Of Dumbledore and Gandalf

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released tonight at midnight (of course). And Pope Benedict, it appears, is not a Harry Potter fan.

And what of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or C.S. Lewis’ "Space Trilogy" (Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength)?

Tolkien was an unassailably orthodox Roman Catholic, and famously brought his good friend Lewis to Christ (although not necessarily to Catholicism). Lewis was among the greatest – and certainly the most popular – Christian apologists of the Twentieth Century. On that matrix where one graphs "authors by Christian orthodoxy" on one axis against "authors by popularity," on the other, Tolkien and Lewis represent wild outliers.

We read both LOTR and the Space Trilogy to our children and recommend them to all. Both works describe worlds different from ours. Both invoke magic (either explicitly or instead unfamiliar and supernatural forces indistinguishable from magic) and describe its use for evil as well as good purposes. Neither work is explicitly Christian. Both could be said to describe a polytheistic universe, with but a fig leaf of a superior, ultimate God off in the distance somewhere (do not confuse LOTR itself with Tolkein's other writings that make even that more explicit).

But now we learn Pope Benedict (when still a cardinal) has criticized Harry Potter, including the complaint that the books "distort Christianity." [Benedict has not exactly condemned the book. If you'd like to see exactly what he did, look HERE, recognizing that you are visiting a site with both a point of view and a sufficiency of attitude.]

I have read LOTR (and much else by Tolkien), I have read Perelandra, et al. (and much else by Professor Lewis), and I have read all 5 Harry Potter books (Amazon promises that my copy of The Half-Blood Prince will arrive tomorrow.)

As literature, of course, Harry Potter isn't, while the others are. If what J. K. Rowling does is writing (and it surely is, and is better than much else that passes for writing these days), then what Tolkien and Lewis did is something else again, despite the fact that all three are limited to English, which in turn is limited to 26 letters. (There was a time when I played golf rather well. What Tiger Woods does is another thing, even though our clubs and shoes may be identical.) To say they are better than she would be to crush that word under an impossible burden.

But substantively, morally, and theologically, I really can't tease out enough differences (in the books themselves, not necessarily in their authors) to get particularly excited.

In the fiction of Tolkien, of Lewis, and of Ms. Rowling, we find characters who exhibit prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity, as well as characters who do not. And there is no doubt as to whose side we (and the authors) are on. These virtues are seldom exemplified perfectly, nor do they prevail in every contest, but they win out in the end, however costly victory may be to Frodo, to Ransom, or to Harry.

To reject books that traffic in the supernatural (except the orthodox Christian supernatural) is a coherent position. But to give Lord of the Rings & Perelandra as Christmas gifts, while tossing Harry Potter on the pyre, seems to me imprudent and unjust.