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Harry Potter for Catholic grown-ups
Mary Anne — (archived)

The reaction is the same from the Vatican to The DaVinci Code as it has been from Protestant fundamentalists (some, not all) to the Harry Potter series. I believe this derives from the level of popularity enjoyed by each. If they were not runaway best-sellers, only a very few would care.

I'm reminded of what Philip Pullman, the author of the very wonderful, very subversive His Dark Materials trilogy, said about Harry Potter. He was grateful to Ms. Rowling because Harry drew all the fire away from his trilogy, a heady fantasy best described as Paradise Lost turned on its head, which then just slid in under the radar.

Though I like Harry very much, Pullman's trilogy has much more depth. It's certainly read by fewer people. And while Harry contains a large amount of fantasy, at bottom its story reflects very traditional respect for authority and institutions, whereas Pullman's books attack organized religion at its roots using some very old stories in new clothes.

Popular adult imagination has now entertained heresy for entertainment value on a mass scale. That so many adult fans of Dan Brown have confused his novel with a work of non-fiction is a downright comical illustration of how muddled the distinction between journalism and entertainment has become.

This is the threat that religion sees: not how deeply critical or critically deep a work is, but how many people it reaches. The Church sees not the substance of doubt, which is negligible in The DaVinci Code, but the habit of doubt as the danger. It turns religion from a collection of rituals and beliefs into a journey of spiritual discovery. One doesn't need a hierarchy to do that.

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