[Aquinasfan]

Audio link to Steven Greydanus discussing Harry Potter and other recent movie releases on Catholic Answers.

[Aquinasfan]

FYI

[billbears]

bump for later

[ppaul]

Harry Potter, Hairy Plotter, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseaum.....

[RMrattlesnake]

Q: These books are just fantasy and therefore harmless.

A: This argument of fantasy is the most mindless argument of all. If these books were "fantasy" books about violence or pornography people would have no problem seeing how harmful they were. The Harry Potter books present as harmless children using the power of witchcraft, something God has declared is an abomination. Deut 18 Q: "Children who read about Harry Potter will probably discover little about the world of the occult."

A: Essentially witchcraft is about our being able to control people or things by what we say or the rituals we do. This is clearly presented in the Harry Potter books. Also witchcraft is about using various means to foretell the future. This is also clearly stated in the Harry Potter books.

The real question is do these books provide Satan an opportunity to seduce children into experimenting in witchcraft, thereby gaining power and authority in their life. There is no doubt that these books do provide an innocent view of witchcraft.

The Harry Potter books are not handbooks of witchcraft, in other words all the practices and philosophy are in the books, but they are not necessarily set forth as a coven would practice them today. Therefore those who make these claims seem to believe that these books are harmless. The real question is if a child reads these books would they be more open to experimenting with witchcraft. When we consider today that children have no fear of experimenting with witchcraft are these appropriate books for children to read? There is more witchcraft material easily available to our children today than at any other time in history. There are also more children practicing witchcraft than at any other time in history.

http://www.therealpotter.com

[Mr. Thorne]

Harry Potter vs. Gandalf

Gandalf'd take the brat. No contest.

[AMDG&BVMH]

anthropomorphic mandrake roots that look and scream like living human babies but may be transplanted or destroyed at will by teachers and students;

This is seriously creepy, and is the reason my daughter stopped being a HP fan. She realized that something is seriously wrong with this (ability to kill -- gratuitiously and at will -- something that is by the author's design a representation of human babies).

We'll be seeing Lord of the Rings instead of HP . . .

[Ward Smythe]

Well for the record I'm also looking forward to The Lord of the Rings and hope the movie will inspire my son to read it (I think it will).

I'm refuse to get drawn into another debate thread. But for someone who is afraid of Harry Potter and the influence it has on kids, you're sure giving it a lot of publicity.

[Brett66]

Excellent article. BTTT

[FairWitness]

Moreover, if the reader is at all attuned to the real magic of Tolkien’s work, his imagination will be less preoccupied with such things as the wizardry of Gandalf than with, for example, the elusive grace and poetry of the Elves; the earthy austerity and hardiness of the Dwarves; the ineffable stateliness, the sheer antiquity of the Ents; the battle-hardened majesty of Aragorn; the playful, fathomless mystery of Tom Bombadil; and, perhaps most of all, the Hobbits themselves, with their quiet and humble ways, their unassuming, humorous, gregarious, homebody, pipe-smoking, meal-loving, comfort-seeking, Shire-dwelling hearts, and, hidden just beneath the surface, their unguessed depths and disreputable capacity for heroism. Here is the true center of gravity in Tolkien’s Middle-earth: not the world of magic, but the magic of the world.

Worth repeating.

[discostu]

Very nice article Aquinasfan, though I'm not sure why you posted it. As always while I respect you opinion, logic and writing and disagree with your premise. What I find interesting with this post is that this guy is pretty much in agreement with me (ie HP is not inherrently evil, some touble kids can use it as a stepping stone to ruining their lives, but some troubled kids find a way to use just about anything as stepping stones to ruination), and in pretty strong disagreement with yourself (ie HP is occult 101). Admittedly I only skimmed the sections about the "Hedges" (this is a VERY long article, but a good read and I intend to read the whole thing later) I did thuroughly read most of it. Here are some paragraphs I though were choice:

From the section Séances vs. flying broomsticks
And, on this fundamental point, it should be noted that Rowling’s Harry Potter books are unambiguously on the “right” side, the same side as Tolkien and Lewis. If anything, the magic in Rowling’s world is even more emphatically imaginary, even further removed from real-world practices, than that of Tolkien or Lewis; and, like theirs, presents no appreciable risk of direct imitiative behavior.

Further in the same section
Even on those occasions when Rowling’s magic converges toward real-world practices, it hardly seems pernicious. For example, in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry has a class in Divination that includes lessons in reading tea leaves and astrology. Yet Rowling roundly spoofs the class and the teacher, who is almost infallibly wrong about everything she says (a fact confirmed by Dumbledore — in spite of which, however, he does permit the class to continue). Anyway, even Lewis’s Narnia has an example of astrology (Dr. Cornelius in The Horse and His Boy).

