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Traditional Catholic Faith => Catholic Living in the Modern World => Topic started by: Simeon on December 06, 2023, 11:37:06 AM
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I’m not trying to start a fight. Really, I’m not.
But in case anyone out there might be benefited by the two talks I’m including here, it’s worth the potential hostility.
My observable, measurable fruit of about two or more years of extreme immersion in Tolkien – before then I actually avoided him on advice of smart Catholics – was a case of acedia that might make even St. John Cassian raise an eyebrow. The spiritual paralysis, the explosion of emotion, the inability to vacuum a floor – is one for the books.
That’s why I went to the desert Fathers – to be cured. And now, about one month in, I have received a signal grace from God – in fact only days ago - that made me understand one serious cause of my problem – LOTR.
I was almost living in the cursed thing. It’s allure, it’s beauty, it’s resonation with every fiber of my being, its powerful hold on my mind and emotions – sheesh! The damned thing is a soul whisperer.
Yesterday I remembered these two talks, which I listened to many years ago. I re-listened and, boy did they speak to me about a lot of things.
If anyone bothers to listen to these talks, and has ever been oppressed by sloth, acedia, escapism, or depression, pay close attention to what the priest says about “mystic flights” in part 2.
Will I miss LOTR? Oh yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will I kick it to the curb for my soul? Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2LI7r4MIJQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JDv4qTJw7M
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Immoderate use of any work of fiction can cause someone to be disconnected from reality, or indulge in escapism and avoidance of duty. The problem is not in the fiction itself but in its immoderate use.
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This is an interesting topic. My youngest son is prone to this particular character flaw. But I observed this in him at an extremely young age. He also is drawn to fantasy literature. I discovered years ago that the solution was to enforce work on him. He is an adult but he lives with me and I only have one rule for his recreational pursuits-- they must not be immoral. As long as he goes to work, pays his bills, and does the chores around here that I ask of him I don't comment on his hobbies anymore. For his age he is extremely responsible.
I don't believe there's anything about Tolkien's work that draws people in to this flaw if it's not already there. The same thing could be said about social media or video gaming. But there are examples of people who can use both who do not waste time on it or use them as an escape from reality. I still appreciate this thread however.
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I don't believe there's anything about Tolkien's work that draws people in to this flaw if it's not already there. The same thing could be said about social media or video gaming. But there are examples of people who can use both who do not waste time on it or use them as an escape from reality.
and this
Immoderate use of any work of fiction can cause someone to be disconnected from reality, or indulge in escapism and avoidance of duty. The problem is not in the fiction itself but in its immoderate use.
You could say the same about many good, lawful things. Alcohol for example. I'm not into it myself, but Catholics are allowed to imbibe in moderation. But some men in every age abuse it, to the point of becoming alcoholic. Must we ban alcohol or say it's evil? No. We as Catholics can even sell it for a living, promoting it to some extent. But if you have an addictive personality or other voids/baggage in your life looking to be filled with something -- then watch out.
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I truly appreciate the replies, especially as they are friendly and not hostile. Thank you!
I understand all the rebuttals, but they do not reach the explicit and well-docuмented points made by the priest. What I'd really like, is to hear thoughts and rebuttals on his arguments and examples - which are learned and quite stunning. Talk about thought provoking!
It's a lot to ask people to invest over two hours in media these days. But I strongly believe what this priest brings forward is quite worthy of consideration and discussion.
Real McCoy, as far as fruits from me offloading my cache, it's too soon to tell; and I had already begun to improve as soon as I resorted to the desert. That being said, I was able to add back into my daily horarium, immediately upon shedding, daily housework; whereas that issue has been quite resistant, even to "solitude and sand." I've now got a splendidly clean bedroom, bathroom and kitchen floor! :laugh1::laugh1::laugh1:
That is a good point about our being predisposed to certain vices, however, the problems the demonstration presents are objective. He does not approach the question from the standpoint of what immersion in this literature can do to your soul, except accidentally. He is pointing out serious and objective problems with the work itself.
Again, it's hard to discuss it unless people familiarize themselves with his points.
Thank you all!
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I'm sorry to say this priest's condescending tone of voice annoys me.
I didn't find any great revelations in what he said. Doesn't everyone know that Tolkien's works are pagan and gnostic? I go back to my original assertion that people with a particular disposition are at risk. Possibly melancholic personalities who are already prone to inaction and being "in their head" too much. Thankfully the Church has many approved mystical works that can be substituted.
Simeon, if this priest's sermon helps you then God bless you. We all have our cross to bear.
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The videos in question, are these the same essay/presentation that made the rounds on Rorate Coeli awhile back?
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The videos in question, are these the same essay/presentation that made the rounds on Rorate Coeli awhile back?
Was waiting for Mith to chime in on this. :popcorn: I always appreciate his observations on LOTR.
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The videos in question, are these the same essay/presentation that made the rounds on Rorate Coeli awhile back?
I'd say it's likely. The priest is an indult man, and I know him personally. He sent me the talks and I listened to his audio files many years ago. I went looking for it on youtube yesterday, and found it on his channel, and it said "8 years ago."
When I first listened to it, I was "the choir," and also a Tolkien virgin, and so I listened but without trying to discern for myself. I had seen the movies but had never read the books. I was warned about them in the early 2000's. Thus I gave the priest a thumbs up email and went my way.
But curiosity got the better of me a few years ago; and I dived in; and I must say, LOTR is quite an ecstatic adventure.
My recent acedia problem was different than my normal vice template. It was really severe, and very concerning to me; and frankly I had plenty of other explanations for it. It's only since I started praying differently, and began receiving actual counsels from God in my soul - on various corrections He wants me to make - that this came up.
On the grace I received alone, I threw out my entire LOTR DVD collection. Afterwards I remembered the priest's talk, and wanted to hear it again and listen with a different set of ears.
I found what he said so intriguing that I decided to post. I was under the impression that most Catholics read Catholicism into the books, and hotly deny that they are gnostic and pagan. The conferences have for their sole purpose dispelling that myth. Pardon the pun.
Since you are intellectual and a LOTR fan, can you tell me your opinion of the books? Are they Catholic or gnostic? I'm not interested in whether or not they are good for the soul. That's subjective. I'm interested in the objective question presented and answered by the priest.
Thanks Mith, and God bless!
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20 years ago I became obsessed with the book "Last Dinner on The Titanic" after seeing the exhibit in a museum. I would spend numerous hours in the middle of the night, everynight, reading the book and planning my own Titanic dinner party. I had 4 spiral ring notebooks filled with pages of menu plans. After seeking professional help I discovered I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder rather than the book having a spiritual effect on me. I recovered after about 3 weeks and have no interest in that book or the Titanic anymore. I have no lingering symptoms.
So Simeon, I can relate somewhat.
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I go back to my original assertion that people with a particular disposition are at risk.
This ^^^. Since the dawn of time, people who have addictive personalities get addicted (to all manner of things). I was told a story about pre-V2 priest who said he had to stop playing chess because he started to obsess about moves and strategy, even while saying Mass. It was too much of a temptation/distraction.
The Harry Potter books were written by a witch and are satanic. LOTR was written by a Catholic and are slightly-good, to neutral. I think it's good (but not necessary) for children to see the battle of good vs evil in mediums which are NOT catholic (i.e. LOTR, Star Wars) because it helps to broaden their horizons and to experience Catholic truths in non-catholic things, which they will have to navigate when they are adults (seeing as most of the world is not catholic).
*Some* people can get addicted to sports, exercise, reading, social media, internet, games, even prayer. Most people won't.
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20 years ago I became obsessed with the book "Last Dinner on The Titanic" after seeing the exhibit in a museum. I would spend numerous hours in the middle of the night, everynight, reading the book and planning my own Titanic dinner party. I had 4 spiral ring notebooks filled with pages of menu plans. After seeking professional help I discovered I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder rather than the book having a spiritual effect on me. I recovered after about 3 weeks and have no interest in that book or the Titanic anymore. I have no lingering symptoms.
So Simeon, I can relate somewhat.
LOL!!
I’ll see your Titanic and raise you a Hercules…..…..
Your hilarious story reminds me of one of my own.
Back in college, I contracted a Grade 5 infatuation for a beautiful young Greek American. We hung out for a time, and I was so entranced by his person that I decided to take up the Greek classics, to “understand” him!! HA!!!
I not only read all the epic poems, but got into other readings, and finally actually began the painfully boring histories of Herodotus!
There we two were. Him with his bologna sandwiches, koolaid mustaches, and insipid acoustic guitar strummings, and me with a burgeoning intellectual beauty! LOL!!!
He never knew I was studying up on his culture. I kept it my secret. By the grace of the classics, my newfound knowledge transported me right out of the infatuation. I mean what is a koolaid mustache compared to a veritable pantheon of gorgeous gods? LOL!!!! When I transferred to another college, I left him, all crusts, croons and FD&C red, with quite an education. :laugh1::laugh1::laugh1:
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https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fantasy-writing-of-tolkien-was.html?m=1
^^This is what I was referring to--Simeon, it's the same material, yes?
I remember reading this essay/presentation once or twice over the years.
I don't have time at the moment to write up my thoughts (I think--or hope-- they might already be somewhere in my posting history), but I'll follow up with them.
Gotta have the annual Tolkien talk :)
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LOL!!
I’ll see your Titanic and raise you a Hercules…..…..
Your hilarious story reminds me of one of my own.
Back in college, I contracted a Grade 5 infatuation for a beautiful young Greek American. We hung out for a time, and I was so entranced by his person that I decided to take up the Greek classics, to “understand” him!! HA!!!
I not only read all the epic poems, but got into other readings, and finally actually began the painfully boring histories of Herodotus!
There we two were. Him with his bologna sandwiches, koolaid mustaches, and insipid acoustic guitar strummings, and me with a burgeoning intellectual beauty! LOL!!!
He never knew I was studying up on his culture. I kept it my secret. By the grace of the classics, my newfound knowledge transported me right out of the infatuation. I mean what is a koolaid mustache compared to a veritable pantheon of gorgeous gods? LOL!!!! When I transferred to another college, I left him, all crusts, croons and FD&C red, with quite an education. :laugh1::laugh1::laugh1:
Your sense of humor is delightful!
I have a question for you. Do you believe there's any prophecy encoded in the Tolkien books? Or any hidden truths? I'm curious as to what spawned your interest.
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https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fantasy-writing-of-tolkien-was.html?m=1
^^This is what I was referring to--Simeon, it's the same material, yes?
I remember reading this essay/presentation once or twice over the years.
I don't have time at the moment to write up my thoughts (I think--or hope-- they might already be somewhere in my posting history), but I'll follow up with them.
Gotta have the annual Tolkien talk :)
That's it, Mith! Take yer time!
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I have a question for you. Do you believe there's any prophecy encoded in the Tolkien books? Or any hidden truths? I'm curious as to what spawned your interest.
No, I don't think there's anything more in LOTR than the product of a fertile and potent intellect. Unless the man was a gnostic, and that's not for me to conjecture.
But if you think about what he accomplished, you almost have to scratch your head. The man devised a language, or is it languages? It's as if he poured his entire self-image into the thing. The priest talks about Tolkien's "word made flesh," and other either esoteric or cosmological concepts that apply to his work.
Don't ask me how, because this is intuitive on my part, but it's as if LOTR is actually an auto-biography, an immensely elevated opus of self-revelation.
Thus the "hidden truth" is Tolkien's own mind and talent. He deposited his entire being into the concepts, the lines, the images, and the movements of epic structure. That's the "mystery" of his work.
Divine Revelation is also mystery.
I wonder if it is possible to say that only demonic inspiration or deep self-absorption (or some combination of them) could have produced such a peculiarly attractive and engrossing literary achievement - that nevertheless intentionally, categorically, and radically excludes the God Who created all things.
What spawned my interest was a deep psychological need to escape from the intense stress and suffering of long-term caregiving for two folks simultaneously. I needed big hits off the pipe of delight that can only come to me through the deeply pleasing experience of exceptional thinking couched in exceptional writing.
I do live in my head. Mea culpa! LOL!!
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…acedia…
Had to look up acedia in the dictionary.
acedia | əˈsēdēə | noun literary spiritual or mental sloth; apathy. ORIGIN early 17th century: via late Latin from Greek akēdia ‘listlessness’, from a- ‘without’ + kēdos ‘care’.
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I listened to the first talk and I'm working on the second.
This is an interesting topic & discussion.
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Since you are intellectual and a LOTR fan, can you tell me your opinion of the books? Are they Catholic or gnostic?
No, LOTR is not gnostic and it's definitely not pagan. Harry Potter, for sure, is both. LOTR is non-religious, but still has inherent catholic spirituality. LOTR (if you read the history of the Silmarillion) has a complex, deeply spiritual history of the world, with many Christian themes of God, angels, etc. Tolkien did not intend these stories to be overtly Catholic, but were written for everyone. I'd say a good description for LOTR is it's based on the natural law fight between good and evil, with a rich foundation of catholic symbolism.
Just because something is not 100% catholic does not mean it's gnostic/pagan. False dichotomy.
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Not all paganism is gnostic.
I think that Tolkien, especially his lesser-known works, like The Silmarillion, is somewhat of a pagan art. I mean, he developed a mythology about the beginning of his created world, how evil came to be, etc. This is similar to some pagan religions, like the Nordic ones.
Not that I see a problem with it, but I see a kind of pagan aspect about his work.
It is not apparent in Lord Of The Rings, or in The Hobbit, his more widely known books.
There is an interesting text in one of the editions of Lord Of The Rings, on which he says that he wrote the books merely for fun, and that he put no allegory or hidden meanings there.
I think that the books are just that. They are for fun. They are not religious works, and do not have some deeper hidden meaning. It is entertainment.
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People have been telling stories about magic and witches and similar things since the dawn of time, including Catholic countries, and I've never heard of such things ever being condemned. If we are going to condemn Tolkein's literature, we'd also have to condemn the Grimm's fairy tales, the Arabian nights, Hansel and Gretel, the tales of King Arthur, and all of the vast body of fantasy literature that goes back further than we even know, since most of it was transmitted orally, but certainly it goes back to before the Middle Ages in Catholic Europe.
I've sure read a lot of sermons and devotional books by saints, and none of them have ever condemned this kind of fiction.
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Had to look up acedia in the dictionary.
acedia | əˈsēdēə | noun literary spiritual or mental sloth; apathy. ORIGIN early 17th century: via late Latin from Greek akēdia ‘listlessness’, from a- ‘without’ + kēdos ‘care’.
In a nutshell, it is not doing what you should be doing, when you should be doing it, and how you should be doing it. You know those images of men sliding down a slippery and steep path into the abyss? That's what it's like. You cannot grab onto anything to slow the fall into absolute torpor. Also the body becomes very heavy. I don't mean fat. I mean it's an effort to do pretty much everything and anything. Feels like a giant millstone is stuck on your back.
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I listened to the first talk and I'm working on the second.
This is an interesting topic & discussion.
I'm happy to hear you think so.
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No, LOTR is not gnostic and it's definitely not pagan. Harry Potter, for sure, is both. LOTR is non-religious, but still has inherent catholic spirituality. LOTR (if you read the history of the Silmarillion) has a complex, deeply spiritual history of the world, with many Christian themes of God, angels, etc. Tolkien did not intend these stories to be overtly Catholic, but were written for everyone. I'd say a good description for LOTR is it's based on the natural law fight between good and evil, with a rich foundation of catholic symbolism.
