Harry Potter – Is he safe?

It was the kind of proclamation that mayors sign all of the time - with a twist.

"WHEREAS, Earth Religions are among the oldest spiritual systems on the planet; and WHEREAS, Followers of many earth-centered religions live and worship in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina."

Thus, Asheville Mayor Leni Sitnick declared the last week of October "Earth Religions Awareness Week," in a rite attended by local witches and scores of singing children, led by a priestess in a long, black robe. A few days later, a witch read one of her favorite books to elementary schoolchildren.

No, it wasn't a Harry Potter book, one of those supernaturally popular novels about a youngster at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But a lot of people are having troubled welcoming witches into the public square - period.

"This is precisely the kind of thing that keeps happening these days and more people are getting concerned," said Joel Belz, publisher of World, a national evangelical newsmagazine based in Asheville.

After all, Harry Potter-mania is everywhere. The books recently held the top three slots on the U.S. hardback fiction bestseller lists and the top two slots on the paperback lists. British author Joanne Kathleen Rowling's books have been translated into 28 languages and she has promised four more books in the series. Hollywood is gearing up, too.

What's a parent or pastor to do?

"We know that what's in the Harry Potter books is not all bad and that lots of Christian families will read them and enjoy them," said Belz. "No one wants to be reactionary. But we have to take issues of good and evil seriously and we just can't endorse the kind of moral ambiguity that we see in these books."

Thus, the book division of God's World Publishing has stopped selling "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," "Harry Potter and the Secret Chamber" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Customers made their concerns very clear, said Belz. Also, the editors at World magazine had decided to reverse course.

A May review focusing on the first Harry Potter novel said: "Magic and wizardry are problematic for Christian readers. Mrs. Rowling, though, keeps it safe, inoffensive and non-occult. This is the realm of Gandalf and the Wizard of Id, on witchcraft. There is a fairy-tale order to it all in which, as (G.K.) Chesterton and (J.R.R.) Tolkien pointed out, magic must have rules, and good does not - cannot - mix with bad."

But a new cover story argues that Rowling's work has evolved and now resembles the "tangled terrain and psychology of Batman." While the Harry Potter books may seem innocent, this "safety, this apparent harmlessness, may create a problem by putting a smiling mask on evil. A reader drawn in would find that the real world of witchcraft is not Harry's world."

Others are just as worried about the violence in the books. Earlier this month, the South Carolina Board of Education agreed to review the status of the Harry Potter books. In a quotation featured in news reports from coast to coast, Elizabeth Mounce of Columbia told the board: "The books have a serious tone of death, hate, lack of respect and sheer evil." These debates are not merely a Bible Belt phenomenon. Critics are speaking up in states such as Michigan, Minnesota and New York.

Meanwhile, Rowling has been touring the United States and offering this blunt advice: Anyone who is worried about the content of her books shouldn't read them. But she also has repeatedly warned her readers that the tone of the Harry Potter books will become increasingly dark and potentially disturbing. She is committed to portraying evil in a serious way, with characters that are more complex than cardboard cutouts.

"If you ban all the books with witchcraft and the supernatural, you'll ban three-quarters of children's literature," she told the Washington Post. "I positively think they are moral books. I've met thousands of children, but I've never met a single child who has asked me about the occult."

The drama of John Paul II

As his helicopter turned toward the Denver skyline and the Rocky Mountains, Pope John Paul II fingered his rosary and gazed at the 500,000-plus worshippers gathered in Cherry Creek State Park for the closing Mass of World Youth Day in 1993.

What the pope was thinking and feeling at that moment can be summed up in one English word, according to the American journalist and theologian who recently released "Witness to Hope," a stunning 992-page biography of John Paul. And that word is "Gotcha!"

Many bishops and commentators had expressed doubts that young people soaked in malls and MTV would rally around the aging pontiff. Yet the pope envisioned an updated version of New Testament drama in which St. Paul met the Greek intelligentsia in the court of Areopagus and sympathetically noted their mysterious altar dedicated "to an unknown god."

For John Paul, said Weigel, World Youth Day's success was a "vindication of his claim that you could take the Gospel into the heart of secular modernity. This is why Denver was chosen. It was chosen because it is a self-consciously modern and secular city. He was saying, 'We are going to the Areopagus and we'll have World Youth Day at the altar of the unknown microchip.' "

In that Mass, John Paul told his flock: "Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first apostles who preached Christ and the good news of salvation in the squares of cities, towns and villages. It is time to preach it from the rooftops."

