Rowling "Lures Kids to Satan"

[MountainLaurel]

They're at it again:

Hit children's author J.K. Rowling has been blasted by a Vatican official for tempting children towards Devil-worship with her popular boy-wizard series Harry Potter.

The Roman Catholic Church's chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth has warned the magical schoolboy adventures are tainted by "the Prince of Darkness" and are inspiring a generation of Satanists and sinners.

The 80-year-old cleric, who has exorcised more than 3,000 malign spirits since 1986, said yesterday: "You start with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the Devil.

"There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books. 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."

http://www.hollywood.com/news/detail/id/3481554

So how much do you think a book with the signature of Satan would go for on Ebay?

[KyuzoGator]

1. Ask this guy:

[MountainLaurel]

2. The big red X?

:hi:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. ...

[spuddonna]

24. LMAO!!! That's awesome!

It took a little while to load, but that's hillarious!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

28. I think so too... not often I get a chance to use it.

:)

[Coexist]

29. that was great!!

[SaveElmer]

31. The Catholic Church becomes more irrelevent...

On a daily basis!!!

As far as I am concerned, speaking as a recovering Catholic, this is a good thing!!!

[jrw14125]

3. Rebuttal to teh Catholic church:

You start with God and Jesus, as taught, practiced, and enforced by the Catholic church, and you end up with Satan.

[YOY]

16. that's not the Catholic Church, babe

but a severely RW and archaic bunch of Catholics.

I assume you are not and never were Catholic, correct?

[texastoast]

4. What a bunch of hypocrisy and nonsense

I just love it. The Catholic church takes all the Pagan holidays, festivals, and symbols and bases their Christ religion on it, all the while torturing Pagans into submission. Now who is the devil there?

[DinahMoeHum]

5. How does the church "exorcise", anyway? Abracadabra? Magic?

Chanting?

Pot, meet kettle.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

[woo me with science]

38. no kidding! nt

[northzax]

41. well, first they call this guy

[Pithy Cherub]

6. LOL! Just in time to boost sales of the "Goblet of Hire" CD.

These idiots have no sense of timing, morality lessons from literature or appreciation that Harry Potter is a universal story with great appeal.
:yoiks:

[gordianot]

7. Maybe sometimes the Devil wraps himself in righteous indignation.

[Nye Bevan]

8. Ah, that explains it.

I was wondering why my 9 year old had started sacrificing chickens and drinking their blood.

[MountainLaurel]

34. ROFL

:spray:

[mattclearing]

9. This is even funnier than Hillary with Grand Theft Auto.

Talk about grandstanding on a who cares issue.

Let's have the Roman Catholic Church go back to trying to keep people from discovering the wonders of sexual intercourse while protecting their priests from accountability for molesting altar boys.

STFU, Vatican.

[MrSlayer]

10. Idiocy, plain and simple.

As if there actually is a "Satan" to be concerned about. I swear these people are just flat out insane.

[midnight]

11. Many adult read these books.

A few years back we heard similar thoughts from the men at the catholic church. The women at the catholic church,a nun, came out in favor of the books. She said it represented women as intellectuals. I guess there well be two schools of thought on literature.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Oh my Lord *wiping tears from eyes* People like that complain about every

little thing as being spiritually dangerous. Quick! Hide the Garfield books before the padre starts another lecture on the sins of gluttony.

[tatertop]

13. They would be way ahead if they compared Potter to Christ

They would be way ahead comparing Potter to Christ
and the Potter books to the Bible, don't you think?
They should read the wildly popular books during religion class
and identify 'lessons' from the bible. They are there
in spades.

Potter even forgoes the love of his life to protect her and keep her from harm, in effect, taking the vow of celibacy.

[Mythsaje]

14. At this point

Rowling should put a note at the end of the books saying "Feel free to buy and burn as many copies as you like."

<eg>

I'd LOVE to have the RWers protesting, burning, or trying to ban my books!

;)

[Rob H.]

15. Amorth should read this article

I can't remember how I found it (and it may have been courtesy of another DUer posting a link, in fact), but here's an article he might want to take a look at: http://www.up.edu/portlandmag/2004_summer/potter.htm">Harry Potter, Catholic Boy by John O'Callaghan.

