Often, if these things are encouraged at all, the language is something about making us nicer people and better citizens. That may be true and a consequence of being a good Christian, but the first and most important thing is the salvation of souls.

Preaching devotion to our Lady is manly, I think. Have you ever heard our Lady preached at Immaculate or at the Chaplaincy of Cornell University? I mean, really preached, in a way that would make St. Louis de Montfort proud?

Do some of those thoughts make clear what I have in mind?

Lets keep those doors open 24-7!!!

What type of manly material are you talking about? why is that important? I am not saying the homilies at Imm Conc are knocking my socks off….but I never thought of them as something that was not manly? what is manly in terms of spirituality?

1. Not all Novus Masses are the same. I personally would be fairly okay with the Novus if it were always done well. When the Doctor and I were at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Alabama, we went to a Novus there. It was in Latin and about as liturgically high as I’ve ever seen (for a non-Tridentine, at least), and they had the sisters singing lovely music for it. If I could go to that kind of Novus every week, I’d have no complaints. Even among more ordinary Novus Masses, there are huge differences from place to place.

2. I don’t quite understand why being married would make the difference as to whether or not you would be willing to attend a Novus Mass.

Also, in a way, attending the Novus Ordo, when one doesn’t want to, is an act of faith, I suppose, in that we recognize the Mass in externals which would otherwise lead us to believe that nothing resembling a sacred rite of the Church has taken place.

Indeed, the Novus Ordo is just an imitation of the Protestant “reforms”, but in places like Immaculate Conception parish in Ithaca, this truth is brought painfully home by the “spirituality” which accompanies said rites.

Actually, again, I’m always impressed by the numbers of people there on Sundays. Wow, I would never attend such garbage, especially as a man. I wonder how many men are there because they want to be there instead of because their wives have goaded them into coming? If I were married, my wife could never get me to attend the Novus Ordo and, a fortiori, the Sunday Mass at Immaculate Conception.

But poor, unmarried, no real job, a graduate student, I still end up there on occasion. :)

I agree that one should try not to spend the whole Mass stewing about all the liturgical abuses, but what sort of attitude change would you suggest? Would it be better to shrug one’s shoulders at heresies uttered in the homily? To be cheerful about being explicitly asked not to show reverence for our Lord by kneeling during the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei and communion? To smile warmly at a nine-year-old child who pays no attention to the Mass at all, and then, after being nudged into the communion line by his mother, tries to tease her by chewing the Blessed Sacrament as noisily and obnoxiously as possible? It is admittedly hard to find the line between self-righteous uncharity and lax indifferentism, but the line must not be obliterated. Christ himself grew angry at the inappropriate activities taking place in his Father’s house.

Clara, Clara, how naive . . . that only goes to show how crafty those people are . . . witch - crafty, that is. You see, they already had all of those books at home, have the spells memorized– there was no need to peruse that section again on a night when there were bigger things in the offing.

Besides, everyone knows that those people learn that satanist stuff on the internet, which is one of the reasons that the internet is pure evil, which is also one of the reasons why I never spend any time on it.

(Except sometimes I go to see what they’re talking about at Angel Queen, but don’t tell Iacobus I said that….)

I think the article Iacobus passed on is mostly fair. Magic in children’s stories is not necessarily evil, and all of us have surely read and enjoyed such stories without falling into irreligion. But there are areas of legitimate concern. JK Rowling is not deliberately leading children to the devil, but her stories display no serious religious sensibilities, and hence they carry certain dangers, as would any series of books that creates a fantasy world where God plays no clear and active role. Similar concerns might be raised about many or even most of the films and books produced for entertainment purposes today, so these things have to be judged carefully on a case-by-case basis. Almost all of us decide that it is possible to partake of certain entertainments despite our recognition of some spiritual or moral deficiencies in them. Are not recent Disney movies or science fiction series imbued with liberal values and modernist heresies? Do Seinfeld or the Simpsons promote Catholic teachings? There are many shades of grey in deciding how to deal with these problems, and I suggest that the books of JK Rowling fall into one of these grey areas.

As for the article passed on by Iosephus, I have to agree that this is grasping at straws to some degree. The Pontiff has not directly condemned Harry Potter; he has only hinted disapproval in a private letter. If he wanted to say something stronger, he certainly could, but thus far he has chosen not to. Has he ever read the series? I rather doubt it. I take his warnings under advisement, but think it is unreasonable to make too much of such a weak statement.

On the whole I agree with the assessment of Harry Potter books as being unhealthy objects of obsession, but acceptable entertainment if mixed in with a diet of different sorts of children’s books. Personally, I love children’s literature in general and I can’t wait until I have kids old enough to give me an excuse to pull out all of my old favorites (not that I’m really that bashful about pulling them out now.) Whether I’d let my kid read Harry Potter would probably depend on the age and temperament of the child. But as a final anecdote (and I’ll have to tip my hand here about just how pathetic I am, but oh well): I was in fact in a bookstore on the evening when the most recent Harry Potter book was released. It took a lot longer than I expected to buy my copy… I didn’t realize that there would be literally hundreds of people there. But anyway, while we all wandered around the store for a couple of hours waiting for our chance to buy the book, I did a sort of informal survey by going several times through different aisles of the store, checking to see what other sorts of books the Harry Potter fans would find interesting. The children’s section was, of course, swarming. The fantasy shelf was thoroughly picked over, and of course the young adult section was also packed. Other parts of the store seemed to have a reasonable spread of customers. But what about the shelves devoted to witchcraft and the occult? I glanced over many times, but there didn’t seem to be any notable interest in these books. With hundreds of Potter fans trapped in the store for hours, I only saw a few casual stragglers wander into this aisle to browse. There were far more people looking through the religion section. Anyway, that observation obviously doesn’t have the authority of a serious survey, but I thought it was at least some indication that interest in Harry Potter isn’t very strongly connected to interest in Satanic cults in the real world.

That is Pope John XXIII.

Despite your joking, I respond:

Satanist or not, we mustn’t embrace probably false news stories that do little but promote the sales of books by the likes of this sassy Gabriele Kuby character. Just like Benedict’s supposed condemnations of all rock music, which I so thoroughly agree with, these things are so widespread in culture and so important to the lives of Catholics that our grasping onto hints from lifesite.net and other foolish sources as if they had any worth whatsoever makes up the worst kind of cultural crusade.

As for the article I linked to, I tend to come down more harshly against HP than the author, but he makes all of the important points against.

Okay, I know that one of the Harry books was translated into Latin by an Oxford don, and it’s supposed to be serious Latin, so Reggie said.

But by the time, Clara, your children can handle the serious Latin of this book, they’ll also have good enough taste to want to read something more edifying and ennobling. :)

Cardinal Ratzinger backs author whose book opposes Harry Potter “cult”.

That said, I am not certain that Harry Potter should be condemned and the Vatican has given no definite word on the matter. Magic in fantasy is not the same as magic in real life. Which of us did not enjoy fairy stories as children? Did it turn us to Wicca? I realize that there are a number of complications in Rowling’s case, but it is not prima facie clear that her books are evil. I’m still deciding whether or not my children should be allowed to read them.