In an attempt to express certain objection to established religion in The Golden Compass Philip Pullman has turned the Church into a world wide, or at least European wide dictatorship called the Magisterium.   This organization uses the language of the church, and is centered around some idea of God.  However, this Magisterium is only a hollow shell, a misleading ‘replica’ of the church as it exists in our world.

Pullman utilizes much of the same terminology for his Magisterium as the Catholic Church in our world does for vastly different things.  He calls particle physicists theologians and priests, Original Sin becomes Dust, and Souls become Daemons, but just because a group has God, priests, souls, and sin doesn’t mean it accurately reflects the Church.  Pullmans Magisterium fails to include any of the positive retributive aspects of church theology which are a far more important part of what the church really is than the semantics of original sin.  There are hardly any references to the mercy of God in The Golden Compass and the only attempt made to save souls was through human technological intervention, not Divine spiritual intervention as the church actually emphasizes.  If Phillip Pullman wants to criticize the church through analogy, as many have suggested he is doing in The Golden Compass then the least he should do it give an accurately analogous model in his story for criticism.   Instead he draws an incomplete comparison between the church in our world and his Magisterium and voices his objections against a model of his own creation which he has stripped of all the aspects that its real world counterpart possess with which it could defend itself.  Through this story Pullman has tried to attack organized religion, Catholicism in particular, in a deceptive ad manipulative way, aimed at convincing others that religion is bad without offering any substantial arguments for his case.