Totally Bad Carma

Bummer of a week if you're a prosecution lawyer named "Carla".

All that work down the drain...

News Flash: Harry Potter in League with Lucifer

Nice news if you can get it new. However, this little gem has been floating around for some time. Catholic News reports it as of 4 January 2002, sourcing it from LifeSite dated 2 January 2002. however, of note is the reported downplaying of the warnings in the North American Media (The New York Times coverage by Melinda Henneberger which was carried in Canada's National Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and on Yahoo Daily News) left out all the bad stuff below. Quite a reliable source, then The Sun. Only the SMH's use of it is FOUR YEARS OUT OF DATE. What's the news here? The fact that the Sun is also just as out of date as the SMH? Or that the SMH is as out of touch as the Sun? (By the way, a five year archival search of the Sun's UK database yielded zero results).

Perhaps the Sun referred to is the SMH's stablemate, the Sun-Herald? It's identified as "The online edition of Sydney's Sunday newspaper with magazine sections on entertainment, health, lifestyle, plus the weekends news and sports." Are we quoting ourselves now, as authoritive sources? What happened to journalistic integrity?

Vatican exorcist warns of Harry Potter
By Jano Gibson
March 3, 2006 - 5:15PM

The Vatican's chief exorcist has warned that reading Harry Potter could lead young people towards Satanism.

JK Rowling's blockbuster fiction series about a young magician has been deemed dangerous by Father Gabriele Amorth, The Sun reported.

"By reading Harry Potter a young child will be drawn into magic and from there it is a simple step to Satanism and the Devil," he was quoted as saying.

"You start with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the Devil.

"There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books."
In 2003 Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) reportedly wrote two letters to a critic of the Harry Potter series.

"It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly," he wrote.

NOT THE SAME JAY-DUB AS THE PLAINTIFF IN PRINCE v MASSACHUSETTS...

Update [3]: Gene M Bridges at Triablogue wonders "what it means for a Jehovah's Witness to convert to Islam?"

Update [2]: Apparently there has been some rapprochment between at least one famous Jehovah's Witness and the Vatican.

Update [1]: Speaking of Watchtower mindslaves, this piece of fatuousness in the Weekend Australian IKEA catalogue colour magazine (11 September 2004, p 8), commenting on a photo of Jacko (flanked by sisters LaToya and Jackson, and all wearing white suits) turning up for his pre-trial hearing at the Santa Maria courthouse:

"Note the use of the [T]rinity, a holy Christian symbol," says Jasmin Martin, body language expert. "Michael is flanked by his two sisters..."

NOT THE SAME JAY-DUB AS THE PLAINTIFF IN PRINCE v MASSACHUSETTS ... Catholic blogger Sean Gallagher links to an interesting news item; that Prince -- yes, The Artist Formerly Known As, the "Purple Rain" guy -- has converted to Jehovah's Witness-ism, taking it seriously enough to have gone out doorknocking for the cause. Larry Graham, former bass player for Sly and the Family Stone, goes with him.

Just was is it with African-American pop stars and the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society? There's also Michael Jackson and George Benson. (And in the Trinitarian camp of those who believe that Jesus Christ and the Archangel Michael are the same, Little Richard is now an ordained Seventh-Day Adventist minister.)

One intriguing sideline is that a Jewish couple complained because they let Prince and Graham inside, thinking they wanted to use their home as a video set, but then the ditheistic duo "start[ed] on this Jehovah's Witness stuff." Contrary to the Jay-Dubs' much-repeated belief that the Trinity is the biggest stumbling block against Jewish and Muslim acceptance of Christianity -- they like to [mis]quote Catholic theologian Hans Küng's statement that "Even well-informed Muslims simply cannot follow, as the Jews thus far have likewise failed to grasp, the idea of the Trinity" (from Christianity and the World Religions, quoted in Should You Believe the Trinity?, Watchtower publication) -- there is, it seems, no love lost among the small-U unitarian branches of Abrahamic monotheism:

* '... Eduardo Campos, a 62-year-old Uruguayan immigrant married to an Israeli, whom ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to get fired from his job at the Vita food company [in Israel] merely because he is a Jehovah's Witness ...' -- Daniel Lazare, "The One-State Solution", The Nation (3 November 2003).

* 'The death by beheading of two Jehovah's Witnesses captured by bandits connected with the Abu Sayyaf Muslim separatists is part of a "jihad" against Christians in the southern Philippines, the military believes. ... A letter was found from one of the heads warning that those who do not believe in Allah will suffer the same fate. They said what they did was jihad," said Brigadier-General Romeo Tolentino.' -- Kimina Lyall, "Beheading of Christians 'a jihad'", , The Australian (23 August 2002).