Pope is Mild About Harry

Don't know who Jimmy Akin is, but Insight Scoop linked to his post on the B16/Harry Potter flap. He goes into more detail than I did below about just why we ought not make too much of five sentences B16 wrote two years before he was B16. I wouldn't mention it again except he makes the point that people clicking through Drudge and other pages form impressions based on headlines, so this abuse of the pope's name and status is a disservice to him and indeed to the Church. As Akin puts it, whatever Ratzinger meant by his letters,

he most certainly did not intend his permission to mean "Should I ever be elected pope, I would be very pleased to have you use what I said in my thank you note to create an international media frenzy that causes many people to believe that the pope has officially condemned Harry Potter."

UPDATE: Yet more evidence the Pope doesn't dislike HP. Transcript of a radio interview from Catholic Insider.