Counting on the popes

Flexible figures

I confess: My weekend television viewing includes Jack Van Impe Presents. “Dr.” Van Impe claims multiple doctorates (but not from accredited institutions) and is probably best known for his facility at spewing Bible verses. He likes to make a statement and then append a string of chapter-verse citations. Occasionally Van Impe pauses to catch his breath, during which time his wife Rexella (also the holder of uncertain doctorates) offers praise to her husband or exhortations to the viewers.

During the episode scheduled for the first weekend in March 2014, Van Impe returned to a favorite topic: the pope in Rome. While most television evangelists are content to decry Roman Catholicism and its extra-biblical excesses, Van Impe frequently speaks positively about Pope Benedict and even cites passages from the Church's official catechism. His affection for Catholicism does not, however, extend so far as to endorse Francis, the current pontiff. Van Impe considers Pope Francis to be theologically unsound and suspects that he is fated to be the last man to occupy the papal throne.

Over the years, Van Impe has frequently referred to the supposed prophecy of St. Malachy. Apparently Malachy, a 12th-century Irish bishop, was favored with a vision that presented him with the identities of the next 112 popes. Each pope is described by a very short phrase that Malachy aficionados have not hesitated to twist into shockingly accurate (or shockingly strained) prognostications.  For example, Angelo Roncalli, elected in 1958 as Pope John XXIII, corresponds in Malachy's list to description #107, “Pastor and sailor.”  In what respect was John XXIII a sailor? The best anyone has come up with relates to Roncalli's position at the time of his election as Patriarch of Venice. The city has canals, you know. Hello, sailor!

Fortunately, I looked up from my Sunday crossword puzzle when Van Impe began his breathless description of the Malachy prophecy. The TV screen was crowded with a numbered list of papal names, beginning with Celestine II (the pope in office at the time of St. Malachy). Subsequent screenfuls displayed more names, progressing through the 112 of the alleged prophecy. A problem arose, however, with the last two screens:

It just so happens that John Paul II was the immediate successor of John Paul I. What is going on with Jack Van Impe's list, which displays the names of Gregory XVII, Michael I, and Pius XIII in the positions #108 through #110? These men were (are) antipopes and have no place in this roster. Michael, in fact, is a self-proclaimed pope who washed out of a seminary program; he's not even a priest. I suspect he's read Baron Corvo's Hadrian VII a few times too many.

Thus Van Impe's list is badly screwed up. Shall we all breathe a sigh of relief and rest easy that we are spared the anxiety of an apocalyptic last pope? Sorry! There are plenty of papal lists that correct Van Impe's mistakes and end up matching Francis with #112, the last pope on Malachy's list (not #113). This final pope is supposed to be “Peter the Roman,” but Cardinal Bergoglio disappointed many superstitious prophecy fans when he chose to name himself after Francis of Assisi instead of St. Peter. However, the father of St. Francis was named Peter—and that's proof enough that Malachy was right! Sort of!

Really and truly, these people should dress up in funny outfits and go to Comic-Con.

The Patrician's parable

More mistakes by god

Are you a fan of the writing of Sir Terence David John Pratchett? I certainly am. Sir Terence is better known as Terry Pratchett, the creator of the Discworld series of comic fantasy novels (and other delights). Aficionados of Pratchett's oeuvre are well aware that humor is an excellent vehicle for treating serious topics—at least in hands as capable as Sir Terry's.

The recent paperback release of Unseen Academicals has put Pratchett on my reading list again. This novel delves into the impact of organized sports on institutions of higher (and weirder) learning and society in general. It's not a topic that would interest me in other contexts, but I trust Pratchett to make the most of it. Once again, I am not disappointed.

A particularly telling nugget is unearthed on pp. 236-237, where Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician who rules over the city-state of Ankh-Morpork as its benevolent dictator, waxes uncharacteristically conversational over a long series of drinks with the wizards of the Unseen University. Vetinari tells his listeners a story:

I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

Here endeth the lesson. Amen.

