Love cannot long survive without truth. Nor is truth really truth unless it is integrated with love. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
There are indeed ‘values’ in the Harry Potter series, but they’re confused with anti-values. Potterworld is a scrambled moral universe. There are Christian symbols in the series, but the author misappropriates them, mutates them, and integrates them into a supposedly larger and broader system where evil symbols are dominant. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
It goes without saying that a good Catholic novel should be good craftsmanship, good writing skills. The creative person must always be engaged in the long labor of perfecting the tools of his art. Yet the work itself need not be explicitly evangelical in its themes and plots. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
I knew there would be some controversy over the ‘Potter’ series between religious people and secular-minded people – that was inevitable – what astonished me and continues to astonish me is the intense controversy that erupted very early on among Christians themselves, in all the churches. It cuts across every denominational line. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
Corrupt fantasy points us, or forms us, in a consciousness that can lead to thinking that evil is good and good is evil. In the worst case, this may have long range effects, prompting the reader intuitively, subconsciously, to do evil while thinking they’re doing good. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
J.K. Rowling is a talented storyteller, but she has also used the style and technique of modern television and cinema media, which seizes the imagination by pummelling it, bombarding it with powerful stimuli, in a rapid pace, with plenty of emotional rewards. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
Harry Potter represents a much larger wave of cultural revolution that we’re all immersed in, and I believe it’s a spiritual revolution as well – a negative spiritual revolution. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
My Catholic faith is my life. Any artist, if he is to be faithful to how he perceives the world and to the nature of his creative gifts, cannot divorce the two. To create is to love. To love is to create. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
If creators of Christian culture hope to produce work that will bear good fruit, we must draw our life from the true source – our living Savior. He is real. He is present. But all too often we reduce him to an abstraction, giving him intellectual assent, but not our hearts. Michael O'Brien Read Quote
