Fantasy

By the time I turned 16, I was suffering from a perplexed conscience in regard to Harry Potter. My literary palate was quite accommodated to this phantastic brew, and my heart was mixed in it, but the arguments of certain cautious Christians strongly urged discarding the potion and sifting my soul out of it.

They made some plausible arguments and appealed to some credible authorities. They also wrenched biblical prooftexts from their chapters to support their ascetic version of Christian aesthetic education, such as ‘The LORD saw … that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually’. This was my first practical lesson in Hermeneutics 101 (the theological equivalent of Defence Against the Dark Arts).

The years accomplished what my youthful self shuddered to consider. My taste has been modified, my passions less ready to drown themselves in fictional cauldrons. The question whether Harry corrupts the youth has therefore lost much of its urgency, yet it retains a passing interest.

Recently I came across a Dutch blogger, Anton de Wit, who argued that Rowling should be classed with Tolkien and Lewis, in a different category from the boring Gnostic fantasies that more frequently inundate our television screens. By contrast, the accomplished novelist Michael O’Brien sees Harry Potter as Gnostic, an agent in the ongoing paganisation of culture. Since they are both Catholic, adduce reasonable arguments, and have a healthy appreciation for the potential of imaginative literature, it may be worthwhile to summarize their arguments. Weigh, and weigh in if you please, carissime lector.

Anton de Wit offers three criteria for distinguishing between good and ‘Gnostic’ fantasy – Gnosticism being ‘something that looks like a healthy spiritual attitude but isn’t’.

Firstly, Gnostic fantasy is characterized by a strict separation of good and evil; good is the intrinsic and exclusive property of the ‘good guys’, while evil is what the ‘bad guys’ do. Good and evil are thus determined more by the group to which one belongs than by the choices one makes. In good fantasy, evil does not simply exist as an opposing force; it has a history, and its root is in the good which it rejected.

Secondly, Gnostic fantasy is characterized by a spiritual elite of the initiate, those ‘in the know’. The doctrines of the Christian faith, though not accepted by all, are still publicly preached and universally accessible. Gnosticism, on the other hand, works with conspiracies, ‘closed meetings and secret codes’, and believes that higher knowledge is reserved for those few who have been favoured by fate.

Thirdly, Gnostic fantasy is characterized by strict individualism: all knowledge and power is already present within the chosen one, and his friends can only lead him to a place where he can realise and actualise it; they constantly emphasise how helpless they are to contribute anything.

According to De Wit, Harry Potter is different from Gnostic fantasy on all three counts. Firstly, Harry and his friends sometimes make bad choices, but remain good by choosing virtue in decisive and difficult moments; evil characters can repent (Malfoy and perhaps Wormtail spring to mind) and even the greatest villain was once a gifted and agreeable student. (I would like to add that Voldemort ends up murdering the only part of him that still adheres to goodness: the part that inheres in Harry.)

Secondly, while Harry is indeed a member of a select group favoured by fate, wizards are ultimately not significantly different from Muggles; they have few spectacular powers. In many modern fantasy tales, ordinary people are entirely impotent, ‘passive observers of a cosmic game they can neither grasp nor control’. Muggles, on the other hand, have a role to play and are feared.

(While I agree that the power of magic mostly seems to be equivalent to human technology, I think the role of Muggles is overestimated here. Though Sirius Black is apprehended by Muggle police, no Death Eater is harmed by Muggles and they play no important part in the story, unless you count Harry’s bullying family. Guns do not seem to be a match for spells, and the Muggle Prime Minister is even more clueless than the Minister for Magic.)

Thirdly, Harry does not run the race on his own; Ron and Hermione ‘complement him in essential points’, and Dumbledore is an important counsellor to him. Their role is certainly not limited to telling Harry that he needs to find all the answers himself.

Thus far Anton de Wit. Michael O’Brien, as I said, is much more critical of the Harry Potter series (of which Part Four was the latest when the article was written). His article is not only a discussion of the ‘Potter phenomenon’, but also a more general reflection on the loss of discernment in our culture due to the constant stimuli with which we are bombarded. He points out (rightly, I think) the passive state in which television has left both our rational and our imaginative faculties: we find it increasingly difficult to attend to anything, whether it be an argument or an artwork. This makes us vulnerable to manipulation.

He then discusses the argument that Harry Potter promotes reading. He concedes the fact, but finds it inadequate, because a book is not always better than a movie. Much fantasy, he says, reads like a movie: overwhelming (‘fast-paced’ is an oft-used term of praise in reviews) and shallow. ‘In a word, thrills have swept aside wonder.’

