On Readers, Harry Potter, and the Pope

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
J. R. R. Tolkien

I have to confess that I’m a fan of the Harry Potter series. Like millions, I look forward to each new book. I also have to confess that, as a writer, I envy J. K. Rowling, and not only because of her novels’ outrageous sales. I’m jealous, for one thing, of Rowling’s mastery at developing a tightly-woven plot. Her ability to keep us turning the pages is astonishing. And she’s also a master at creating highly imaginative settings—as evidenced by Hogwarts and the world of wizards. If Rowling has a weakness it is in the area of character development. But even here she must be doing something right; otherwise we wouldn’t care so passionately about what will ultimately happen to Harry.

What most impresses me about Rowling’s novels, though, is how her readers are able to create book discussion groups on the spot. On several occasions I’ve been in gatherings where someone mentions Harry Potter and at once people of all ages become engaged in rather sophisticated discussions of Rowling’s work. It’s little wonder that librarians are enthusiastic about the series, particularly about how it’s been able to attract young people to the act of reading.

Recently, however, the news media reported that the pope does not approve of the Harry Potter novels. What brought this to the forefront were of a couple of letters that Joseph Ratzinger—when he was still a cardinal—wrote to Gabriele Kuby in which he praises her for making people aware of the dangers that J. K. Rowling’s work poses for the young. Unfortunately, the press’ coverage of Ratzinger’s statements has been misleading, and objectivity has been cast aside for the sake of sensationalistic headlines. It turns out that, after all, Benedict XVI has neither read Rowling’s nor Kuby’s works. And it seems that the letters were actually composed by an assistant, although they bore the Cardinal’s signature.

Regardless, Gabriele Kuby is a compatriot of Benedict XVI and she’s the author of Harry Potter: Good or Evil? In her book, she condemns J.R. Rowling’s novels because they’re corrupting the hearts of the innocent, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, and in the process harming their relationship with God.

Kuby, and others who share her viewpoint, are entitled to their judgment. Furthermore, they have every right to monitor what their children read. That goes without saying.

What’s more, Kuby was astute in seeking Ratzinger’s endorsement of her views, as well as in making public his apparent approval of her book. Let’s face it, who better to endorse a work condemning the spiritual dangers of Harry Potter than the then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith? And as an added bonus, because of the prominent media coverage, Kuby’s work, from virtual obscurity, has received more than its fair share of attention from the world press. Most writers gladly welcome any controversy that promotes sales of their book. (I shall leave Salman Rushdie out of this equation).

But what concerns me is not that anyone disapproves of J. K. Rowling’s fiction. No artist, especially one as successful as Harry Potter’s creator, will be universally loved. What worries me is a specter from the past that I see hovering above this entire affair—like Nearly Headless Nick, who refuses to accept the manner of his death.

In Spanish America, for the first three-hundred years of its existence, novels were forbidden. A person could not legally own—let alone read—a work of fiction. To have such a thing in one’s possession was an offense punishable by law.

Who was responsible for instigating this decree? El Santo Oficio: The Spanish Inquisition.

The reasoning behind the prohibition was that reading novels would be harmful to the spiritual well-being of the indigenous who, the inquisitors believed, would be unable to distinguish fact from fiction. The Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, in his introduction to La Verdad de las Mentiras, argues out that the inquisitors—long before literary critics—were the first to recognize that fiction, by its very nature, is both seductive and seditious.

Indeed, a writer, through the power of her imagination, is capable of creating a world that readers may prefer over the real one. Also, and perhaps more dangerously, fiction can prompt a young mind to become independent and, heaven forbid, freethinking.

A world without fiction would be colorless—muggle-like, if you will. But some people prefer to live in a world that’s black and white, and that’s their privilege. Yet what frightens me is the certainty that many of them would like to restore the power the Church exercised in the days of colonial Spanish America, forcing the rest of us to live in a monochrome universe where great flights of the imagination are viewed with suspicion and scrutinized with a rigid checklist that aims to detect and banish anything deemed dangerous.

Isn’t that the dream of every inquisitor?

The entire affair regarding Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s supposed condemnation of Harry Potter demonstrates that inquisitors still exist. And what I find particularly alarming, as this case illustrates, is that they believe they have an ally in Benedict XVI.

In Gabriel García Márquez’s Del amor y otros demonios, a priest, Cayetano Delaura, who during Spanish colonial times functions as the librarian for the archdiocese of Cartagena, Colombia, recalls how, upon entering the seminary, he had a novel taken away from him because it was a “forbidden book.” Twenty-six years later, he walks into the library of Abrenuncio de Sa Pereira Cao, a scholarly Jewish physician. The priest is astounded to see a collection that far surpasses the one he cares for, and which includes countless "forbidden books." As he scans the bindings he recognizes four volumes of Amadís de Gaula, the series of adventures about a heroic knight he had taken from him as a child. With tears in his eyes, he tells the physician, “It is my duty to turn you in to the Holy Inquisition.”

But he doesn’t. In the end, after a long discussion about books, love, demonic possessions, and other matters, as the priest leaves, he says to the learned doctor, “With you I can converse without stopping into the next century.”

And so it should be among everyone who reads novels, even those about a young wizard named Harry Potter.