily see why it was such a phenomenon. The second was also very good, though not quite as brilliant as the first which I suppose is unavoidable in such a case. The third was fine, but nothing more really. A pattern was emerging, but I was hoping that the downturn was a typical lull in a long story arc as things were being developed for future revelation. However, hope can carry you on for only so long, and after the next two I could go no further.

As the books got longer, and more dreary, they seemed to lose any interest in the characters themselves. By the fourth and fifth I found that I hated Harry. He became a snide, nasty, sniveling little egomaniac and I could really find no difference between his character and the villains. That may be fine in some settings, but in a series of books touted as heroic good vs. evil fantasy it just doesn’t work. You simply have to like the hero, and as the series wound on it was clear that there was no hero at all, but merely an incidental protagonist who happened to be a jerk. I simply couldn’t think of reading yet another massive tome about an illtempered primadonna like Potter, and so gave up on them. The rewards of reading the books had disappeared and the costs were hefty. Boring, boring, boring...

So, again, congratulations on the effort. I really don’t know how you did it.

[William Terrell]

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

Uhhh, like the Dixie Chicks, maybe?

[darkangel82]

Elton John is a hack who writes trite pop ditties that will be utterly forgotten in 50 years.

50? It won't take that long, but then again pop "music" is forgettable anyway.

[HKMk23]

Some people would continue to drink the poisoned water on principle and say it was delicious as they breathed their last.

Too true. Finish this, "for wide is the gate, and broad is the way..."

[trisham]

Sadly, I’m afraid I do. Best of luck to you.

[Antoninus]

But suddenly the whole series is vile and evil, not because of what is in it, but because something said outside of the books.

Yes, something that was said by the author of the books concerning one of the main heroic characters--and this in a series that is ostensibly for kids to read. And now, the tiresome subject of homosexuality will be broached any time the series is discussed--especially in academic settings. They're already talking about using them as "teachable moments."

And it's not "suddenly". The moral sense of the books has been convoluted from day one and I've tried to point that out in my reviews when I saw it. Harry's incessant lying, his contempt for authority, his repeated dissing of his friends, his use of unforgivable "dark magic", his complete lack of remorse for bad acts he commits.

"Dumbledore is gay" is just the final straw, as far as I'm concerned.

[Antoninus]

He became a snide, nasty, sniveling little egomaniac and I could really find no difference between his character and the villains. That may be fine in some settings, but in a series of books touted as heroic good vs. evil fantasy it just doesn’t work.

I agree. In the later books, I kept waiting for Harry to repent of his obnoxious ways. But he never did. To a certain extent, he stopped acting that way, but he never felt any remorse for acting like a jerk in the first place. And that fits with the pseudo-Christian mindset of the JK Rowlings of this world, if you ask me. There's no such thing as sin, so there's no need to repent for anything. Guilt is bad as we know.

Basically, as the series ended, I thought Harry was a crummy hero and Voldemort was a hopeless villain. I was truly hoping that it would turn out that Neville was the real hero and Harry was just along for the ride. Alas, that might have been too daring.

[Antoninus]

Finish this, "for wide is the gate, and broad is the way..."

...that leads to destruction. And many will enter it."

[Tired of Taxes]

I agree with you here. After talking with other parents and reading the first book myself, I let my eldest son read the entire series as each book was released. I think he owns all the books. Some were gifts. He won one in a contest. Then he spent his own money buying the final book.

As someone said on another thread, it is pure evil that Rowling hid the information and waited until her last book was sold to reveal this news. I’m sure kids are going to hear about it and spread the news. These days, it may be made into an issue in the movies, too.

Of course, my son also read Narnia, LOTR, and other books that are pure good vs. evil, so he’s not a Potter-obsessed fan (anymore). I’m now glad my other two children are not early readers who like big, thick novels.

[Antoninus]

As someone said on another thread, it is pure evil that Rowling hid the information and waited until her last book was sold to reveal this news. I’m sure kids are going to hear about it and spread the news. These days, it may be made into an issue in the movies, too.

With the make up of Hollyweird these days, you can almost guarantee that it will be added to the movies, if only in some "inside joke" kind of way.

I'd say "I'll be watching for it," but I have no intention on spending another dime on a Harry Potter realted product.