Column Aerial sports and Harrys magic around every corner
By TIM UNSWORTH
Just when you think you know
someone, you discover she has run off with a myopic teenager named Harry
Potter. Harry is a struggling student of wizardry at the unrenowned Hogwarts
School of Sorcery (school motto: Never tickle a sleeping dragon)
somewhere in the English countryside. One cannot be jealous of Harry. His
folks, after all, had been killed by the evil Voldemort, a maladjusted wizard.
Harry is forced to live with the Dorseys -- his aunt, Petunia, and uncle,
Vernon, and their wormy son, Dudley, muggles (non-wizards) all. Indeed, for 11
years, Harrys room was a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs -- and he
never had a birthday party. He couldnt play a sport but he was the Tiger
Woods of broomstick riding and the star of his Quiddich (a broomstick game)
team.
I cant really blame my wife Jean for going over the edge.
She has been living on oatmeal for decades. With Harry, she has found new
friends, aerial sports and magic around every corner.
I followed her around the house, dressed as Jesus, the muscled,
sword-wielding Pant-ocrater who took over after Jesus the Good Shepherd got
benched during Constantines reign. With my holy water bucket and
aspergillum in hand, I read paragraph 2117 of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church to her over and over again. All practices of magic or
sorcery, the First Commandment chapter said, by which one attempts
to tame occult powers, so as to place them at ones service and have a
supernatural power over others ... are gravely contrary to the virtue of
religion.
Shut your gob, she said as she mounted her mop handle,
with Volumes I through IV of Harry Potters adventures tucked under her
bathrobe.
Repent, you blasphemous egit, I said. And I gave her a
dose of Galatians. Now, the works of the flesh are plain: fornication,
impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery ... and the like. And I warn you,
as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the
Kingdom of God.
Oh, shove off, dung brain, she said, sounding just
like Harry Potters friends who now had her soul in bondage. Then she took
another bite out of her purée of stoat sandwich and flew off.
The local super-Catholic radio station waived its copyright in the
hope that its earnest listeners would copy its Harry Potter broadcast and
distribute it to any soon-to-be-lost soul. Orphaned Harry and his disordered
friends were destroying family life and virtually everything else under the
sun, including the Republican Party platform.
A distinguished professor at the University of Chicago, where
Hittite is the language of choice, called J.K. Rowlings prose
garbage -- a sure endorsement of good writing. Fundamentalist
ministers on television sprayed warm spittle on their Rolex watches as they
fulminated over the diabolical books. Catholic News Service gave the simple,
uncomplicated, fun books a gentle review, focusing on the author and her
Presbyterian faith. Most diocesan papers didnt pick it up.
Divination! I screamed at Jean.
Constipation! she yelled back as she delved into
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -- 734 pages of wizardry and lessons
from Hermione (Harrys girlfriend) on how to remove frog guts from under
ones fingernails.
It all brought me back to my youth, circa 1938, when the
fabulously successful movie The Wizard of Oz was released. It was
based on Frank Baums 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which
sold about 5.6 million copies before 1956 when the copyright expired and other
publishers picked it up. Baum wrote 13 sequels to Wizard -- all
fantasies for children -- and the world did not collapse. J.K. Rowling is only
a little different from J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings),
C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), Lewis Carroll (Alice in
Wonderland) or J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan). Children learn to sort
things out.
J.K. Rowling has three more episodes planned that will take Harry
through puberty. Churchmen are already shaking and practicing how to pronounce
Gomorrah with a good hissing background.
Somehow, the reaction to Harry Potter has become symbolic of many
sides of Christianity closing in upon itself. Branches of the ancient tree of
Christian belief are petrifying. Some Protestant sects are denying ordination
to women just as we Catholics have done. Recently, the church has reaffirmed
its denial of the Eucharist to divorced people who remarry without an
annulment. Homosexuals just got another rebuke from John Paul II who seems to
prefer absolving guys who tried to kill him. Diocesan papers are filled with
the third promise of Fatima, a dark and hell-centered prophecy.
Gradually, the open windows through which John XXIII hoped would
waft a healing breeze are closing. Slowly but surely, Catholic discipline is
echoing a tub-thumping, fundamentalist discipline that still measures skirt
length at parish dances. (Are there any parish dances anymore? Heck, were
lucky to have spaghetti suppers.) Now, even Harry Potter is suspect.
A pity. Sadly, if, through some bit of spiritism, Harry Potter and
his friends were drawn to the church, it looks as if they would all be rejected
unless they put their vivid imaginations in a parish that is under interdict
for allowing kids to trick-or-treat on Halloween.
As for Jean, shes in the kitchen, rolling pin upraised. She
has turned into a pillar of salt.
Tim Unsworth writes from Chicago where he is taking lessons in
the dark arts. Hes at unsworth@megsinet.net
National Catholic Reporter, September 1,
2000
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