The Golden Compass Controversy

The older I get, the more it is clear to me that the popular euphemism, “History repeats itself,” is one of the few sayings; ubiquitously popping up is every history class at one time or another; to be absolutely true. Oftentimes something outrageous or controversial hearkens this saying to our lips. For instance, the McCarthy era of the1950s saw people eager to �name names’ of suspected Communists in Hollywood royalty. This seems vaguely similar in scope to the most famous of all witch hunts, the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, no? Furthermore, any article or report I have ever read about the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Western Sudan seem eerily familiar to accounts I have read of or seen about the Holocaust. It should not seem like a lark, then that the recent stirrings about the Catholic Church and their vehement discontent with the Philip Pullman trilogy, His Dark Materials; more specifically with the first book in the triad, the Golden Compass; bring to mind Martin Luther and his nailing 95 Theses to the door of the church. If history does indeed repeat, will that mean an Atheist Uprising? I hope so.

Somebody or something needed to take the Catholic Church down a peg or two. I have a lot of problems and issues with the Catholic Church. You see, I am a recovering Catholic and the fact that; in light of its recent and scandalous appearances in the news; that the Catholic League would not prefer to have the church slink under the radar of public opinion. Instead, under the direction of its president and CEO William Donohue, the Catholic League issued the Catholic version of a Fatwa titled The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked to inform the public of the “agenda” behind the movie version of the Golden Compass which they purport to be Pullman’s use of fantasy to sell Atheism to kids.

Get out your wallets, moms and dads…Free choice and liberty for sale!!

I find the affirmation that the book by Philip Pullman is an atrocity to the Catholic Church and an affront to all things good and decent to be quite ironic. Decency is certainly not a strong suit for the Catholic Church of late. The 2005 Catholic priest scandal brought to light the horrific accounts of adults that were sexually molested as children by “respected” members of the clergy. Donohue’s response to this scandal was that the crisis was of a homosexual nature, not of a pedophilia nature. First of all, someone who solicits sex from a minor is a pedophile. It makes no difference if the child is of the same sex or opposite sex. Second, pedophiles are most often heterosexual.

So, judging from what I see here, sodomizing a minor is good and decent, but a storybook fantasy written by an Atheist author is an affront. Is it just me, or does the Catholic League need to (a) put its priorities in order; and (b) pull its head out of its ass?

When asked in an interview if he truly had an agenda, Pullman responded, “I have the agenda of every storyteller which is to make the reader turn the pages and read on to the end of the book, and I hope that when they’ve read the book, they’ll feel a little better for doing so.” He went on to quote Samuel Johnson, “The true aim of reading is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it. And that’s my agenda.”

I myself have not read the Golden Compass. In fact, I had never heard of the series until the Catholic League began its media blitz warning parents about the ill effects of their child reading a book. This piece