Is this the case in Harry Potter? O’Brien does not say so explicitly. In fact he almost defends the opposite, by detailing the truly imaginative charms of the wizarding world. What he does find objectionable is the mixture of these delights with repulsive things: vomiting slugs, ghosts in toilets, habitual rudeness between students, and so on. These are arguably more prevalent in Rowling’s work than in Lewis’s or Tolkien’s. But let us stick to the points we’ve used so far and try to reconstruct O’Brien’s answers to De Wit.

Firstly, good is indeed presented as stronger than evil, and repentance is possible; nonetheless, there is no clear standard of good and evil. The Harry Potter series is marked by the philosophy that the end justifies the means. Harry blackmails his uncle, lies, takes revenge on enemies, and is disobedient, for which disobedience he is rewarded by the authorities. (I could add Dumbledore’s willing Snape to murder him: an intrinsically evil act, even in his illness.) Moreover, Rowling herself sneers at the physical ugliness of the ‘bad guys’ who torment Harry.

We might argue that these things happen in real life, after all. But the point is precisely that they shouldn’t happen in real life, and that literature should make this clear. A book in which injustice is rewarded with the sympathy of the author – in other words: a book in which some of Harry’s bad choices are presented as good – does not teach the difference between good and evil. It seems, after all, that the ‘good guys’ are ‘those who agree with what Harry does’, which would invalidate De Wit’s first point.

Secondly, Harry is indeed part of a ‘gnostic cabal’, which may not be as extreme in its powers as some groups portrayed in other fantasy works, but nevertheless separates itself from society in the pursuit of power and esoteric knowledge. (They erase the memories of ordinary people who happen to stumble upon the magical world – hardly respectful of their integrity! I would say that one of the most terrible scenes in the seventh movie shows Hermione taking the decision to erase herself entirely from her parents’ lives.)

Yes, it is power, not wisdom, that is sought for in Rowling’s magic: power over oneself, over the environment, sometimes even over other people. It is upsetting that ‘supernatural powers are redefined as human faculties’; magic, which in the real world always involves contact with unclean spirits, is portrayed as a harmless gift which it is good to train. The Catechism says that magic or sorcery, the attempt ‘to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others’, is diametrically opposed to the virtue of religion.

Of course, as mentioned, magic has been redefined as ‘natural power’, like electricity or other forces we use without full understanding. The question remains whether the books are not likely to excite a desire for esoteric power in children. Magic is portrayed otherwise in Tolkien’s and Lewis’s works, where it is either sparingly wielded by divine or angelic beings (Aslan, Gandalf) to protect others’ freedom, or it is manipulative and destructive. (Lucy’s magic on the Dufflepuds is not mentioned; still that chapter also chastens our desire for magical power and knowledge.)

In the last analysis, Rowling’s story is Gnostic where Tolkien’s isn’t. ‘Harry is the reverse image of Frodo. Rowling portrays his victory over evil as the fruit of esoteric knowledge and power. This is Gnosticism. Tolkien portrays Frodo’s victory over evil as the fruit of humility, obedience and courage in a state of radical suffering. This is Christianity.’ (To which I would like to add that Tolkien really does not portray Frodo’s victory, only his defeat and salvation through mercy!)

Thirdly, while Harry is not a lone ranger, he does not consider himself bound by any external law. All rules may be broken, as long as one’s own values do not suffer; this means that obedience is not one of Harry’s values. (St. Augustine called obedience ‘the mother of all the virtues’.) Dumbledore seems to approve of Harry’s trespassing tendencies; rule-enforcers are usually dubious characters. The young reader can only conclude that he himself is most capable of distinguishing between good and evil in any concrete situation, ‘guided only by the occasional intervention of a Dumbledore or some similar guru figure’, and that the law needs to be treated with a certain degree of contempt.

(In Rowling’s defence, traditional moral theology does allow law-breaking in exceptional circumstances for which the lawgiver did not intend the law. Also, some laws are not binding in conscience and may be broken, as long as one is willing to accept the punishment when caught. Yet it seems irresponsible to acquaint children too soon with these niceties of casuistry; besides, they are bound by the commandment to honour their parents, which also extends to those in loco parentis, such as teachers.)

In short, O’Brien would be in general agreement with De Wit on what constitutes a Gnostic and unhealthy fantasy, but disagree about the application to Harry Potter. I think that his arguments at least merit consideration, that there is a real danger of youths being confirmed in an anti-authoritarian attitude (at best) or sliding into occult activity and demonic oppression (at worst), and that O’Brien has a point when he says that our cultural discernment is damaged by our frequent exposure to violence, sexual promiscuity and inverted symbolism.

