Q. Why don’t people speed in Pontiac?
Because the police are giving out Lions tickets.
Q. How do you keep a Detroit Lion out of your yard?
Put up goal posts.
Q. Where do you go in Oakland County in case of a tornado?
A. To the Silverdome - they never get a touchdown
there.
Q. What do the Detroit Lions and opossums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.
*************************************************
I appreciate the following interview by Al Kresta
of Steven Greydanus. Like Greydanus, I much enjoyed the Harry Potter film.
However, I was also concerned about deeper issues mentioned within the
interview. Since Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is to be released this week,
I think we should be aware of vast differences of intention between Tolkien
and Rawlings.
Steven Greydanus is a film critic whose work has appeared
in American Outlook and This Rock magazines as well as on the Catholic
Exchange website. He is a weekly guest on the Ave Maria Radio Network radio
show Heart, Mind & Strength, hosted by Dr. Gregory Popcak, where he
discusses “Faith on Film.” He is also a frequent guest on the Catholic
Answers Live radio show and is the creator of decentfilms.com. On Nov.
16 he discussed the Harry Potter phenomenon with Al Kresta on Kresta in
the Afternoon. Excerpts follow.
KRESTA: Are you pro or con Harry Potter?
GREYDANUS: I’m on the razor’s edge. I’ve enjoyed reading
the Harry Potter books. They’re fun to read. They have some themes that
are morally redeeming - like good versus evil, the virtues of courage and
loyalty. They show unattractive qualities like prejudice and bigotry in
a very unflattering light.
There’s a wide range of concern over some of the moral
elements in the books, such as rule-breaking and lying, and over magic
and the occult. Whether these negative elements pose a danger for a kid
will depend on the particular child. I don’t think it’s possible to give
a blanket thumbs-up or thumbs-down. These books will be harmless fun for
many children. For a few children that are at risk for a number of reasons,
they may possibly be a danger.
KRESTA: A criticism of the books and the movie is
that they model wizardry, witchcraft, sorcery, magic; and Christians are
forbidden to do this, according to Deuterononomy 18 and other passages
of Scripture, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
GREYDANUS: Those are serious moral concerns Christians
must come to grips with in literature and the arts. In fiction there are
really at least two kinds of magic, morally speaking. Some examples don’t
raise moral concerns having to do with occult activity or divination, such
as Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz or Cinderella’s fairy godmother.
Christian writers like J.R.R. Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings and C.S.
Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia have used magic as a symbol in fantasy
settings in ways that are very powerful and in line with the Gospel. These
examples of harmless fantasy magic do not involve the kind of activity
that you have in the world of the occult. There are no séances or
summoning of spirits or attempts to foretell the future through occult
activities like reading tea leaves or astrology.
On the other hand, you have other popular media depictions
of magic which do raise those very dangerous occult issues. I’m thinking
here of TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where you have a wicked
witch who does magic in the service of good, and movies like The Craft,
which came out a few years ago.
Harry Potter is not quite so innocuous as something
like Cinderella or The Wizard of Oz, but I don’t put it clearly on the
far side of the line with Buffy and The Craft.
KRESTA: But there are tea leaves and astrology in
the Harry Potter series.
GREYDANUS: True. In one of the later books Harry takes
a course in divination from a teacher who is trying to teach the class
how to read tea leaves and do the kinds of things that I mentioned. But
it’s important to know that Rowlings makes a complete mockery of these
situations; for example, almost without exception the predictions of one
character are completely wrong. And Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of
the school, who is a powerful authority figure, holds that character in
contempt when she actually does have one case of divination that comes
true.
So we see here that some figures in the Harry Potter
books do the same things as the American “psychic” Jeane Dixon does, but
they see them made a figure of mockery and not being taken seriously. That’s
not a bad thing.
KRESTA: Most educated Christians, like yourself, fondly
recommend the fantasy stories of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. What are
some major differences between the Potter books and those of Lewis and
Tolkien?
GREYDANUS: One of the problems with Rowling is precisely
that the imagination of her stories is not Christian, even though they
take place in contemporary England, where Christianity theoretically exists
as a historical phenomenon.
A key to understanding the use of magic by Tolkien
and Lewis is that they relocated the magic to fantasy worlds - Narnia and
Middle Earth, where the kind of prescriptions you read in Scripture were
never given. The book of Moses was not given to the Narnians, it was given
to us humans on Earth. So magic is against our covenant with God, it is
against our moral beliefs. It’s possible to imagine God creating another
world where the physical laws are different, where activities that here
would not be permitted would be permitted.
But Rowling has done something quite different. She
has placed her story in a contemporary setting, in England; and in principle
somewhere in her world there has got to be a Catholic Church and a Catechism
of the Catholic Church that says that some of the things Harry Potter is
learning are contrary to moral teaching.
Rather than dealing with that the way Lewis and Tolkien
did, by turning it into a fantasy world, she just ignores Christian belief
on the subject to the point of oblivion.
I don’t think that is an absolutely decisive argument
against the books, but it is a point of concern to bear in mind, that parents
must present to their children.
KRESTA: So Tolkien would say, if you want to do fairy
stories, make them pre-Christian, so to speak. They will lose their integrity
when they come into contact with Christian themes.
GREYDANUS: Tolkien most definitely said that in one
of his letters. Because Rowling is living in a society where, even compared
to America, it is non-religious and non-Christian, she doesn’t deal with
it.
Moral concerns regarding magic just do not register
on her radar screen. She’s not anti-Christian, but Christianity is absent
from them. There is a sort of vacuum where there ought not to be, in a
way that you don’t have with fantasies like The Wizard of Oz and Cinderella.
KRESTA: What is Rowling’s spiritual background?
GREYDANUS: I can’t tell you specifically about J.K.
Rowling’s spiritual background, but we know that the culture that she comes
from - modern England - is in fact very, very secular. Church attendance
in England is plummeting and religion is not taken very seriously as a
social force in England today. Every interview I have read about Rowling
indicates that she is writing about magic from a fantasy perspective and
that religious concerns are not playing into this. I have heard her say
that no child has ever come up to her and said, “Oh, Ms. Rowling, I loved
your books so much and now I want to become a witch.” She’s uncomfortable
with the whole moral concern having to do with the occult. She has disclaimed
that it is her intention to (interest) any child in the occult, by my sense;
and this is just a guess, but my sense is that her perspective is that
of a typical secular person who would find the occult only so much superstition.
Love in Him,
Fr. Jim
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