[Formendacil]

If anyone has any doubt as to which faith I follow, I refer them to my signature. In the event that they still don't know, here are few hints: "Mary", "JPII", and "Roman Collar"...

However, to get back to the main topic, I refer you to a couple quotes from Hookbill and Mithalwen:

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

Looking at Church history it’s easy to see where you are coming from. I do not mean to insult any Catholics that are here, but point (4) is very true. My father was brought up a Catholic before he got saved, and he tells me that the reading of the Bible is not banned, but neither is it encouraged. Its only in relatively recent history that the Bible has been allowed to be read in secular Catholicism, so there are bound to be many people who do not know a lot about what the Bible actually says. This is what My Father tells me from his experience; please correct me if I am wrong...

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

As for bible reading - I very much doubt that it was banned as such although it certainly had limited access before printing and when all books were writtten in Latin. The development of the printing press certainly coincided with the rise of protestantism. Access to the bible in English meant that people could read and make up their own minds and reduced the power of the priests as instructors and sole interpreters of Holy Writ....... how ironic that fundamentalist protestants now seek to limit access to books. La plus ca change .............

As a practising Catholic, much interested in history and theology, and contemplating entering the seminary a year from now, I can confirm some of this...

The practise of only having clerics read the Bible in the Middle Ages did come from habit. After the fall of Rome, the only people in the West who COULD read the Bible were monks and priests, for the most part. As everyone ought to remember, it was the monastaries that saved western learning.

This developed into habit, and as Mithalwen notes, there was hardly a Gideon's Bible available for everyone who wanted...

Yes, this is ontopic. I'm getting to my point....

This changed shortly before the Protestant Reformation, with the arrival of the printing press, but the Church was slow to change. The Church has always had a very healthy respect for tradition- too healthy at times, but it is a respect that many other institutions lack entirely. Furthermore, this was a sorry time in Church history, with numerous abuses going on. And when the Protestants championed Bible-reading by the masses, the Church's knee-jerk reaction was to go the other way. And this remained the case pretty much until the past century.

But the Catholic Church was not without it's reasons. One thing that separates Catholics from Protestants, and has been a bone of contention between them, is that Catholics believe (or are supposed to believe) that only the Church has the authority to interpret Scripture. People may get insights from it on their own, maybe personal revelations, but the message intended by God in any particular passage is to be determined by the Church and not however the reader pleases.

As a result, the Church had good reason to be somewhat concerned with the reading of the Bible by the masses. The Church, after all, is called to shepherd its faithful, and keep it in Communion with God. Now, as everyone ought to know, the Bible has more than a few passages that, if interpreted at face value with no acknowledgement of context, translation, or figurative speech, could well be interpreted in a way widely different from the proper interpretation, thus leading to a misunderstanding and a misbelief on the part of the reader.

Therefore, in order to spare it's members the possibility of falling away from the true faith due to misunderstanding, and because of its healthy respect for tradition, the Church did not encourage reading of the Bible by the Laity for many years.

Of course, this changed in recent times, with the realization by the Church that it is better to have its members reading the Bible and being aware of its proper interpretation than to keep them in safe, but ignorant, bliss, where they would be ripe prey for anyone who knew the Bible and had an alternative view.

Now, to my point:

I see the actions of the fundamentalists concerning Harry Potter as being highly reminiscent of the actions of the Church concerning the Bible. In both cases, those being prohibitive were concerned for those in their care, either their children or the laity.

The Catholic Church was concerned with keeping its members safe from false teaching, fulfilling its mandate- even if the choice they made to do so wasn't the best one.

Similarly, the fundamentalists are concerned with keeping their children safe from the occult and witchcraft, doing their duty as Christian parents- even if the choice they make isn't necessarily the wisest.

Perhaps its time for the fundamentalists to realize what the Catholics realised some time ago: that it is better to teach those in your care to DISCERN what is right and what is wrong, what is real and what is evil/fictional, than to shield them in the hope that they will never reach a situation where they would need to use such a knowledge. Just as a Catholic is bound to find someone who has contrary Biblical views, so to is a fundamentalist child bound to encounter the occult or demonism in some form, some time.

Now, with regards to the Lord of the Rings, I admit to not knowing why the critics of the day didn't pounce on it. At the time of its publication, there was none of the huge mass of background information which we so diligently enjoy on this site, and the critics wouldn't have known much about it anyway. However, I have a theory:

Harry Potter is a series in which magic is in your face. The book is about a wizard, about his time spent in a wizarding school. It describes his spells and the magical world in detail. Quite frankly, without magic there is NO Harry Potter. With the Lord of the Rings, the situation is quite a bit different. Although magic is certainly there, and plays some important roles, it is never more than a supporting cast member. It takes up far less of the "screen time" and is described in far less detail.

Therefore, going by the argument that Harry Potter is being banned by fundamentalist because of the threats it COULD pose to children, the Lord of the Rings is quite a bit less likely to be potential threat to children because of the much weaker concentrations of magic in it, thus leading to a lower threat, and no banning on the same massive- and public- scale as Harry Potter.

There! See, I did stay ontopic.