An atavistic "Avatar"

Been there, done that

You may have heard of this legendary computer-animated film in which the protagonist finds himself in a drastically resized body and falls into the hands of those whom he was originally trying to destroy. Once among his erstwhile enemies, he is taught their ways by a winsome lass who wins his sympathy and inspires him to switch sides.

The movie is The Ant Bully and it came out in 2006.

Oh, did you think I was talking about Avatar? I guess I could be.

James Cameron's Avatar is currently raking in box office receipts and capturing the imagination of the movie-viewing public. Cameron got a few bucks from me earlier today. I have to admit that Avatar is very pretty and serves as an excellent example of the state of computer-generated graphics. In that sense, Avatar is a tour de force.

In every other sense, it fails.

Perhaps I was inoculated against truly enjoying Avatar by the premature hype and over-the-top expectations. I was irked when the characters of Bones were drooling with anticipation over seeing the movie. To me, product placement is an irritant and a distraction. Aggressive marketing predisposes me to dislike the product, whatever it may be. It does not whet my appetite.

Nevertheless, I wanted to see Avatar and give the movie an opportunity to entertain me. The visuals are very nice, with spectacularly imaginative flora and fauna for Pandora, the planet on which the action occurs. The gigantic blue natives, the Na'vi, are rather excessively humaniform, but that's okay. Rapacious Earthlings want to mine Pandora for its motherlode of “unobtanium,” which has antigravitational properties. A little trite, yes, and scientifically absurd, but I can suspend my disbelief that much. I sense, however, that I'm getting just a little overextended.

Our hero, a marine named Jake, gets lost in the Pandoran wilds and is rescued by a lovely native named Neytiri. She turns out to be the daughter of her tribe's chieftain. (Of course.) Her mother is the tribe's spiritual leader (naturally) and it is she who decides that Neytiri will be responsible for teaching our hero the ways of the Na'vi tribe. (Wouldn't you know it?) This will cause some trouble with the heir-designate to the leadership of the tribe, Tsu'Tey, a great warrior who is also Neytiri's betrothed. (Oh, please.)

I was instantly bored and restless. Nothing surprised me. Will our hero learn the ways of the tribe? Of course. (At least they spared us a montage.) Will he win grudging respect from the people? Damn right. Will Tsu'Tey continue to resent him and hope he dies? You bet! Does Jake make mistakes that put him in dire straits but still recover and win through? Every time!

I'll grant you that it would be unfortunate for the hero to be put out of commission too early in the movie, but it would be nice if something provided a modicum of suspense. When Jake and Neytiri barely escape an attack from a Leonopteryx, a flying monster the Na'vi refer to as the “Last Shadow” (because its shadow is the last thing you'll ever see), she tells him that her legendary grandfather was the last member of the Na'vi ever to tame one sufficiently to fly upon it. Instantly, you know without a particle of doubt that Jake will be flying one before the movie ends. And, of course, he'll displace Tsu'Tey as Neytiri's fiancé.

At least, I assume so. I walked out right after Neytiri's story about her ancestor and the Last Shadow. I was afraid of dislocating my jaw.

Driving along in my Mugglemobile

Although the suspension is shot

Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ”true”: it accords with the laws of that that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from the outside.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories

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My copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon UK arrived on Tuesday. I've avoided the American editions because of the tin-eared retitling of the historically rooted Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to the meaningless Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. (The philosopher's stone was an actual obsession of the ancient alchemists, who sought it unsuccessfully for hundreds of years, hoping to use it to achieve immortality and unbounded wealth. The “sorcerer's stone” is a vapid marketing construct.)