Just because something is not 100% catholic does not mean it's gnostic/pagan. False dichotomy.
Thanks much for your direct reply. I was certainly under the impression that many Catholics who enjoy LOTR do deny that it is pagan and gnostic. The priest in the talk went to great, and I think convincing lengths, to prove that the Silmarillion is absolutely and incontestably gnostic - pretty much no other interpretation possible. I know this priest, and I know the depth of his plunge into the study of gnosticism and cosmology. He's well read and an avowed geocentrist. I give him the benefit of the doubt on the question of whether he knows what he's talking about.
If there is a contention among Catholics about whether LOTR, and especially the Silmarillion, are gnostic, then it follows that if it were proven to be pure gnosticism, then the Catholics who now deny such would begin to have issues with it.
Is that correct?
Lastly, there is no false dichotomy being presented by the priest in the videos. You have set up a strawman. Did you listen to his presentation? He demonstrates that the Silmarillion is not merely "not 100% Catholic," but explicitly heretical, specifically gnostic. You know what the Church teaches about heresy. Even a taint is enough to destroy what the priest calls the integral good of the work.
Principles are principles, and they govern for a reason. Anyone compromising on any question, because he wants his cake and eat it, always allows the principles to slip, to fade, to drop. I'm not attacking you personally, nor do I judge anyone who enjoys Tolkien. I'm speaking objectively.
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Not all paganism is gnostic.
I agree that that is correct. My understanding is that gnosticism is a weave of a multiplicity of falsities, with a dash of corrupted Christianity thrown in. A sewer of heresy, and Pope St. Pius X might qualify it, and certainly the underpinning of the demon we call Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ.
There is an interesting text in one of the editions of Lord Of The Rings, on which he says that he wrote the books merely for fun, and that he put no allegory or hidden meanings there.
I don't believe that for a minute. The man breathed his entire soul and spirit into this opus of his. He created new alphabets and languages. His energy input and volitional buy-in was immense. That's self-evident.
To call what he did "having fun" or "sport" is gross mischaracterization. Since he himself said such things, he is mischaracterizing his own conduct. Someone above asked me if I thought there was a mystery hidden in his work. I replied that I believe the mystery is himself. He himself is hidden in his work. And some of his answers to questions were, I think, deflections, both to protect what he cloaked, and to enhance the sense of mystery.
I think that the books are just that. They are for fun. They are not religious works, and do not have some deeper hidden meaning. It is entertainment.
I think the Jєωιѕн and the freemasonic propagandists would disagree.
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People have been telling stories about magic and witches and similar things since the dawn of time, including Catholic countries, and I've never heard of such things ever being condemned. If we are going to condemn Tolkein's literature, we'd also have to condemn the Grimm's fairy tales, the Arabian nights, Hansel and Gretel, the tales of King Arthur, and all of the vast body of fantasy literature that goes back further than we even know, since most of it was transmitted orally, but certainly it goes back to before the Middle Ages in Catholic Europe.
I've sure read a lot of sermons and devotional books by saints, and none of them have ever condemned this kind of fiction.
Nice distinction, but not to the point of the presentation. The point of the presentation is that Catholics have no business calling Tolkien's works Catholic. Other points were made, including about possible harm to the soul, but they were collateral to the thesis.
Did not the Church Fathers contend over the question of whether Catholics should read the pagan classics? And did not the Church allow both schools of thought? Thus the question remains viable.
Secondly, we are not speaking about a) pagan literature, which has integral value, because it is based in reality, and to some degree natural religion and piety; and b) medieval Christian literature, which was firmly fixed in the Christian ethos, reality, and absolute verisimilitude. The condemnation of sorcery would have been either implicit or explicit in medieval literature. Nor would God ever be excluded from His own creation.
The problem presented by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis is novel. This is fantasy fiction, involving fictional universes, that deliberately and vehemently exclude God. They do not exclude men, women, children, trees, mountains, seas, animals, magic, wizards, good and evil - but they exclude the God who created all things, and Who condemns those who practice magic of any kind.
Why did these two Christian men exclude God from their epics, whilst including not only fantasy creatures, but every real creature under the sun? Perhaps because they unconsciously conjectured that excluding God would give them license to paint pictures that would offend Him if they came before His Face. Possibly, they got Him out of their sight, so they could be "free" to write. Guilty conscience swept under the rug?
Fantasy literature is a genre that would have the scholastics producing ten tomes per minute, if scholastics still existed. They certainly don't show up in fantasy literature. :)
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If we are going to condemn Tolkein's literature, we'd also have to condemn the Grimm's fairy tales, the Arabian nights, Hansel and Gretel, the tales of King Arthur, and all of the vast body of fantasy literature that goes back further than we even know, since most of it was transmitted orally, but certainly it goes back to before the Middle Ages in Catholic Europe.
I've sure read a lot of sermons and devotional books by saints, and none of them have ever condemned this kind of fiction.
You are committing factual error here.
None of the works you cite are properly denoted fantasy literature. You are confuting and improperly synthesizing definitions of things that are specifically different and cannot be predicated of each other.
Fantasy literature is a genre belonging exclusively to the modern age.
What you find in classical and ancient literature - gods, demons, magic, sorcery, strange signs and wonders, false miracles, manifestations, etc. - are not fantastical. They are real. They are what belong to the natural and preternatural orders.
Fantasy literature consists of fictional universes cuм magic.
You have never heard a sermon condemning the above cited works, precisely because they are NOT fantasy literature, and would therefore be excluded from any condemnation of same.
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I think that Tolkien, especially his lesser-known works, like The Silmarillion, is somewhat of a pagan art. I mean, he developed a mythology about the beginning of his created world, how evil came to be, etc. This is similar to some pagan religions, like the Nordic ones.
Right. "Classic paganism" (i.e. pre Christianity) is similar to the Greeks, who were very much interested in God, truth and the natural law. That's what paved the way for Christ to be accepted worldwide.
"Modern Paganism" is a rejection of Catholicism and Christian culture and is, at present, atheism. But it will eventually slide towards satanism, because atheism is simply a void which will eventually be filled with something.
My understanding is that gnosticism is a weave of a multiplicity of falsities, with a dash of corrupted Christianity thrown in.
That's not a standard definition of gnosticism and it's way too broad to use.
Did you listen to his presentation?
Don't have 2 hours.
He demonstrates that the Silmarillion is not merely "not 100% Catholic," but explicitly heretical, specifically gnostic. You know what the Church teaches about heresy.
I don't know anyone who claims that LOTR is catholic, so the application of heresy is misguided. Can't criticize a screwdriver for not being a hammer.
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I have found the text here https://www.thetolkienforum.com/threads/lotr-the-second-edition-foreword-by-tolkien.16713/ (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/threads/lotr-the-second-edition-foreword-by-tolkien.16713/)
I have bolded the parts that I think that are more useful in our discussion.
The Lord of the Rings (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/The-Lord-of-the-Rings) has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.
As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/the-Ring) as the link between it and The Hobbit (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Hobbit). The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past', is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it.
The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Sauron); he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Barad-dûr) would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Saruman), failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Mordor) the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Middle-earth). In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/hobbits) in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.
Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/the-one) resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/events) of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed by some that The Scouring of the Shire (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/Scouring-of-the-Shire) reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/objects) (I had never seen one) and men (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/men) were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/the-Young) miller, but his father, the Old (https://www.thetolkienforum.com/wiki/the-Old) miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.
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Listened to two minutes of the first video and had to turn it off. I prefer to know the man, priest or layman, before I listen to what he says, sorry. When I read the Bio of Tolkien some years ago, I recall that Token went to his home church in 1970, and when the priest started mouthing off some English, Token stood up in Church and said, "This is supposed to be in Latin." I read most of the Tolkien Trilogy and there is nothing that I can see that is in opposition to the Faith. Other than the Hobbit, I have read no other Tolkien.
It seems to me if the child is interested in fiction, let him explore, so long as it is decent. He may become the next Tolkien.
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Tolkien himself said that the LOTR was profoundly Catholic. It just takes time to delve into his works to see how this all works out. :smirk:
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Some thoughts on the material presented:
I think it was Alexander Pope who said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and I think that axiom applies to the critic-priest's presentation against Tolkien. What follows is a defense/response to some of the specific claims he makes. I thought I had written something like this years ago, but didn’t find it in my posting history. I've seen this presentation before. FYI, I'll be responding to the text copy rather than the audio. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fantasy-writing-of-tolkien-was.html
Although the priest is able, apparently, to provide some evidence for his claims, all the evidence is ill considered and divorced—sometimes violently and contradictorily—from its original context. A closer and more objective look at Tolkien sufficiently and resoundingly debunks or at least casts significant doubt on almost everything the critic-priest has to say about him.
I am going to focus mainly on the first part of the presentation, since that is the part where he makes his case against Tolkien. I’ll take it in order. I’m not responding to literally everything he said, but I am certainly attempting to respond what I believe are all his main points.
Regarding myth and allegory…
it is well established that JRR Tolkien, a philologist…someone who studied words and languages, enjoyed researching and discussing mythology, especially that of Northern Europe. As a result, he developed a sort of “philosophy of myth” while shunning allegory, saying, “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations.” He criticized C.S. Lewis for his too transparent allegories and resisted all attempts to make his own works allegorical. Here we already have a problem because God loves allegory. He placed allegories in the Scriptures as St. Paul explains in Galatians. Thus, one of the main ways to interpret the Sacred Scriptures is the allegorical sense. A whole school of thought in the early Church, the Alexandrian School, has contributed many things to the exposition of the Scriptures using allegory.
Tolkien did not have some irrational phobia of allegory. What Tolkien had was a cordial distaste for a very specific kind of allegory, i.e., the kind of allegory where there is only one possible meaning or interpretation of a figure, event, place, artifact, etc. Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia is a good example of this—Aslan is simply Christ, full stop. There’s nothing more or less to interpreting the character. In Tolkien’s view, fiction is better rendered not without allegory, but where the allegory has a more generalized character—for instance, he described LotR is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that it was also an allegory of power (Letters 142 & 186). He said in another letter that “the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it." (letter 109). Clearly, it just isn't true to say that Tolkien disliked allegory full stop and leave it at that.
Ironically, the kind of allegory Tolkien uses—the kind which he believes is not just tolerable but actually inextricable from a good story—is exactly the kind that scripture uses! Scripture does not have 1:1 allegories. Melchisidech is not an allegory for Christ, but an allegory for Christ, and for the new priesthood, and for the sacrifice of the Mass, etc. The critic-priest’s suggestion that Tolkien is anti-allegorical is simply false, and his further implication that in being anti-allegorical Tolkien runs afoul of God and scripture is even more false.
According to Joseph Pearce, Tolkien thought that myth was a better way to transmit various high level truths: “Tolkien … believed that mythology was a means of conveying certain transcendent truths which are almost inexpressible within the factual confines of a ‘realistic’ novel.” In another place: “For Tolkien, myth …was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form” (Tolkien: Man and Myth, Pearce, p. XIII). I hope your alarm bells are going off. This is a sign of modern revolutionary thinking… which teaches that only in recent times have we finally figured out how to do things right … in this case, how to transmit high level truths. What? All these centuries we have failed to transmit the transcendent truths of God in a realistic manner? Does this make any sense? NO!
This is kind of ironic… in the previous paragraph the critic-priest criticizes Tolkien for his dislike of allegory, and in this paragraph Tolkien’s problem is that he doesn’t trust enough in realism’s ability to transmit truth! You’ll have to pick one, you can’t have both. This reads like someone who is simply searching for problems, without any attention to whether the overall critique is coherent.
But the problems with this criticism are even more serious than the criticism over allegory. For starters, the quote from Pearce is mangled beyond recognition. Here is what Pearce actually said:
“[Tolkien] understood the meaning of myth in a way that has not been grasped by his critics and this misapprehension is at the very root of their failure to appreciate his work. For most modern critics, a myth is merely another word for a lie or a falsehood, something which is intrinsically not true. For Tolkien, myth had virtually the opposite meaning. It was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form" (Pearce, p. XIII).
Are alarm bells ringing? You bet. Anyways, I think Pearce’s description here is completely accurate, based on what I’ve read of and from Tolkien. Tolkien took myth to refer to the transcendental truths about reality, human nature, etc. and he preferred the mythic format to the “realistic novel” format for this very reason. Again, the critic-priest’s attempt to pigeon-hole Tolkien as being anti-Gospel or anti-Church is just vain.
A quick aside, since the critic-priest seems to rely almost exclusively on Pearce for his analysis: Pearce is a relatively competent Tolkien scholar, but at the end of the day he is one of many Tolkien scholars and I personally don’t agree with everything Pearce has to say about Tolkien’s work. And that’s usually the case when it comes to scholarship. Scholarship is arguable, and there are different sides and interpretations available. The critic-priest should not use Pearce as though he is the singular authority of Tolkien. A serious critique of Tolkien would need to take more than just one author’s view. And it would also need to incorporate the things that Tolkien himself said, which the critic-priest only infrequently does.
The Problem with Myth...
Moving on, the critic-priest spends several paragraphs talking about how myth is inferior to the gospel and how the proof is in the pudding so to speak—in the 60s and 70s (the two decades following LotR’s release) people lost faith rather than being buffeted in it or converted to it. But the critic-priest has already mischaracterized what Tolkien has in mind by myth, so his various quotes from Pius XII and references to Baruch are just inapplicable. Moreover, the critic priest by this point has subtly shifted his premise: he is essentially, by this point, supposing that Tolkien’s intent in writing LotR was to provide a mythology to supplant Christianity! An outrageous assumption, frankly. If the critic-priest was laboring under the assumption that LotR is a sufficient replacement for going to Mass, believing the truths of the catechism, following the moral law, etc., then that’s his problem or the problem of whoever sold him LotR… it’s not Tolkien’s. And the suggestion that the cultural revolution is in some way related to the proliferation of Lotr is… ridiculous. I’m sure readers of Cathinfo can find a perfectly satisfactory alternative explanation to why the 1960s and 70s were times of rapid moral decline without blaming Tolkien 😉
Now, the truth is that the Church has long tolerated myth (there are times and places where treatises against myths were issued, and this was because in those times and places the myths were actual substitute religions—intended as such, and taken as such; clearly not a fair comparison to LotR). An ecclesiastical education has always required students to learn Latin and Greek, and the mode of learning these languages was to read the ancient Roman and Greek pagan myths. St. Basil has a rather famous treatise on the right way to approach the works of the pagans, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: take them where they are good, and be ready to identify (and leave them) where they are bad. Tolkien—who was a practicing and devout Catholic, whatever his failures are—must, as a mythmaker, certainly get more credit than actual literal pagan mythmakers. At worst, St. Basil’s rule applies to Tolkien, too. Take him where he is good, leave him where he is not. Avoid him at all costs because myths are evil? This is hysterical.
Briefly I also want to mention the critic-priests naturalization of mythical creatures in scripture. He says the unicorn is a rhinoceros, the leviathan a whale, etc…. While these are probably acceptable interpretations, they’re by no means the only ones. Personally I think David really did mean unicorns, and he also mentions basilisks, and Isais mentions vampires—not sure how we naturalize a basilisk or a vampire. At any rate, I just want to point out that the critic-priest has constantly shifting standards, and it seems that as long as he can make a point against Tolkien he’ll do it, regardless of how consistent the point is with the rest of his critique. So far Tolkien is bad because: he rejects the symbolism of allegory, but also because he rejects the truthful nature of realism, and also he rejects the naturalistic interpretations of mythical creatures in scripture… there's a lot of internal tension in this criticism that on the one hand says Tolkien should have greater appreciation for symbolism, on the other he needs greater appreciation for realism, all from a man who takes mythical references in scripture and gives naturalist interpretations of them... It doesn't jive well.
