The Catholic Archdioceses of Philadelphia issued a statement last November condemning the movie The Golden Compass, released late last year. Philadelphia area Catholic school principals sent letters to parents asking them to prohibit their children from seeing the film. In December, a religious rights group known as the Catholic League pulled the same stunt complaining about the book depicting children killing God. According to them, "militant atheist" author Phillip Pullman wishes to undermine the church by infecting the minds of children with secular blasphemy. There's a pattern here.
With the Harry Potter series tearing the New York Times bestsellers list to shreds, the church intervened in classic fashion by condemning the book on the grounds that "The Bible is very clear that wizards, demons and devils exist and are very real ... God's people are told to have nothing to do with them," adding that "it is confusing to children when something wicked is being made to look fun." With The Golden Compass and its sequels gaining in popularity with young readers, all the Catholic Church can muster is to condemn yet another revolutionary children's book.
To give you an idea of the stir that the book has caused in the community, I'll pass along some criticisms. According to certain Philadelphia Catholic leaders, the series "has kids kill God and promotes atheism." The Catholic League asserted that the movie is "selling atheism in a stealthy fashion," and has called for a nationwide boycott of the film. Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, said that the directors of The Golden Compass are "using the movie as a lure to ... hook the parents into thinking the books are okay and get it as a Christmas gift."
With the film's initial cravings and controversies now dying out, the mass heretical hysteria against which the church warned us seems now to be no more frightening than whatever recently raised the Homeland Security Advisory System up to orange.
Immorality has not taken our youth by the throat and cast us into a dark age of promiscuity. Santa's sleigh was not struck by lightning for carrying copies of The Golden Compass to be placed under Christmas trees around the country. And neither I nor anyone with whom I discussed the movie is taking a gun to the skies hoping to land a bullet and "kill God." Were the Catholics wrong? Better yet, do they even care?
Surely I cannot be the only person utterly outraged by the lunacy with which the church now conducts itself, especially in the wake of modern public sentiment toward reading. God forbid (and apparently he does) parents believe that their children actually desire a book under the tree on Christmas morning. Parents and schools alike would give anything to see their children spend more time and money on books instead of violent video games and movies. Yet with Catholicism on a slow but steady decline (28 percent of Americans identified themselves as Catholics in 1990, while only 22 percent did in 2007), prominent church officials are not hesitating to shoot their public relations department in the foot.
Has paranoia so tenaciously gripped the church by the bells that it can find no other option? Perhaps, but there is still time for Catholic officials to reconcile their differences with contemporary society. So much benefit can come to children from reading at a young age, including enhanced vocabulary, communication skills and general intellectual enrichment. Works of fiction such as Harry Potter or The Golden Compass endow young imaginations with prolific creativity and should be encouraged in any household.
The church needs to open its arms to the ideas contained in such literature. Notions of witches, wizards and giant polar bears are not in any way harmful to the minds of children. These are works of fantasy: fictional literature teeming with imaginative metaphors and parables, all to be taken with a grain of salt. Sure, there may be accounts of demons, devils, death and wanton destruction, but they are in no way reality, and should not be interpreted as such. Does the church not possess the ability to discern between the two? Perhaps I've said too much.
If the Catholic Church wishes to garner more support, it better drop the paranoia and embrace the vehemence with which children are finally taking up reading. Otherwise, the pressures of secular society will ultimately draw the aging institution into obscurity. There is time for reconciliation, but only at the hands of intelligent and progressive leaders.
