Harry Potter books are now off-limits to students of St. Edward Catholic School in Nashville, Tennessee after the school pastor found “actual curses and spells” in the fantasy novel.
Rev. Dan Reehil, a pastor at the Catholic school, explained that the Harry Potter books written by British author J.K. Rowling could bring harm to students.
“These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception,” he said in an email. “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.”
Reehil said that the exorcists he consulted in the U.S. and Rome recommended the removal of the Harry Potter books from their school.
Rebecca Hammel, the superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Nashville, told the Tennessean that an inquiry from a parent motivated him to make the decision.
Hammel pointed out that Reehil is in the position to ban the books. “Each pastor has canonical authority to make such decisions for his parish school. He’s well within his authority to act in that manner,” she said.
Hammel claims that the removal of the novel from the school is not a form of censorship. “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.”
Parents of students at St. Edward wrote a letter to object the removal of Harry Potter books from the library. However, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, interim director of the American Library Association (ALA) office for intellectual freedom, points out that because St. Edward is a private school, the parents’ request to have the series reinstated has no strong legal grounds.
“We understand that the parents want to guide their child and raise them in a particular way, and we don’t object to that. When they try to use that as a reason to prevent access for all families, for all children, for all readers, really with the assumption that everyone should share their values or their beliefs, that’s where we object,” said Caldwell-Stone.
