Harry Potter and the Christian Magicians II — Baptizing Dumbledore

A reader writes in to ask three questions:

1. What is the right way to answer the accusation that the fantasy genre turns kids into satanists/gnostics/pagans? One sees this argument most used against Harry Potter, but in recent years I’ve come upon people who believe that the inclusion of magic in a work is so evil they won’t even let their children read Narnia.
2. Related to this, I’m curious what your opinion is in regard to what the proper way is for a Catholic author to handle magic in his work.
3. What would be your response to those who say that all magic ought to be portrayed as evil or only used by characters who are stand-ins for God (Aslan) or who are agents of God (as I have seen some argue that Gandalf is)?

The first question I answered at some length here. The third, and to my mind most interesting, because it asks the relation of entertaining fiction to theological fact, must wait until another day. Let me gird up my loins and address the second.
The second question has deep roots. To discuss it, we need to discuss the relation of Christianity to paganism, of poetry to fantasy, and fantasy to the faith.
Each of these discussions is worthy of its own essay: unfortunately for any longsuffering reader, I will cover all three points below in one long essay to suffer through.
This second question is by no means new. The question was put AD 797, by the scholar Alcuin of the court of Charlemagne, echoing the words of St Paul in an address to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, where the monks spent more time chanting the lays of Ingeld than chanting the liturgies and hours: “What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”
Read more