Excerpt

Scholastic Books, the American publisher of the Harry Potter novels, changed the title of the first book from its British title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – American readers apparently cannot be expected to buy a book with “philosopher” in the title. But this change misled many to think that the novels are fundamentally about sorcery, witches, and witchcraft. They’re not. They are about philosophy, literally the love of wisdom, the desire to understand better the highest causes of things, and they are about faith seeking understanding, fides quaerens intellectum in the lovely Latin phrase. These two themes are intertwined and have an ancient heritage in Western culture, from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine and Aquinas through J. K. Rowling, who gives narrative expression to them in a lively morality tale, pitting unfettered power and evil against the power of goodness and love, a culture of life versus a culture of death in search of the philosopher’s treasure: wisdom.

Consider the rich religious symbols used throughout the novels. We have the character of Lucius Malfoy — that is, Lucifer, surnamed bad faith. We have his son Draco, whose name is Latin for snake. We have Slytherin House, again the snake. By contrast we have Gryffindor House, gryffindor being French for golden griffon — a medieval symbol of Christ. We have, in the third novel The Prisoner of Azkaban, Lupin the wolf, symbol of poverty and St. Francis (the association with St. Francis is apt when we think of Professor Lupin’s ill health, and the rags he wears for clothes) and Sirius Black, the dog, who represents “watchfulness and fidelity” often used in religious art as a symbol of St. Dominic and associated with the Dominicans (who are known as the Blackfriars because of the black capes they wear over their white religious habits). And the villain of the third book is Peter Pettigrew, the rat, symbol of destruction and evil.

Most striking of images in the books is the deer or stag, who represents piety, religious aspiration, solitude, and purity of life. Unbeknownst to Harry it is his father in the form of a stag who appears when he utters the Patronus spell in the third book. Recall that Harry is passing out, about to be overcome by the kiss of a dementor (themselves unsubtle tributes to J.R.R. Tolkien’s ringwraiths.) In Latin patronus means defender or advocate, and is etymologically linked with the Latin for father. Expecto means “I await,” a waiting that may be tinged with hope as in the Nicene Creed, expecto resurrectionem. So the spell expecto patronum means “I await a defender, an advocate.” It turns out that the answer to Harry’s prayer is the father whom he hopes for. The son is saved by his prayer, and then sees himself standing next to the stag on the bank across the lake. Later the wise Dumbledore explains, “your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him…”

(complete article at the link above--Rob)

Also from the linked article: John O'Callaghan taught philosophy at the University (of Portland) from 2001-2003. He now labors for the University of Notre Dame, poor lad.

I'm guessing that like most people who blow a gasket over the Harry Potter books, Amorth has never actually read any of them.

[tanyev]

17. Petrificus Totalus!

Just finished reading Book 6. Does this mean I have to stop going to church every Sunday now?

[Mythsaje]

18. On reflection

It occured to me that Christmas might "Lure kids to Santa."

Get to protesting, folks.

:evilgrin:

[texastoast]

25. And Santa, rearranged, spells what?

Uh-hmm. Yep.

[brooklynite]

32. Actually I can see Opus Dei stepping in...

After they finish up with "The Da Vinci Code", they could demand that TV stations stop broadcasting "The Miracle on 34th Street" on the grounds that Santa Claus sullies the real story of Saint Nicholas.

[nonconformist]

43. Could it be..... SATAN? / church lady voice nt

[TechBear_Seattle]

19. The irony being

That all references to religion in the Harry Potter books are Christian. Sirius Black is Harry's godfather and Hogwarts breaks for Christmas and Easter. Malevolent forces are very much and very clearly on the wrong side of everything that Harry, his friends and his school stand for. In fact, I have heard and read sermons about how Harry Potter stands as a Christian ideal of standing up against evil and temptation even in the face of strong pressure and the seduction of power and fame.

[Rocknrule]

20. To these people, anything that kids like is evil

Videogames, Pokemon (although I admit that was a sucky fad), Spongebob, Harry Potter, rock music, sex, and on and on.

[Mythsaje]

22. Hey, my oldest started with Pokeman

and has now graduated to D&D.

