Harry Potter is unsafe for Christians Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online

Harry Potter Fanatics Lash Out at Pope, Michael O’Brien, LifeSiteNews Over Criticism of Novels

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/harry-potter-fanatics-lash-out-at-pope-michael-obrien-lifesitenews-over-cri

Commentary by John-Henry Westen Editor and Steve Jalsevac Managing Director, Toronto, August 23, 2007

LifeSiteNews receives angry and often hate-filled responses to its news reports on mainly three subjects.

The most hateful and threatening come from gay activists. Apparently, some cannot tolerate objective news reports containing information that in any way contradicts savoured personal opinion. For such, our news reports are "hate", even though hate or even anger is never intended in any LifeSiteNews report. We challenge them to point out where our reports include "hate" but the challenge is never answered because it can’t. We just report alternative news that mainstream media refuse to report or distort.

Second, are the angry emails from abortion and population control activists. That has always been expected given the massive deceit and manipulation used for decades to advance their anti-human agendas which we regularly expose. Their control of the mainstream media is no longer as useful as it used to be.

Third has been the bizarre response to our Harry Potter reports, which most will have difficulty finding in the mainstream media or even in many orthodox religious publications. That is our role, to report what most media will not report.

It seems that every time LifeSiteNews publishes an article with an alternative view that is critical of the Harry Potter series we get a flurry of angry and sometimes downright hateful emails from Harry Potter devotees.  Our latest, an article by Canadian Catholic novelist Michael D. O’Brien, which we published Monday was no exception. (See "Harry Potter and ‘the Death of God’" http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07082003.html )
A few of our more colourful responses included scathing ad hominem attacks and a wish for curses on O’Brien, reference to LifeSiteNews.com as a "filthy publication" and Pope Benedict XVI as "a Nazi". 
Comments related to the Pope are likely due to the letters - first published online by LifeSiteNews.com - which he wrote praising a German Harry Potter critic for her work in pointing out the dangers in the Potter series. (See "Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels - Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online") http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05071301.html
Someone identifying him/herself as Ant Johnson wrote:
"To whom it may concern:
Honestly, I found, not just your recent article by Michael D. O’Brien, "North America’s foremost Potter critic"—a laughable distinction to be sure—but all of his poorly misguided efforts at measured, non-dogmatic criticism to be pathetic and more than a little jealous. It’s the sort of archaic thought O’Brien so classically illustrates in his articles that sends droves of people heading for aisles mid-sermon at Sunday morning mass.  Or maybe it’s because your pope was at one point a Nazi, and in many ways, still is. With the sincerest of regards, -Ant Johnson"
Apparently a Gnostic took issue with O’Brien’s position that Gnosticism is presented in the Potter books:
"I don’t see the Gnostic worldview in the Harry Potter books. I know, I am one.
Because the Old Testament is the book of the evil one, we Gnostics are not allowed by Jesus to engage in imprecatory prayer which is common now amongst the Catholic Churches allies in the Evangelical movement.
Does the Catholic Church allow imprecatory prayer? Not officially, but you always have it if you want. Imprecatory prayer is Black Magic.
The Orthodox church, not the Gnostics are practicing Witchcraft. Michael is a deceiver but its ok, because the ways of Saklas-Satan are seductive, so it’s easy to forgive him.
In Jesus name. Titus Andronicus"

And finally John Wohn in Austin Texas wrote: "I hope that every witches’ coven in the US casts spells to curse Michael O’Brien and everyone who works for your filthy publication."

Trying to Skirt the Pope’s (Cardinal Ratzinger’s) Negative Appraisal of Harry Potter

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/trying-to-skirt-the-popes-cardinal-ratzingers-negative-appraisal-of-harry-p

