Twilight of the gods?

First it was Harry Potter, now it’s Edward Cullen and his fellow vampires in the Twilight series of films.

The two films so far – of the books by Stephenie Meyer – have been Twilight and New Moon, the latter of which opened in the UK on Thursday night. The third book, Eclipse, is being filmed with a pencilled-in release date of June 2010.

The Catholic Church – but of course – are getting twitchy about it, according to a story in the Daily Mail, and think the saga is “a deviant moral vacuum”.

The second film opened only this week in the UK, but, according to some prat from the Vatican, it is “a mixture of excesses aimed at young people and gives a heady esoteric element”.

Great. Bring it on.

A few years ago, Pope Ratzinger was saying of the Potter series that it has “subtle seductions” and could corrupt the Christian faith?

Amen to that!

Go on. Read the story. Have a laugh.

Oh, by the way, your humble blogger has tried to close his eyes to the fact that Meyer is a Mormon – reasoning, he guesses, that other religions have wacky elements, too, and it’s hard to know whether one is reading a book by one of them – and is reading New Moon, having polished off Twilight a few weeks ago.

Good stuff, romance with a bite, well told by a good writer who has one or two annoying writers’ tics, but otherwise provides some good character development and almost makes the vampires and werewolves believable in the way these concepts are introduced into the stories.

Perhaps Potter and Cullen and many other books of this genre that are springing up will simply take the place of a need to believe in what religion claims, and this is what’s worrying the likes of Catholic nutcases. Perhaps they’re worried that this is the Twilight of the gods.