The Pope says Harry Potter is corrupting Christian faith and souls!

[Ian David]

H. Potter's 'Relativism' Dangerous for Youth, Says European Author

By Jim Brown
December 13, 2005

(AgapePress) - A Catholic sociologist and writer from Bavaria believes Harry Potter is a "global long-term project to change the culture" by destroying children's inhibitions against cursing, magic, and occult practices.

<snip>

"The confusion of good and evil, which happens in Harry Potter all the time, is dangerous because it's the foundation of what the Pope calls relativism," Kuby explains. "Relativism means there's no sure criteria for good and evil -- and if that is sunk into the soul, it's dangerous."

Kuby is convinced the Potter phenomenon is a "mockery of Judeo-Christian truth" and says subjecting young students to Harry Potter books in schools is "intolerant." The author believes the Potter series is replete with occult practices as well.

Any kind of witchcraft, cursing, and so on, is the normal, everyday life in Hogwarts, which is the place Harry and his friends love to be," she says. "And so the youth of this globe, in fantasy, is getting used to using occult methods to exercise power. I think this is dangerous."

In 2003, Kuby received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- in which he endorsed her book and said the Harry Potter phenomenon is "corrupt{ing} the Christian faith and souls."

Link to hate-site deliberately left out.

[AX10]

1. Ratzinger is a bigot. What is so bad about Harry Potter, Joe?

Oh, that's right, it's not your "brand of belief", therefore it must be wrong and condemned.

:eyes:

[FreedomAngel82]

38. Isn't Rawling a Christian?

I remember reading she was a part of the church.

[davidinalameda]

2. let me be the first to say it

:puke:

[Lusted4]

59. How many stitches did he get after

that gargoyle fell off the Vatican and hit him in the head?

[Cha]

3. And what were the sex-

crazed Priests doing..pray tell??????!!!!

[CatholicEdHead]

4. Let's have some more story detail:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0504069.htm

[Ian David]

9. Did Agape Press mischaracterize Pope Ratzinger's statements?

Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, wrote to Gabriele Kuby to acknowledge receipt of her book, "Harry Potter: Gut oder Bose" ("Harry Potter: Good or Bad"), which expresses her concern that children can become fascinated with the occult through reading the series.

In the cardinal's letter, excerpted on Kuby's Web site and published widely since late June, he praised the author's attempt to "enlighten people about Harry Potter" and the possible "subtle seductions" that can distort children's thinking before they mature in the Christian faith.

<snip>

In the letter, Cardinal Ratzinger suggested Kuby send a copy of her book to Msgr. Peter Fleetwood, then an official at the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Msgr. Fleetwood told Catholic News Service July 14 that he received a copy of the book in 2003 and wrote Kuby a four-page letter explaining where he thought she may have misunderstood or read too much into the books. He said he never heard back from her.

More:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0504069.htm

[MichiganVote]

14. Does this mean we can read The Carpetbaggers and Valley of/Dolls?

Sorry, I'm dating myself for all the juniors on the board

[CatholicEdHead]

18. Those sites would NEVER do something like that

:sarcasm:

[Scurrilous]

11. LOL

We don't need no details. We're Pope bashin' here.

[Solly Mack]

5. Good for Harry!!!!!!!

[ClassWarrior]

6. We can't confuse of good and evil. Which is why Bush**...

...Cheney**, Delay, Frist, and the rest need to drop the pretenses, confess, and surrender to authorities. It's dangerous to confuse children by pretending otherwise.

NGU.

[CatholicEdHead]

7. This never makes it down to the pews

You NEVER hear about this in the pews week in and week out. I have even see some really "tradtionalist" Catholics who are big fans of the series.

[FreedomAngel82]

40. When the books were becoming popular

not long ago after the first movie I was at my great-grandmothers before she died and a cousin of mine had one of the book's and read it the whole time she was there and they're Baptist's. I think it's great kids are wanting to read again instead of tv and video games all the time.

[lateo]

8. Yeah, unlike pedophile priests...

[mmonk]

10. Confusing

"In 2003, Kuby received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- in which he endorsed her book and said the Harry Potter phenomenon is "corrupt{ing} the Christian faith and souls.""

The article seems to be about the opinions of Kuby.

[Solly Mack]

19. that's the way I read it too...Kuby's opinions

and I say Good for Harry!

[hyphenate]

48. That's my impression as well

This author Kuby is using the original letter she got from Ratzinger/Vatican to validate her opinions in her book. SHE is the RRR member in this instance. But there are SO many exactly like her it's disgusting.