By John-Henry Westen Editor, Toronto, August 29, 2007

Since LifeSiteNews.com first published online scanned copies of the letters of Cardinal Ratzinger concerning Harry Potter, many have attempted to deny the Cardinal, now Pope’s, statements on the matter.
The latest such claim to hit the news was from a report in the Catholic News Service, the official news agency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 
An article, headlined "Catholic perspective can be seen in Potter series, says priest-devotee," by Peggy Weber published on June 27, quotes a Fr. Bernier as saying, "Pope Benedict has not said anything actually about the Harry Potter books themselves. I don’t know if he’s even read them."
The writer then goes on to report: "He told his audience of about 25 people that before he became pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, responded to a book written about the dangers of Harry Potter. He sent a note to the author thanking her for the book and said if the accusations were true then they would be of grave concern."
The statements in the article, which has since been republished in a good number of diocesan newspapers, are inaccurate.  The Pope did in fact, say something about the Harry Potter books, which was not prefaced with a proviso questioning the truth of accusations.  Moreover, Cardinal Ratzinger gave explicit permission for his judgment on Potter to be made public.

On March 7, 2003 then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter to his friend Gabriele Kuby, the author of a book warning against Harry Potter.  The Cardinal wrote: "It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly". 

Kuby, the author of "Harry Potter, good or evil?" subsequently wrote to the Cardinal again asking his permission to make his comments about Potter public. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote back, "Esteemed and dear Ms. Kuby ... Finally this pile [of unanswered mail] is taken care of, so that I can gladly allow you to refer to my judgment about Harry Potter."

Harry Potter: The Archetype of an Abortion Survivor

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/harry-potter-the-archetype-of-an-abortion-survivor

By Marie Peeters-Ney, MD and Philip G. Ney, M.D., M.A., FRCP(C), FRANZCP, R. Psych, September 5, 2007

Originally published in Catholic Insight December 2003.
One could speak about a worldwide "Harry Potter phenomenon," appearing soon after the Pokémon craze. The object of this discussion is to reflect on the possible reasons for the remarkable popularity of Harry Potter.
Can the current craze be only due to good marketing skills? Does this book have exceptional literary value? Could the book be an indicator of a deeper cultural trend?  We wish to hypothesize that the popularity of the Harry Potter series is due to the fact that the themes and the main character strike deep chords in the minds of our younger generation because they are abortion survivors.
They identify with them, because Harry Potter appears to hold the key to unlock the deep, unresolved conflicts which the young generation has buried in its unconscious. We write this short article after reading the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. We will not expand on the progressive downward spiral commented on by numerous other authors.
Some cultural events may transcend generational gaps and cultural differences because they reflect our common humanity, its aspirations, hopes and struggles. Some may shape human thought and influence the course of history. Others are a reflection of the mindset that is in vogue and are thus just an expression of the times. Others go further: they express a facet of the times and present it as the norm, thus shaping the thought of an era and influencing the course of current thinking.
Much has been written about the Potter series and considerable controversy has arisen about it. However, there has not, to our knowledge, been anything written which analyzes some of the deeper reasons for the success of the Potter series. Such an analysis is important in order to gain understanding both of the reasons for its success and to judge the work itself.
In 1979, Dr. Philip Ney discovered and described people with a unique constellation of signs and symptoms, whom he called "abortion survivors." The malaise they suffer from is called the post-abortion survivor syndrome (PASS). Post-abortion survivors are all those individuals who could have been aborted, but mere chance or the fact that they were wanted saved them from termination.
Examples are: people who were born in a family where a sibling was aborted; people whose parents told them they should have been aborted; or people born in a country where the majority of children are aborted. This applies to at least 50 percent of the people born since the 1970s. Thus, being an abortion survivor affects millions of young people and unquestionably, popular literature is bound to reflect the thinking of those hurt by having an abortion and/or being an abortion survivor.
With few exceptions, the rest of the young population wonders if they were allowed to be born because they were wanted. The world is thus filled with people who have an anxious fascination about issues that the Harry Potter series broadly hints at.
A brief description of the psychopathology associated with being an abortion survivor is necessary to understand the attractiveness of the Harry Potter books.
Children born in families where there has been an abortion live with a mother who is struggling with her own guilt and grief. They also often have a father who is alienated. Having parents who are prepared to exercise the power of life and death over their children, these children grow up with very ambivalent relationships with their parents - wanting desperately to be close to them, but knowing that it is too dangerous, and wanting to flee, but caught by their emotional and material dependency on them. Deep anger, violence or passivity, intergenerational communication designed to avoid confronting harsh truths and secretiveness are some of the conflicts that are then expressed. 
Given the fact that they cannot ask their parents about the real causes of their fears, they grow up in an atmosphere of pseudo-secrets. There are important events and problems they sense their parents or any parental figure will not talk about. Abortion survivors live in a closed, unreal, dehumanized world, communicating with code words and through cyberspace. Communication is mainly between peers, but rivalry, competition and lack of commitment interfere with their relationships.
The first attachment, that to mother, was an anxious attachment that resulted in ambivalence and conflict. Abortion survivors grow up with self-doubt and very ambivalent relationships to others. People are used, not loved.
Abortion survivors have cut themselves off from all their emotions, except fear and anger. They feel they have no intrinsic right to be. Their right to exist depends on their being wanted. Having made it into the world, they survive by gaining power, by trickery and seduction. They must "have" to be: money, good looks, sports prowess, magic powers, etc. Only by having can they continue to be wantable and thus to continue to exist.  Unable to trust, they live in a world of fear, with nobody to turn to. They suffer from nightmares in which their aborted sibling (who is not always identified as such) is seeking revenge, full of rage for her wrongful death and full of anger against the sibling who is alive.

