Clericalism and Harry Potter

The Hogwarts Express has come and gone, taking our magical children back for another exciting, evil-defeating year of enchanted education. We Muggles, left behind in this sometimes depressingly mundane world, must fend for ourselves, training our eyes (those windows to the soul) to seek out the magic that lies just under the surface of all things, for in that sparkling, numinous presence lies the true nature of existence, and our true purpose: to live like Christ – that is, to live for others, and in so living, never to die.

Well, that’s how I see Harry Potter anyway.

But the pastor of a Catholic parish in Nashville, Tennessee disagrees. According to this article in the Tennessean, he has removed all the Harry Potter books from the new library at his parish school this fall. I’ll set out his reasoning (as reported in the article) and give my rebuttal, just like it’s 2002. In so doing, I hope also to demonstrate in some small way what Pope Francis has called the evil of clericalism – that is, any undue emphasis on the opinions, attitudes and actions of clerics over those they are meant to shepherd, simply because they are clerics. In my opinion, that is the real evil which underlies this particular situation.

1. The pastor at the Nashville school said, “[The Harry Potter] books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception.” Not to be overly Muggle-ish, but I would start by reminding us all that magic is not real. Good magic, bad magic: none of it is real. It’s just fiction. However, we do see magic depicted in the Bible – Moses appears to have some serious magical moves, given to him by God, in the story of the Exodus – so maybe magic used to be real. Who knows? But these days, if someone claims to have magical power, they are pulling your leg.

But if it is literary magic this pastor objects to, he is going to need to do a much more thorough cleanse of the school library than simply removing Harry Potter. As I said above, the Bible will have to go. The Chronicles of Narnia are out for depicting Aslan as performing “magic deeper still,” than that of the White Witch (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 163). Yes, the lion’s Christ-like self sacrifice and redemption of Narnia is out. Because magic. Tolkien’s entire canon will have to be removed, because it depicts magical, fairy realms as points of encounter with the numinous presence of the divine, not just in Lord of the Rings but also in his many short stories, poetry, letters and ancillary writings. Fantasy literature which depicts magic is in such vogue right now (my 8 year old and I particularly enjoyed Adam Gidwitz’s extremely well-researched medieval novel The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog), that I will be surprised if any books are left in the library at his parish school, once the Nashville pastor is done with his purge of books which depict the use of magic by both good and bad characters.

Instead of banning books with magic, this pastor might encourage his staff to teach children to recognize distinctions in the ways in which magic is depicted in the stories they read, perhaps using Brandon Sanderson’s spectrum of hard and soft magic. Identifying  different types of magic in stories and how each works helps create critical readers.

The pastor could also encourage his students to fully grasp how Rowling depicts evil in her saga. Political philosopher and ethicist Jean Bethke Elshtain gave a lecture to University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture about the nature of evil in Harry Potter, finding it deeply consistent with the thought of St. Augustine, especially in its depiction of Voldemort not as glamorous but as banal. “Evil is banal. It lacks depth. It is a flattening of the world through a failure to engage it at its roots,” said Elshtain. Voldemort begins as handsome Tom Riddle, but gradually becomes horrific, his face flattened, snake-like, less than human as he becomes more entrenched in dark magic. Elshtain says evil in the Harry Potter books is not unique and special; it is a parasite, living in the back of some poor professor’s turban, or off the milk of an enchanted serpent; it is a whimpering thing, left under a bench at King’s Cross station.

Or the school staff, with the pastor’s leadership, might also encourage students to think deeply about what magic (especially as used by good characters) means in stories – to identify whether it might point to deeper realities. In Harry Potter, magic can be read as a metaphor for the life of God’s grace, to which we are all invited, and yet we must be trained to use this gift wisely and well by the school that is the Church. Ever wonder why only the first-years cross to Hogwarts over the lake? It can be read as an initiation symbol (it’s probably not a coincidence that Rowling herself chose baptism at age 11, the same age students in her story begin their magical education at Hogwarts). In this sense, magic in Harry Potter can be seen as sacramental, because it points to something much greater than itself – something which reveals the life of God. (Stay tuned for a new publication this fall by yours truly which explains this idea with a truly nerdy level of detail.)

Instead of welcoming student interest in Harry Potter as an opportunity to build critical thinking skills and appropriate tenets of Catholic systematic and sacramental theology, the pastor has arbitrarily banned the books from the school library. This is the definition of a missed opportunity.

2. Next the Nashville pastor said, “The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.” The article goes on to say that the pastor “consulted several exorcists in the U.S. and Rome who recommended removing the books.”

First, I’m not making this up.

Second, see rebuttal #1.

Third, while evil is definitely real, magic is not. The spells in Harry Potter are made up of Latin fragments (with occasional borrowings from Greek and even Aramaic) by the author, who does not profess to be a witch (or even Wiccan), and whose closest connection to a magical institution seems to be her membership in the Church of Scotland.

Fourth, if I – as a layperson – were to publicly make statements such as those of the Nashville pastor, which appear irrational to a “red flag” degree in their seeming inability to distinguish fact from fiction, I would hope I’d be divested of my teaching authority as a representative of my local diocese.

So what’s the deal?

Clericalism plays a critical role. Clericalism is a disputed term, but here I use it as Pope Francis has on many occasions, to indicate a perversion of the hierarchical Church, deeply embedded in Catholic culture, that says “Father knows best,” even when he really, really doesn’t. It is doing what the priest says, not because it’s a good idea, but because he is the priest. In the Tennessean article, Rebecca Hammel, the superintendent of Catholic schools in Nashville upheld the pastor’s “canonical authority” to pull the Potter books. And yet, in a 2018 meeting with Chilean bishops in 2018, Pope Francis said laypeople (that is, the non-ordained) like Hammel “are not our [the clergy’s] peons, or our employees. They don’t have to parrot back whatever we say.”

And to her credit, Hammel did not parrot the pastor on the issue of Potter. Instead, she said:

“Should parents deem that this or any other media be appropriate we would hope that they would just guide their sons and daughters to understand the content through the lens of our faith […] We really don’t get into censorship in such selections other than making sure that what we put in our school libraries is age appropriate materials for our classrooms […] The goal is to promote engaging, quality literature and an enjoyment of reading in hopes of building students’ skills and knowledge.”

One gets a sense from her statement that she possesses strong educational experience and exercises sound reason in her administrative role. Why isn’t she in charge of which books Catholic school children have access to while at school, instead of delusional pastors with exorcist friends? Why doesn’t she stand up to him? Perhaps she deemed it too trivial a matter to risk losing her job over. I can understand that; the pastor’s removing the books is a fairly ineffectual move. And yet I wonder what his next move will be…

Identifying and warning others of evil is an essential part of the Church’s mission. Let us hope that this pastor and all who would “exorcise” evil elements of culture from children’s lives might focus their attentions on that which is truly evil, such as media which numbs us to graphic violence, or mass shootings and our inability to stop them. And let us pray we can grow to understand that the Church’s mission – in both big and small matters – belongs not only to a select, ordained few, but to us all.

As always, let me know your thoughts in the comments.