(If someone would have told me five years ago that I would write this article, I would have laughed in his face!)

Year of Faith

Today the Year of Faith has started, as announced in His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei. I went to the Basilica of St. Lidwina in Schiedam, where the Bishop of Rotterdam celebrated Mass with many of his priests. Afterwards they rang the bells for quite some time. It was a beautiful experience.
 
May this Year be a source of grace to the Church and all the world. Faith is a gift from God, and we cannot increase it by our own efforts, although we can and should do everything in our power to dispose ourselves to receive the gift. This Year offers a wonderful opportunity. The hymn chosen as its theme implores the Lord: Adauge nobis fidem, ‘Increase our faith’. I found one version here; I haven’t been able to find a Latin or English version yet.
 
As Porta Fidei says:
 
The “door of faith”  is always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime.

Breathe

We have been in the Holy Land for ten days. It was a pilgrimage full of churches and impressions. Yet the most memorable moment for me was when we went sailing on the Sea of Galilee in a wooden boat. At some point, the engine was turned off and while we drifted on the lake, various passages from the Gospels were read: about Jesus walking on the water, Jesus calming the elements, and so on. Then the rector proposed to recite the Creed together. It was a very beautiful moment.

After the Holy Land, we went on a silent retreat for five full days. That too was a beautiful time; all sorts of earlier memories came up which I did not know I still had. My friend Christy has written about a similar experience.

From the guesthouse library I borrowed a book by Josef Pieper, called Musse und Kult (translated as Leisure: the Basis of Culture). Apparently old Aristotle had already recognized that it is not enough to have free time; the question is what to do with it. In order for true leisure to exist, there must be something that lifts us out of the world of passing means and ends, of production and use. According to Pieper, the highest expression of leisure is the cultic feast; it enables a whole culture to come together, to remember, contemplate and celebrate the things they have learned without effort.

There were many interesting thoughts in the book, including a criticism of the Kantian tendency to measure the value of an action or a truth by the effort it took to accomplish or acquire. In the last resort, we are made for the Sabbath.

Keep breathing, that’s the key! Breathe!

A New Life

It seems that today I have entered on a new life, a span of days not given to someone else, but given to me; a life in which every day is a new grace. But so far it has appeared more ghostly than spiritual.

Five Years

Sometimes we meet people who seem to us the bearers of an extraordinary value, unique and irresistible. I met someone like that five years ago, in a lagoon of life’s flow. From 1 to 5 August 2007, I had the pleasure of her company; afterwards I never saw her again, nor will, at least not on this earth. It is strange, and perhaps not entirely just, that we should be so permanently fascinated to people for whom our loving admiration remains untempered by knowledge and mild proximity. Yet these are windows onto a different aspect of our nature, one less easily glimpsed but more poignant.

Anyhow she has changed my life. I wrote a poem in her honour on the first of this month, but since it is still too young, I will share last year’s instead.

Goodbye to Diana

Four years ago, my new-sworn friend and I

Went separate ways; since we could not foretell

Our next rejoining, she had said ‘Farewell’

At last night’s hug and next-to-last goodbye.

I rose to sunder early in the day.

We drew together, had our photo taken,

When time drew us apart; and I, forsaken,

Called ‘See you’ as she turned and walked away.

Diana, friend, my thought has often leaned

Upon the slender column of our meeting,

And I recalled my ill-considered greeting

This year, on learning death had intervened.

Vive la France

For two weeks now, I have been on holiday in France with my family. We have made quite a tour of the country, dropping all the way down on the eastern side via Nancy, Mâcon, Le Puy-en-Velay and Narbonne, then going west within sight of the Pyrenees via Lourdes; now we have found a place in the woods of Les Landes, part of old Aquitaine. We have seen the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in one holiday.

Lourdes was wonderful, but a bit dismaying all the same. I seem to recall a story of St. Bernadette coming back after many years and feeling sadness at how her visions had changed her hometown. The place would have been unrecognizable; it now crawls with hotels and tourist shops selling religious articles, one after the other, bigger and more conspicuous than in Rome. They do have beautiful items, though; I especially appreciated the pale statues of Our Lady with a deep purple garment.

The sanctuary itself was busy, but not as overcrowded as, say, St. Peter’s Basilica. Passing the church, I saw a round structure with many normal-looking water taps, which I couldn’t believe was Lourdes water until a volunteer told me; people were just as noisy and careless as they are at any other bottle-filling place. But they were silent and respectful at the grotto where Our Lady appeared in 1858; people went in there and ran their hand across the stones. I went to the entrance to the pool without going in, and took pains to explain to my sceptical siblings why sick people went to bathe there if the water had no healing properties and healing was not guaranteed.