The Harry Potter books have given me immense—if not unalloyed—pleasure. The initial volumes were especially delightful, cleverly crafted, involving, and smoothly plotted. They bogged down a bit for me as the drama overcame the comedic elements and the story turned darker. I also think the books suffered a bit from J. K. Rowling's gargantuan commercial success, since I think a good editor could have tightened some of the self-indulgent maundering in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By that point, I'm sure, Rowling had become all but editor-proof, secure in her ability to do whatever she pleased. I still enjoyed the books and found them worthwhile, but I became conscious of struggling occasionally to maintain my forward motion. It was the opposite of the problem I had had with the earlier installments, which I found quite difficult to put down.

A tiny semi-spoiler alert

Deathly Hallows fulfilled the promise of the series with a deeply satisfying climax and conclusion. Rowling's virtues as a writer were on full display and her occasional tendency to spin her wheels was under control (coming into view only, in my opinion, during the over-long account of the furtive wanderings of Harry and his companions as he and they dithered over what to do next). The author also managed to avoid the temptation to take undue advantage of her magical milieu and resolve all of the tangled plot points by winching a convenient deus ex machina down onto the stage. I might quibble over the extremely late revelation that elves have the ability to Apparate and Disapparate under some circumstances where wizards and witches cannot, but that was a relatively minor transgression. To be fair to Rowling, it's possible she hinted at it earlier and I did not notice; she's had the big picture in her mind all along and has usually been diligent in planting clues and foreshadowing future developments. Those of us who page rapidly through her novels can easily miss her subtle intimations.

All of that said, however, there are aspects of Harry Potter's world that simply do not work for me. As Tolkien observed in his 1938 essay on fantasy, a fairy-tale's world must be “true” in the sense that it maintains an honest internal consistency. As clever as Rowling's creation is—a masterful amalgam of legend, lore, and imagination—I was too often reminded that I didn't “believe” it.

Harry is always having trouble with his glasses. They've been lost, broken, and magically repaired at various times. He's almost helpless without them. How does this make sense in a world of magic? When one can use polyjuice potion to completely transform oneself into an exact physical replica of another person, why is it not possible to alter one's lenses the tiny amount necessary to correct one's vision? You'd think there would be wizard optometrists with the ability to out-do any Muggle practitioner, even those with Lasik clinics. (I imagine a wizard optometrist could outperform a Muggle Lasik operator with a creative application of splinching, but that is just idle speculation on my part.)

Another puzzling point to me is the peculiar disjunction between the worlds of the wizards and the Muggles. It's understandable that the Muggles don't know about the wizard world that exists all about them because there are policies and magical practices in place to preserve their happy ignorance. I'm a bit nonplussed that it also seems to work in the opposite direction. Arthur Weasley, for one, is supposedly fascinated by Muggle technology and is always being surprised by their wonderful cleverness, yet he has every opportunity to soak up as much knowledge of the Muggle world as he could desire. His obsession must be a dilettantish sort of obsession, otherwise a few weeks' vacation among Muggles would clear up most of his questions about Muggle society and its devices. I wouldn't want to deny Rowling one of her richest veins of humor, but there were a number of “Yeah, right” moments when she'd depict a witch or wizard being bemused by some Muggle practice. It strained credulity.

I can achieve (more or less) willing suspension of disbelief, when I am held there and supported by some other motive that will keep away boredom: for instance, a wild, heraldic, preference for dark blue rather than light. This suspension of disbelief may thus be a somewhat tired, shabby, or sentimental state of mind, and so lean to the “adult.” I fancy it is often the state of adults in the presence of a fairy-story. They are held there and supported by sentiment (memories of childhood, or notions of what childhood ought to be like); they think they ought to like the tale. But if they really liked it, for itself, they would not have to suspend disbelief: they would believe—in this sense.

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I do like Rowling's tales. Do I “really” like it, in Tolkien's sense of seeing it as “true”? Perhaps not quite. I found the world of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings more consistent internally and felt fully immersed in it while reading his epic fantasy. Rowling, of course, is setting herself the challenge of overlaying her fantasy world on our personally experienced real world. It's a bold endeavor and more susceptible to jarring us out of our involvement. That she has succeeded to the degree she has is a tribute to her story-telling skills. I doff my hat to her.