There are a variety of simply factual errors too… Meister Eckhart’s condemnation had nothing to do with anything remotely analogous to what Tolkien was up to. Theosophy has nothing to do with what Tolkien was up to. Matthew Fox? C’mon. This is just a very vague smear by very, very remote association.
At any rate, the vast majority of the critic-priest’s criticism of Tolkien as a myth-maker falls flat because he is treating some generic kind of myth, and the worst kind, rather than what Tolkien actually had in mind.
The Silmarillion, Gnosticism, Magic
Moving on to the Critic-priest’s more specific problems with LotR and the Silmarillion… The fundamental problem here seems to simply be this: Tolkien didn’t write the Gospel or a catechism. He points out dissimilarities between parts of Tolkien’s story and scripture or Tradition, and then uses these dissimilarities to argue that Tolkien’s myth is incapable of communicating truth. The critic-priest sounds like the type who needs that 1:1 allegory to make sense of fiction.
I find that this critique, like all the others, ultimately reduces to the question not just of LotR, but of fiction per se. The critic priest—seriously, apparently—criticizes Gandalf for casting the Witch King into the abyss, without mentioning eternal punishment. From which we are supposed to infer that no such thing as eternal punishment exists, I guess?
This standard—the standard whereby fiction is deemed dangerous because it fails to mention every Catholic truth—renders fiction per se immoral. And I just don’t see how that is a conclusion we can take seriously. The Church has long been a patron of the liberal arts and of literature. Not all of it, of course, but much of it. Catholic education has included, without any tumult, experience with the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and many other iconic western writers. If the standard by which we judge fiction is whether or not it is literally identical to the deposit of faith, then clearly all fiction fails.
I’d like to address two more specific claims of the critic priest’s, and then wrap up. First, there’s the claim of Gnosticism in Tolkien’s creation myth. Then there’s the claims about Tolkien’s use of magic.
It is true that the Gnostics believed in a creation through intermediary beings instead of the Creator God, but Gnosticism holds that there is this awful tension and violence between the demiurges and the “real” god, and in fact the whole “point” of Gnosticism is to be released from the prison of the material world (created by the demiurges against the will of “god”). This is why gnostics always manifest in history as dualists—they regard the body and matter as evil, and believe that our fundamental duty and calling in life is to rush to death so that our souls can be freed from our bodies and the material world—both of which are prisons. The problem with Gnosticism is more that than the idea of God allowing or empowering lesser beings to participate in creation. Of course, God did not in fact allow or empower the angles to create the world, but there is nothing contradictory to the nature of God to have done so. After all, He most definitely ennobles humankind to participate in the ongoing work of human creation. So, Tolkien’s creation myth isn’t identical to what scripture says about creation. But to call it gnostic and heretical, as the critic-priest has done, is an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to simply say that Tolkien’s creation myth didn’t happen. But that isn’t a very salacious claim. And everyone already knows that.
Regarding magic, this one is misunderstood by the critic-priest and also, I think, by Pearce. In Tolkien’s world the “magic” is really, by and large, special (as in, pertaining to species) powers some characters have. Gandalf is a maiar (analogous to an angel) who, by virtue of his nature, has certain special abilities. Same with elves and the Numenorians. I know that the word “magic” is used at times (more in the Hobbit, I think, than in LotR) but it simply isn’t. It’s something else. The only magic in the actual sense (i.e., alchemical attempts and other endeavors to exercise unnatural power over nature) is used exclusively by the bad guys, and the point is always that they are acting unlawfully and that havoc ensues.
Tolkien and Modernity
I’m going to leave my defense there, and close with this: in his second conference, the critic-priest more or less argues that the reason LotR is popular is that it affirms all the insipid assumptions and values of modernity. I vehemently disagree with that, and some of the reasons why are included in my defense above, but a complete treatment of that topic will need to be left for another post. As a matter of fact, I think that the reason Tolkien is popular is exactly the opposite.
No one actually likes modernity, or few do. Modernity is characterized by purposelessness, alienating individuality, and an insufferably mundane malaise (among other things). The modern condition is a miserable one, and even godless people will tell you that. The reason that LotR is so popular is that it is not these things. In Middle Earth, everyone and everything has a purpose, even if that purpose is not yet revealed. In Middle Earth there are peoples with strong identities and cultures. In Middle Earth, despondency is overcome by heroism.
Contrary to the progressivist principle that over the passage of time mankind inevitably improves and progresses, Middle Earth is a place where unless there are noble and virtuous men to preserve and guard what is good in the world, people decay and decline. Tolkien upholds the doctrine of degeneration rather than progress, as Middle Earth is a place where unless the good guys are vigilant, the devil devours and over time cultures and civilizations decline rather than improve. There is hardly anything more anti-modern than the idea that things get worse, not better, over time.
Our own times and culture as so modern, so progressive, etc. that Tolkien’s work provides a welcome respite. Of course, the primary reason for the condition of the modern world is that the Church has been infiltrated and her authority has all but completely disappeared. And Tolkien’s work is no substitute for a functioning Catholic hierarchy and teaching Church. No one—least of all Tolkien himself—would ever even remotely suggest otherwise. But Tolkien is a lot more accessible than the Catholic Church (notwithstanding the various attempts to corrupt his work, too). And people feel like they are taking less of a risk reading a book of fiction than reading the Gospel or a catechism.
Finally, I would hardly say that Simeon needs to stop everything and start reading LotR again. I think we all know there are things, including good things, that some of us give up because we struggle to use them in moderation. That is the right thing to do. So don’t take my response as an indication that Simeon did the wrong thing.
If there is anything specific about the presentation that I didn't address and someone would like me to, please bring it up. I'm in the mood to talk Tolkien.
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Some thoughts on the material presented:
I think it was Alexander Pope who said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and I think that axiom applies to the critic-priest's presentation against Tolkien. What follows is a defense/response to some of the specific claims he makes. I thought I had written something like this years ago, but didn’t find it in my posting history. I've seen this presentation before. FYI, I'll be responding to the text copy rather than the audio. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fantasy-writing-of-tolkien-was.html
Although the priest is able, apparently, to provide some evidence for his claims, all the evidence is ill considered and divorced—sometimes violently and contradictorily—from its original context. A closer and more objective look at Tolkien sufficiently and resoundingly debunks or at least casts significant doubt on almost everything the critic-priest has to say about him.
I am going to focus mainly on the first part of the presentation, since that is the part where he makes his case against Tolkien. I’ll take it in order. I’m not responding to literally everything he said, but I am certainly attempting to respond what I believe are all his main points.
Regarding myth and allegory…
Tolkien did not have some irrational phobia of allegory. What Tolkien had was a cordial distaste for a very specific kind of allegory, i.e., the kind of allegory where there is only one possible meaning or interpretation of a figure, event, place, artifact, etc. Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia is a good example of this—Aslan is simply Christ, full stop. There’s nothing more or less to interpreting the character. In Tolkien’s view, fiction is better rendered not without allegory, but where the allegory has a more generalized character—for instance, he described LotR is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that it was also an allegory of power (Letters 142 & 186). He said in another letter that “the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it." (letter 109). Clearly, it just isn't true to say that Tolkien disliked allegory full stop and leave it at that.
Ironically, the kind of allegory Tolkien uses—the kind which he believes is not just tolerable but actually inextricable from a good story—is exactly the kind that scripture uses! Scripture does not have 1:1 allegories. Melchisidech is not an allegory for Christ, but an allegory for Christ, and for the new priesthood, and for the sacrifice of the Mass, etc. The critic-priest’s suggestion that Tolkien is anti-allegorical is simply false, and his further implication that in being anti-allegorical Tolkien runs afoul of God and scripture is even more false.
This is kind of ironic… in the previous paragraph the critic-priest criticizes Tolkien for his dislike of allegory, and in this paragraph Tolkien’s problem is that he doesn’t trust enough in realism’s ability to transmit truth! You’ll have to pick one, you can’t have both. This reads like someone who is simply searching for problems, without any attention to whether the overall critique is coherent.
But the problems with this criticism are even more serious than the criticism over allegory. For starters, the quote from Pearce is mangled beyond recognition. Here is what Pearce actually said:
“[Tolkien] understood the meaning of myth in a way that has not been grasped by his critics and this misapprehension is at the very root of their failure to appreciate his work. For most modern critics, a myth is merely another word for a lie or a falsehood, something which is intrinsically not true. For Tolkien, myth had virtually the opposite meaning. It was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form" (Pearce, p. XIII).
Are alarm bells ringing? You bet. Anyways, I think Pearce’s description here is completely accurate, based on what I’ve read of and from Tolkien. Tolkien took myth to refer to the transcendental truths about reality, human nature, etc. and he preferred the mythic format to the “realistic novel” format for this very reason. Again, the critic-priest’s attempt to pigeon-hole Tolkien as being anti-Gospel or anti-Church is just vain.
A quick aside, since the critic-priest seems to rely almost exclusively on Pearce for his analysis: Pearce is a relatively competent Tolkien scholar, but at the end of the day he is one of many Tolkien scholars and I personally don’t agree with everything Pearce has to say about Tolkien’s work. And that’s usually the case when it comes to scholarship. Scholarship is arguable, and there are different sides and interpretations available. The critic-priest should not use Pearce as though he is the singular authority of Tolkien. A serious critique of Tolkien would need to take more than just one author’s view. And it would also need to incorporate the things that Tolkien himself said, which the critic-priest only infrequently does.
The Problem with Myth...
Moving on, the critic-priest spends several paragraphs talking about how myth is inferior to the gospel and how the proof is in the pudding so to speak—in the 60s and 70s (the two decades following LotR’s release) people lost faith rather than being buffeted in it or converted to it. But the critic-priest has already mischaracterized what Tolkien has in mind by myth, so his various quotes from Pius XII and references to Baruch are just inapplicable. Moreover, the critic priest by this point has subtly shifted his premise: he is essentially, by this point, supposing that Tolkien’s intent in writing LotR was to provide a mythology to supplant Christianity! An outrageous assumption, frankly. If the critic-priest was laboring under the assumption that LotR is a sufficient replacement for going to Mass, believing the truths of the catechism, following the moral law, etc., then that’s his problem or the problem of whoever sold him LotR… it’s not Tolkien’s. And the suggestion that the cultural revolution is in some way related to the proliferation of Lotr is… ridiculous. I’m sure readers of Cathinfo can find a perfectly satisfactory alternative explanation to why the 1960s and 70s were times of rapid moral decline without blaming Tolkien 😉
Now, the truth is that the Church has long tolerated myth (there are times and places where treatises against myths were issued, and this was because in those times and places the myths were actual substitute religions—intended as such, and taken as such; clearly not a fair comparison to LotR). An ecclesiastical education has always required students to learn Latin and Greek, and the mode of learning these languages was to read the ancient Roman and Greek pagan myths. St. Basil has a rather famous treatise on the right way to approach the works of the pagans, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: take them where they are good, and be ready to identify (and leave them) where they are bad. Tolkien—who was a practicing and devout Catholic, whatever his failures are—must, as a mythmaker, certainly get more credit than actual literal pagan mythmakers. At worst, St. Basil’s rule applies to Tolkien, too. Take him where he is good, leave him where he is not. Avoid him at all costs because myths are evil? This is hysterical.
Briefly I also want to mention the critic-priests naturalization of mythical creatures in scripture. He says the unicorn is a rhinoceros, the leviathan a whale, etc…. While these are probably acceptable interpretations, they’re by no means the only ones. Personally I think David really did mean unicorns, and he also mentions basilisks, and Isais mentions vampires—not sure how we naturalize a basilisk or a vampire. At any rate, I just want to point out that the critic-priest has constantly shifting standards, and it seems that as long as he can make a point against Tolkien he’ll do it, regardless of how consistent the point is with the rest of his critique. So far Tolkien is bad because: he rejects the symbolism of allegory, but also because he rejects the truthful nature of realism, and also he rejects the naturalistic interpretations of mythical creatures in scripture… there's a lot of internal tension in this criticism that on the one hand says Tolkien should have greater appreciation for symbolism, on the other he needs greater appreciation for realism, all from a man who takes mythical references in scripture and gives naturalist interpretations of them... It doesn't jive well.
There are a variety of simply factual errors too… Meister Eckhart’s condemnation had nothing to do with anything remotely analogous to what Tolkien was up to. Theosophy has nothing to do with what Tolkien was up to. Matthew Fox? C’mon. This is just a very vague smear by very, very remote association.
At any rate, the vast majority of the critic-priest’s criticism of Tolkien as a myth-maker falls flat because he is treating some generic kind of myth, and the worst kind, rather than what Tolkien actually had in mind.
The Silmarillion, Gnosticism, Magic
Moving on to the Critic-priest’s more specific problems with LotR and the Silmarillion… The fundamental problem here seems to simply be this: Tolkien didn’t write the Gospel or a catechism. He points out dissimilarities between parts of Tolkien’s story and scripture or Tradition, and then uses these dissimilarities to argue that Tolkien’s myth is incapable of communicating truth. The critic-priest sounds like the type who needs that 1:1 allegory to make sense of fiction.
I find that this critique, like all the others, ultimately reduces to the question not just of LotR, but of fiction per se. The critic priest—seriously, apparently—criticizes Gandalf for casting the Witch King into the abyss, without mentioning eternal punishment. From which we are supposed to infer that no such thing as eternal punishment exists, I guess?
This standard—the standard whereby fiction is deemed dangerous because it fails to mention every Catholic truth—renders fiction per se immoral. And I just don’t see how that is a conclusion we can take seriously. The Church has long been a patron of the liberal arts and of literature. Not all of it, of course, but much of it. Catholic education has included, without any tumult, experience with the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and many other iconic western writers. If the standard by which we judge fiction is whether or not it is literally identical to the deposit of faith, then clearly all fiction fails.
I’d like to address two more specific claims of the critic priest’s, and then wrap up. First, there’s the claim of Gnosticism in Tolkien’s creation myth. Then there’s the claims about Tolkien’s use of magic.
It is true that the Gnostics believed in a creation through intermediary beings instead of the Creator God, but Gnosticism holds that there is this awful tension and violence between the demiurges and the “real” god, and in fact the whole “point” of Gnosticism is to be released from the prison of the material world (created by the demiurges against the will of “god”). This is why gnostics always manifest in history as dualists—they regard the body and matter as evil, and believe that our fundamental duty and calling in life is to rush to death so that our souls can be freed from our bodies and the material world—both of which are prisons. The problem with Gnosticism is more that than the idea of God allowing or empowering lesser beings to participate in creation. Of course, God did not in fact allow or empower the angles to create the world, but there is nothing contradictory to the nature of God to have done so. After all, He most definitely ennobles humankind to participate in the ongoing work of human creation. So, Tolkien’s creation myth isn’t identical to what scripture says about creation. But to call it gnostic and heretical, as the critic-priest has done, is an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to simply say that Tolkien’s creation myth didn’t happen. But that isn’t a very salacious claim. And everyone already knows that.
