Mark Shea is talking about Harry Over at the First Things blog...

The conversation is now elevated to a higher plane...

I'm talking about Harry Over at the First Things blog...: "I'm talking about Harry Over at the First Things blog

And the mail is starting to roll in already:

Just read your blog on FT. Brilliant. Very glad, also, to see that yourMary book has found a publisher.

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How lovely to see your article in First Things this morning. I haven't read the Harry Potter series [haven't had to--my sons are grown] but I have followed the dispiriting controversy over it. Is it demonic or isn't it? It embarrasses me because it so trivializes the reality of evil.

The burden of your article is so welcome--that the knitted brow and foofaraw are ungenerous and unfounded.

[Rowling was a classical scholar. Her Latin phrases, I'm told on good authority, are moreaccurate, more grammatically correct than the ecclesiastical Latin we take for granted in the old rite.]

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I participated in a radio discussion with you on WLCR in Louisville a
fewmonths ago. We had a spirited disagreement on the nature and/or definition of torture, which was not resolved - at least not during the show.

Anyway, it was an honor to have particpated in tha with you and I wanted to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for the Harry Potter article in First Things.

My son read the first three or so and got bored. He does much prefer Tolkein and Lewis, but he did enjoy the Potter stuff.

I think this nonsense over Harry Potter, even among good Catholics istotally that - nonsense, and it troubles me that otherwise clear thinking, holy people can get it so wrong, and seemingly, from thin air.

I expect as much out of evangelical Protestants, whose intellectual veracity can at times be suspect, but never of more informed Catholics.

Thank you for putting us back on common sense and let us hope, at least for evangelization reasons, we put the Harry Potter worries behind us.

Thanks all!

I've been pondering why it is the books seem to evoke such strong feelings. I suspect it goes back to plain and simple love. Christian critics of the books are, in essence, saying to parents, 'You are bad. You are a bad parent. You are either stupid or wicked, or both. You are too dumb to see that you are actually ushering your children directly into direct opposition to the will of God himself and urging your child to strike up a friendship with the Prince of Darkness himself. You are injecting the worst sort of postmodern amoral nihilism directly into the bloodstream of your little child. And when God sends me to warn you, you reject me. So you are rejecting God.' For some reason, parents take umbrage with this sort of thing. Some of us would like better evidence for this accusation than the spectacularly wrong-headed exegeses of Michael O'Brien and the lies and distortions which Lifesite tells about Pope Benedict.

What I hear in these letters and elsewhere is *relief*. As I have mentioned in the past, one of the things that occurs from time to time in the life of the Church is that various subcultures within the Church create a sort of faux Magisterium which they take far more seriously than the real Magisterium. This is particularly the case when the bishops have failed to distinguish themselves in holiness. I know this for a fact because I've been anointed a Magisterial Authority from time to time when I'm nothing of the kind. 'Mark Shea (or Scott Hahn or Jimmy Akin or Ros Moss or Michael O'Brien or EWTN Talking Head #6) says...' gets conflated with 'The Church teaches...' In the case of Harry, a great many Catholics fell into the notion that the Magisterial office of the Church somehow had condemned Harry because a) a few Personalities had done so and b) Lifesite fraudulently claimed that B16 had their back. Result: a lot of fans of Harry (like the relieved people above) felt as though they had to keep their heads down lest they be tarred as heterodox, tainted with occult influences, dissenting, deceived, bad parents, and all the rest of it.

Rubbish. There is not a thing in the world to stop a Catholic parent from enjoying these books. They are a fine teaching opportunity. They are funny. They are engaging. They are chockablock with Christian (and mythic and literary) references and you should not let yourself be cowed by this false exercise of a faux Magisterium that has absolutely no authority to make you feel guilty, unclean, wicked or dumb for enjoying an innocent pleasure. Nobody has to like the books. But nobody has the authority to diss the quality of your faith or your competence as a parent for enjoying them."

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)