{"id":177505,"date":"2019-09-03T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/03\/the-stupid-it-burns\/"},"modified":"2019-09-03T18:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T23:20:00","slug":"the-stupid-it-burns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/03\/the-stupid-it-burns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stupid, It Burns!"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Have you heard the one about the school that threw out all of its Harry Potter books on the advice of its exorcist<\/a>?<\/div>\n

No, it’s not a joke:<\/p>\n

A private Catholic school in Nashville has removed the Harry Potter<\/a> books from its library, saying they include \u201cactual curses and spells, which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits\u201d. <\/p>\n

Local paper the Tennessean reported<\/a> that the pastor at St Edward Catholic school, which teaches children of pre-kindergarten age through to 8th grade, had emailed parents about JK Rowling\u2019s series to tell them that he had been in contact with \u201cseveral\u201d exorcists who had recommended removing the books from the library. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception,\u201d Rev Dan Reehil wrote. \u201cThe 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Curses and spells included in the bestselling books, which were published between 1997 and 2007, include \u201cavada kedavra\u201d, the \u201ckilling\u201d curse; \u201ccrucio\u201d, the torture curse; and \u201cimperio\u201d, which allows the wizards to control others\u2019 actions. <\/p>\n

Rebecca Hammel, superintendent of schools for the Catholic diocese of Nashville, told the Tennessean that Reehil had sent the email after an inquiry from a parent. She added that \u201che\u2019s well within his authority to act in that manner\u201d, because \u201ceach pastor has canonical authority to make such decisions for his parish school\u201d.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 I weep for humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you heard the one about the school that threw out all of its Harry Potter books on the advice of its exorcist? No, it’s not a joke: A private Catholic school in Nashville has removed the Harry Potter books from its library, saying they include \u201cactual curses and spells, which when read by a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[397,588,555,380,406],"class_list":["post-177505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-education","tag-fail","tag-literature","tag-religion","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}