That is simply incorrect. I am not Catholic, but I am a fan of both Tolkien and Potter. Not all Catholics condemn Harry Potter.
Let's take just one issue: there is no God in the books. No mention ever of a supreme being, no reference even to life after death. What happens to these characters when they die? From a truly Catholic perspective, that is the only issue that really matters. Yet LoR ignores it entirely, even though basic consistency of plot would require some explanation of what happens to elves when they die as opposed to living forever.
You need to read the books with understanding. God is all through the books, and the appendices and subsequent works by Tolkien. I don't mean to be rude, but if you don't see God in these works, you aren't paying attention.
As for the afterlife...what do you think is represented by the Grey Havens? It is most significant that "non-elves" (Frodo, Bilbo, Gimli) are invited to go on that journey. What could it mean except heaven?
And the Christlike symbolism is all through the books: Frodo the Deliverer, Gandalf the Resurrected, Aragorn the Returning King.
I suppose that one needs to be able to appreciate this sort of logic in order to understand the "Catholic" symbolism of Lord of the Rings.
You need to read the books with understanding. God is all through the books, and the appendices and subsequent works by Tolkien. I don't mean to be rude, but if you don't see God in these works, you aren't paying attention.
Your ad hominem arguments have somehow failed to convince me.
the Christlike symbolism is all through the books: Frodo the Deliverer, Gandalf the Resurrected, Aragorn the Returning King.
These could just as easily be Hindu or Zoroastrian symbols. Next I'll be hearing that "Gilgamesh" is also a Catholic work. It has a hundred times more symbolism that could be interpreted as being "Christ-like."
According to Professor Jane Chance, an "expert" on Tolkien, ...
Tolkien distinguished between the primary world, which is the world of pain, suffering, turbulence that we live in day-to-day, in which we have finite lives. But he talks about fairy tales as a creation of a secondary world, in which the reader finds escape, consolation, and recovery, where the colors are brighter, as he says, where you are sick and are always healed. It's the recovery of Paradise, if that's what you want to call it. We all long for a secondary world. But he would see the Bible as truth in the primary world.
He would never identify his secondary world as real—the Grey Havens, for instance, as Heaven. He never used Christian terminology to describe his world, because it would be a violation of the secondary-world construction to introduce the primary world into it.