[oregonindy]

12. wow....maybe instead of fantasy we should instead look at what the church

has given us for examples...

inquistions, murder in the name of god, genocide in the name of god, abuse, blind eye towards the suffering of others, bigotry, racism...and on and on and on.....

[Trillo]

13. Ratzinger, maybe you should watch your occult practices.

such as encouraging people to have more children in an already dangerously over-populated world, among other things.

[DebJ]

15. Sure. and don't see Disney animations because children will

believe in talking animals.

[lovuian]

16. Harry Potter is scaring them to death and its popularity

It gets the children to read and reinforces good qualities

Courage Friendship and Love

whats wrong with that...

[JuniperLea]

17. My Fundie Cousin

Won't let her kids watch that stuff... Magic is the Devil's work, sez she.

I jumped all over her for letting her kids watch E.T. when I saw the video at her house. She thought it was a cute movie. I told her it was blasphemous because E.T. healed people and plants. Only God should be allowed to do that;)

[Hardrada]

20. How about The Lion, the WITCH and the Wardrobe?

All part of Narnia!

[JuniperLea]

33. DEVIL! SATAN! ICKY POO!!

Oh, yeah, all that magic stuff is forbidden!

No "soothsayers", psychics, Tarot cards, I Ching, Ouija, Scrying in a black mirror or crystal ball or even a bowl of water... all of that stuff is (allegedly) against Jesus' teachings.

Funny thing is, and I love pointing this out to her, psychics are "soothsayers" and are forbidden by her church, yet the Bible says that in the end times "your children shall prophesize". So, what is a psychic vision but prophecy? And why is it that Pat Robertson can get "words of knowledge" and Bush can listen to God talk? And how do you tell the difference between "your child" prophesizing and a psychic telling you what's going to happen in the near or distant future?

[FreedomAngel82]

44. LOL

Oh how funny!

[MrSlayer]

21. What a fucking idiot.

Youth are getting used to using occult methods to exercise power? You mean kids are actually running around with magic wands and hexing people? They are making potions and shit? And IT WORKS!?!?!

Where do I sign up?

[FreedomAngel82]

46. I remember reading an interview with Rawling

and she said that little kids and elementary age would write her letters and say they love the books and want to go to school with Harry and the others. She said that everything was fake including the spells. It's like with "Buffy" and "Charmed." They use fake spells because they don't want kids going out and trying them. Of course you have to be a believer for it to have any effect on you.

[xchrom]

22. quelle surprise!

uh -- not so much.

willful ignorance has cast it's evil spell over the vatican and is having it's way with her all over the place.

[kenny blankenship]

23. I don't read the books

but the HP movies at least are just as simplemindedly dualistic (so far) as any of George Lucas' Star Wars crapfests. There is our side which is Good and the Other which is Evil. Sometimes there are people who pretend to be on our side but who are revealed to be fully on the Evil Other side.

What's the problem? Ratzo should love it.

[CatholicEdHead]

25. But like all movies based on books it is more complicated in the books

The plot lines are not so cut and dry. They have to skip over many underling reasons for time.

[Zenlitened]

24. Love how they make the leap to "Harry Potter is anti-xian bigotry"

Kuby is convinced the Potter phenomenon is a "mockery of Judeo-Christian truth" and says subjecting young students to Harry Potter books in schools is "intolerant."

Yep. If anything that this particualr breed of christian finds objectionable even EXISTS -- it's an ATTACK on xians. :eyes:

And won't somebody please think of the children? These poor kids -- the ones clamoring to read, read, read like never before -- they're being "subjected" to this... in the schools!

Seriously, the people at Agape Press, and all the like-minded nutbars they interview -- really have the discipline down when it comes to cramming all their favorite memes into every situation. What loons.

[rd_kent]

26. Perhaps he should look in his own church, first!

When he puts a stop to all the pedo priests, THEN he can worry whether a fiction book is corrupting his religion.

[Book Lover]

27. Slate once ran a piece on how Catholic the Potter books are

comparing Potter to the Left Behind series

http://www.slate.com/id/2100637/

The little similarities go on. Both books present the media as corrupt or easily corruptible. The Left Behind tribulation takes seven years; so does Hogwarts'. Carpathia takes the form of a snake; Voldemort takes the form of a lizard, and Harry is able to tap into the evil world by speaking snake (parceltongue). And in both, the good guys bear a special "mark"—on their foreheads!—that protects them.

