Editorial

By Paul Schratz

When you've just swallowed arsenic, it makes no difference to your survival whether you knew you were being poisoned or not. Poison is poison, whether served straight up or camouflaged in a glass of orange juice.

Some recent children's literature shows how you literally can't judge a book by its cover. The most obvious example is the Harry Potter series. Sensible parents, regardless of whether they let their children read the books, did their research, discerned whether the books were appropriate for their children, then made a prudential decision in their kids' best interest.

Now many of the parents who had faith in the innocence of the phenomenon have learned they were hoodwinked. Author J.K. Rowling recently declared at a fan forum that included children that, by the way, "Dumbledore is gay."

She may as well have announced to parents, "Oh, by the way, your children just ate poison."

It's difficult to conclude that something similar isn't happening with the upcoming movie The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman. The movie is based on a popular children's series by one of Britain's most avowed atheists, Philip Pullman.

Pullman wrote the series as a conscious effort to rebut the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia series, which Pullman dismissed as religious propaganda. The author makes no effort to conceal his aggression toward organized Christianity and especially the Catholic Church, either in public or in his writings.

Kidman, who is rediscovering her Catholic faith, says she wouldn't appear in a movie that was anti-Catholic. Perhaps not, but she's in a movie that is based on books that are more anti-Catholic than Harry Potter was pro-occult.

In the case of Harry Potter, we had to wait years to find out about the Dumbledore time bomb. In the case of the Golden Compass, the evidence is already out there. The bad guys are the "Magisterium" and "the Church," led by a Pope protected by brutal Swiss Guards. "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake," says a scientist and ex-nun describing her loss of faith.

The fact that the movie has apparently been stripped of its anti-religion message is not reassuring and in fact should sound alarm bells. If its philosophy were obvious, viewers would realize the danger, avoid the movie, and forget about the books.

Instead The Golden Compass is being marketed as the children's movie of the year, including promotional tie-ins with Coca Cola, Burger King, video games, and Scholastic Books - coming soon to a classroom near you.

What film studio would be idiotic enough to make a movie based on Salman Rushdie's controversial novel The Satanic Verses, expunge it of any content considered blasphemous about Mohammed, then market it to Muslims?

None, because they know what kind of a firestorm it would cause. The very least that knowing Christians can do is give this film the response it deserves at the box office.