The surviving siblings feel like a weight on their shoulders and a permanent curse from the aborted sibling.  They are, therefore, threatened in their very existence, both from the seen and unseen world.

Abortion survivors flirt with death and seek control. They often seek answers and power in the occult.
The genius of Ms. Rowling is to have consciously or unconsciously tapped into the secret world of abortion survivors. Her first book described the world of abortion survivors: a world where all is "unreal," dominated by primary relationships with peers, absent parents, a dread of being used, abused or killed by caretakers who have no love or understanding. Ms Rowling describes people who have everything, but live in fear that their "secret" will be discovered (the Dursleys). The real world is so awful that Harry Potter thought, "He did not know where he was going (to witchcraft school), but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind ..."
In inventing the character Harry Potter, Ms. Rowling introduces the reader to a person whom an abortion survivor can relate to.
Harry is the "boy that lived," although physically marked by the sign of death and wanted dead by a satanic figure. On his forehead, he is scarred, he is special, he is a survivor. He witnesses the death of an innocent creature by one who has nothing to lose and everything to gain by committing such a heinous crime. The centaur tells him "because the blood of the innocent will keep you alive, even if you are inches from death, but at a terrible price … You have slain something pure and defenceless to save yourself, you will have but half a life, a cursed life from the moment the blood touches your lips."
Harry Potter is emotionally, physically and verbally abused by caregivers, but he feels little pain and sheds no tears. The only emotions he seems to feel are fear and hatred. He is not allowed to ask questions. He does not know his own story, although he knows there is a secret about him. He has been dehumanized. He lives in a world of fear, plagued by the recurrent nightmare of a hooded, faceless figure who drinks the blood of the innocent victim. As Ronan, the centaur explains, "Always the innocent are the first victims …"
The fear of death that is present in all abortion survivors is usually dealt with by flirting with death, so that the person imagines he has some control over life and death. Harry Potter exemplifies this when he is told, "Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it, that is important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you are nervous …" When Harry Potter did it, he closed his eyes, ready for a crash.
Using coded language, Rowling has been able to put into written form the unrevealed and unspoken fears of the abortion survivor. She expressed in writing psychological conflicts that generally only appear in nightmares. Many of the struggles experienced by children, and which she fantasizes about in her Harry Potter series, have been expressed in the terrifying dreams of abortion survivors. For example:
  - somebody tried or wanted to kill you (Harry’s teacher, Mr. Quirrell, trying to kill him)
  - the feeling that one is surrounded by invisible people, some of whom are hostile and wish your death (Harry looks into the mirror and sees a whole crowd of people standing right behind him)
  - shedding blood, murdering your sibling (in fantasy), so that you can live half a life (Mr. Quirrell drinking the blood of an innocent, pure victim to stay alive, although at a terrible cost)
  - the feeling of being burdened by a parasite, a hostile sibling who hangs on to you and prevents you from living (Mr. Quirrell, a man with two faces, carrying a half-dead Voldemort who explains that he has a form only when he can share another’s body and who dreams to create a body for himself)
  - and, of course, the terrifying reality that somebody is angry at the survivor for being alive (Voldemort’s anger at Harry Potter)
Ms. Rowling also appeals to the abortion survivor, because she briefly touches on some of the deepest yearnings of all humans for life and meaning. (Harry finally finds somebody who watches over him). However, having opened up this yearning, she sends the reader away empty-handed. She remarkably and accurately describes and expands on the dark side of a humanity without God. The themes she develops are antithetical to the glory of Christian revelation. She illustrates the morbid fascination abortion survivors have for control and power, even if these are dark and frightening.
Harry Potter looks for the stone that confers eternal life. This is clearly opposed to Christian revelation. He experiences a mother’s love that is so strong, it is capable of burning and destroying the enemy, a caricature which is quite obvious.
Ms. Rowling appeals to the more pathological dreams of the abortion survivors. She describes transfiguration as one of the most complex and dangerous kinds of magic. She describes a world of magic and of power. "There is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it." In the Harry Potter world, there is the mirror of Erised, which shows us what we want or want to see. A world where one can be special, if one is marked as having survived.
The inventor of Harry Potter describes with great accuracy the world of the abortion survivors. However, in a truly satanic fashion, she leads these broken people in a downward spiral into a world that is not life-giving, but one of death and despair. She shows them the way to an illusion of power, which is without life and which is the realm of Satan.
Harry Potter can become a cult, making people feel they are understood and will understand the truth and then deliberately lead them away from the source of Life and Truth. The psychopathology associated with being an abortion survivor is real. It needs to be understood by those involved in the new evangelization. We now need people who are saintly enough to descend into the pit of hell where they are and who can bring them to the light. Preaching Jesus Christ is a work of love, healing and life. It is a work of mercy.
Philip G. Ney trained as a child psychiatrist and child psychologist at McGill University, University of London and the University of Illinois. He taught in five universities in four countries and has been hospital and university department chairman.

