St Edward Catholic School in Nashville has opened up its new library for the upcoming academic year, but the pastor who is in charge has removed all the Harry Potter titles from the library claiming that they contain real curses and spells. He further stated that these spells can be used to attract Satanic energies.
Catholic Church has no official stance on J.K. Rowling’s most popular Harry Potter series which has a worldwide fan following of millions. However, Reverend Dan Reehill who is a staff member in the school has consulted the Vatican and exorcists in the US as per them depiction of magic and sorcery detailed in the books is heretical.
An email has been sent to the parents where Reverend Reehil wrote, “These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.”
The superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Nashville Rebecca Hammel also stated, “Each pastor has canonical authority to make such decisions for his parish school. He’s well within his authority to act in that manner. I know that in the process they were going through and kind of weeding out some of the content in hopes of sprucing it up and improving the circulation.”
She also added that “Should parents deem that this or any other media to be appropriate we would hope that they would just guide their sons and daughters to understand the content through the lens of our faith. We really don’t get into censorship in such selections other than making sure that what we put in our school libraries is age-appropriate materials for our classrooms.”
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