The Lord of the Rings: A Catholic View

The Cool-Ohm Zone ^ | -- | Charles Coulombe

[B-Chan]

“It has been said that the dominant note of the traditional Catholic liturgy was intense longing. This is also true of her art, her literature, her whole life. It is a longing for things that cannot be in this world: unearthly truth, unearthly purity, unearthly justice, unearthly beauty. By all these earmarks, Lord of the Rings is indeed a Catholic work, as its author believed; but it is more. It is this age's great Catholic epic, fit to stand beside the Grail legends, Le Morte d'Arthur, and The Canterbury Tales. It is at once a great comfort to the individual Catholic, and a tribute to the enduring power and greatness of the Catholic tradition, that JRRT created this work. In an age which has seen an almost total rejection of the Faith on the part of the Civilisation she created, the loss of the Faith on the part of many lay Catholics, and apparent uncertainty among her hierarchy, Lord of the Rings assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness cannot triumph forever.”

[John O]

I stand corrected. The actual players in the event were never of much interest to me when I was Catholic or when I became Protestant. The fact that the event happened (and had cause to happen) is the important thing.

Thanks for clearing me up.