Finally, they both have a theology. It's not, as one might expect, that Left Behind is Christian and Harry Potter pagan, but rather that Left Behind is Protestant and Harry Potter is Catholic. One of the chief theological arguments between Catholics and Protestants has been over whether salvation is earned through faith or by good works. In Left Behind, the only thing that matters is faith in Jesus. Steele explains that church leaders had led so many people astray because they merely "expected them to lead a good life, to do the best they could, to think of others, to be kind, to live in peace. It sounded so good, and yet it was so wrong. How far from the mark!"

While everything is pre-ordained in Left Behind, in Harry Potter, by contrast, Dumbledore explicitly tells Harry that even though he carries some of the essence of Voldemort in him, he has the power to do good because he has the power of choice.

In that sense, despite their similarities, at their hearts the two series are different in a fundamental but not obvious way. Left Behind is fatalistic; Harry Potter sees outcome determined by individual actions. Both provide a roadmap for how to live a good life, but in one case the key is morality, and in the other it is faith.

[sniffa]

28. harry potter is corrupting the church's true path

open, unabashed, man-on-boy Love.

[oregonindy]

29. they cant even get their own stories straight.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5598946&mesg_id=5598946

On most NPR radio stations in the East, or it is also available on-line.

Bart Ehrman's new book is how and why the words of Jesus and the Bible were changed over the years by the Catholic church, among others. Here's more info:


Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'

Listen to this story..
by Terry Gross

Fresh Air from WHYY, December 14, 2005 · Scholar Bart Ehrman's new book explores how scribes -- through both omission and intention -- changed the Bible. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is the result of years of reading the texts in their original languages.

Ehrman says the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. In the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes that when he came to understand this process 30 years ago, it shifted his way of thinking about the Bible. He had been raised as an Evangelical Christian.

Ehrman is also the author of Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which chronicles the period before Christianity as we know it, when conflicting ideas about the religion were fighting for prominence in the second and third centuries.

The chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Ehrman also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ, called Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

Read an excerpt from Misquoting Jesus (at link below):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5052156

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. I can see what Gabriele Kuby and Pope Benedict would be

exercised about, but it seems a great shame that they make no reference to the fact that the motivation and purpose of J J Rowling's herself were likely to have been entirely innocent. Surely, she is a child of her time. Just reading posts on this forum, it is clear that for many people the supernatural is simply fantasy. The proper stuff for just such amusements as fantasy stories for children. I'm sure I've read that J J Rowlings has spent a tremendous amount of her money on charitable causes.

I remember a lad in the army telling me quite diffidently that praying was just talking to yourself, and it doubled me up, because I realised that that is precisely what it must seem like if you don't believe in a religion. He needn't have felt diffident about it, though, because given that assumption, his logic was faultless!

[mikehiggins]

31. Just a form letter

No biggee, actually. Ratzy got a book from a Catholic writer and somebody sent her a letter telling her she was the cat's pajamas. Most likely the third-assistant-undersecretary for form letters.

[adriennui]

32. the banality

of the pope actually spending a moment on harry potter could be one of the stupidest things i've ever heard.

is this the most important issue confronting the church???? gee, so glad the world is so perfect.

[xchrom]

41. lol -- ding ding ding -- we have a winner!

[Czolgosz]

34. He also worries about the kind of sex celibate priests are abstaining from

What is up with that?

Who wants to know specifically what sexual acts our priests are CHOOSING NOT TO ENGAGE IN? And if, somehow, I felt that I desperately needed to know what exact carnal acts my priest was giving up for the sake of the Church, I'd be more interested in my priest's confirmation that it wasn't sex with minors of either gender he was abstaining from rather than knowing whether or not he was a celibate man with heterosexual or homosexual urges.

I'm Catholic so I try to understand the Pope's role in context, and I truly believe that this Pope is leading the Church out of the 20th century, but I'm thinking that he's leading us into the 19th century.

[CatholicEdHead]

35. Most of the dogma is still in the 19th century

By average Church speed, to come into the 21st Century we have to be in the 23rd or 24th Century.

[Czolgosz]

43. What's up with the Pope trying to put the kibosh on Kerry? True or false?

It seems like you have a pretty good grip on which stories about the Pope are true and which are just anti-Catholic hoo haa. I had heard that the Pope, as a Cardinal, was a principal force behind a movement within the Church to excommunicate Kerry but I could neither confirm or refute that. Any thoughts?

[FreedomAngel82]

53. Very weird

I also heard that Bush was for this Pope. Why would Bush butt into the Catholic faith?

[CatholicEdHead]

56. Votes stupid

He wants to control the Catholic voting base like he does the Fundie voting base. Also the RCC is a big focus of Liberation theology, which is more poor-focused. The current group prefers a top-down model that is more aristocratic focused.

