Lyra, played by Dakota Blue Richards, embarks on a quest to save the world (© 2007 Laurie Sparham / New Line Cinema)   Learn about the books and film online To learn more about The Golden Compass film, visit goldencompassmovie.com. To read plot summaries for the series, visit randomhouse.com.

Some of Pullman’s other statements suggest that he is more against corrupt religious institutions and harmful conceptions of God than against the elementary idea of the divine.

“I think the (religious) impulse is a critical part of the wonder and awe that human beings feel,” he said in the Sydney Morning Herald interview. “What I am against is organized religion of the sort which persecutes people who don’t believe. I’m against religious intolerance.”

It is this kind of religion that his books are clearly vilifying. The Church portrayed in the novels does not reflect any of the good qualities we know our Church to contain. It is a Church that does not embody Jesus. In an interview with the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, in 2004, Pullman says:

“[Jesus] doesn’t figure in the teaching of the church, as I described the church in the story. I think he’s mentioned once, in the context of this notion of wisdom that works secretly and quietly, not in the great courts and palaces of the earth, but among ordinary people and so on. And there are some teachers who have embodied this quality, but whose teaching has perhaps been perverted or twisted or turned, and been used in a fashion that they themselves didn’t either desire or expect or could see happening.”

Moreover, the Authority of Pullman’s novels, though identified in Lyra’s world as the God of Christianity, is not a god any Catholic would rightly worship: He is not the Creator but an angel who set himself up to be a god — much like Satan. Donna Freitas and Jason King argue in their book Killing the Imposter God: Philip Pullman’s Spiritual Imagination in His Dark Materials that Pullman is dealing with “only one understanding of God — God-as-tyrant…. But he says nothing about the many other gods that are worshiped across the world’s religions or about more sophisticated understandings of the Christian God.”

What do Catholics say about the books?

Unsurprisingly, there have been sharp reactions from some Catholics to the works. Leonie Caldecott, writing in The Catholic Herald, Britain’s leading Catholic newspaper, called the books “worthy of the bonfire.” Catholics in the United States have been equally vocal, and the books have now been banned from some Catholic school libraries.

There are also Catholics, aside from Donna Freitas of Killing the Imposter God, who have found redeeming qualities, and even Christian themes, in the books. Daniel P. Moloney concluded his review of the series in the journal First Things with the following:

I can fairly characterize His Dark Materials in this fashion: imagine if at the beginning of the world Satan’s rebellion had been successful, that he had reigned for two thousand years, and that a messiah was necessary to conquer lust and the spirit of domination with innocence, humility, and generous love at great personal cost. Such a story is not subversive of Christianity, it is almost Christian, even if only implicitly and imperfectly. But implicit and imperfect Christianity is often our lot in life, and Pullman has unintentionally created a marvelous depiction of many of the human ideals Christians hold dear.


Will the film, and its anticipated sequels, be anti-Catholic?

Chris Weitz, the film’s screenwriter and director, has said, “In the books, the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots. If that’s what you want in the film, you’ll be disappointed. We have expanded the range of meanings that the Magisterium represents.”