As an academic and clinician of more than thirty five years, he has done research into child abuse for more than thirty years and has authored or co-authored 66 scientific papers and 7 books.

In his early research Professor Ney became increasingly aware of the reciprocal connection between child abuse and abortion. More recently he has studied children who are the survivors of abortion. He is conducting therapeutic groups for men and women abused as children in private practice in Victoria, British Columbia.
As a semi-retired professor, Philip Ney is currently researching the effects of various kinds of pregnancy losses on women’s physical and mental health. With wife Dr. Marie Peeters-Ney, Philip conducts training sessions world-wide.
Dr. Marie Peeters-Ney is an American. Having obtained her medical training in Belgium and her paediatric specialty training in the USA and Canada, she worked at the University of Paris with the world-famous geneticist, Jerome Lejeune, and won an important scientific prize for her research into the biochemical causes of mental retardation.  

Harry Potter and anti-Christian bigotry
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56715, http://www.wnd.com/2007/07/42612/

July 18, 2007

Is it possible Harry Potter is fostering anti-Christian bigotry in our youth?

Our kids hear every day in public schools about the perils of “intolerance” and “homophobia.” They are cautioned frequently to “separate church and state,” because not to do so would result in vague, unspecified horrors. And merely raising an eyebrow at evolutionary theory can unleash pent-up fury over Christian beliefs.

So, kids know who the establishment thinks are supposed to be the “bad guys” in America: conservative Christians. But then along comes the most popular book series of all time to further undermine Christian theology by glamorizing occult practices – and it doesn’t end there. Harry Potter has a not-so-subtle political message as well.

Kids read a story and figure out right off who the heroes are, and who the villains. In the Potter tales, there are several types of villains: the “dark magic” Lord Voldemort and his ilk; the mean teen wizard group at the Hogwart’s school; and then there’s a group we might call the fools. In Harry’s world, they’re called “Muggles.”

These residents of the conventional “non-magic” world are portrayed as clueless at best, sometimes harmless, but mostly obstacles to progress. Enlightened witches and wizards have to work around their ignorance in the government and in everyday life. Only occasionally do the wizards pull back the curtain to reveal to Muggles what’s really going on, and it’s usually more than these one-dimensional creatures can handle. Denial is one response; dying of fright is another.