Regarding magic, this one is misunderstood by the critic-priest and also, I think, by Pearce. In Tolkien’s world the “magic” is really, by and large, special (as in, pertaining to species) powers some characters have. Gandalf is a maiar (analogous to an angel) who, by virtue of his nature, has certain special abilities. Same with elves and the Numenorians. I know that the word “magic” is used at times (more in the Hobbit, I think, than in LotR) but it simply isn’t. It’s something else. The only magic in the actual sense (i.e., alchemical attempts and other endeavors to exercise unnatural power over nature) is used exclusively by the bad guys, and the point is always that they are acting unlawfully and that havoc ensues.
Tolkien and Modernity
I’m going to leave my defense there, and close with this: in his second conference, the critic-priest more or less argues that the reason LotR is popular is that it affirms all the insipid assumptions and values of modernity. I vehemently disagree with that, and some of the reasons why are included in my defense above, but a complete treatment of that topic will need to be left for another post. As a matter of fact, I think that the reason Tolkien is popular is exactly the opposite.
No one actually likes modernity, or few do. Modernity is characterized by purposelessness, alienating individuality, and an insufferably mundane malaise (among other things). The modern condition is a miserable one, and even godless people will tell you that. The reason that LotR is so popular is that it is not these things. In Middle Earth, everyone and everything has a purpose, even if that purpose is not yet revealed. In Middle Earth there are peoples with strong identities and cultures. In Middle Earth, despondency is overcome by heroism.
Contrary to the progressivist principle that over the passage of time mankind inevitably improves and progresses, Middle Earth is a place where unless there are noble and virtuous men to preserve and guard what is good in the world, people decay and decline. Tolkien upholds the doctrine of degeneration rather than progress, as Middle Earth is a place where unless the good guys are vigilant, the devil devours and over time cultures and civilizations decline rather than improve. There is hardly anything more anti-modern than the idea that things get worse, not better, over time.
Our own times and culture as so modern, so progressive, etc. that Tolkien’s work provides a welcome respite. Of course, the primary reason for the condition of the modern world is that the Church has been infiltrated and her authority has all but completely disappeared. And Tolkien’s work is no substitute for a functioning Catholic hierarchy and teaching Church. No one—least of all Tolkien himself—would ever even remotely suggest otherwise. But Tolkien is a lot more accessible than the Catholic Church (notwithstanding the various attempts to corrupt his work, too). And people feel like they are taking less of a risk reading a book of fiction than reading the Gospel or a catechism.
Finally, I would hardly say that Simeon needs to stop everything and start reading LotR again. I think we all know there are things, including good things, that some of us give up because we struggle to use them in moderation. That is the right thing to do. So don’t take my response as an indication that Simeon did the wrong thing.
If there is anything specific about the presentation that I didn't address and someone would like me to, please bring it up. I'm in the mood to talk Tolkien.
Most excellent. This indeeds to be brought up again and again.
As I re-read LOTR for the umptieth time (on ROTK right now, trying to complete it before Gaudete Sunday) there is always something new that continues to illustrate Tolkien's Catholicity in the text.
I remember the sense of revelation I received, many ages ago when i just began delving more deeply into Tolkien's works, when I understood WHO it was/is that was responsible for having made Bilbo find the One Ring, which begins "the economy of salvation of Middle Earth" in the Third Age and ends with the only Person Who could truly be the direct agent in destroying the Ring. That was a truly "Whoa!" moment.
I am always eager to further develop my understanding of Tolkien's work, which naturally increases my appreciation and enthusiasm.
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Tolkien himself said that the LOTR was profoundly Catholic. It just takes time to delve into his works to see how this all works out. (https://www.cathinfo.com/Smileys/classic/smirk.gif)
True, but Tolkien's use of symbolism is much more subtle than (as an example, C.S. Lewis') allegory.
An allegory is a narrative that cannot be read without getting "the message" (i.e. the tales of Narnia are unquestionably Christian). Tolkien didn't like allegory and thought it was too specific, since there was only 1 interpretation allowed. Thus, he used symbolism, which is why his works appeal to both Catholics and non-catholics.
As you point out, once you start "delving into his works", you start to notice the Catholic details, and the hidden interpretation of many things is brought to light. As an example, a normal reader can easily understand the "One Ring" as idea of temptation, lust for power, pride, etc. But a deeper, more Catholic understanding of it is sinful human nature, which must be kept in check or it will destroy your entire world.
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Thank you, Mith! Exactly what I was hoping for. A point by point rebuttal.
I'll need time to read and think about all of this.
Glad you popped in!
Glad you took the time to listen to and actually think about what the priest actually said.
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True, but Tolkien's use of symbolism is much more subtle than (as an example, C.S. Lewis') allegory.
An allegory is a narrative that cannot be read without getting "the message" (i.e. the tales of Narnia are unquestionably Christian). Tolkien didn't like allegory and thought it was too specific, since there was only 1 interpretation allowed. Thus, he used symbolism, which is why his works appeal to both Catholics and non-catholics.
As you point out, once you start "delving into his works", you start to notice the Catholic details, and the hidden interpretation of many things is brought to light. As an example, a normal reader can easily understand the "One Ring" as idea of temptation, lust for power, pride, etc. But a deeper, more Catholic understanding of it is sinful human nature, which must be kept in check or it will destroy your entire world.
Therein lies the greater richness and depth to Tolkien's work. :smirk:
The One Ring....as thou hast said.....which is why sin requires God's grace through the Sacrifice of the Cross to help us overcome sin.
We all are like Frodo in that sense, and we all have our Samwise Gamgees to help, in order that we might toss our Ring into the fires of Orodruin.
What I find a pain is that we have to put with all those damned Smeagol/Gollum types in life! :laugh1: Mercy and pity must stay the hand that wants to throttle those stinky slinkers!
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I got a little distracted from the topic as I was listening to the first talk. :laugh1: At time stamp 8:13, he mentions Louis de Wohl, author of numerous works of fiction on the saints (most of which I had read). To my surprise, with the information here, and reading wikipedia & references, I learned:
-He was a noble of Jєωιѕн Austrian and Hungarian descent, born in Germany in 1903. Aka: Ludwig von Wohl, born: Lajos Theodor Gaspar Adolf Wohl.
-His mother a hereditary Baroness of Dreifus, Austria
-Wikipedia: "born in Berlin to a poor Catholic family."
-Started writing when he was 7, and was a successful novelist in his youth.
-was a banker at age 17 around the time his father died, fired at age 21.
-Became a dress designer & movie advertiser, a screenwriter, & had 16 of his novels made into movies when he was still in his 20-30's.
-1928 wrote a book called Secret Service of the Sky (age 25)
-Emigrated to Britain in 1935, age 32.
-Astrologer, cigar smoker, liked to play cards for money, liked to dress up in women's clothes, usually wore a flowing robe or silken dressing gown, always prosperous & loved luxury and opulence.
-Most of his objects of daily use were engraved with a baronial coat of arms.
-Was not allowed to be a volunteer at the front during WWII because he was "not a British national" but in 1940 started working for British intelligence, MI5, as an astrologer in special ops & psychological warfare.
-His autobiography was published in 1937 when he was only 34.
Title: I Follow my Stars.
-He wrote several other books on astrology.
-In 1945-46 he retired from the military and "converted" to Catholicism, but wrote his last book with astrological content in 1952, @ his work with MI5.
-1953 Married a well known German novelist, Ruth Feiner (Jєωιѕн name) aka Ruth Magdalene Lorch.
-He called himself the "modern Nostradamus." (from his MI5 file released in 2008).
-Wrote a 1946 novel called Strange Daughter @ "Catholic astrology."
-His wife was a Lady Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre & he held the title of Knight Commander of the Holy Sepulchre.
-Died age 58, in 1961, in Lucerne,Switzerland where he lived his last years.
:confused: Lots of red flags here from start to finish. Would never have imagined this would be his bio.
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MITH: In Tolkien’s view, fiction is better rendered not without allegory, but where the allegory has a more generalized character—for instance, he described LotR is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that it was also an allegory of power (Letters 142 & 186). He said in another letter that “the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it." (letter 109). Clearly, it just isn't true to say that Tolkien disliked allegory full stop and leave it at that.
I do not deny that Tolkien stated in one of his letters that LOTR is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. However I strongly dispute his claim.
Nor do I deny that Tolkien discussed allegory at length in both his written work and even in his lecture hall. It's part and parcel of being a professor of Literature. He was, I'm confident, an expert in his field. Nor do I imagine that he could completely omit to discuss allegory in relation to his canon of writing.
Question, Mith, since you seem to have studied this subject in depth. Can you produce any citations from Tolkien's essays or letters wherein he goes into greater detail about the quality of his work being fundamentally religious and Catholic? Or is the quote you provided a naked assertion, and one of its kind?
Similarly, does Tolkien anywhere discuss the inclusion, in his epic, of magic and of fantastical creatures/characters, in relation to his decision to exclude the true God from his universe, and also in relation to his decision to create a fictional creation account for his Middle Earth?
If Tolkien resolved the questions for the Catholic reader, where can we read his own words?
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MITH: This is kind of ironic… in the previous paragraph the critic-priest criticizes Tolkien for his dislike of allegory, and in this paragraph Tolkien’s problem is that he doesn’t trust enough in realism’s ability to transmit truth! You’ll have to pick one, you can’t have both .... But the problems with this criticism are even more serious than the criticism over allegory. For starters, the quote from Pearce is mangled beyond recognition.
Seems to me, Mith, that you are twisting the priest's words and meanings into a pretzel.
First of all, I don't see where he mangled the quote. The essential meanings, both of Pearce's assertion and of the priest's restatement of Pearce's assertion, are identical. In fact, the priest gave part of the Pearce's quote verbatim: "For Tolkien, myth had virtually the opposite meaning. It was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form."
Restated, the meaning is this: Tolkien had a unique conception of the role of mythology in literary form and structure, which was peculiar to him and which played a pivotal role in the construction of his narrative. (In my opinion, this is part of the justification or explanation for creating an imaginary, God-less universe and creation story.)
Ultimately there is no divergence of meaning between the priest's and Pearce's presentations of Tolkien's viewpoint. The priest sets up Tolkien's view of mythology as a fact, and as a fact which neither you nor Pearce can deny, given you both assert it. You may certainly oppose and contradict the priest's application of principles to this fact; but you cannot deny the fact itself.
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MITH: Tolkien took myth to refer to the transcendental truths about reality, human nature, etc. and he preferred the mythic format to the “realistic novel” format for this very reason. Again, the critic-priest’s attempt to pigeon-hole Tolkien as being anti-Gospel or anti-Church is just vain.
Tolkien had a massive idea in his mind, and had to decide by what literary mechanism he would "incarnate" it.
His views on, and employment of mythologic formality, are exactly what you affirm - personal preferences, means chosen to accomplish his end. And as such, they belong to the subjective order.
Notwithstanding, the finished body of work, once it flies out of the nest of his mind and his hand, is no longer properly his member, but a thing subsisting in itself - an artifice, a virtual substance. And as such, it belongs to the objective order, and is most certainly the proper object both of literary criticism and of ecclesiastical scrutiny.
The priest is well within his rights and his authority.
P.S. Finished for tonight. I'll read more of your post tomorrow. God bless you, and may the force be with you! :laugh1:
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I have watched the first video and I have to say that I agree. LOTR is well written and has 'virtues' that many people in our current age are attracted to. But the 'pagan' elements corrupt the whole, I think many trads are giving it a free pass due to emotional reasons. I liked LOTR, they were entertaining movies (I have never read the books) but after I became traditional Catholic I started removing fictional works/video games/anime/manga/movies and all kinds of things from my life, I no longer can bring myself to spend time to consume media like it, it just doesn't entertain me anymore, I see all the 'little things'.
A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.
[Galatians 5:9 (https://www.drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=55&ch=5&l=9#x)]
Some will say that such works like LOTR helped bring them into the Church but God brings good out of all things, these things should only be a passing mark, something we thank God for for using for our salvation and leaving behind so it doesn't shackle us.
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I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings back-to-back in my twenties and it's a fond memory. I'd have to reread them to get an updated view.
The movies were garbage. You'll notice the hack Jew director Peter Jackson's following movie was King Kong, depicting a pretty white gentile woman in love with an ape (black boys) and the ugly jewboy Adrien Brody.
However, holding true to the view that anyone in the public eye is Judaized by virtue of being in the public eye, J.R.R. Tolkien was Judaized:
He drafted two letters to Rütten & Loening; only one survives, and his biographer Humphrey Carpenter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Carpenter) presumes that Unwin sent the other to Rütten & Loening. The surviving draft says[T 1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race#cite_note-Letters_25_July_1938-11)
I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian... But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jєωιѕн (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jєωιѕн) origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.[T 1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race#cite_note-Letters_25_July_1938-11)
"that gifted people."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race
So Tolkien plays the same game that male celebrities play when they object to people viewing them as ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ, while also declaring that there's nothing wrong with being ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ.
The fruit Thomas Merton once (twice, thrice?) expressed regret that he wasn't Jєωιѕн. And by "Jєωιѕн" not the Jews of the Old Testament but тαℓмυdic Jews.
With Catholics like these who needs enemies?
Jєωιѕн blood has meant nothing for 2000 years, according to the Church. The Jews who went on to compile the тαℓмυd are Children of the Devil.
Both Tolkien and his buddy C.S. Lewis were heavily Judaized, which is the main reason the Jєωιѕн establishment in the 1930s-1960s promoted them so forcefully. Lewis even married a Jewess.
I read somewhere, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Tolkien was a member of the British Monday Club. This was in the 1960s, when the official position of this club was to expel all non-whites from Britain. Maybe Tolkien learned a little too much a little too late.
The Monday Club wasn't bold enough to suggest expelling Jews from Britain because the Monday Club is Judaized and always has been.
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Simeon, ultimately the priest's point is that Tolkein's works are not 100% catholic so we should not read them. This is extremism.
Our Lord spoke in parables and taught by way of fantastic examples (i.e. pearl of great price, the camel through the eye of the needle, etc). God gave human nature an imagination, which part of our 'made-in-God's-image' power of creativity. Tolkein used imagination and creativity to create a world where the natural law battle of good vs evil takes place. Everything in his book is based on reality.
1. Wizards and magic - this is a real thing. See witchcraft. Tolkien just made his wizards (mostly) good.
2. Orcs, goblins, etc. These things are mostly bad in LOTR lore. These represent devils and evil men.
3. Elves, hobbits, men. These are based on angels, men of simpler times (i.e. peaceful Catholic Middle Ages) and modern men.
Etc, etc. Stories and fantasy, much like parables, help to teach principles and truths far better than the "raw facts" of a boring classroom. It's why fairy tales were invented - to teach children the dangers of strangers, and how to deal with life, in various situations.
There's no need to go overboard on this. God created imagination; this isn't the problem. Tolkien used his gift to tell stories that uplift the human spirit and teach the benefit of natural virtues. This is a good thing.
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Why do some people read the books once and never give it a second thought and others become so obsessed to the point where it almost destroys their lives? Likewise one person can read it as purely literature and someone else reads it and it alters their belief system.
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Simeon: I agree that that is correct. My understanding is that gnosticism is a weave of a multiplicity of falsities, with a dash of corrupted Christianity thrown in. A sewer of heresy, and Pope St. Pius X might qualify it, and certainly the underpinning of the demon we call Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ.
Pax: That's not a standard definition of gnosticism and it's way too broad to use.