The young people prayed and marched and cheered, while legions of journalists debated whether a new generation was ready to obey this pope, or merely impressed by his star power.

This is a variation on a critical question about John Paul II. This pope survived Nazism and played a pivotal role – if not THE pivotal role – in the fall of Communism. But has he vanquished "cafeteria Catholicism," a do-it-yourself brand of faith that reflects this consumer-friendly age?

The most popular critique of John Paul, writes Weigel, comes from a chorus of secular media voices and leaders in Catholic academia. It argues that this pope is, despite his courage and impact as a statesman, best understood as an authoritarian who has opposed the birth of a collegial, flexible, modern church. This critique argues that John Paul has been especially oppressive to intellectuals and women and, thus, is ridiculously old-fashioned.

But Weigel flatly notes that 35 years "after Vatican II, John Paul II's intellectual critics, and in some instances his avowed enemies, remain firmly in control of most theological faculties in the Western world. If this is repression, it is repression of a very inefficient sort."

Thus, many Catholic conservatives - who yearn for the restoration of order and discipline in an era they believe is dangerously chaotic - now offer an equally harsh critique. They believe that John Paul has been a wonderful prophet and a sensitive priest, but say he has failed to be an effective king.

Weigel said it is important to remember that before he was a priest, bishop, cardinal and pope, the young Karol Wojtyla was an actor and playwright. Today, John Paul still believes that life is a drama with many acts, one in which actors must make leaps of faith from who they are to who they should be. And because of the drama he has watched unfold in his native Poland, the pope believes that the content of a culture is more important than political, economic and even military power.

John Paul has not been trying to win a battle. He has been trying to be a witness and an evangelist who confronts what he believes is a global "culture of death." The pope has refused to condemn the modern world, or to compromise with it.

"I think that the pope is a man who is utterly convinced that God is in charge of history and that the truth wins out over time," said Weigel. "He is quite confident that the best way to preach that truth is through the model of Christ - who did not propose the truth with a bludgeon, but with the example of his own life."

Catholic education (wink, wink)

Elizabeth Fiore didn't expect Georgetown University's freshman orientation program to include a condom demonstration.

When the mandatory safe-sex session was over, the student leaders apologized because policies on the Catholic campus prevented them from handing out condoms to needy newcomers. But - wink, wink - they could leave a few on a nearby table.

What was shocking was not the candid talk, but the assumption that students had already rejected Catholic teachings, said Fiore, at a conference backing efforts to give church authorities more clout on America's 235 Catholic college campuses.

"It is this attitude - the attitude which subscribes to society's shameless values system and superimposes it on young people at a Catholic university - that is just as harmful as the values, or the lack thereof, which it endorses," said Fiore, who is now a graduate student in theology at the Catholic University of America. "In addressing us as though we were sexually active, they have made a decision for us - they have presented an image to which we are, in some way, challenged to conform."

The question, she said, is not whether institutions such as Georgetown will listen to the views of non-Catholics and try to meet their educational needs. The question is whether Catholic educators will be just as sensitive to the concerns of Catholics who support church teachings.

For example, Fiore said she was glad the cafeteria served matzo bread during Passover and gave Muslims special take-home containers so they could eat at appropriate times during Ramadan. But she found it strange that the cafeteria served three meat dishes on Good Friday in Holy Week, forcing students who wanted to observe the Catholic fast to resort to peanut butter and jelly. The priests got fish.

The Jesuit campus has become a May pole for Catholic controversies - from the on-again, off-again decision to remove classroom crucifixes, to a campus lecture by Hustler's Larry Flynt, to a student's shame when Women's Center workers ridiculed her request for information on how to enter a religious order.

Many speakers at last weekend's Cardinal Newman Society conference focused on Pope John Paul II's "Ex corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church)," a philosophical map for Catholic education. During their Nov. 15-18 meetings in Washington, D.C., America's Catholic bishops will make a second attempt to implement the pope's views, amid ongoing protests by academics.

At some point, said a concerned outsider, Catholic leaders will have to answer two questions: Will church doctrines impact decisions about who they will, and will not, hire as professors? And, will they set limitations on the moral conduct of students, staff and faculty?

