So Now the Vatican Likes Harry Potter?

While I disagreed with the arguments put forth by the Roman Catholic Church when it issued the recent ban on Reiki, at least from the standpoint of univalent Christianity they made some sense. If you believe that the use of your own deity's spiritual power is automatically good when applied according to doctrine while any other use of spiritual power is automatically evil, it follows logically that you would be opposed to any magical practice that is not part of your own spiritual tradition.

For years the Roman Catholic Church has come out against the Harry Potter books and movies on similar grounds. Because the books and films portray the use of magick and magick is considered evil by the Church this is to be expected, although a lot of people over the years have pointed out that since Harry Potter is a work of fiction it is not exactly teaching anyone the magical arts. I mean, I would love to be able to levitate something just by flicking a wand and intoning "wingardium leviosa" - but of course it doesn't work that way.

Strangely enough, the Catholic Church appears to have finally seen reason in its review of the latest Harry Potter film. Contrary to all of the Church's previous statements, a positive review of the film was recently published in the official Vatican newspaper. So what changed? Here's what the review had to say:

"There is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil and [the film] makes clear that good is right. One understands as well that sometimes this requires hard work and sacrifice," the newspaper judged.

The broadsheet paper also praised the film's clear message that "the search for immortality epitomised by Lord Voldemort" was wrong. It even approved of the film's treatment of adolescent romance amid the halls and corridors of Hogwart's, saying that it achieved the "correct balance" and made the teenage stars more credible.

Aside from the comments on adolescent romance I don't see how any reviewer could have missed these points upon viewing the first film, let alone the sixth. Was Voldemort not "evil enough" for the Vatican in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?

Let's see - he killed Harry's parents, murdered unicorns and drank their blood, tried to steal the sorcerer's stone twice, and tried to kill Harry multiple times (or at least ordered Professor Quirrell to do so). That seems pretty evil to me. And seeing as Voldemort killed the unicorns and tried to steal the sorcerer's stone in order to obtain immortality, hasn't the message that trying to obtain immortality as Voldemort does is wrong been there the whole time?

As recently as last year, the same Vatican newspaper condemned the Potter books.

The newspaper wrote: "Despite the values that we come across in the narration, at the base of this story, witchcraft is proposed as a positive ideal.

"The characterisation of common men who do not know magic as 'Muggles' who know nothing other than bad and wicked things is a truly diabolical attitude."

The newspaper called the teenage boy wizard "the wrong kind of hero", comparing the books unfavourably with two other British children's classics, the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

I'm left rather confused here, to tell the truth. While I'm of the opinion that the original condemnation of the books and films was pretty silly, the Roman Catholic Church is usually pretty consistent in its positions. Could it be that the previous denunciations were simply based on the presence of buzzwords like "witchcraft" in the story and only now someone actually sat down and watched one of the films?