At times, though, Muggles blossom into full-blown bigots and bullies. Harry’s relatives are depicted in this way. His Uncle Vernon Dursley is a “big, beefy man with hardly any neck” (page1, “Sorcerer’s Stone”) who “didn’t approve of imagination” (page 5). Because he is so ferociously “anti-magic,” Uncle Vernon’s worst fear is that someone will find out Harry’s a wizard.

In fact, Uncle Vernon’s attitude toward Harry is classic bigotry:

“Now, you listen here, boy,” he snarled. “I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured. …” (Page 56, “Sorcerer’s Stone”)

The message that screams from these pages for children to absorb is that these despicable people who object to “magic” are worthy of the worst scorn. And that’s mostly what they receive throughout the Potter books.

Our children quickly figure out that Muggles equate to traditional conservatives. And who are the most fervently “anti-magic” in real-world America? Christians. If kids don’t get this right off, the mainstream media’s frequent, negative caricatures of Christians will connect the dots for them. Might this be one more clue to explain the rise in virulent anti-Christian sentiment in recent years?

In the Potter books, it’s OK to hold such people in thorough contempt and sometimes openly mock them. Harry’s school nemesis, wizard Draco Malfoy, shows undisguised bias against Muggles or those with mixed Muggle and wizard “blood,” and his nasty attitude is politically incorrect by the school’s standards. But Malfoy just expresses what the others secretly think.

Author Rowling reveals hero Harry’s hateful thoughts toward his relatives, who have been carefully drawn as disgusting people. His apparently justifiable resentment comprises many passages:

Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn’t as though they were any help to him awake. … They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. (Page 19, “Goblet of Fire”)

Harry’s cousin Dudley is described as a fat underachieving bully with “small piggy eyes” (page 51, “Half-Blood Prince”). Harry, an orphan, is at first assigned a broom closet under the stairs when he arrives at his uncle’s home. He gets little to eat, and his home situation only improves due to manipulation, sometimes supernatural, on the part of his wizard protectors.

The power of wizardry brings Muggles to their knees, in fact. When professor Dumbledore comes to the Dursley home to fetch Harry for another year of school, the family becomes a comic tool of sorcery, which they are powerless to stop (“Half-Blood Prince,” chapter 3). Occult power is, you see, supposedly superior to anything the conventional world can offer – another great lesson for our kids.

Scads of self-described Christian families purchase Harry Potter books for their kids, allow them to attend the movies, and even indulge their forays into Potter chat rooms and fan clubs. Many think nothing of giving the parental stamp of approval to stories about a school teaching sorcery to children and teens and other elements that are outright tutorials in the occult. It’s “fantasy,” they reason, and no worse than lots of fiction out there.

What they don’t get is more and more teens are seriously into “wicca” and paganism, actually experimenting with rituals of a supernatural nature. Many teens say their interest was initially sparked by reading Harry Potter books.

Is a little entertainment worth imbedding some very unfaithful ideas in the heads of children? Sorcery is named specifically in Scripture as a violation of God’s law (Deuteronomy 18:10-12; Galatians 5:20 and elsewhere), and it’s not a joke. Besides, Harry does not think like a Christian in many other ways. He nurses and feeds grudges against his relatives and his rivals at school, and revenge is portrayed as justifiable.

The author also does not maintain a light-hearted tone, but her clever and comic elements blend into nightmarish scenes of slithering snakes, kids trapped underwater, blood sacrifice, severed limbs and even the death of a schoolmate. This “bait-and switch” storytelling should raise red flags for discerning parents.

So next time you hear your kids dish out scorn for Christians and /or Christian beliefs, maybe it’s time to take an inventory of their favorite books and movies.

What will another Potter tale add to the mix? Rowling could decide to have Harry repent of his open rebellion against God through sorcery. Maybe she will cease dishonoring traditional “non-magic” beliefs. And, pigs could also start flying.

Until this happens, Christian families need to protect their kids from Harry Potter’s clever seduction.