It was one of the oddities of the neoCatholic world that their womenfolk were weirdly, almost fanatically protective of “our Harry.” A certain pro-life news website, even to this day, still occasionally hears the accusation that they made up a message from the former Cardinal Ratzinger warning that HP was a danger to the souls of the young readers enthralled by it. This was a possibility that the leathern-winged harpies could not absorb, considering themselves as they did to be good “conservative” Catholics, and all Ratzinger fans. No, it had to be that website that was trying to besmirch both of their darlings for some nefarious purpose of their own.
I remember being lectured by a priest that there were “a lot of good Christian themes in Harry Potter…”
I responded by holding out to him an imaginary glass of invisible liquid: “This is a lovely glass of orange juice. I squeezed it myself. I only put a tiny little bit of arsenic in it. If you don’t personally like arsenic, just drink those bits that don’t have any. Go ahead… What’s the matter, are you some kind of fanatical perfectionist that everything you eat and drink has to be totally free of deadly poison?”
The next time someone says to you, “But there’s much that’s good in Laudato Si… there’s Christian themes. Pope Francis used some quotes from classical Catholic social teaching,” just pause a moment to think about the implications of these protestations.
J.K. Rowling is a non-Christian fantasy writer of somewhat dubiously praised children’s fiction. And they loved to defend her on the grounds that her work “contained Christian themes.” Now many of the same kind of people are defending a papal encyclical by insisting that it “contains Christian themes.”
Just stop for a moment. Let that sink in.
People are defending… a papal encyclical…because it contains… “Christian themes”… Yah.
Ummm… people, he’s the pope. It’s supposed to go without saying that there would be “Christian themes” in anything a pope produces. It’s supposed to go without saying that a papal encyclical contains “Catholic social teaching.”
Shortly after Bergoglio’s election, I remember hearing from someone who was trying to make the best of it that he had “defended the unborn” back in Argentina. I remember being in the company of Mike Matt at the time, who rather dryly observed that he needed rather more from a pope than that he thought it a bad idea to kill babies.
Have we finally set the bar so low that we defend something coming from a pope because one can find, if one looks hard enough and with enough of a squint, something in it that is not directly contrary to the Catholic Faith?
Really? We’re there, are we?
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