The church was awesome. There are mosaics everywhere, especially in the dome. It contains a large image of Mary as a young girl, as she appeared to St. Bernadette; on the walls are the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. By staircases or ramps the top of the church can be accessed, where the visitor may find a great golden crown (Our Lady’s), St. Bernadette’s crypt and a chapel; and on top of all that another chapel. Thus it is a three-tiered church. On the roof one can cross a road and walk the Way of the Cross in the mountains of France.

At 9pm a movie about Bernadette was shown in cinema with Dutch subtitles (just goes to show), but we did not go for general lack of interest. However, my parents and I did attend the 11pm Mass at the grotto. There were five priests there and a sizable crowd of visitors. After Mass there was Eucharistic Adoration; most of the people stayed. After a short while, we went to look at the candles, where my parents put some of the candles upright, touchingly enough.

Le Puy was interesting too. It is a small city, built around a hill with the cathedral on top and two big rocks close by. One of them, close to our camping, is topped with a thousand-year-old chapel dedicated to St. Michael; two chapels to the other Biblical archangels were added later at various points on the way up. The other rock had a large statue of Our Lady (now entirely wrapped up for restoration purposes). The cathedral had a special feature: somewhere in the middle, between altar and entrance gate, a large staircase came up in the middle of the floor out of the city centre. Inside the cathedral, flanking the main aisle, were two statues of France’s two warrior-saints, St. Louis IX and an unusually masculine St. Joan of Arc. There was also a big statue of St. James, with his famous seashell, because this was a site on the way to Santiago de Compostela.

I went to Mass there at 7am, a pilgrims’ Mass. It was the memorial day of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, about whom my friends at Popin’ Ain’t Easy have written well. The priest present gave a weighty homily, mentioning St. Lawrence’s effort to send soldiers to the Battle of Vienna, and the opposition – ‘not only a difference’ – between Christianity and Islam. Islam, he said, rejected the two chief doctrines of Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation: the mystery of God-become-man, on which our whole redemption rests. He concluded on a note such as this: ‘The Church has thought long about what constitutes a just war, and the Battle of Vienna is an example of it; but to support this would require further reflection, which I cannot give today.’ At which he left the ambo.

At the end of Mass, a benediction was given to the pilgrims, who gathered around the statue of St. James.

The homily fits well with the book I have been reading. It is Joan of Arc, by the famous agnostic writer Mark Twain. He was fascinated by the little girl who became commander-in-chief of the French army at 17, and this awe is perceptible on every page of the book. Joan of Arc is shown as a staunch patriot, naturally bashful but completely convinced of her divine mission to save France; an unflinching leader of battles, but with truly human feelings for those who suffer in war.

I think St. Joan of Arc should be given as much attention as that other famous French girl, St. Therese of Lisieux. She gives a unique answer to the question where God is on the battlefield. We people of today, in love with the soft power of potential but full of sentiment about weakness, will be inclined to seek the face of God in the suffering wounded or the medical staff. That God could shine in the general in the brunt of the battle is a foreign idea to us. What does God care about petty human affairs? Why would God send Michael the Archangel (no less) to put a pathetic figure like Charles VII on the throne of France, honouring the ancient (but human) Salic law rather than the recent (but equally human) Treaty of Troyes? I’m not sure myself, but Sainte Jeanne’s generalship did not stem from human ambition. Let the doubters read doubting Twain.

Life

During our Pentateuch oral exam, Dcn. Koet offered the opinion that the original Vulgate (St. Jerome’s translation) is much more interesting than the New Vulgate, a ‘compromise translation’ arrived at by voting. This Sunday, in the enjoyment of tranquillity, I read Genesis 1-3 in the Buber/Rosenzweig translation, and now I realize why Scripture translations should be made by one or two poets, not by committees.

This translation tries to be as faithful as possible to the oddities of the Hebrew original, which engenders turns of phrase like ‘From all the trees in the garden you shall eat, eat’ and ‘On that day you shall die, die’. For once, a Bible that reads like ancient poetry!

Grammar is stretched (the way Jesus did) in sentences like: ‘And God saw that it is good.’

The same goes for God’s and man’s naming activity. The word ‘call’ retains its strength through the skillful use of interpunction: ‘And God called the light: Day! And the darkness he called: Night!’

To me, the most striking thing (though I have not yet plumbed its full meaning) is that when God tells man, ‘Dust you are and to dust you shall return,’ he responds by calling his wife: ‘Chawwa (Eve), Life!’