The real magic of Harry Potter (1)

So now the Church's semi-official condemnation on the Harry Potter series has come out into the open. Fr Elias Vella, OFM - undoubtedly a respected figure and an exorcist - quotes former Cardinal Ratzinger's disenchantment with regard to the Harry Potter books (The Sunday Times, August 7).

It is true that J.K. Rowling centres her books around the theme of magic, yet no child-reader can refrain from seeing the absurd within her themes.

Consider the scenario in the time of Enid Blyton. Those of us who were immersed in her books could not see the absurd in the author's plots - for there was none. Remember the exploits of the Famous Five? Those of the Secret Seven? Remember all the adventures in the Adventure Series - remember Kiki the parrot? Yet did her readers ever try to emulate what all these fine characters did in their books?

Although such characters were so realistically portrayed by Enid Blyton, we, her avid readers, never even thought of trying to copy what these characters did - they were Blyton's characters, as simple as that.

So much drivel is seen and witnessed on our screens - at the cinema and on TV, which nearly every child has in his or her bedroom. The question is: how much of this unpleasant content is being followed and copied by youngsters? And if, for the sake of argument, there is a lot of it, what about it? What are we going to do? Censor every single item that modern-day communications present to us? Shall we also censor the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Back to Harry Potter. Rowling does not even attempt to disguise the world of magic in real-life situations. If she does that, at times, it is only weakly. Anyway, in all her six Potter books, the magic content is such that Good triumphs over Evil (even if there's a price to be paid - Book Five).

As an educator of many years' standing, I stand up to be counted in stating that the Harry Potter phenomenon is nothing but the best thing that ever happened to English language readers. Young readers, and especially Maltese readers, have been encouraged to read thick books in English, where previously they wouldn't have read a single short story.

This is the real magic contained in the Harry Potter saga - on second thoughts, not magic - but a miracle! A literary phenomenon which will be remembered through time, simply because it has made children rush to buy and read these thick books, setting all-time records.

Let us have enough of this humbug - of having people continually being told what to do, what not to do, what to read and what not to read. Let the people read to their hearts' content - it is innocent reading, and it will do everybody a world of good. And let us stop being too obsessed and trying to pass the buck of what is happening to our younger generations on to such innocent things as reading Harry Potter!

What worries me is that the Catholic Church recently seems to expect that its pronouncements are to be taken for granted by the lay authorities.

In a letter I had once written to this newspaper, I suggested that the models of behaviour that are harming today's youngsters and adolescents are not to be found in books and films - they are people in real life who usurp their power, people who do not live according to the standards they preach, who immorally relieve their neighbours of what rightfully belongs to them. These are the kind of people who would make even Voldemort, Sauron or any other Dark Lord look like harmless and innocuous sheep.