Of course.
I was agreeing with a statement made by GB, not defining anything. Therefore, no need for precision of language.
Pax: I don't know anyone who claims that LOTR is catholic, so the application of heresy is misguided. Can't criticize a screwdriver for not being a hammer.
You need only read this thread to understand that a rather large swath of traditional Catholics, mostly men, many of them priests, will go their graves arguing for the authentic Catholicity of Tolkien’s opus. My dear! only today the priest in his sermon gave a detailed recapitulation of the misapprehension of the character of Galadriel in the minds of the men of middle earth. He cited actual material from LOTR, including the “lore” that no one enters Lothlorien without being permanently changed by her (I paraphrase – he pretty much did not). He likened Our Lady to Galadriel, the “lady of the woods,” under the aspect of Her being misapprehended by many men.
People write entire books on Tolkien, presenting the thesis that LOTR/Silmarillion is an authentically Catholic work. I’ve seen many comments on this forum and elsewhere online, where the arguments supporting this thesis get quite heated.
I know you don’t live under a rock, Pax; therefore I don’t understand how you might assert that you don’t know anyone who claims LOTR is Catholic. I’ve had SSPX priests look me in the eye and insist it’s Catholic.
Pax: Simeon, ultimately the priest's point is that Tolkein's works are not 100% catholic so we should not read them. This is extremism.
You said you did not listen to the talks. I’ve listened to them three times – alpha to omega. The priest’s ultimate point is categorically NOT that Tolkien’s works are not 100% Catholic, ergo we should not read them. Nowhere does the priest set up the “not 100% Catholic” gold standard. You are the author of that standard. Do not put it in the mind and mouth of the priest.
I know this man in real life. He is an avid consumer of literature. He does not condemn it. He recommends it, as part of the proper development of the human mind and character. He’s never not in the middle of some elevated work of fiction. I’ve listened to vast multitudes of his sermons and talks, and have corresponded with him privately. Nowhere will you ever find him propounding the artificial standard you have contrived in this thread.
His ultimate point is that LOTR/Silmarillion is heretical and gnostic-leaning. The standard by which he judges it is the integral Catholic Faith. The principles he applies are the same that once governed the determinations on candidates for the Index.
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therefore I don’t understand how you might assert that you don’t know anyone who claims LOTR is Catholic.
To say some book is "Catholic" means its teaching the faith. Yes, Tolkien's work has Catholic ideals in it. But it's not meant to be a catechism, nor is it meant to teach doctrine. The author was Catholic, *some* of the narrative is catholic, but that's the extent of it.
His ultimate point is that LOTR/Silmarillion is heretical and gnostic-leaning.
It's an odd thing to label something 'heretical' which was never meant to be Faith-focused.
If I go to a ball-game, which has nothing to do with catholicism, but there is a 'moment of silence' before the game to pray for (insert reason), does this mean the event was 'heretical' because a catholic prayer wasn't used?
If a catholic boys baseball team plays a protestant baseball team, does this make the game schismatic?
Putting aside the term 'heretical'...is the book 'dangerous to the Faith'? Does it overtly undermine doctrine or morals? No. Harry Potter? Absolutely.
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Hi Simeon,
Thank you for sharing the videos, this is an interesting topic. I listened to all of the first one and much of the second thus far.
I'm noticing one argument running through the first video can be summed up as follows: "Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a myth (or written in a mythic "fantasy" style), myths have no use for a Catholic (according to select biblical and Church Father quotes), therefore the Lord of the Rings and other similar works have no use for a Catholic." The inference of the speaker is that Catholics should never read myths or mythic stories, whether from Tolkien or other sources (presumably Greco-Roman as well), and that no benefit can be gained by reading them.
However, this mindset actually appears to be quite alien to the traditional structure of the "classical education" that was championed by Catholic institutions for centuries. Dante could never have written the Divine Comedy if he had first not read the mythic works of Virgil and others. And before the Rennaissance in the profoundly medieval period, not counting Meister Eckhart, inferences to Greco-Roman mythology are actually numerous throughout its literature. Notably, they did not believe the myths literally (i.e. as a pagan worldview), but they had to have been reading them. And even more recently, literary figures such as John Senior (author of The Death of Christian Culture) and Andrew Senior who were Traditional Catholic advocated for a return to the "classical education" that included works like Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which are saturated with mythology. These were included along with other works of an overtly Catholic nature such as The Confessions of St. Augustine etc.
As a polite criticism, I think a possible misstep of the videos (and perhaps some of Paula Haigh's works as well) is that they overlook the following: there appears to be more than one way a Catholic can approach myths and mythology. Some of these ways are bad, and some are good. A "bad" way would of course be to literally adopt the myths as a theology or try to "force fit" the pagan theology into the Catholic theology. This is the error most of the quoted scriptural/Church Father quotes appear to be referring to when they speak against "myths" etc. However, the "good" way to approach the Greco-Roman myths (at least as espoused by a traditional Catholic classical education) would be as follows: admit from the outset that the pagan theology within is false, and read the myths not for the purpose of finding any kind of literal theological truth, but to better recognize (A) what these civilizations got wrong (i.e., the consequences of the pagan theology) (B), what these civilizations got right in a general sense (i.e., glimmers of morality/justice), and (C) appreciate the literary/poetic value of the works, which came to leave an indelible mark on artistic endeavor throughout Catholic Western Civilization. It is worth noting that this Western Civilization the Catholic Church flourished in ultimately was more influenced culturally by the Greco-Roman civilizations than the Judaic ones. Hence why the Mass ended up persisting in the "pagan" Roman language of Latin rather than being in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish...
With regard to (B), it is is interesting to explore how even the ancient pagans got some things surprisingly right. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas's unlawful relations with queen Dido lead to nothing but chaos and destruction. The Greek tragedies basically explore the consequences of sin, guilt, and the chaos caused by it, albeit without a proper resolution via forgiveness.
And then there are some themes with an uncanny resemblance to what would come later. For example, in Homer's Odyssey, Athena is basically a mediator between "the gods" such as Zeus and "men" like Odysseus. Interesting. I'm not necessarily saying this was some kind of "preparation" for the coming of Christ, something which St. Eusebius apparently does not agree with (at least per the speaker in the video ; would be worthwhile to look up the actual quote). However, the "foreshadowing" in some cases is certainly curious. Perhaps in the same way some of the Greeks were great philosophers/logicians (even to the point that St. Thomas Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotle's methods for his theological works), maybe some of the Greeks/Romans that wrote those myths ruminated on things enough that they got some things right, even within the bounds of their flawed false theology. This doesn't make them Catholic, but it is interesting to observe.
Obviously, some would argue that the Tolkien is in a different category, as it is not an ancient work and was written after the coming of Christ. However, if I remember correctly (and Tolkien scholars out there correct me if this is wrong), part of the reason Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings etc. in a mythic style was due to the British lamenting there was no uniquely "English" mythology which influenced the world/Western Civilization in the same way the Greco-Roman mythology/civilization did. Tolkien was motivated to create a speculative "mythology" that would have existed in England before Christ; an imaginative English "equivalent" to what was going on in Greece and Italy Therefore, Tolkien's works represented a theoretical perfect English mythology, the "ideal" mythology that England "would have had" before the coming of Christ. If true, that would explain a lot about the way he wrote it the way he did; he wanted to make it "authentic" as a theoretical BC mythology, so he purposely made the Catholic concepts more covert than overt, and included the Scandinavian-esque theological elements that might also have been prevalent in ancient England. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but an interesting thought.
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Hi Simeon,
Thank you for sharing the videos, this is an interesting topic. I listened to all of the first one and much of the second thus far.
I'm noticing one argument running through the first video can be summed up as follows: "Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a myth (or written in a mythic "fantasy" style), myths have no use for a Catholic (according to select biblical and Church Father quotes), therefore the Lord of the Rings and other similar works have no use for a Catholic." The inference of the speaker is that Catholics should never read myths or mythic stories, whether from Tolkien or other sources (presumably Greco-Roman as well), and that no benefit can be gained by reading them.
However, this mindset actually appears to be quite alien to the traditional structure of the "classical education" that was championed by Catholic institutions for centuries. Dante could never have written the Divine Comedy if he had first not read the mythic works of Virgil and others. And before the Rennaissance in the profoundly medieval period, not counting Meister Eckhart, inferences to Greco-Roman mythology are actually numerous throughout its literature. Notably, they did not believe the myths literally (i.e. as a pagan worldview), but they had to have been reading them. And even more recently, literary figures such as John Senior (author of The Death of Christian Culture) and Andrew Senior who were Traditional Catholic advocated for a return to the "classical education" that included works like Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which are saturated with mythology. These were included along with other works of an overtly Catholic nature such as The Confessions of St. Augustine etc.
As a polite criticism, I think a possible misstep of the videos (and perhaps some of Paula Haigh's works as well) is that they overlook the following: there appears to be more than one way a Catholic can approach myths and mythology. Some of these ways are bad, and some are good. A "bad" way would of course be to literally adopt the myths as a theology or try to "force fit" the pagan theology into the Catholic theology. This is the error most of the quoted scriptural/Church Father quotes appear to be referring to when they speak against "myths" etc. However, the "good" way to approach the Greco-Roman myths (at least as espoused by a traditional Catholic classical education) would be as follows: admit from the outset that the pagan theology within is false, and read the myths not for the purpose of finding any kind of literal theological truth, but to better recognize (A) what these civilizations got wrong (i.e., the consequences of the pagan theology) (B), what these civilizations got right in a general sense (i.e., glimmers of morality/justice), and (C) appreciate the literary/poetic value of the works, which came to leave an indelible mark on artistic endeavor throughout Catholic Western Civilization. It is worth noting that this Western Civilization the Catholic Church flourished in ultimately was more influenced culturally by the Greco-Roman civilizations than the Judaic ones. Hence why the Mass ended up persisting in the "pagan" Roman language of Latin rather than being in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish...
With regard to (B), it is is interesting to explore how even the ancient pagans got some things surprisingly right. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas's unlawful relations with queen Dido lead to nothing but chaos and destruction. The Greek tragedies basically explore the consequences of sin, guilt, and the chaos caused by it, albeit without a proper resolution via forgiveness.
And then there are some themes with an uncanny resemblance to what would come later. For example, in Homer's Odyssey, Athena is basically a mediator between "the gods" such as Zeus and "men" like Odysseus. Interesting. I'm not necessarily saying this was some kind of "preparation" for the coming of Christ, something which St. Eusebius apparently does not agree with (at least per the speaker in the video ; would be worthwhile to look up the actual quote). However, the "foreshadowing" in some cases is certainly curious. Perhaps in the same way some of the Greeks were great philosophers/logicians (even to the point that St. Thomas Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotle's methods for his theological works), maybe some of the Greeks/Romans that wrote those myths ruminated on things enough that they got some things right, even within the bounds of their flawed false theology. This doesn't make them Catholic, but it is interesting to observe.
Obviously, some would argue that the Tolkien is in a different category, as it is not an ancient work and was written after the coming of Christ. However, if I remember correctly (and Tolkien scholars out there correct me if this is wrong), part of the reason Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings etc. in a mythic style was due to the British lamenting there was no uniquely "English" mythology which influenced the world/Western Civilization in the same way the Greco-Roman mythology/civilization did. Tolkien was motivated to create a speculative "mythology" that would have existed in England before Christ; an imaginative English "equivalent" to what was going on in Greece and Italy Therefore, Tolkien's works represented a theoretical perfect English mythology, the "ideal" mythology that England "would have had" before the coming of Christ. If true, that would explain a lot about the way he wrote it the way he did; he wanted to make it "authentic" as a theoretical BC mythology, so he purposely made the Catholic concepts more covert than overt, and included the Scandinavian-esque theological elements that might also have been prevalent in ancient England. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but an interesting thought.
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reply. My head is literally spinning right now from excessive posting in the other thread. I can't read what you wrote until tomorrow, but I am really looking forward to it!
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After I became traditional Catholic I started removing fictional works/video games/anime/manga/movies and all kinds of things from my life, I no longer can bring myself to spend time to consume media like it, it just doesn't entertain me anymore, I see all the 'little things'.
A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.
[Galatians 5:9 (https://www.drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=55&ch=5&l=9#x)]
I agree. And it is way more entertaining reading CI :laugh1:
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Some thoughts on the material presented:
I think it was Alexander Pope who said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and I think that axiom applies to the critic-priest's presentation against Tolkien. What follows is a defense/response to some of the specific claims he makes. I thought I had written something like this years ago, but didn’t find it in my posting history. I've seen this presentation before. FYI, I'll be responding to the text copy rather than the audio. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fantasy-writing-of-tolkien-was.html
Although the priest is able, apparently, to provide some evidence for his claims, all the evidence is ill considered and divorced—sometimes violently and contradictorily—from its original context. A closer and more objective look at Tolkien sufficiently and resoundingly debunks or at least casts significant doubt on almost everything the critic-priest has to say about him.
I am going to focus mainly on the first part of the presentation, since that is the part where he makes his case against Tolkien. I’ll take it in order. I’m not responding to literally everything he said, but I am certainly attempting to respond what I believe are all his main points.
Regarding myth and allegory…
Tolkien did not have some irrational phobia of allegory. What Tolkien had was a cordial distaste for a very specific kind of allegory, i.e., the kind of allegory where there is only one possible meaning or interpretation of a figure, event, place, artifact, etc. Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia is a good example of this—Aslan is simply Christ, full stop. There’s nothing more or less to interpreting the character. In Tolkien’s view, fiction is better rendered not without allegory, but where the allegory has a more generalized character—for instance, he described LotR is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that it was also an allegory of power (Letters 142 & 186). He said in another letter that “the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it." (letter 109). Clearly, it just isn't true to say that Tolkien disliked allegory full stop and leave it at that.
Ironically, the kind of allegory Tolkien uses—the kind which he believes is not just tolerable but actually inextricable from a good story—is exactly the kind that scripture uses! Scripture does not have 1:1 allegories. Melchisidech is not an allegory for Christ, but an allegory for Christ, and for the new priesthood, and for the sacrifice of the Mass, etc. The critic-priest’s suggestion that Tolkien is anti-allegorical is simply false, and his further implication that in being anti-allegorical Tolkien runs afoul of God and scripture is even more false.
This is kind of ironic… in the previous paragraph the critic-priest criticizes Tolkien for his dislike of allegory, and in this paragraph Tolkien’s problem is that he doesn’t trust enough in realism’s ability to transmit truth! You’ll have to pick one, you can’t have both. This reads like someone who is simply searching for problems, without any attention to whether the overall critique is coherent.
But the problems with this criticism are even more serious than the criticism over allegory. For starters, the quote from Pearce is mangled beyond recognition. Here is what Pearce actually said:
“[Tolkien] understood the meaning of myth in a way that has not been grasped by his critics and this misapprehension is at the very root of their failure to appreciate his work. For most modern critics, a myth is merely another word for a lie or a falsehood, something which is intrinsically not true. For Tolkien, myth had virtually the opposite meaning. It was the only way that certain transcendent truths could be expressed in intelligible form" (Pearce, p. XIII).
Are alarm bells ringing? You bet. Anyways, I think Pearce’s description here is completely accurate, based on what I’ve read of and from Tolkien. Tolkien took myth to refer to the transcendental truths about reality, human nature, etc. and he preferred the mythic format to the “realistic novel” format for this very reason. Again, the critic-priest’s attempt to pigeon-hole Tolkien as being anti-Gospel or anti-Church is just vain.
