No brainer here. The Pope is going after a children's book! Good lord, there is nothing wrong with some harmless fantasies. Anyone who reads any sort of satanic or paganism into these books are nuts. Joey Ratz is out of line here.
First Harry Potter, then what? Going after Cartoon characters that don't wear any pants for being "indecent"?
Finally, kids are reading - and the Catholic church has a problem. For the life of me, I can't think of a more irrevelent institution that the CC.
The reformation was started because a bunch of people started reading books, and translating important books into a language that common people would read. No shock that the catholic church isn't a founding member of the "book of the month" club.
Very true. They knew once people got a chance to actually read the Bible and other books, they would start to question things. Of course, not giving Henry VIII a divorce helped the refomation along as well.
Right sentiment, wrong justification. Harry Potter books are insidious because they start kids down the slippery slope of mediocre children's literature that sells more toys and movie tickets than it opens young minds. Why he didn't mention Lemony Snicket in the same critique is a mystery to me.
First point I'd like to make is that the Harry Potter franchise is actually woefully lame on the toy front. They could have done a much better job marketing the franchise than they have. Aside from the Legos, which present a fairly broad selection, they really could have taken a few pages on the Action Figure market from Lord of the Rings. As to the mediocrity of the literature, you have a point in that it is not the best children's literature (highly addictive, but not the best literature). However, as some others pointed out, there are few well-read adults that didn't read a lot of mediocre (or worse) literature as children. Given that the books take all of a day or two read, I've come to the conclusion that the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
I'll be starting my daughter off with Hunter S. Thompson books. Sure, she'll have a tendency to mace her playmates, but that can be corrected... Wonder what the Pope has to say about that?