Are they also going to ban the bible? That’d be swell.

Catholic board bans ‘Golden Compass’ indefinitely

“The Golden Compass” and two other books in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy have been banned indefinitely by the Halton Catholic District School Board despite a committee’s recommendation that the titles remain on library shelves.

Board chair Alice Anne LeMay told CTV.ca that the committee found the books suitable for students in Grades 7 and up, but the majority of board members voted against the committee’s report Tuesday night.

The book, written by popular British author and avowed atheist Philip Pullman, has won numerous awards, including the Maine Student Book Award and the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults award.

“Philip Pullman’s trilogy of atheistic ideology, carefully couched within the realm of fantasy for young readers, is in direct opposition to the mission statement and governing values of our board,” the board’s decision reads.

The trio of books was removed from library shelves last November after receiving a request for review from a member of the community. All three titles were available to students upon request.

The board set up a committee, made up of teacher, principals, trustees and consultants, to review the book and recommend whether it should be available to students.

LeMay said this is the first time a book has been banned from school libraries within the board. The three titles will not be made available to students upon request and will be “stored at the central board office for the time being.”

Don’t let your children watch this upcoming fantasy film, behind it is nothing but Christian bashing and godlessness!

Religious furor over ‘The Golden Compass’ 

Earlier this fall, many Catholics began to receive e-mail messages warning of the “agenda” behind a “new Children’s movie out in December called ‘The Golden Compass.’ ” The film, these e-mails claimed, was intended to serve as bait for the novel on which it is based, the first in a fantasy trilogy collectively titled “His Dark Materials.” Kids intrigued by the film, the e-mails went on, would be tempted to read the trilogy and might thereby fall into the ideological clutches of its author, Philip Pullman, who seeks nothing less than “to bash Christianity and promote atheism.”

The messages had the breathless, marginally literate quality of rumors about spider eggs in bubble gum. Perhaps that’s why the controversy promptly earned itself a page at www.snopes.com, that venerable Internet clearing house for urban legends. Snopes lists this particular rumor as “true,” presumably because the e-mails use a few genuine, if cherry-picked, quotations from Pullman’s writings and press interviews. But that doesn’t keep the whole thing from being fundamentally ridiculous.

Most preposterous, of course, is the idea that anyone would make a $180-million movie with the purpose of tricking children into reading a seditious book. What self-respecting kid ever needed that much encouragement to ferret out whatever the adults are trying to hide?

Also — whoops! — no one’s been hiding “His Dark Materials.” To date, 15 million copies of Pullman’s books have been sold worldwide. “The Golden Compass” won not only the 1995 Carnegie Medal, a prize awarded by British children’s librarians, but also the “Carnegie of Carnegies,” as the public’s favorite book in the prize’s 70-year history. The final novel in the trilogy, “The Amber Spyglass,” won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2001, the first children’s book ever to do so. It’s safe to say that copies of the trilogy reside in every decent children’s library in the nation. If there is indeed a “deceitful stealth campaign” afoot to lure children to Pullman’s books — as William Donohue, spokesman for the Catholic League, insists — it’s remarkably short on stealth.