Yes, I can see my way clearly to “believing” the Harry Potter stories—in Tolkien's sense. Most of the time, anyway.

Harry Potter doesn't know Jesus

Christianity cashes in

Coral Ridge Ministries is looking out for me. They want me to know the truth about Harry Potter. It seems that Harry Potter is a wizard! (Sorry: I should have put “Spoiler alert!” at the top of this post.) For a modest contribution (D. James Kennedy's outfit always needs money), Coral Ridge will send me a tell-all book by the distinguished scholar Richard Abanes.

Help for Potter-Puzzled Parents

“Let no one be found among you who, ... practices divination or sorcery , interprets omens, engages in witchcraft” (Deuteronomy 18:10 NIV)

In less than 48 hours, bookstores around the world will open to droves of wide-eyed children and parents desperate to feast their eyes on J.K. Rowling's final Harry Potter novel. While Rowling's book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will undoubtedly fly off bookshelves, her Potter stories have stirred evangelical opposition because they glamorize the occult and introduce children to the world of sorcery.

But are Christian parents just overreactjng? What about popular fantasy novels such as The Chronicles of Narnia penned by C.S. Lewis, and The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien? When does the world of imagination become dangerous to children?

Author Richard Abanes, an authority on cults and religions, answers these questions in his book Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings: What You Need to Know About Fantasy Books and Movies. He uncovers what is inspiring and healthy, and what is potentially harmful and misleading in fantasy novels. He examines the occult's influence on children, and provides a clear-cut Christian perspective to help parents discern what lurks in the land of make-belief.

Request Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings now and apply Abanes' insight to help you solve the Potter puzzle. When you do, you partner with Coral Ridge Ministries in helping to shed the light of God's Word in a darkening world.

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Abanes must be a pretty smart cookie. How else could he be an authority on things as different as cults and religions? (I do believe that the main distinction is membership size.) This is a scholar of real breadth.

His list of publications is pretty impressive, too. If we check his listing at Amazon, we discover that he has been working on the Harry Potter controversy for some time. This is a man who knows how to cash in on popular marketing phenomena. His earlier treatise on Pottermania, Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick, would seem to have come down on the side that regards Harry Potter as perhaps a bad thing. Readers of Harry Potter and the Bible, however, seem to have concluded that it is Abanes' book that is the bad thing: of the readers who posted reviews on Amazon, twice as many gave twice as many readers gave it the lowest possible rating (1 star) as gave it the highest possible rating (5 stars). Also, if you peruse the reader reviews in “most helpful” order, the negative reviews are heavily front-loaded. I guess the negative reviews were deemed unhelpful.

Abanes presumably rehashes his anti-Potter material from his earlier book, mixing it with some new Narnia and Lord of the Rings material to fill out his exercise in recycling. Since both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were known to be devout Christians, I'm guessing that their fantasy novels fare better in the Abanes book than anything by J. K. Rowling.

The new book has just been listed on Amazon and has only a handful of reviews. It fares just a bit better than its predecessor. I do, however, particularly like the pithy comment by the person who uses the handle “Purple Wizard”: “Since Abanes found Harry Potter he has used Potter-bashing to make a fortune. I wish this guy would stop writing about Harry Potter since he hates him so much.”

Abanes does not limit himself to trying to ride the Harry Potter gravy train. He also took a stab at feeding off Dan Brown's leavings by exposing “the truth” behind The Da Vinci Code. Abanes is also pretty ticked at the Mormon church, which I suspect he lumps in with the cults, despite its millions of members.

How does one become a widely recognized expert on cults and religions? Richard Abanes is a former singer, dancer, and actor. One can hardly imagine a better preparation for taking on the threatening darkness of Harry Potter.

Tarantallegra!