Further trouble is that I fear most of our society -- the notable subsection being professed Catholics -- most of them aren't intellectually prepared to answer these questions. I spent approximately, oh, 18 years or so in Catholic school and I was shocked by how .little about the faith was taught beyond a 4th grade level. This ignorance is not inherent in the faith itself, but rather a flaw in the people who make up the church, either for not teaching the faith properly or not making the effort to learn fully -- and though I may 'blame' them, I don't imagine that this is ever and always something that an individual can control. But the fact remains that it is so.
Back to the book, it's *subtle*. I personally didn't get it until reading the linked article, despite having read a half dozen OTHER articles against the series, not to mention the series itself. Maybe I'm just dumb. :p Maybe it's a message that would have generally been missed, but I doubt it. The danger is that it seems innocuous enough, but it isn't. It's an attack on the Church, and an arguably difficult question to pose to young minds, but it doesn't seem like it. That's what I think is 'dangerous.'
As I noted in another comment, I'm actually VERY interested in reading the series again in light of this epiphany. I think, if handled properly, that the series could be a very powerful teaching tool, a catalyst for intellectual exercises, and so on whatever. (I also still hold that it's literarialy immature and potentially weakly written, but that's completely beside the point.) But I think that it's more difficult than it seems, and that is why marketing it to children the way it is being marketed (particularly the movie) is, for lack of a better word, 'dangerous.'
(As a final aside a pet peeve of mine is the confusion between The Church and the people who compose the institution, which is a much more complicated subject than I can even allude to in one sentence.)
If not you, then who? (The Second)
Back to the book, it's *subtle*. I personally didn't get it until reading the linked article, despite having read a half dozen OTHER articles against the series, not to mention the series itself. Maybe I'm just dumb. :p Maybe it's a message that would have generally been missed, but I doubt it. The danger is that it seems innocuous enough, but it isn't. It's an attack on the Church, and an arguably difficult question to pose to young minds, but it doesn't seem like it. That's what I think is 'dangerous.'
As I noted in another comment, I'm actually VERY interested in reading the series again in light of this epiphany. I think, if handled properly, that the series could be a very powerful teaching tool, a catalyst for intellectual exercises, and so on whatever. (I also still hold that it's literarialy immature and potentially weakly written, but that's completely beside the point.) But I think that it's more difficult than it seems, and that is why marketing it to children the way it is being marketed (particularly the movie) is, for lack of a better word, 'dangerous.'
(As a final aside a pet peeve of mine is the confusion between The Church and the people who compose the institution, which is a much more complicated subject than I can even allude to in one sentence.)