Archbishop Pell and the Philosopher’s Stone

Sydney
28 April 2002

Archbishop Pell and the Philosopher’s Stone

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Archbishop Pell and the Philosopher’s Stone

Archbishop Pell relaxes in the gardens of the Catholic Education Office in Leichhardt with a fascinated audience and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a good book “full of good moral teaching”.

All of us - “and especially the young” - need to be reminded that good is more powerful than evil and will have the last word, says the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr George Pell.

So it is with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which the archbishop describes as a “great yarn” with a “good dose of moral truth”.

Dr Pell observed that the book and film had been criticised in some areas for “giving respectability to witchcraft, to the occult world of good and bad magic”.

He did not think, though, that there was much danger of this “because the world of fantasy is so extreme, such a clever and unusual stimulation of the imagination”.

More importantly, the book and film “are full of good moral teaching, just like traditional fairy stories”, he said.

“It’s important for all of us to learn that good and evil are real spiritual forces, that each of us has to commit himself against evil.”