As sales of the latest in the series of Harry Potter novels reached record numbers upon release last week, news arrives of the Vatican’s disapproval of the popular children’s book series.
Even though Pope Benedict XVI made no official announcements against the adventures of the young magician, two letters that he wrote when he was still Cardinal make clear his dissatisfaction with these books. According to the LifeSiteNews website the Pope wrote a letter to author Gabriele Kuby, responding positively to her critique of the Harry Potter novels, “Harry Potter- good or evil?,” stating that it was true that these works are “subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow.”
Author Kuby argues strongly that the novels are a great risk to Christianity and one of her main points is that “Harry Potter is a global long term project to change culture. In the young generation inhibitions against magic and the occult are being destroyed. Thus, forces re-enter society which Christianity had overcome.”
Up until the release of the sixth novel in the Harry Potter series last week, Pope Benedict’s own book had been at the top of the charts in Germany as the highest-selling book.
