NOT TOO WILD ABOUT HARRY (OR FRODO):
Some Critics Miss the Points About J. K. Rawlings and J. R. R. Tolkien

It’s that time once again. The next installment in the Disneyesque filmed versions of the popular Harry Potter children's fantasy novels by J. K. Rawlings –and the key word here is “fantasy”—is due to be released in theatres around the country tomorrow. The next installment of the classy and classical Lord of the Rings comparatively adult-level fantasy series will follow soon thereafter.

And once again, both –but especially the former-- will be met with a barrage of protests by many (especially amongst Protestant and Catholics) who seem ill-acquainted with Western literature save, perhaps, the local newspaper and the Bible, and likewise oddly unable to discern the difference between fact and fiction; not to mention those who seem to see a Global Satanic New Age Conspiracy behind the most innocuous presentations of myth-and-magic, no matter how hodge-podge and implausible (Harry Potter) even for one who believes in the supernatural and the demonic, or no matter how thought-provoking and invocative of Western Christianity (Rings). Granted, most Christians familiar with Tolkien’s work recognize the latter fact and place it in the same category as C. S. Lewis’ Narnia fantasies. Too many, however, especially in the upper far-right choirs of Christendom, do not and, in fact, look askance even at Lewis, whose fantasy works are more overtly Christian than Tolkien's.

In any case, whether one reads the novels of Rowlings or Tolkien (or even Lewis) --or views films based on those works-- one does so for their primary purpose: To be entertained. This rather salient fact seems to have been lost on both Tolkien's and Rowlings' critics. Moreover, the fact remains that the fairy tale versions of "magic" and Disney-style forms of "sorcery" (as in the famous Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Sorceror's Apprentice) depicted in Harry Potter bear no resemblance whatever to real-life Satanism or witchcraft (especially a la the modern, contrived "religion" of Wicca, created mostly out of whole cloth by occultist Gerald Gardner), or occult practice in general:

For example, nowhere in Harry Potter do the protagonists invoke Astaroth or Beelzebub; or summon demons; or conduct seances; or worship nature or "the Goddess"; or sacrifice animals to Satan; or dance in "magic circles" skyclad (i.e., naked). Instead, what one sees in Harry Potter is a smorgasboard of purely fictional elements and fantasy characters borrowed from all forms of Western folklore and legend. Even the scene in the movie of Harry and his friends learning to fly on broomsticks is based not on real occult practices, but on popular folklore, and Harry's magic wand is an echo of Disney "sorceror" Mickey Mouse, not Rosemary's Baby or even Merlin. Harry Potter no more teaches kids how to be practitioners of Wicca, or Satanism, or Necromancy, or Voo-Doo than Leggos teaches them how to construct office buildings, or Star Trek teaches them how to pilot a spaceship to the Moon.

Rather than some kind of imagined covert attempt by Hollywood in cahoots with the New Age movement to indoctrinate children into the nearest witches’ coven (which proves little more than that too many Harry Potter critics have entered the Twilight Zone) the only real problem with the Harry Potter series –unlike J. R. R. Tokein’s masterful work of political metaphor and symbolic Christian [i]didactica[/i] in the form of myth-and-magic story-telling-- lies elsewhere: As does the majority of contemporary Western secular fiction (and, for that matter, much of contemporary modern Western Christian fiction), the Harry Potter series seems shallow in how it deals with moral issues and with character development, especially in terms of teaching children to distinguish the differences between virtue and vice and to pursue the former.

In all fairness to Rowlings, however, her books are intended to entertain children, not teach them ethics. The very popular and enormously entertaining Veggie Tales videos are much better suited to that task.

In Tolkien’s story, Frodo, the lead character in the first installment of The Lord of the Rings must undertake dangerous tasks as well as overcome ongoing and great temptations as he seeks to destroy a demonic ring whose bearer would be given absolute power were he or she to choose to employ the ring. Added to that is the ring’s increasingly corrupting influence over the one who merely carries it without using it at all. Thus Frodo’s struggle is both temporal (overcome an evil force seeking to possess the ring in order to destroy the world) and spiritual (overcome both his imperfect nature and the ring’s morally debilitating effects upon his moral fortitude). The Lord of the Rings --written by Tolkein with the warring nations of the WW2 conflict and the then-new atom bomb in mind-- is nothing less than a wonderfully entertaining homily and epic-level parable against the dangers of absolute power and its tendency to corrupt absolutely as well as to destroy.

But nothing so high-minded can be discerned in the Harry Potter series, at least not in the first installment of the film version: The only reason the lead character, Harry, undertakes a dangerous mission to retrieve a magically powerful artifact from his friends’ arch-enemy is, well, the latter is his friends’ arch-enemy, and because the SOB murdered his parents when he was a baby. Beyond a vague appeal to “justice,” there is simply no moral element to Harry’s struggle to overcome both his foes and his weaknesses, the latter of which (unlike Frodo's) are less of a moral nature than a physical or mental one. Like much of what passes for "thinking" in modern Western liberal secularism (especially in politics and religion as well as in culture), the first Harry Potter story is about power versus powerlessness, not virtue versus vice, or even good versus evil --two concepts which seem hopelessly vague and empty of any real content in Harry Potter.

Other than a comic-book-level treatment of good and evil, this lack of moral clarity and depth is the only potential problem with the Potter series, at least last year's film version. Yet its most vehement critics ignore this very central aspect of Harry Potter, and aim instead at the wrong target --a target largely of their own collective imagining.

