Tolkiens Lord of the Rings as a Catholic Epic :: Lord of the Rings Essays

Tolkiens Lord of the Rings as a Catholic EpicIt will be the contention of this paper that overmuch of Tolkiens unique vision was directly shaped by recurring images in the Catholic civilization which shaped JRRT, and which are not shared by non-Catholics generally. The expression of these images in Lord of the Rings will then reverence us. To begin with, it must be remembered that Catholic culture and Catholic faith, time mutually supportive and symbiotic, are not the same thing. Mr. Walker Percy, in his Lost in the Cosmos, explored the difference, and back breakered out that, culturally, Catholics in Cleveland are much to a greater extent Protestant than Presbyterians in say, Taos, New Orleans, or the South of France. Erik, Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, points out that the do of this dichotomy upon politics, attributing the multi-party system in Catholic countries to the Catholic adherence to absolutes he further ascribes the two-party system to the Protestant willingness to co mpromise. However this may be, it does point up a constant element in Catholic thought---the stake of the absolute. Here we must make an aside in regard to the U.S. Catholic culture in America is practically non-existent, except in weaken form among such peoples as the Hispanos and Indians of Northern New Mexico, the Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana and the different Gulf States, and the old English Catholic settlements of Maryland and Kentucky. Elsewhere the trustfulness was brought by immigrants, and its attendant culture has, like all imported ones in the States, veered between preservation and assimilation. This was exacerbated by the fact that Catholic leadership in the United States was early committed to a programme of cultural melding. In addition, this leadership was primarily Irish, a nationality which had been deprived of much of its native culture by centuries of Protestant Ascendancy. Hence it has been extremely difficult for Americans, even American Catholics, to un derstand or appreciate the Catholic thing (as Chesterton showd it) in a cultural context. I am reminded of the astonishment of a classmateof tap (from a typical American Catholic High School) at see an anthology of Catholic poetry. This situation has been greatly accentuated in the past twenty historic period by the changes occurring after Vatican II. This being so, it will be necessary to describe a little of the uniquely Catholic world view. In fine, it is a sacramental one. At the heart of all Catholic life is a miracle, a mystery, the Blessed Sacrament.