From the conclussion
I also object to the portrait of Harry Potter as a poster child for the occult, and the claim that parents who permit reading Harry Potter are necessarily exposing their children to harmful influences. The absence in Rowling of the hedges I’ve been discussing doesn’t make her books automatically harmful or even dangerous for all children, though it may make them harmful for some.
For whether a book or movie or any other form of narrative is harmful to its audience depends as much upon the audience as upon the narrative. 150 years ago, The Three Musketeers was a potentially dangerous and immoral influence in a world in which duels to the death were real-life occurrences. Today, duels are no longer a viable social threat, and consequently we can read and enjoy the swashbuckling exploits of D’Artagnan and his companions without fear that anyone will be influenced to draw swords to kill another.

Almost the end of the article
Yet reading Harry Potter by itself — or rather, reading Harry Potter as part of a well-rounded reading program including well-chosen books that might include the works of Tolkien and Lewis, the adventure stories of Howard Pyle, the fantasy of Lloyd Alexander, the frontier stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the apocalyptic fiction of Michael O’Brien, the fairy-stories of George MacDonald, or the detective tales of Encyclopedia Brown (and, later, Sherlock Holmes) — a child whose reading has this kind of breadth and depth is unlikely to be negatively influenced by having read the Harry Potter books.

Now I've included whole paragraph to demonstrate goodwill and show that I'm not cherry picking, taking things out of context or skewing for my own purposes. It's pretty clear throughout the article that the author at most takes issue with the fact that Rowling is not a practicing fundamentalist Christian and she doesn't believe in even the possibility of magic and therefore doesn't go out of her way (as Tolkien and Lewis did) to make sure the reader is fully informed on how imaginary this world is and unrealistic the magic is. But he does, among other things, directly assault the concept that HP contains real spells and therefore teaches real magic.

Basically, in short, I feel this author is saying all the same stuff I've been saying on these threads lo these many weeks. Except he does a much better job of it.

[discostu]

Hey ladies. Aquinasfan actually found a really good article (long but good) here that I feel says a lot of the things we've been all along. Not sure why he posted it but so what, good article and if you're up for another HP fight this will be todays hot thread. Also it's got some really great quotes to throw out in future HP fights.

[Darth Reagan]

Harry Potter vs Anakin Skywalker

[stuartcr]

Why do people continue to talk about these characters as if they were real?

[Loopy]

Take Gandalf and the points.

[Woodkirk]

So then let me see if I understand this --- Dumbledore is the headmaster who makes the rules that Harry and his friends break without Dumbledore punishing him. At one point Harry's teacher is told by Dumbledore not to teach the deeper secrets of sorcery to Harry's class, but the teacher says "I'm going to ignore the headmaster and do it anyway". It sounds to me like JKR wants kids to think of God as Dumbledore -- someone who makes silly rules that can be broken without consequences from the maker of those rules -- that "learning and practicing magic" is a viable reason for ignoring rules against it -- kids don't have to pay attention to his words because he really doesn't mean it. "Dumbledore" ---- what a mocking name she has chosen for the chief authority figure. Even a blind man can see that Dumbledore, his name and bumbling character, is a slap at the God who her books are intended to mock. For all of you who think that these books are innocent fantasy, and think that children falling in love with Harry is innocent fun, you probably think and hope that God is really like Dumbledore , but guess what --- that is your fantasy !!!!!!!!

[ctdonath2]

A boy, living in miserable conditions, is discovered to have an unusual affinity to magical manipulations of his surroundings, is taken away to a council of masters who decide what he should learn, and what to teach him to achieve mastery of his mysterious talents to percieve and manipulate his surroundings through magical means. Along the way he meets up with an attractive girl, an annoying sidekick or two, and is caught up in greater events and is pursued by an evil wizard. Wild adventures occur, the story ends, and there is an expected sequel.

Question: am I describing Harry Potter or Anniken Skywalker?
Question: why is the Harry Potter movie considered evil, yet Star Wars is not?

[Sabertooth]

Call me when Harry Potter can take on a Balrog.

[JoeSchem]

Click here for the entire article.

Oh, must I?

[The Wizard]

For the record, wizard's don't do magic, don't fly around or do anything supernatural.

Wizards are such because of their ability to use what's here...

I never wear my hat on Halloween

I just realized the other day, that for the record, I am one of the only real wizards alive today. I have a lifetime history and suggest that I am the only source of "live" information on Wizards around today.....