Either Catholics share some enforceable moral laws, or they do not, said Richard Williams, an administrator at Brigham Young University.

"Half-way measures will be worse than no attempt at all," he told the conference. An honor code or set of moral guidelines cannot merely contain "positions of personal preference, but rather the stuff that sins are made of, and you must not be willing to compromise for other more traditionally academic reasons. Be aware that in the climate of the current culture, any attempts to establish standards will be met with skepticism, if not derision."

But the last thing administrators can afford to be is vague, in an age when accreditation committees and lawyers split every hair in academic life, he said. Brigham Young has been able to enforce its faith's moral codes, and insist that Mormon and non-Mormon employees at least respect church teachings, because its policies are clearly communicated to each and ever person before they are hired, when they sign a contract and throughout their years on campus.

Catholic educators may be shocked at how many students will want to attend this brand of school and how many scholars will seek to teach and do research there, he said. Plus, building morally conservative schools will only add to the diversity of American higher education.

"There is a spiritual hunger abroad in the land that you can help to satisfy," said Williams. "Have faith that you will achieve the highest levels of academic excellence not in spite of your religious mission, but precisely because of it."

Hey Bauer! WWBD?

No matter where the young Billy Graham went, his evangelistic team always seemed to arrive a few days after Elmer Gantry left town.

Finally, Graham huddled with his inner circle during a 1948 tent revival in California. A key biblical text for the day was St. Paul's advice to his protegee Timothy: "Flee youthful lusts." The team quickly agreed on a code to cover money, the media, clashes with other clergy and, of course, sex.

"We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel," explained Graham, in his autobiography. "We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet, or eat alone with a woman other than my wife."

This private pact became known as "The Modesto Manifesto." There isn't a copy in the official Graham archives.

"I don't think they ever had a calligrapher write it up so they could have it laminated. But they never had a lot of trouble remembering what they were supposed to watch out for - with money and sex at the top of the list," said sociologist William Martin of Rice University, author of "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story."

This idealistic code has become part of Graham lore and influenced life in Christian groups of all kinds.

Ask presidential candidate Gary Bauer, a Religious Right superstar who recently felt forced to respond to rumors that he was having an affair with a 27-year-old campaign aide. Former staff members - Christian conservatives, one and all - openly accused him of holding lengthy one-on-one meetings with a woman other than his wife and, thus, creating the appearance of impropriety.

Bauer has, in effect, being accused of failing to ask: "What would Billy do?"

It's understandable, said Martin, that others have tried to adopt Graham's lifestyle code. After all, the evangelist has survived a half-century under the gaze of reporters and scholars, emerging with an almost miraculously spotless record.

"People want to be able to get a copy of the Modesto Manifesto, hang it on the wall, and then say, 'Look, we're doing what Billy did,' " said Martin.

But it isn't clear that the same code will work for everyone in an era in which women and men share a marketplace bedeviled by changing gender roles and foggy laws about sexual harassment. Priests often hear confessions in private, one-on-one meetings. How about a pastor, facing a suicidal teen? A professor, discussing an ethical issue with a student? And, yes, a politician holding a confidential discussion of strategy?

Graham met the moral challenges that accompanied his work as an itinerant evangelist. Moving from crusade to crusade, surrounded by aides, he has been able to avoid one-on-one meetings with women other than his wife. Graham has, noted Martin, been known to retreat to solitude of his room when faced with a woman trying to give him a hug and kiss of fellowship in a public restaurant.

Bauer's most outspoken critics also have, like the candidate himself, spent years working with radio counselor James Dobson. The Focus on the Family patriarch of the Focus has deep roots in the ultra-strict Nazarene branch of Protestantism. On top of that, he is a veteran family therapist in an era in which that profession has been rocked by litigation and he-said, she-said scandals. Dobson makes Graham look like an Episcopalian.

Facing the media, Bauer begged to be judged as a politician. "I am not a minister," he said. "I am not a pastor."

Bauer is, of course, running as a moral conservative in the wake of the media storms that hit Gary Hart, Clarence Thomas and the current occupant of the White House. This week, Bauer said he was ordering a glass door for his office.

"In the circles that Gary Bauer works in, the mere appearance of trouble is bad news," said Martin. "It's safe to say that everybody should consider putting a window in their office door, these days. I imagine that the last few years of American life would be quite a bit different if Bill Clinton had learned to leave his office door open."