A quick aside, since the critic-priest seems to rely almost exclusively on Pearce for his analysis: Pearce is a relatively competent Tolkien scholar, but at the end of the day he is one of many Tolkien scholars and I personally don’t agree with everything Pearce has to say about Tolkien’s work. And that’s usually the case when it comes to scholarship. Scholarship is arguable, and there are different sides and interpretations available. The critic-priest should not use Pearce as though he is the singular authority of Tolkien. A serious critique of Tolkien would need to take more than just one author’s view. And it would also need to incorporate the things that Tolkien himself said, which the critic-priest only infrequently does.
The Problem with Myth...
Moving on, the critic-priest spends several paragraphs talking about how myth is inferior to the gospel and how the proof is in the pudding so to speak—in the 60s and 70s (the two decades following LotR’s release) people lost faith rather than being buffeted in it or converted to it. But the critic-priest has already mischaracterized what Tolkien has in mind by myth, so his various quotes from Pius XII and references to Baruch are just inapplicable. Moreover, the critic priest by this point has subtly shifted his premise: he is essentially, by this point, supposing that Tolkien’s intent in writing LotR was to provide a mythology to supplant Christianity! An outrageous assumption, frankly. If the critic-priest was laboring under the assumption that LotR is a sufficient replacement for going to Mass, believing the truths of the catechism, following the moral law, etc., then that’s his problem or the problem of whoever sold him LotR… it’s not Tolkien’s. And the suggestion that the cultural revolution is in some way related to the proliferation of Lotr is… ridiculous. I’m sure readers of Cathinfo can find a perfectly satisfactory alternative explanation to why the 1960s and 70s were times of rapid moral decline without blaming Tolkien 😉
Now, the truth is that the Church has long tolerated myth (there are times and places where treatises against myths were issued, and this was because in those times and places the myths were actual substitute religions—intended as such, and taken as such; clearly not a fair comparison to LotR). An ecclesiastical education has always required students to learn Latin and Greek, and the mode of learning these languages was to read the ancient Roman and Greek pagan myths. St. Basil has a rather famous treatise on the right way to approach the works of the pagans, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: take them where they are good, and be ready to identify (and leave them) where they are bad. Tolkien—who was a practicing and devout Catholic, whatever his failures are—must, as a mythmaker, certainly get more credit than actual literal pagan mythmakers. At worst, St. Basil’s rule applies to Tolkien, too. Take him where he is good, leave him where he is not. Avoid him at all costs because myths are evil? This is hysterical.
Briefly I also want to mention the critic-priests naturalization of mythical creatures in scripture. He says the unicorn is a rhinoceros, the leviathan a whale, etc…. While these are probably acceptable interpretations, they’re by no means the only ones. Personally I think David really did mean unicorns, and he also mentions basilisks, and Isais mentions vampires—not sure how we naturalize a basilisk or a vampire. At any rate, I just want to point out that the critic-priest has constantly shifting standards, and it seems that as long as he can make a point against Tolkien he’ll do it, regardless of how consistent the point is with the rest of his critique. So far Tolkien is bad because: he rejects the symbolism of allegory, but also because he rejects the truthful nature of realism, and also he rejects the naturalistic interpretations of mythical creatures in scripture… there's a lot of internal tension in this criticism that on the one hand says Tolkien should have greater appreciation for symbolism, on the other he needs greater appreciation for realism, all from a man who takes mythical references in scripture and gives naturalist interpretations of them... It doesn't jive well.
There are a variety of simply factual errors too… Meister Eckhart’s condemnation had nothing to do with anything remotely analogous to what Tolkien was up to. Theosophy has nothing to do with what Tolkien was up to. Matthew Fox? C’mon. This is just a very vague smear by very, very remote association.
At any rate, the vast majority of the critic-priest’s criticism of Tolkien as a myth-maker falls flat because he is treating some generic kind of myth, and the worst kind, rather than what Tolkien actually had in mind.
The Silmarillion, Gnosticism, Magic
Moving on to the Critic-priest’s more specific problems with LotR and the Silmarillion… The fundamental problem here seems to simply be this: Tolkien didn’t write the Gospel or a catechism. He points out dissimilarities between parts of Tolkien’s story and scripture or Tradition, and then uses these dissimilarities to argue that Tolkien’s myth is incapable of communicating truth. The critic-priest sounds like the type who needs that 1:1 allegory to make sense of fiction.
I find that this critique, like all the others, ultimately reduces to the question not just of LotR, but of fiction per se. The critic priest—seriously, apparently—criticizes Gandalf for casting the Witch King into the abyss, without mentioning eternal punishment. From which we are supposed to infer that no such thing as eternal punishment exists, I guess?
This standard—the standard whereby fiction is deemed dangerous because it fails to mention every Catholic truth—renders fiction per se immoral. And I just don’t see how that is a conclusion we can take seriously. The Church has long been a patron of the liberal arts and of literature. Not all of it, of course, but much of it. Catholic education has included, without any tumult, experience with the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles, and many other iconic western writers. If the standard by which we judge fiction is whether or not it is literally identical to the deposit of faith, then clearly all fiction fails.
I’d like to address two more specific claims of the critic priest’s, and then wrap up. First, there’s the claim of Gnosticism in Tolkien’s creation myth. Then there’s the claims about Tolkien’s use of magic.
It is true that the Gnostics believed in a creation through intermediary beings instead of the Creator God, but Gnosticism holds that there is this awful tension and violence between the demiurges and the “real” god, and in fact the whole “point” of Gnosticism is to be released from the prison of the material world (created by the demiurges against the will of “god”). This is why gnostics always manifest in history as dualists—they regard the body and matter as evil, and believe that our fundamental duty and calling in life is to rush to death so that our souls can be freed from our bodies and the material world—both of which are prisons. The problem with Gnosticism is more that than the idea of God allowing or empowering lesser beings to participate in creation. Of course, God did not in fact allow or empower the angles to create the world, but there is nothing contradictory to the nature of God to have done so. After all, He most definitely ennobles humankind to participate in the ongoing work of human creation. So, Tolkien’s creation myth isn’t identical to what scripture says about creation. But to call it gnostic and heretical, as the critic-priest has done, is an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to simply say that Tolkien’s creation myth didn’t happen. But that isn’t a very salacious claim. And everyone already knows that.
Regarding magic, this one is misunderstood by the critic-priest and also, I think, by Pearce. In Tolkien’s world the “magic” is really, by and large, special (as in, pertaining to species) powers some characters have. Gandalf is a maiar (analogous to an angel) who, by virtue of his nature, has certain special abilities. Same with elves and the Numenorians. I know that the word “magic” is used at times (more in the Hobbit, I think, than in LotR) but it simply isn’t. It’s something else. The only magic in the actual sense (i.e., alchemical attempts and other endeavors to exercise unnatural power over nature) is used exclusively by the bad guys, and the point is always that they are acting unlawfully and that havoc ensues.
Tolkien and Modernity
I’m going to leave my defense there, and close with this: in his second conference, the critic-priest more or less argues that the reason LotR is popular is that it affirms all the insipid assumptions and values of modernity. I vehemently disagree with that, and some of the reasons why are included in my defense above, but a complete treatment of that topic will need to be left for another post. As a matter of fact, I think that the reason Tolkien is popular is exactly the opposite.
No one actually likes modernity, or few do. Modernity is characterized by purposelessness, alienating individuality, and an insufferably mundane malaise (among other things). The modern condition is a miserable one, and even godless people will tell you that. The reason that LotR is so popular is that it is not these things. In Middle Earth, everyone and everything has a purpose, even if that purpose is not yet revealed. In Middle Earth there are peoples with strong identities and cultures. In Middle Earth, despondency is overcome by heroism.
Contrary to the progressivist principle that over the passage of time mankind inevitably improves and progresses, Middle Earth is a place where unless there are noble and virtuous men to preserve and guard what is good in the world, people decay and decline. Tolkien upholds the doctrine of degeneration rather than progress, as Middle Earth is a place where unless the good guys are vigilant, the devil devours and over time cultures and civilizations decline rather than improve. There is hardly anything more anti-modern than the idea that things get worse, not better, over time.
Our own times and culture as so modern, so progressive, etc. that Tolkien’s work provides a welcome respite. Of course, the primary reason for the condition of the modern world is that the Church has been infiltrated and her authority has all but completely disappeared. And Tolkien’s work is no substitute for a functioning Catholic hierarchy and teaching Church. No one—least of all Tolkien himself—would ever even remotely suggest otherwise. But Tolkien is a lot more accessible than the Catholic Church (notwithstanding the various attempts to corrupt his work, too). And people feel like they are taking less of a risk reading a book of fiction than reading the Gospel or a catechism.
Finally, I would hardly say that Simeon needs to stop everything and start reading LotR again. I think we all know there are things, including good things, that some of us give up because we struggle to use them in moderation. That is the right thing to do. So don’t take my response as an indication that Simeon did the wrong thing.
If there is anything specific about the presentation that I didn't address and someone would like me to, please bring it up. I'm in the mood to talk Tolkien.
Still, I am a little spooked about the Ainur and any telling of a story of creation that looks so much like the story of actual creation... that departs from the truth that God alone created - not the angels, as implied with the narrative of the Ainur.
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I got a little distracted from the topic as I was listening to the first talk. :laugh1: At time stamp 8:13, he mentions Louis de Wohl, author of numerous works of fiction on the saints (most of which I had read). To my surprise, with the information here, and reading wikipedia & references, I learned:
-He was a noble of Jєωιѕн Austrian and Hungarian descent, born in Germany in 1903. Aka: Ludwig von Wohl, born: Lajos Theodor Gaspar Adolf Wohl.
-His mother a hereditary Baroness of Dreifus, Austria
-Wikipedia: "born in Berlin to a poor Catholic family."
-Started writing when he was 7, and was a successful novelist in his youth.
-was a banker at age 17 around the time his father died, fired at age 21.
-Became a dress designer & movie advertiser, a screenwriter, & had 16 of his novels made into movies when he was still in his 20-30's.
-1928 wrote a book called Secret Service of the Sky (age 25)
-Emigrated to Britain in 1935, age 32.
-Astrologer, cigar smoker, liked to play cards for money, liked to dress up in women's clothes, usually wore a flowing robe or silken dressing gown, always prosperous & loved luxury and opulence.
-Most of his objects of daily use were engraved with a baronial coat of arms.
-Was not allowed to be a volunteer at the front during WWII because he was "not a British national" but in 1940 started working for British intelligence, MI5, as an astrologer in special ops & psychological warfare.
-His autobiography was published in 1937 when he was only 34.
Title: I Follow my Stars.
-He wrote several other books on astrology.
-In 1945-46 he retired from the military and "converted" to Catholicism, but wrote his last book with astrological content in 1952, @ his work with MI5.
-1953 Married a well known German novelist, Ruth Feiner (Jєωιѕн name) aka Ruth Magdalene Lorch.
-He called himself the "modern Nostradamus." (from his MI5 file released in 2008).
-Wrote a 1946 novel called Strange Daughter @ "Catholic astrology."
-His wife was a Lady Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre & he held the title of Knight Commander of the Holy Sepulchre.
-Died age 58, in 1961, in Lucerne,Switzerland where he lived his last years.
:confused: Lots of red flags here from start to finish. Would never have imagined this would be his bio.
Don't you just love wikipedia for sussing out so many red flags?
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I have watched the first video and I have to say that I agree. LOTR is well written and has 'virtues' that many people in our current age are attracted to. But the 'pagan' elements corrupt the whole, I think many trads are giving it a free pass due to emotional reasons. I liked LOTR, they were entertaining movies (I have never read the books) but after I became traditional Catholic I started removing fictional works/video games/anime/manga/movies and all kinds of things from my life, I no longer can bring myself to spend time to consume media like it, it just doesn't entertain me anymore, I see all the 'little things'.
A little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.
[Galatians 5:9 (https://www.drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=55&ch=5&l=9#x)]
Some will say that such works like LOTR helped bring them into the Church but God brings good out of all things, these things should only be a passing mark, something we thank God for for using for our salvation and leaving behind so it doesn't shackle us.
I agree with everything you say here. When I threw LOTR into the dumpster the other day, my Sherlock Holmes collection went with it.
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Still, I am a little spooked about the Ainur and any telling of a story of creation that looks so much like the story of actual creation... that departs from the truth that God alone created - not the angels, as implied with the narrative of the Ainur.
I was so engrossed in LOTR that one day I decided to try the Silmarillion. I bought the audiobook and started listening. It scared me too, and I thought I might call down some displeasure from our Lord for wallowing in it. I chucked it before getting very far in; and am so glad I did.
Tolkien had to have wallowed in it for hours upon hours, days upon days, years upon years. He expended enormous energies upon it. You might even say that he put it on "like a garment; and it went in like water into his entrails, and like oil in his bones... and [it became unto him] like a garment which covereth him; and like a girdle with which he is girded continually." Psalm 108
This is how he employed his immense talent.
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Putting aside the term 'heretical'...is the book 'dangerous to the Faith'? Does it overtly undermine doctrine or morals? No. Harry Potter? Absolutely.
And I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I personally know SSPX Catholics who feed Harry Potter to their children, and go apeshit belligerent if you try to warn them about it.
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Hi Simeon,
Thank you for sharing the videos, this is an interesting topic. I listened to all of the first one and much of the second thus far.
I'm noticing one argument running through the first video can be summed up as follows: "Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a myth (or written in a mythic "fantasy" style), myths have no use for a Catholic (according to select biblical and Church Father quotes), therefore the Lord of the Rings and other similar works have no use for a Catholic." The inference of the speaker is that Catholics should never read myths or mythic stories, whether from Tolkien or other sources (presumably Greco-Roman as well), and that no benefit can be gained by reading them.
However, this mindset actually appears to be quite alien to the traditional structure of the "classical education" that was championed by Catholic institutions for centuries. Dante could never have written the Divine Comedy if he had first not read the mythic works of Virgil and others. And before the Rennaissance in the profoundly medieval period, not counting Meister Eckhart, inferences to Greco-Roman mythology are actually numerous throughout its literature. Notably, they did not believe the myths literally (i.e. as a pagan worldview), but they had to have been reading them. And even more recently, literary figures such as John Senior (author of The Death of Christian Culture) and Andrew Senior who were Traditional Catholic advocated for a return to the "classical education" that included works like Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which are saturated with mythology. These were included along with other works of an overtly Catholic nature such as The Confessions of St. Augustine etc.
As a polite criticism, I think a possible misstep of the videos (and perhaps some of Paula Haigh's works as well) is that they overlook the following: there appears to be more than one way a Catholic can approach myths and mythology. Some of these ways are bad, and some are good. A "bad" way would of course be to literally adopt the myths as a theology or try to "force fit" the pagan theology into the Catholic theology. This is the error most of the quoted scriptural/Church Father quotes appear to be referring to when they speak against "myths" etc. However, the "good" way to approach the Greco-Roman myths (at least as espoused by a traditional Catholic classical education) would be as follows: admit from the outset that the pagan theology within is false, and read the myths not for the purpose of finding any kind of literal theological truth, but to better recognize (A) what these civilizations got wrong (i.e., the consequences of the pagan theology) (B), what these civilizations got right in a general sense (i.e., glimmers of morality/justice), and (C) appreciate the literary/poetic value of the works, which came to leave an indelible mark on artistic endeavor throughout Catholic Western Civilization. It is worth noting that this Western Civilization the Catholic Church flourished in ultimately was more influenced culturally by the Greco-Roman civilizations than the Judaic ones. Hence why the Mass ended up persisting in the "pagan" Roman language of Latin rather than being in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish...