CATHOLICS vs. THE WEASEL ZONE:
Outraged Christians in an Age of Buck-Passers

Once again the Vatican and the US Catholic Bishops are in the news as the latter meet this week to discuss and implement Rome’s directive to bring the June 2002 draft of the Bishops’ new “zero tolerance” policy on clerical sexual abuse of minors into conformity with the Church’s Canon Law.

According to an editorial in The Washington Post last week, one of the objections Rome raised was two-fold: (1) the Bishops’ new policy overlooked or ignored the due process rights of accused clerics under the Canon Law; and (2) the Bishops’ new policy ignored the Canon Law’s 10-year statute of limitations on charges of clerical sexual abuse. That is, a victim of sexual abuse by a priest must report the incident(s) within 10 years of his or her 18th birthday –a proviso which seems to have been difficult at best for victims in the past because much pressure was placed on him or her and/or his or her family by their diocese to protect Mother Church against needless embarrassment in the public eye, a priority the Vatican seems to consider still rather paramount.

The Post also notes that the Vatican likewise objected to the Bishops’ June decision requiring all Bishops and clerics in all dioceses to immediately report all accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors to the civil authorities whether or not state or local laws mandate such reporting, and even whether or not state or local governments which mandate such reports specifically exempt religious organizations. Instead, the Vatican said, Bishops should be required to do no more or less than comply with whatever the civil laws in their dioceses happen to be.

Ironically enough, mostly non-Catholic and highly secularized average American citizens and civil leaders seem to take this problem much more seriously than do some leaders within the Catholic Church, even at the Vatican level: Many, if not most, American state and local legal codes include no statute of limitations on either statutory rape (consentual sexual relations between an adult and a minor) or sexual abuse of minors, the latter of which is considered a deeply serious crime to which are attached severe penalties up to and including long prison sentences. Moreover, in almost any school district in the country the mere accusation of any form of sexual involvement by any teacher with any student of any age, with or without that student’s consent, results in that teacher’s immediate dismissal. In most cases, the offender is turned over to the civil authorities for prosecution. But, with perhaps a few rare exceptions, offending teachers are never transferred to other school districts and victims and/or victims’ families are never urged to keep quiet to avoid embarrassing the school system.

On the surface, the Holy See’s desire to protect the rights of priests as well as the reputation of the Church seems all well and good, as well as fair and proper. That is, until one remembers a couple of (in our opinion) important caveats:

(1) One of the roles of the Church and her clergy is to protect the family, without which the Church cannot exist. It’s NOT the role of the family to protect the Church and her clergy. After all, the family as a God-ordained institution precedes the Church as a God-ordained institution, both in terms of history and theology:

God –Himself a family in the form of three Persons!-- created the family first for a reason, and founded the ancient nation of Israel –the Church’s prototype-- upon families for a reason, primarily to image Him. Thus the integrity and security of the family --especially its most vulnerable members, its children-- has primacy over the integrity and security of the Church –especially its most powerful members, its clergy. God has even built into human nature the tendency of all human beings to protect and defend their immediate families –especially their children-- from any person or institution which threatens them either unwittingly or self-consciously, up to and including the Church or her clergy. In its understandable (and even proper) desire and haste to protect the rights and reputations of her priests and the Church, the Vatican seems to have forgotten these first things.

(2) Too many of the world’s institutions –civil government, the multi-national corporation, the investment firm, marriage, and even charity and volunteerism are being both overrun and run by weasels, those folks who, in the words of “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams, operate in “a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities” which Adams has dubbed “the Weasel Zone” (see Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel HarperBusiness; 2002).

While only the most skilled weasels are also lawbreakers who don't get caught (once you're caught and prosecuted, you cease being a weasel and become a criminal), most weasels engage in less-than-illegal yet less-than-moral activities such as "acts of omission, conflicts of interest, manipulating public opinion, deflecting blame, avoiding issues, hypocrisy, false claims of discrimination, obfuscation (weasel words), cover-ups, unwarranted optimism, turning a blind eye, ignoring scientific data, scapegoating, and anything else that strikes you as just-plain-wrong."

Weasels will never take responsibility for any negligence or incompetence on their part, especially when it results in harm to those around them and under them, or to their organization as a whole. Instead, weasels will blame someone else inside their organization, usually an underling. Or they’ll try to blame their organization’s rules or policies. Or they’ll blame outside “forces” (such as competitors, the media, or the civil authorities) who are “out to get them.” In any case, weasels pass the buck from themselves to something or someone else.

This latter phenomenon may be one of the factors many otherwise loyal and compliant Catholic lay people have been especially outraged by. As they see it, the Vatican’s –and some American Bishops’-- response to and attitude toward the Bishops’ “zero tolerance” policy is and has been an example of operating in the Weasel Zone.

Instead of using the Canon Law to preserve the status quo, or –worse yet— as an excuse for avoiding accountability and its stepchild, reform, the Vatican should acknowledge that the Canon Law needs to be changed radically (“at the root”) to place at least as much emphasis on protecting the natural rights of Catholic children who came into the Church’s life involuntarily as on protecting the man-made rights of Catholic clergy who came into the clerical life voluntarily.

This is especially crucial in light of one of the foundational principles upon which the Catholic Church’s social teaching is based; namely, consistent emphasis on the rights and dignity of the most vulnerable over the rights and dignity of the most powerful –a principle which has rightly earned the Church worldwide admiration and respect, even from many of her toughest critics. It’s time to bring the Canon Law into conformity with that principle, and to bring out of the Weasel Zone everyone in the Church’s hierarchy who may to still be in it.