I just gave him my whole set of 2nd edition stuff.

Things are progressing nicely.

[Rocknrule]

30. I was never much of a fan of Nintendo or anime

but tools of Satan they are definitely not

[Mythsaje]

36. Some anime is good, some isn't...

If they want to point at "tools of Satan," assuming there are such things, I'd point at the priorities of this administration.

Oh, did I write that out loud? :evilgrin:

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Only kids are supposed to like those things?

With the possible exception of pokemon, I'm still partial to most of those.

[mzteris]

23. I guess he hates Cinderella and

Snow White, too.

[spuddonna]

26. Yes, it is true!

I brewed up a batch of Veritaserum and plan on administering it to the whole Bush administration!
BWAHAHAHA!!!

:crazy:

These people really need a better hobby...

[Secular Agent Man]

27. The truth be told, the Vatican doesn't like the competition.

It holds the patent and copyright on all known magical feats. Got VAULTS? ;-)

[CornField]

33. Yet the literary magic put out by CS Lewis is derived straight from God

Yeah... uh-mmm... sure.

Why does the Vatican want to prevent young people from using their imaginations?

[kiki]

35. He ought to read some Philip Pullman.

Pullman's books basically say that God is insane, and the Catholic Church is run by child molesters.

Compared to Pullman, Rowling is Enid Blyton.

[BoneDaddy]

37. LOL

You know it is posts like this that remind me why I am not a catholic anymore. You got to be kidding me on this.

[Warren DeMontague]

39. Right, your kids are SO MUCH safer in the fondling hands of the

Roman Catholic Church.

[Vickers]

42. "has exorcised more than 3,000 malign spirits since 1986"

What the fuck, that's only like two a week...if I was his boss, I'd fire his slack ass.

[Warren DeMontague]

44. Perhaps, in the interim, he is disposing of malign spirits

in other ways.

[bumblebee1]

48. Exorcising demons

jumping jacks! Ready, begin!!

one, two, three, ONE! one, two, three, TWO! one, two, three, THREE!!!!

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. The origin for this story seems to be Murdoch's tabloid Sun

http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=&q=amorth+potter&ie=UTF-8

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2004580002-2006100092,00.html

and their reputation for accuracy is not the best in the world. So take it with a pinch of salt until a more reliable source reports it independently.

[Bridget Burke]

47. The story was news in January 2002. Murdoch's people are a bit slow.

www.cathnews.com/news/201/17.php

And one 80 year old does not represent the whole Catholic Church. In fact, another cleric doesn't mind Harry Potter at all--as of February 2003.

The good versus evil plot of the best-selling J.K. Rowling books are imbued with Christian morals, a Vatican press conference was told yesterday.

Secretary of the European Conference of Bishops Fr Don Peter Fleetwood said: "I don't see any, any problems in the Harry Potter series." ....

Fleetwood was asked whether the magic embraced by Harry Potter and his friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was problematic for the Catholic Church. Some evangelical groups have condemned the series for glamorizing magic and the occult.

"I don't think there's anyone in this room who grew up without fairies, magic and angels in their imaginary world," said Fleetwood, who is British. "They aren't bad. They aren't serving as a banner for an anti-Christian ideology.

www.cathnews.com/news/302/10.php

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

46. I read H.P. Lovecraft as a kid

and August Derleth, Algernon Blackwood, Poe, Guy de Maupassant, to mention a few. I don't consider the immersion of my mind in a fantasy world of horror and the macabre to be sinful, nor has virtually every generation of young people since ghost stories and horror began being told by kids to each other around the campfire of the cave.

[FlaGranny]

49. Do these people have any clue

that a kid old enough to read a real book is old enough to know fantasy from reality? I guess not. I read every scifi and fantasy novel I could find as a kid. Strangely, I did not grow up to worship the devil.

[toddaa]

50. I wish I could lure kids to Satan

seriously

[WildEyedLiberal]

51. This isn't the official Catholic Church position FYI

The Vatican recently came out and said that there was no harm in the Harry Potter books. This guy's opinion belongs solely to him, he doesn't represent the church at large.

[Warren DeMontague]

52. Now, if they could only say the same thing about birth control. n/t