With regard to (B), it is is interesting to explore how even the ancient pagans got some things surprisingly right. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas's unlawful relations with queen Dido lead to nothing but chaos and destruction. The Greek tragedies basically explore the consequences of sin, guilt, and the chaos caused by it, albeit without a proper resolution via forgiveness.
And then there are some themes with an uncanny resemblance to what would come later. For example, in Homer's Odyssey, Athena is basically a mediator between "the gods" such as Zeus and "men" like Odysseus. Interesting. I'm not necessarily saying this was some kind of "preparation" for the coming of Christ, something which St. Eusebius apparently does not agree with (at least per the speaker in the video ; would be worthwhile to look up the actual quote). However, the "foreshadowing" in some cases is certainly curious. Perhaps in the same way some of the Greeks were great philosophers/logicians (even to the point that St. Thomas Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotle's methods for his theological works), maybe some of the Greeks/Romans that wrote those myths ruminated on things enough that they got some things right, even within the bounds of their flawed false theology. This doesn't make them Catholic, but it is interesting to observe.
Obviously, some would argue that the Tolkien is in a different category, as it is not an ancient work and was written after the coming of Christ. However, if I remember correctly (and Tolkien scholars out there correct me if this is wrong), part of the reason Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings etc. in a mythic style was due to the British lamenting there was no uniquely "English" mythology which influenced the world/Western Civilization in the same way the Greco-Roman mythology/civilization did. Tolkien was motivated to create a speculative "mythology" that would have existed in England before Christ; an imaginative English "equivalent" to what was going on in Greece and Italy Therefore, Tolkien's works represented a theoretical perfect English mythology, the "ideal" mythology that England "would have had" before the coming of Christ. If true, that would explain a lot about the way he wrote it the way he did; he wanted to make it "authentic" as a theoretical BC mythology, so he purposely made the Catholic concepts more covert than overt, and included the Scandinavian-esque theological elements that might also have been prevalent in ancient England. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but an interesting thought.
I need time to reply to you. Am studying St. Basil.
I'm so glad I started this thread. I'm learning a lot!
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Had to look up acedia in the dictionary.
acedia | əˈsēdēə | noun literary spiritual or mental sloth; apathy. ORIGIN early 17th century: via late Latin from Greek akēdia ‘listlessness’, from a- ‘without’ + kēdos ‘care’.
Thanks Mark!
I was too lazy to look it up.
:facepalm:
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True, but Tolkien's use of symbolism is much more subtle than (as an example, C.S. Lewis') allegory.
An allegory is a narrative that cannot be read without getting "the message" (i.e. the tales of Narnia are unquestionably Christian). Tolkien didn't like allegory and thought it was too specific, since there was only 1 interpretation allowed. Thus, he used symbolism, which is why his works appeal to both Catholics and non-catholics.
As you point out, once you start "delving into his works", you start to notice the Catholic details, and the hidden interpretation of many things is brought to light. As an example, a normal reader can easily understand the "One Ring" as idea of temptation, lust for power, pride, etc. But a deeper, more Catholic understanding of it is sinful human nature, which must be kept in check or it will destroy your entire world.
Now, if the (Indult) "critic priest" had evidence of Tolkien's Jєωιѕн lineage, maybe a LotR review symposium would be in order? :cowboy: But, that's not the case.
In fact, the Tolkien & Lewis friendship broke off, after the latter married a jewess.
(https://angelusnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/77d7mqd0pt_NR_art-1024x683.jpg)
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I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings back-to-back in my twenties and it's a fond memory. I'd have to reread them to get an updated view.
The movies were garbage. You'll notice the hack Jєω director Peter Jackson's following movie was King Kong, depicting a pretty white gentile woman in love with an ape (black boys) and the ugly Jєωboy Adrien Brody.
However, holding true to the view that anyone in the public eye is Judaized by virtue of being in the public eye, J.R.R. Tolkien was Judaized:
"that gifted people."
--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race
So Tolkien plays the same game that male celebrities play when they object to people viewing them as ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ, while also declaring that there's nothing wrong with being ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ.
The fruit Thomas Merton once (twice, thrice?) expressed regret that he wasn't Jєωιѕн. And by "Jєωιѕн" not the Jєωs of the Old Testament but тαℓмυdic Jєωs.
With Catholics like these who needs enemies?
Jєωιѕн blood has meant nothing for 2000 years, according to the Church. The Jєωs who went on to compile the тαℓмυd are Children of the Devil.
Both Tolkien and his buddy C.S. Lewis were heavily Judaized, which is the main reason the Jєωιѕн establishment in the 1930s-1960s promoted them so forcefully. Lewis even married a Jєωess.
I read somewhere, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Tolkien was a member of the British Monday Club. This was in the 1960s, when the official position of this club was to expel all non-whites from Britain. Maybe Tolkien learned a little too much a little too late.
The Monday Club wasn't bold enough to suggest expelling Jєωs from Britain because the Monday Club is Judaized and always has been.
Good points!
The silver lining is that Hollywood Jєωs were unable to omit some symbolic truths in the movie series:
(https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/50075/1001492344/original/the-first-age-began-with-the-elves-and-melkor-at-war-photo-u1?auto=format&q=60&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&dpr=2&w=375)
"It's a battle between Babylon and Jerusalem until the end of time."
(Source; Our Lady, "Mystical City of God)
(https://static1.moviewebimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/lord-of-the-rings-orcs-origin.jpeg)
The Babylonians are revolutionary Jєωs, symbolized as Orcs
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I agree with everything you say here. When I threw LOTR into the dumpster the other day, my Sherlock Holmes collection went with it.
Simeon, I also have let it go. I thank you for this thread, that opened my eyes. If we can free ourselves from the urge to be entertained, we begin to free ourselves from the world, and make more room for God.
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Simeon, I also have let it go. I thank you for this thread, that opened my eyes. If we can free ourselves from the urge to be entertained, we begin to free ourselves from the world, and make more room for God.
Well said!
First of all, let me properly welcome you to the forum, Persto. You seem to have a very lively spirit, and I like that. I presume you are young.
Secondly, I think in the OP I said that I posted the two talks in case anyone else might benefit from them, even though I figured it might get sweaty in here. But my praise goes out to the CI Tolkien men, who have posted here and have conducted themselves like perfect gentlemen. Makes my heart happy.
Thirdly, I've been getting heavily into the study of the desert Fathers and the ascetical practices. Only this week I picked up yet another gem of an axiom, and it squarely applies here. It goes like this: Say you have a cross - and lots of people even here have big crosses that they post about, like loneliness, etc.. And that's not to mention the huge crosses we all carry from the spits and blows of Vatican 2 and the modern world. I mean who isn't practically spent these days, right?
If you deliberately seek to distract yourself from that cross, by entertaining yourself and engrossing yourself in things that please the emotions and the lower nature, you literally make your cross ten times heavier, you make your soul heavy and lethargic, you loose oodles and oodles of signal graces and merit, and you create more misery for yourself. By trying to deflect the blows of the hammer, you turn pain into the "agony of defeat" - of one kind or another.
Emile wrote about spiritual retardation. Deflect the cross, go towards worldly distractions, and you are guilty of your own spiritual retardation.
For the cross has come to you from the hands of God; and He has a reason for burdening you down with it; and that reason is your eternal salvation.
Indeed, I picked up Tolkien, against stern warnings received in the past, with the conscious and deliberate intention of relieving severe grief from the last illnesses and recent loss of both my parents. From Tolkien I went on to Victorian literature. I did it deliberately because I couldn't get a handle on the grief. I got to the point where I was literally walking around with an audiobook in my ear all waking hours not devoted to prayer. I wanted to put my mind out of its misery. The result? Massive leakage of grace. Crippling case of acedia.
Now I know the experimental truth of the warnings of my "cautioneers." Already the misery is lifting, the mood is lifting, and the tears are drying up. So, I'm really glad you got a benefit from this too!
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Well said!
First of all, let me properly welcome you to the forum, Persto. You seem to have a very lively spirit, and I like that. I presume you are young.
Secondly, I think in the OP I said that I posted the two talks in case anyone else might benefit from them, even though I figured it might get sweaty in here. But my praise goes out to the CI Tolkien men, who have posted here and have conducted themselves like perfect gentlemen. Makes my heart happy.
Thirdly, I've been getting heavily into the study of the desert Fathers and the ascetical practices. Only this week I picked up yet another gem of an axiom, and it squarely applies here. It goes like this: Say you have a cross - and lots of people even here have big crosses that they post about, like loneliness, etc.. And that's not to mention the huge crosses we all carry from the spits and blows of Vatican 2 and the modern world. I mean who isn't practically spent these days, right?
If you deliberately seek to distract yourself from that cross, by entertaining yourself and engrossing yourself in things that please the emotions and the lower nature, you literally make your cross ten times heavier, you make your soul heavy and lethargic, you loose oodles and oodles of signal graces and merit, and you create more misery for yourself. By trying to deflect the blows of the hammer, you turn pain into the "agony of defeat" - of one kind or another.
Emile wrote about spiritual retardation. Deflect the cross, go towards worldly distractions, and you are guilty of your own spiritual retardation.
For the cross has come to you from the hands of God; and He has a reason for burdening you down with it; and that reason is your eternal salvation.
Indeed, I picked up Tolkien, against stern warnings received in the past, with the conscious and deliberate intention of relieving severe grief from the last illnesses and recent loss of both my parents. From Tolkien I went on to Victorian literature. I did it deliberately because I couldn't get a handle on the grief. I got to the point where I was literally walking around with an audiobook in my ear all waking hours not devoted to prayer. I wanted to put my mind out of its misery. The result? Massive leakage of grace. Crippling case of acedia.
Now I know the experimental truth of the warnings of my "cautioneers." Already the misery is lifting, the mood is lifting, and the tears are drying up. So, I'm really glad you got a benefit from this too!
Thank you for the welcome, Simeon! My condolences to you on the recent death of both your parents. I will keep them in my prayers!
Good advice to keep in mind, about carrying the crosses we face, and the loss of God's grace when we try to distract ourselves from the cross. I'm glad you are sharing the struggle, in order to help others.
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When I read the biography of Tolkien I remember the story of how, in 1970, he visited his home church and the priest started spouting out English. Tolkien rose up out of the pew and said, "This is supposed to be in Latin."
When I was in seminary I read all of Flannery O'Connor's short stories (about 30 of them), and while she is not in the same genre as a Tolkien or a C.S. Lewis, it might be interesting to start a different thread devoted to her. I remember Dr White telling us that he thought O'Connor was the greatest American writer.
I appreciated this thread. I love Tolkien for his poetry. I would often find myself being immersed in a Tolkien story, finding a nice poem in the storyline, only to put the book down and savor the poetry. "All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wonder are lost."
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When I read the biography of Tolkien I remember the story of how, in 1970, he visited his home church and the priest started spouting out English. Tolkien rose up out of the pew and said, "This is supposed to be in Latin."
When I was in seminary I read all of Flannery O'Connor's short stories (about 30 of them), and while she is not in the same genre as a Tolkien or a C.S. Lewis, it might be interesting to start a different thread devoted to her. I remember Dr White telling us that he thought O'Connor was the greatest American writer.
I appreciated this thread. I love Tolkien for his poetry. I would often find myself being immersed in a Tolkien story, finding a nice poem in the storyline, only to put the book down and savor the poetry. "All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wonder are lost."
I asked once on my Random αnтι-ѕємιтєs thread are there are any female novelists who aren't feminists and Mithrandylan unsurprisingly chimed in O'Connor. I found this strange view of hers:
(http://i.imgur.com/mVLMoLt.png)
Source:
Flannery O'Connor: New Perspectives
edited by Sura Prasad Rath, Mary Neff Shaw
https://www.cathinfo.com/members-only/random-'αnтι-ѕємιтєs'/15/
Not surprisingly I never recall her criticizing Jews. She was promoted strongly by the Jєωιѕн literary establishment, as have been practically all modern Catholic novelists taught in Catholic schools.
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MITH: Tolkien did not have some irrational phobia of allegory. What Tolkien had was a cordial distaste for a very specific kind of allegory, i.e., the kind of allegory where there is only one possible meaning or interpretation of a figure, event, place, artifact, etc.
That is correct. The priest did oversimplify; but he literally did not have time to present an in-depth study on every single one of his assertions. He was preaching, not writing a nuanced and scholarly critique.
Secondly, his oversimplification is only collateral to his thesis. It forms part of a multi-layered predication/introduction of the subject.
Thirdly, Tolkien himself said, "I dislike allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #131)
Thus Tolkien admits to using allegorical language to convey meaning through the structure of mythology. Essentially he has combined a personally fabricated mythology - complete with a full-spectrum creation account and even “indigenous languages” - with allegory. To use his own word, this method is “tricksy.” It’s myth, it’s allegory, but not conventional myth or 1:1 allegory. And all the Catholic fans just want to say, “It’s Catholic.”
Tolkien deftly synthesized allegory and mythology; and I think this is how he packed his punch, how he got a “big bang” (pun intended) out of his buck. And this is exactly why there is in his work a great potential for danger to Catholics. I’d go so far as to say that in synthesizing allegory, fantasy, and mythology – and in such a potent, well written, fascinating, verisimilar and all-encompassing conceptualization – he wields a kind of magic of his own, a power to cast real spells, to produce walking dream states in the unwary minds of men.
There’s nothing simple about any of this. Yet we know that God is simple.
Thus far, part 2 of my reply to you.
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MITH: Tolkien did not have some irrational phobia of allegory. What Tolkien had was a cordial distaste for a very specific kind of allegory, i.e., the kind of allegory where there is only one possible meaning or interpretation of a figure, event, place, artifact, etc.
That is correct. The priest did oversimplify; but he literally did not have time to present an in-depth study on every single one of his assertions. He was preaching, not writing a nuanced and scholarly critique.
Secondly, his oversimplification is only collateral to his thesis. It forms part of a multi-layered predication/introduction of the subject.
Thirdly, Tolkien himself said, "I dislike allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #131)
Thus Tolkien admits to using allegorical language to convey meaning through the structure of mythology. Essentially he has combined a personally fabricated mythology - complete with a full-spectrum creation account and even “indigenous languages” - with allegory. To use his own word, this method is “tricksy.” It’s myth, it’s allegory, but not conventional myth or 1:1 allegory. And all the Catholic fans just want to say, “It’s Catholic.”
Tolkien deftly synthesized allegory and mythology; and I think this is how he packed his punch, how he got a “big bang” (pun intended) out of his buck. And this is exactly why there is in his work a great potential for danger to Catholics. I’d go so far as to say that in synthesizing allegory, fantasy, and mythology – and in such a potent, well written, fascinating, verisimilar and all-encompassing conceptualization – he wields a kind of magic of his own, a power to cast real spells, to produce walking dream states in the unwary minds of men.
There’s nothing simple about any of this. Yet we know that God is simple.
Thus far, part 2 of my reply to you.
MITH: Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia is a good example of this—Aslan is simply Christ, full stop. There’s nothing more or less to interpreting the character. In Tolkien’s view, fiction is better rendered not without allegory, but where the allegory has a more generalized character—for instance, he described LotR is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and that it was also an allegory of power (Letters 142 & 186).
