Devil Not Just In The Details

A couple of weeks ago, Jimmy blogged  on an article in the Daily Mail reporting on a Vatican Radio interview with Fr. Gabriele Amorth.

A few days later, content from that Daily Mail article cropped up in an incredibly garbled form in a Sydney Morning Herald article by one Linda Morris, credited as "Religious Affairs Writer."

I don’t know how you get to be "Religious Affairs Writer" for the Sydney Morning Herald, but based on this piece, if I lived in Sydney, I’d consider getting my religion news from a more reliable source. Like the National Enquirer.

Here’s how the article starts out:

Devil in the detail: Vatican exorcises Harry Potter

THE Vatican has never been a fan of Harry Potter, but its chief exorcist has gone one step further and condemned J. K. Rowling’s fictional boy wizard as downright evil.

"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Pope’s "caster-out of demons".

The books contained numerous positive references to the satanic art, falsely drawing a distinction between black and white magic, he told the Daily Mail in London. In the same interview, Father Amorth said he was convinced that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by the devil.

Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence.

Now… how many problems can YOU spot in those few short paragraphs?

  1. Source problems. The article claims to be reporting on an interview with Fr. Amorth given to "the Daily Mail in London." False. In fact, that article was reporting on an interview given with Vatican Radio. Fr. Amorth was apparently not interviewed by the Daily Mail.

  2. Furthermore, even in the Daily Mail piece the Harry Potter business is only tacked on the end as something that Fr. Amorth has said "in the past." So even the Daily Mail wasn’t reporting on recent comments made by Fr. Amorth. The Daily Mail doesn’t even source the "past comments" in question — and then the current story linked above misattributes the Daily Mail‘s unsourced comments to a non-existent interview with the Daily Mail itself — specifically stating that the comments were given "in the same interview," which they weren’t! Just goes to show how carefully the reporter read the piece she was regurgitating.

  3. The article calls Fr. Amorth the "chief exorcist" of "the Vatican" as well as "the Pope’s ‘caster-out of demons’" (the latter phrase apparently lifted straight from the Daily Mail story). Jimmy has already pointed out the problems with these assertions.

  4. Given that (as Jimmy points out in the above link) Fr. Amorth is a priest of the diocese of Rome rather than an official of Vatican City, the various references to "the Vatican" are even more misleading than such media statements typically are.

  5. "Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence." Since Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the Roman See in mid-April, that would put the alleged comments within the first 3½ months of 2005. In fact, though, this statement represents a garbled report about a letter Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in March of 2003 — two years before he is supposed to have made the comments in question. Again, Jimmy has the clarification. Suffice to say, it is not at all clear that Ratzinger ever described Harry Potter as a "potentially corrupting influence," either last year or in 2003.

  6. The article paraphrases Fr. Amorth as saying that "The books contained [sic; the books still exist!] numerous positive references to the satanic art." As phrased, this suggests that Fr. Amorth attributed to Rowling positive references to "the satanic art" as such, when in fact satanism is perhaps never mentioned in any of the HP books. The paraphrase in the original article is slightly more convincing: "Rowling’s books contain innumerable positive references to magic, ‘the satanic art’." That makes more sense: The books refer positively to magic, which Fr. Amorth calls "the satanic art." That’s different from saying that the books "contain numerous positive references to the satanic art."

"Devil in the details," indeed!

I have to say, I’m sick to death of the news media reporting that "the Vatican" has done this or that every time someone sneezes in Italian.

This piece, though, is even more egregious than usual. Did the reporter even bother to read her source piece twice — let alone actually check a single fact?

Sydney residents, demand more from your local media!

21 thoughts on “Devil Not Just In The Details”

  1. Sorry SDG, but us Australians really don’t pay too much attention to our mainstream media.
    Also, us ‘religious nuts’ are really in the minority here in Oz, so it would just be nigh impossible to get results (and don’t worry, we regularly demand them!).
    Sorry to report but Australia is a very secular country (particularly in comparison to the US).

  3. “I’m sick to death of the news media reporting that ‘the Vatican’ has done this or that every time someone sneezes in Italian.”
    Absolutely perfect.

  5. Momof6:
    You took the words out of my mouth. Either Australia is in bad shape, or Luke has a very optimistic view of Americans.
    Lord have mercy on us all.

  7. America is famously religious around the world. Whether it is actually any more religious than Austrania I don’t know, since I thought Australia was a fairly conservative country in some ways, but who knows? Certainly Europe makes the United States look like a monastery. All right that is an exaggeration but still, we could have it a lot worse in this country. Look up the statistics for just about any Western European country. I’m pretty sure the whole of Ireland had NO ordinations all of last year. In most countries only a small percentage go to Church regularly and many are no longer getting their children baptized. I saw an artical last year that said eighty-something percent of French citizens have rarely or never been to a religious service of some kind. It just seems like we live in a secular hell-hole because we used to be much better.

