After years of being shunned by the Vatican, the Harry Potter series received a bit of positive attention from the same after the release of Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince this weekend.
According to Variety,
While fundamentalists consider the depiction of magic in J.K. Rowling's saga incompatible with Christian belief and the Vatican had previously condemned his wizardly ways, the character is decidedly more mature in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," a shift that drew an official thumbs-up last week.
In a review headlined "Magic is No Longer a Surprising Trick," the Vatican's official daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano gave the pic its seal of approval, noting that Harry "is aware that the world of magic, which he grew up with in the past, is not exempt from malice." It praised the pic for promoting "friendship, altruism, loyalty and self-giving."
It is that awareness of the potential for evil and malice, says Variety, that changed the Vatican opinion of the characters and story. According to Variety, "Pope Benedict XVI . . . six years ago as a cardinal warned against the boy wizard's 'subtle seductions' which, he said, 'act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul.'"
One columnist has offered his own opinion on the matter as it might relate to the Twilight series, and, from the nature of the suggestion, may just be completed in The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
Says io9's Graeme McMillan, "If that's all it takes for the Vatican to endorse movies, we humbly but strongly suggest that the people behind the Twilight movies have at least one character in each new movie point out that vampirism may not be all blood cakes and party hats."
Enter Jacob Black and the wolfpack, right? Perhaps this will resolve the on-going controversy surrounding Cullenism, and pre-empt a Vatican strike against the Twilight series.