[CatholicEdHead]

55. No, it was a few overzealous American Bishops

who started the fuss. They are the type who want to climb the ladder of the instiution. Denoucing Kerry with crap like they did is a good way to get attention to move up to the College of Cardnials. Some of the main ones were Burke of St Louis, Fabian of Lincoln NE, and a bishop in Colorado.

[Czolgosz]

62. Thanks

[FreedomAngel82]

51. He just wants some action himself

;) How gross to know someone's sexual life. Ugh. He should go watch a porno or something. Oy! One of the many reason's I couldn't ever be a Catholic. Sure, they have beautiful churches but this Pope guy is just horrible.

[FreedomAngel82]

36. So what about Narnia???

Same concept of good vs evil. It's FANTASY PEOPLE! Good grief! :eyes:

[yella_dawg]

37. I hate relativism.

Let's go kick Tolkien's ass.

[malaise]

39. At least Harry isn't preying

on people's kids like Popie's priests.

[stepnw1f]

42. Statements Like This Make the Pope Less Credible

John would probably be offended by this man's ridiculous posturing. Then again, he and John, well you know...

[hyphenate]

45. Oh, yeah

This shit again. It's always nice to know how many looneytoons are out there to criticize Harry Potter, but yet let the EXACT SAME THING in LOTR and Narnia get by without any problem!

I LOVE them all. They all are wonderful FANTASIES and that's exactly what they ALL are: are FANTASIES.

But the fucking RRR can not stand to see children enjoying pure fantasy, pure imaginary worlds. And you have to think seriously--fantasy has been around for a very long time, and in the past fifty years it's been more prolific than ever. Do these assholes care about D&D, or AD&D or other role playing games? Do they go crazy over all the extremely violent videogames out there? NO! They instead attack a perfectly wonderful book series which is one of the first series to really inspire children and teens to READ--something which was declining under the auspices of the fucking RRR.

End rant.

[adriennui]

50. yes, fantasy has been around for centuries.....

anyone ever read the bible?

[FreedomAngel82]

52. Exactly!

Moses and his magic stick anybody? I've read my Bible thousands of times and there's so much stuff in there from magic to sex and wars. There's even incest!

[radio4progressives]

47. LOL! Anyone bother to tell him...

the fucking catholic church is a Cult?

[sakabatou]

49. What an asshat

[gulfcoastliberal]

54. This Pope is a former Nazi youth

I suspect he still harbors some admiration for the Third reich. What a hateful, disgusting pontiff.

[bullwinkle428]

57. Well, at least O'Reilly has a new wedge issue he can froth at the mouth

about when he returns to work on December 26th!!!! :evilgrin:

[yellowcanine]

58. Well first of all he wasn't Pope when he supposedly said this. So on its

face the title is false. There was another Pope then. There is only one Pope at a time. Secondly who gives a turd what Cardinal Ratzinger said in a letter to an author - it was a personal opinion and didn't carry the authority of the Vatican anyway.

[CornField]

60. And this world-changing, xtian-hating agenda was born of

a woman living on welfare.

What vile assholes. No... what fucking vile assholes. It's bad enough that their fucking religion decided to desecrate anything female, but now they feel the need to attack a woman who somehow managed to pull herself out of economic oblivion by using the only fucking thing she had left at her disposal -- her BRAIN. If there is a fucking god, he purposefully left the brains out of the folks at the Vatican... even god needs a bit of fucking comic relief now and then.

[DaveColorado]

61. Hypocrite.

Just the other day he was talking about how Christmas has been corrupted by consumerism, and all the while he wears designer sunglasses, a gold watch, and drives a Mercedes.

[AgadorSparticus]

63. coming from a religious man who wears Prada and Gucci....right....

he wouldn't know christian faith if it bit him on his ass.

[tlsmith1963]

64. Wizards Don't Really Exist

The way these religious-types talk, you would think that wizards really existed, & that the church people don't want their kids to learn how to cast spells on people. Well, I have news for them: Wizards don't exist. You can't cast spells on other people. And the kids who read Harry Potter are smart enough to know this. Get a life.

Tammy

[and-justice-for-all]

65. Excuse me...

But there are plenty of cursing, murder, adultry, incest and war in the bible to make any Harry Potter movie look like a 'G' rated Disney Film. "Judeo-Xtian Truth"??? WTF, can they actually prove anything in the bible really happened?? NO!! So, the bible is really, just a fantasy story just like that of the Harry Potter books.


"I would rather go to HELL for being myself rather then spend an eternity in a place thats filled with bigots and haters."

[GreenPartyVoter]

66. The Pope can pick a big fat cheek on this relativist and bite it