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Vatican: Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist, has warned that reading Harry Potter could lead young people towards Satanism. Bear in mind that the original source was that great bastion of fact-checking, The Sun.
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,he was quoted as saying.
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.
In 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) reportedly wrote two letters to a critic of the Harry Potter series.
It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,he wrote.
By Satanism
he no doubt means that children may learn to read, think for themselves and question the insanity spouted by the recent crop of frock-wearing troglodites who claim to filter the word of their imaginary friend to the great unwashed masses.
Vatican exorcist warns of Harry Potter [BugMeNot] - Sydney Morning Herald, 3rd March 2006.
Posted in
Popular Culture: Harry Potter
at 01:50. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
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Comments
1: Posted by: psycotic_furby | March 19, 2006 11:19 AM
Old, old story. Here it is in the Times (London) from 2005, quoting letters from 2003.
Pope criticises Harry Potter
Way to tap into current events there, Rebekah...
2: Posted by: psycotic_furby | March 19, 2006 11:22 AM
Oops, wrong link... Well it's still about a month old
Vatican exorcist warns of Harry Potter (March 3 2006)
3: Posted by: Andy Gilmour | March 19, 2006 4:43 PM
ahhh, I'm sure the old kiddie-fiddlers-for-jesus just don't like Ms. Rowling's derivative characterisations, plots & overly-nostalgia-fuelled prose.
:-)
Of course, up here in Scotland they've just announced that they're going to crack down on employing any teachers who aren't active Catholics in their state-funded centres for the indoctrination of minors. Sorry, I meant primary schools. Which should see some very interesting lawsuits / tribunals / etc.
Source for that was the far more reliable (especially now the Barclay Brothers and Andrew "Brillo Pad" Neill have gone), Scotland on Sunday.
4: Posted by: Branwen | March 19, 2006 4:45 PM
Yeah sure, start with HP and end up with Satan (just another imaginary friend). I mean, start with chocolate and next thing you know you’ll be hooked up on heroin. Everyone knows that. :p
5: Posted by: Feòrag | March 19, 2006 8:47 PM
It's amazing, isn't it, that even with the wonders of the internet, it can still take a fortnight for a story to get from a Murdoch paper in the UK to a Murdoch paper in Australia!
I hope the plane's a little quicker than that!
6: Posted by: Red Wolf | March 19, 2006 9:31 PM
The link psycotic_furby mentioned is the same link at the end of the story, also cleaned up the dodgy link left in the first comment. The delay is mine. I was looking for something else and fell over that story, which is a little odd as the SMH tends to kill older story URLs after a week.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are Fairfax papers, not Murdoch, he has The Australian and The Telegraph. The Fairfax papers are only marginally less tabloid-y that the Murdoch papers, although neither have sunk to the levels of The Sun... yet.
7: Posted by: Feòrag | March 19, 2006 9:59 PM
Ah well, it can be hard to tell at times. At least Andy Gilmour reminded me of the good news concerning the Scotsperson -- will have to check if it's back to its old self yet (somewhere to the left of the Grauniad).
8: Posted by: Andy Gilmour | March 20, 2006 9:39 PM
Oh, it's just-about back to the sort of secular "liberal" position I remember from the late-70's onwards [until the advent of the Brillo].
Of course, there are still plenty of contributions from those of dissenting ideologies (eg George "privatise it! Ignore the evidence, just privatise it!" Kerevan), but you need them in the interests of balance, and unintended humour. :-)
It'll take them a while to recover from the haemorrhaging of quality staff that happened under his Padness, but they're certainly back on the right track.
So - can anyone else recall when Jim Naughtie was the chief political correspondent, or am I really that aged & decrepit?
9: Posted by: Feòrag | March 20, 2006 11:19 PM
Andy - you're aged and decrepit! Either that, or I'm so aged and decrepit that my mind has gone and I can't remember.
For the last couple of years or so, the Grauniad has regularly printed columns expounding very different viewpoints from what you'd expect. Presumably they do it to keep the letters page vibrant. Maybe I should offer them my rant on why Parcelfarce should be privatised (if anyone is stupid enough to buy it)?
10: Posted by: Andy Gilmour | March 21, 2006 11:39 PM
Feorag (I'm sorry, but I've no idea how to get the accent on the 'o', mea culpa, mea culpa, etc...)
The only thing I've ever found worth reading in the Grauniad is the excellent Bad Science column - quick plug for Dr. Ben and his website www.badscience.com. And George Monbiot, from time to time
All the paper seems to do now is try to be "controversial" by pushing "radically alternative" viewpoints on issues....yaaaaaaawwwwwwwn.
It's straight from the student newspaper handbook on how to try to look cleverer than you are, isn't it? :-)
I'm not really THAT decrepit. I'm only 37...I just feel about double that sometimes, especially when discussing 'current affairs' with some of my slightly (only slightly!) younger friends. But then I DO remember Dennis Healey when he was chancellor, drone,drone, blah,blah, yackety shmackety...:-)
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