As you, dear reader, and the rest of the world, not to mention most of the universe, I suspect, will know, the latest Harry Potter book is now on the shelves. Now, I have not read the books, but I have seen the films and have to say that they make wonderful entertainment for the young and are not at all bad for those of us who like fantasy and can still remember reading books such as the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Good and very wholesome fun in my, excuse the pun, book.
However, not everyone is of the same opinion and the King of Rome, aka the Pope, does not appreciate Potter’s magical adventures. It seems that the RC church is against magic and such things on the grounds that the Pope, bless his little religious heart, seems to think the Potter stories are “distorting Christianity in the soul.” Don’t really understand why, and I cannot really believe that J K Rowling set out to deliberately distort her young readers’ souls. It’s obviously a deep theological thing which is way above my intellectual capacity (I don’t possess much of an intellect, so this is distinctly possible), I mean one cannot confuse miracles with magic can one? No. And believing that the results of some magic trick are real has no connection to the concept of faith, now does it?
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
Why the dear old Pope did not have a go at all those violent video games (I’m sure he has – and I can’t say I really blame him – games which encourage you to kill may just be a wee bit more able to corrupt our souls) and films, not to mention the violence shown in your average news bulletin, I don’t know. Harry Potter is pretty innocent fun and may even encourage young people to look into Christianity, after all believing in magic requires a certain degree of faith, the absence of which is possibly why so many people have been becoming less and less religious. If you go around condemning Potter lots of kids will think religion is boring stuff made up by boring old men, and thus a whole generation risks being alienated from the Christian faith. Not the best way of promoting the Roman Catholic church.
And all this coming from a group which bases its philosophies on another book, which is possibly one of the greatest work of fantasy ever created by mankind – a book which has sparked wars, led indirectly to millions of deaths and a book which cannot be ascribed to any one single writer, so nobody can really say whether it is true or not, at least Potter’s author admits that her works are pure fantasy and I doubt that wars will be fought over the teachings of ‘Potter the prophet’. Rant over. Oh and its extremely hot here at the moment and this is making me irritable.