Another thought comes to my mind. We know that the principal doctrine of the modernists is evolution. I haven’t discussed Paula’s criticisms of Tolkien yet. I plan to do that when replying to Hansel. Yet she discovers numerous examples of modernism and evolutionism, not only in Tolkien’s canon, but also in his own comments.
Consider this idea of 1:1 allegory versus Tolkien’s concept of allegory, which you qualify as “more generalized.” May we replace "more generalized" with the word ‘ambiguous?’
Ambiguous - capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways.
Allegory - a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.
Can we agree that an entire phalanx of self-nominated Catholics (read: grifters) affirm that Vatican II is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work?”
Can we agree that the principal vector, i.e., linguistic structure, of the modernists is ambiguity (if not pure myth?)
What does ambiguity cause? It causes division, because as many minds as apply themselves to the interpretation of ambiguous language, as many interpretations appear.
And what does division cause? It causes distraction. And what does distraction cause? It causes dissipation. And what does dissipation cause? It causes sin and vice.
Tolkien fabricates a mythological creation story and a false cosmogony/hierarchy of being. It screams gnosticism; and is unequivocally opposed to Genesis and Catholic Dogma. Such a thing causes the same kinds of alarms that went off after the false council. How does Tolkien reply, even in advance, to his critics? The same way the false Vatican II hierarchy responds to the alarms of Catholics. Novelty and ambiguity - and a penchant for maneuvering out of being pinned down.
Certainly the Tolkien epic has created some division among Catholics; for instance when educated men and women try to warn people about it. Notice that the question never gets resolved. Just like the entire question of Vatican II never gets resolved.
Catholic linguistic structure is characterized by semantic and logical precision. Meaning is “yes, yes, no, no” - a kind of 1:1 system of signification. You will say, “Good grief, Tolkien wrote fiction! He wasn't defining dogma!”
And I would say, “Yes, and why then does anyone call LOTR “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work?”
I would say this also. There’s a wonderful collection of truly Catholic, and even non-Catholic fiction out there that doesn’t create division. Why do people argue about Tolkien’s books, but not those of other Catholic authors? Generally speaking, when Catholics argue with each other, it’s about integral truth. I believe that the divisive nature of Tolkien's work, alone, is a red flag.
The Silmarillion is blasphemous and out of bounds. Calling it fiction does not rehabilitate or justify it. And LOTR emanates from it, as pus from an infection. Gorgeous captivating pus, but pus nevertheless.
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Why do people argue about Tolkien’s books
I don’t know why people like you do such. Part of it is a false elevation of the work, and then you see the dangers of the elevation, so you must tear it down.
Most people don’t elevate it to begin with. They take it for a work of fiction, mixed with catholic symbolism. Thus, there’s no need to “rehabilitate” something that was never viewed as salvific or religious. It’s simply a fantasy story.
The fact that you compare it to V2, and use language such as blasphemous and heretical, shows that you give these books way more meaning than originally intended. The problem is not the story; it’s the reader.
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Alright! That's it...I've had enough! It's time to clean house!
(EWPJ storms into the ring and begins picking up and tossing hobbits all over the place....Frodo lands on PV and Simeon simultaneously knocking them both down to the canvas.)
(PV and Simeon start reaching for Frodo's ring but EWPJ is on the top rope and goes for a full on body splash landing on both fighters....SMASH! Frodo rolls out of the ring.)
(Before EWPJ can go for the pin all of the sudden somehow J.R. Tolkien enters the ring and smashes EWPJ in the dome with his volumuous works. EWPJ crashes to the canvas under the sheer heft of his books!)
(All fighters are down...the referee begins the count....1...2....3....4....5....all of the sudden Gandolf enters the ring and distracts the referee! During the fuss EWPJ manages to get up and gets a lighter that was thrown into the ring by a fan and proceeds to set Gandolfs robe alight! The pagan "wizard" is now on fire and proceeds back to the locker room area to try to put himself out.)
(The referee has lost control of this one and a no contest is declared and no one wins but the fans. THE END.)
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Alright! That's it...I've had enough! It's time to clean house!
(EWPJ storms into the ring and begins picking up and tossing hobbits all over the place....Frodo lands on PV and Simeon simultaneously knocking them both down to the canvas.)
(PV and Simeon start reaching for Frodo's ring but EWPJ is on the top rope and goes for a full on body splash landing on both fighters....SMASH! Frodo rolls out of the ring.)
(Before EWPJ can go for the pin all of the sudden somehow J.R. Tolkien enters the ring and smashes EWPJ in the dome with his volumuous works. EWPJ crashes to the canvas under the sheer heft of his books!)
(All fighters are down...the referee begins the count....1...2....3....4....5....all of the sudden Gandolf enters the ring and distracts the referee! During the fuss EWPJ manages to get up and gets a lighter that was thrown into the ring by a fan and proceeds to set Gandolfs robe alight! The pagan "wizard" is now on fire and proceeds back to the locker room area to try to put himself out.)
(The referee has lost control of this one and a no contest is declared and no one wins but the fans. THE END.)
:laugh1::laugh2:
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Alright! That's it...I've had enough! It's time to clean house!
(EWPJ storms into the ring and begins picking up and tossing hobbits all over the place....Frodo lands on PV and Simeon simultaneously knocking them both down to the canvas.)
(PV and Simeon start reaching for Frodo's ring but EWPJ is on the top rope and goes for a full on body splash landing on both fighters....SMASH! Frodo rolls out of the ring.)
(Before EWPJ can go for the pin all of the sudden somehow J.R. Tolkien enters the ring and smashes EWPJ in the dome with his volumuous works. EWPJ crashes to the canvas under the sheer heft of his books!)
(All fighters are down...the referee begins the count....1...2....3....4....5....all of the sudden Gandolf enters the ring and distracts the referee! During the fuss EWPJ manages to get up and gets a lighter that was thrown into the ring by a fan and proceeds to set Gandolfs robe alight! The pagan "wizard" is now on fire and proceeds back to the locker room area to try to put himself out.)
(The referee has lost control of this one and a no contest is declared and no one wins but the fans. THE END.)
Ah, ah, ah..... CS Lewis enters the ring, grabs the mic and declares Pax the hands down winner!
Pax breathes a sigh of relief. No more of Simeons's posts to contend with.
Simeon goes back to her kitchen to peruse recipes for Christmas struffoli.
Now, really, THE END!!
:laugh1::laugh2::laugh1::laugh2::cowboy:
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Simeon, just want to say that some of your points are valid, as are the priest's. I just think some of them are overboard. No hard feelings.
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That is correct. The priest did oversimplify; but he literally did not have time to present an in-depth study on every single one of his assertions. He was preaching, not writing a nuanced and scholarly critique.
Secondly, his oversimplification is only collateral to his thesis. It forms part of a multi-layered predication/introduction of the subject.
Thirdly, Tolkien himself said, "I dislike allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien #131)
Thus Tolkien admits to using allegorical language to convey meaning through the structure of mythology. Essentially he has combined a personally fabricated mythology - complete with a full-spectrum creation account and even “indigenous languages” - with allegory. To use his own word, this method is “tricksy.” It’s myth, it’s allegory, but not conventional myth or 1:1 allegory. And all the Catholic fans just want to say, “It’s Catholic.”
Tolkien deftly synthesized allegory and mythology; and I think this is how he packed his punch, how he got a “big bang” (pun intended) out of his buck. And this is exactly why there is in his work a great potential for danger to Catholics. I’d go so far as to say that in synthesizing allegory, fantasy, and mythology – and in such a potent, well written, fascinating, verisimilar and all-encompassing conceptualization – he wields a kind of magic of his own, a power to cast real spells, to produce walking dream states in the unwary minds of men.
There’s nothing simple about any of this. Yet we know that God is simple.
Thus far, part 2 of my reply to you.
The premise here is flawed. Tolkien doesn't say myth or fairytale must use allegory; he says an attempted explanation of the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language. He was referring to the allegorical language he was about to use in attempting to explain what his work is about, e.g. "All this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Morality, and the Machine..."
He says the less allegory is used in the story, the more allegorical language will need to be used in the interpretations, and vice versa: “And, of course, the more ‘life’ a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.” He is forced to use allegorical language in the explanation he gives in the letter for the very fact that he did not use deliberate allegory in the story.
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I asked once on my Random αnтι-ѕємιтєs thread are there are any female novelists who aren't feminists and Mithrandylan unsurprisingly chimed in O'Connor. I found this strange view of hers:
https://www.cathinfo.com/members-only/random-'αnтι-ѕємιтєs'/15/
Not surprisingly I never recall her criticizing Jews. She was promoted strongly by the Jєωιѕн literary establishment, as have been practically all modern Catholic novelists taught in Catholic schools.
Very interesting!
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And what does division cause? It causes distraction. And what does distraction cause? It causes dissipation. And what does dissipation cause? It causes sin and vice.
Very good observation!
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The Silmarillion is blasphemous and out of bounds. Calling it fiction does not rehabilitate or justify it. And LOTR emanates from it, as pus from an infection. Gorgeous captivating pus, but pus nevertheless.
Anytime you see use of magic portrayed in a positive light: "Fsst! [Fr. Ionnes Petrus' sound effect] Throw it out!"
Gandalf's glowing staff, gleaming swords when orcs are near, spells cast on doors to open them.... all of these represent a wish to conciliate hidden powers.
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Gandalf's glowing staff, gleaming swords when orcs are near, spells cast on doors to open them
Not necessarily. If someone from the Middle Ages were transported to our times, they'd confuse technology with magic (i.e. glowing flashlights, cell phones and punch-key door entry). Can't contribute something you don't understand to magic. Harry Potter overly uses spells, witchcraft and such. Tolkien uses the ancient languages in replacement of spells. Big difference.
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Most children need to read and comprehend the Bible. There is way too much fiction and immaturity these days.
Families should make time to know and love Jesus in order to serve Him.
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Hi Simeon,
Thank you for sharing the videos, this is an interesting topic. I listened to all of the first one and much of the second thus far.
I'm noticing one argument running through the first video can be summed up as follows: "Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a myth (or written in a mythic "fantasy" style), myths have no use for a Catholic (according to select biblical and Church Father quotes), therefore the Lord of the Rings and other similar works have no use for a Catholic." The inference of the speaker is that Catholics should never read myths or mythic stories, whether from Tolkien or other sources (presumably Greco-Roman as well), and that no benefit can be gained by reading them.
However, this mindset actually appears to be quite alien to the traditional structure of the "classical education" that was championed by Catholic institutions for centuries. Dante could never have written the Divine Comedy if he had first not read the mythic works of Virgil and others. And before the Rennaissance in the profoundly medieval period, not counting Meister Eckhart, inferences to Greco-Roman mythology are actually numerous throughout its literature. Notably, they did not believe the myths literally (i.e. as a pagan worldview), but they had to have been reading them. And even more recently, literary figures such as John Senior (author of The Death of Christian Culture) and Andrew Senior who were Traditional Catholic advocated for a return to the "classical education" that included works like Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which are saturated with mythology. These were included along with other works of an overtly Catholic nature such as The Confessions of St. Augustine etc.
As a polite criticism, I think a possible misstep of the videos (and perhaps some of Paula Haigh's works as well) is that they overlook the following: there appears to be more than one way a Catholic can approach myths and mythology. Some of these ways are bad, and some are good. A "bad" way would of course be to literally adopt the myths as a theology or try to "force fit" the pagan theology into the Catholic theology. This is the error most of the quoted scriptural/Church Father quotes appear to be referring to when they speak against "myths" etc. However, the "good" way to approach the Greco-Roman myths (at least as espoused by a traditional Catholic classical education) would be as follows: admit from the outset that the pagan theology within is false, and read the myths not for the purpose of finding any kind of literal theological truth, but to better recognize (A) what these civilizations got wrong (i.e., the consequences of the pagan theology) (B), what these civilizations got right in a general sense (i.e., glimmers of morality/justice), and (C) appreciate the literary/poetic value of the works, which came to leave an indelible mark on artistic endeavor throughout Catholic Western Civilization. It is worth noting that this Western Civilization the Catholic Church flourished in ultimately was more influenced culturally by the Greco-Roman civilizations than the Judaic ones. Hence why the Mass ended up persisting in the "pagan" Roman language of Latin rather than being in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish...
With regard to (B), it is is interesting to explore how even the ancient pagans got some things surprisingly right. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas's unlawful relations with queen Dido lead to nothing but chaos and destruction. The Greek tragedies basically explore the consequences of sin, guilt, and the chaos caused by it, albeit without a proper resolution via forgiveness.
And then there are some themes with an uncanny resemblance to what would come later. For example, in Homer's Odyssey, Athena is basically a mediator between "the gods" such as Zeus and "men" like Odysseus. Interesting. I'm not necessarily saying this was some kind of "preparation" for the coming of Christ, something which St. Eusebius apparently does not agree with (at least per the speaker in the video ; would be worthwhile to look up the actual quote). However, the "foreshadowing" in some cases is certainly curious. Perhaps in the same way some of the Greeks were great philosophers/logicians (even to the point that St. Thomas Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotle's methods for his theological works), maybe some of the Greeks/Romans that wrote those myths ruminated on things enough that they got some things right, even within the bounds of their flawed false theology. This doesn't make them Catholic, but it is interesting to observe.
Obviously, some would argue that the Tolkien is in a different category, as it is not an ancient work and was written after the coming of Christ. However, if I remember correctly (and Tolkien scholars out there correct me if this is wrong), part of the reason Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings etc. in a mythic style was due to the British lamenting there was no uniquely "English" mythology which influenced the world/Western Civilization in the same way the Greco-Roman mythology/civilization did. Tolkien was motivated to create a speculative "mythology" that would have existed in England before Christ; an imaginative English "equivalent" to what was going on in Greece and Italy Therefore, Tolkien's works represented a theoretical perfect English mythology, the "ideal" mythology that England "would have had" before the coming of Christ. If true, that would explain a lot about the way he wrote it the way he did; he wanted to make it "authentic" as a theoretical BC mythology, so he purposely made the Catholic concepts more covert than overt, and included the Scandinavian-esque theological elements that might also have been prevalent in ancient England. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but an interesting thought.
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This is a really, really good post. And yes, Tolkien stated a major motivation of his was to create a folklore for the Anglo people.
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This is a really, really good post. And yes, Tolkien stated a major motivation of his was to create a folklore for the Anglo people.
This is what my youngest son said the other night at supper. He loves folklore and mythology from antiquity.
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Simeon,
I'm content to say that Tolkien's work are a generalized allegory-- if you want to call it ambiguous fine, but you're proving too much. The "si si no no" rhetoric would undermine even the linguistic character of the Gospels, which are densely parabolic. In your studies on the desert fathers I'm sure you've encountered a variety of interpretations for the same passages of scripture. There is hardly anything intrinsically problematic about expressions from which multiple meanings can be drawn.
There is no singular Catholic linguistic structure, either. Logic and precision are the appropriate structures for works that aim to catechize or instruct. St. Augustine did not use that structure when writing Confessions. St. Theresa of Avila did not use that structure. Christ's parables certainly do not use that structure.
I disagree with pretty much everything you've said in your last few posts, but it's all so aphoristic that it seems kind of vain to go through it all point by point. I'm sure the most important points will come back up in a further reply.