Posted on 03/06/2010 3:02:21 PM PST by NYer
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And so it begins. Pope Benedict has come to us at the turning of the tide.
Nice allusion to a great Catholic book...The Lord of the Rings.
The Angels and Saints are singing n heaven! Glory be to God.
It is rare to see one so completely and unashamedly proclaim ones ignorance.
Must suck to call someone ignorant and find you are the ignorant one. The good news for you is that today that ends.
To quote J.R.R. Tolkien: "[The Lord of the Rings is] a fundamentally religious and Catholic work."
Come back and chat when you abandon your ignorance.
Tolkein was a devout Catholic and Catholic themes greatly influence his works but the Lord of the Rings is NOT a Catholic work. Try to keep you with the class.
The Catholic influence is indisputable. There are elements of a Catholic morality play. "Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts." We wouldn't know of a theology like this, would we?
That would be news to Tolkien since he HIMSELF described the work at primarily a Catholic work. Wake up.
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
"“Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”"
The bottom line is I was congratulating you on your reference to The Lord of the Rings with your description of Pope Benedict having “come to us at the turning of the tide.” A very dramatic “resurrection” moment in the book. Evidently that is cause enough to have one’s intelligence attacked.
One of the things I liked most about The Lord of the Rings was its many Catholic elements. I know JRR Tolkein wrote in one of his letters that the lembas bread of the Elves was really based on the Eucharist.
Be careful. Saying that will cause you to be labeled an ignorant moron by some folks.
I’m certainly not looking for an argument with Natural Law - who I like and who is great Catholic brother here at FR. Then again, and this is JUST MY OPINION, I think that Screwtape Letters is a pretty Catholic book and that was written by a Protestant!
Great Catholic brothers don’t usually engage in character assassination.
I heard a Roman Catholic apologist once with a similar story....going from one semi-pelagian (do-your-best-God-will-do-the-rest) form of Christianity to another. Pentecostal-E. Free-Episcopal-Roman, none of which really are actually “evangelical” by the way (in spite of the name “Evangelical Free” (it derives from the historic continental European use of “evangelical” which just means protestant), and certainly not reformed.
Anyway, for every “evangelical” to go to Rome, I reckon I could find 10 evangelicals who came from Rome.
Shalom!
(sigh) I love stories like this. Thanks so much for posting, NYer. Makes me feel again that I’m not alone as I paddle across the Tiber.
Hey asshat, count me in as one of the evangelicals who swum the Tiber.
Folks like you make me ashamed I was ever a prot.
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