  8. Well, I hope Jimmy went to the trouble of forwarding his observations to the paper’s letters column. Sloppy journalism shouldn’t be put up with!

  11. Of course sloppy journalism should be reported but I think that’s more of a divergence rather than anything actually changing the substance of the original interview. It doesn’t change either the fact that obviously Fr. Amorth is referred often by the term “chief” because he is the primary go-to expert for the hard cases in the immediate surroundings and is the head of the International group of exorcists … with some recognition for his experience and history. He also seems to have been the one involved in those cases that have been reported as somehow connected to the Vatican … in the person of the pope at least (the previous one). And after the pope’s rather trunkated session with a victim, Fr. Amorth continued his involvment. And Fr. Amorth was referring to his knowledge of what the books contained – not to whether they still existed or not! Strange interpretations here … perhaps merely for convenience and not truth!
    The Vatican radio discussion does nothing more than have Monsignor Fleetwood repeat what he already said in the previous public interview which was already in the public domain internationally. And his repeated statements again only lend to reiterating his “suspicions” about the communication from then C. Ratzinger – that he “suspects” it might have come from the pen of the Cardinal’s secretary or something … as if that means nothing!! And then again, he simply doesn’t really know now, does he!! His other basis for his side of Potter promoting is that persons simply don’t understand English humor! And then, on the one hand he anoints Harry for doing exactly what “those people” (Catholic orthodox?) want by actually naming the evil (as is done in Catholic authorized demon confrontation), but unfortunately (or conveniently?) does not go beyond that into the realm of those quite different “techniques” used by each example – magic or God given methods of confrontation!
    He then escapes into a saving catch net that the author of Potter, after all, has some Christian background and one cannot escape those influences forming the basis for one’s later creations! Thank you Fr. O’Brien or perhaps the good leaders of the infamous St. Joan’s!

  12. Note to SDG: when I post comments on anything you post, i get an automatic message back saying I am trying to contact you through an old address. But, I’m not. Is there a bug in the system?

  13. Of course sloppy journalism should be reported but I think that’s more of a divergence rather than anything actually changing the substance of the original interview.

    Well, I don’t know — remember, the “original interview” in this case was the Vatican Radio interview, during which, as far as we know, Fr. Amorth said NOTHING about Harry Potter.
    So, it does seems “substantial” that an interview about demonic possession of Nazis and Fascists has been transmogrified into a tirade against Harry Potter just because Fr. Amorth has made such comments “in the past.”
    P.S. Ed, I’ve asked Jimmy to update my email in JA.org.

  14. So what, HP is a good person, being a wizard?
    He is the ideal person right. He goes flirtin around and is a rich big-shot, who not also is the best sport player in his school, people like that end in heaven?
    If it isn’t good than it must be bad huh?
    Sorry mates, but I can’t agree to defend HP.
    Maybe the article is off tad bit, but HP can’t be the best book for children.

  16. So, it does seems “substantial” that an interview about demonic possession of Nazis and Fascists has been transmogrified into a tirade against Harry Potter just because Fr. Amorth has made such comments “in the past.”
    Well, it would appear that there are others joining the confusion of the criticized. And it seems the only ones limiting the topic in articles about the interview are the critics!
    From:
    http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/09/03/harrypotter-exorcist-pope.html
    Pope Benedict XVI’s chief exorcist, Rev. Gabriele Amorth, has called fictional wizard-in-training Harry Potter the “king of darkness, the devil.”
    Amorth made the statement about the star of the best-selling children’s series by British author J. K. Rowling during an interview with Vatican Radio during the week.
    snip
    Amorth compared the Potter character to dictators Stalin and Hitler, saying they were possessed by the devil.
    Now, just what really was in that interview??!!

  17. momof6 and Megan Elizabeth, sorry to break the news to you, but yes, we far more secular than the US.
    Just one small example of this is the way Americans (particularly the heads of state) are able to say “God Bless Anerica” or even mention God for that matter. I’m sorry to report, but if the PM of Oz said anything remotely similar there would be an absolute uproar.
    Mind you, in the Catholic Church in some parts it’s getting better. We have a few ‘roses amoung our thorns’. Cardinal Pell is one such example

  18. Note to SDG: when I post comments on anything you post, i get an automatic message back saying I am trying to contact you through an old address. But, I’m not. Is there a bug in the system?
    This happened to me too.

  20. A similar thing happened in our local paper. Somebody pulled a “Religion” story off the wire and posted it next to the comics (where else would it be?). But this story talked about the gruesome history of the papacy and how Popes have killed one another to ascend this throne of power, blah blah blah. I looked up the actual names and dates in the Catholic Encyclopedia, wrote a correction about what *really* happened, wrote a complaint to the editor, and got my letter published.

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