J.R.R. Tolkien's Religion
How the Author's Catholic Faith Influenced the Creation of Middle-Earth
J.R.R. Tolkien’s published letters contain numerous passages that express the religious beliefs of the famous creator of the hobbits. Before we start reading those letters from which we can learn how the creator of the hobbits understood and lived his Catholic faith, we have to remember that he was raised and educated by his mother, Mabel Tolkien (born Suffield), a convert to the Catholic Church. Even though she was a widow (her husband, Arthur, died in South Africa on 15 February 1896), her predominant Baptist family stopped any financial assistance when her conversion become known. As a direct consequence of all the health difficulties she suffered, Mabel died of diabetes on the 14th November 1904. She was just 34 years old. Both John and his brother, Hilary, were convinced that their mother died as an indirect martyr for her Catholic faith, as we can see in this passage written by J.R.R. Tolkien nine years after his mother’s death:
My own dear mother was a martyr, indeed, and it was not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith.
The orphans, John Ronald Reuel (born on 3rd January 1892) and his brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel (born on 17th February 1894), were raised and educated by a Catholic priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, from the Birmingham Oratory community created by another great Catholic writer, Saint John Henry Newman. As we will notice in his letters, J.R.R. Tolkien was a fervent Catholic who intensely lived his faith. The author of The Lord of the Rings went frequently to Confession and made the Holy Sacrament of the Altar the center of his life, as we can read in a letter sent to his second son, Michael, in March 1941:
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament.
The apologist writer
The importance that J.R.R. Tolkien has always attributed to the Holy Eucharist is still more evident in another letter, dated 1963, to the same son, Michael, where he explains why he is sure that the only true church on earth is Catholic Church:
For me that Church of which the Pope is the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has (and still does) ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour, and put it (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place. ‘Feed my sheep’ was His last charge to St Peter; and since His words are always first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life. It was against this that the Western European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched–‘the blasphemous fable of the Mass’–and faith/works a mere red herring. I suppose the greatest reform of our time was that carried out by St. Pius X: surpassing anything, however needed, that the Council will achieve. I wonder what state the Church would now be but for it.
A firm and vehement critic of the Protestant revolution which has completely eliminated the Holy Liturgy and the Sacraments from the lives of millions of fallen Catholics, J.R.R. Tolkien was not just a spontaneous apologist, but, at the same time, a fully practicing and pious Catholic. Later in his life, when the revolution will enter into the Church he will manifest himself as a staunch opponent of the destruction/substitution of the Mass of Ages—that of Gregorian Rite—by a fabricated liturgy. Another relevant fragment, which contains a brilliant refutation of the liturgical ‘reform’ done in the name of returning to primitive Christianity, can be read in a letter from 1967:
The protestant search backwards for ‘simplicity’ and directness–which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because 'primitive Christianity' is now and in spite of all ‘research’ will ever remain largely unknown; because ‘primitiveness’ is no guarantee of value, and is, and was in great a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian liturgical behaviour from the beginning as now. (St Paul’s strictures on Eucharistic behaviour are sufficient to show this!) Still more because ‘my church’ was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history–the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the ‘mustard-seed’ and the full-grown tree.
Mentioning in a letter from 2nd January 1969 that his patron is Saint John the Evangelist, he does not miss any occasion to emphasize his Catholic intellectual background. Indeed, he made his Catholic faith the main axis of his whole life. That is why, marked by such an influence, one of his sons, John, became a Catholic priest.
A man of the times in which he lived, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a full ‘citizen’ of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth—the Catholic Church. Only a critic or a historian blinded by his own prejudices can ignore the profound religiosity of J.R.R. Tolkien. But how does this religiosity influence the epic stories written by an author who delighted millions of readers from all faiths and races on earth?
Religious symbols in literature
If Tolkien’s letters allow us to unveil the religious, Catholic dimension of their author’s life, the relationship between his literary creations and his religious faith is a delicate matter. All the aspects of this relationship are included in a relevant passage from a letter written in 1953 to one of the most important friends of J.R.R. Tolkien, Father Robert Murray S.J., to show how a certain religious element is included in his stories:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
If the religious element seems to be a noticeable absence in Middle-earth, in this letter the author highlights that this element is absorbed, camouflaged, in any case implicitly present in the texture of the story—especially in its symbols.
Like many other great Catholic writers from the 20th century, such as Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Georges Bernanos, J.R.R. Tolkien does not write programmatic ‘Catholic literature’ as a disguised form of apologetics. (None of these writers accepted the label of ‘Catholic writer.’) Tolkien considered himself a Catholic who, among other secondary vocations (such as teacher, husband, and father), has received that of a writer. He does not mistake the principles and rules proper to literary art for those specific to religion and theology. Although harmonious, in his perspective, art and faith are distinct. Each of these two types of human experience and thinking has its own field. This does not mean a divorce, but a form of co-existence where strong influences and exchanges are always possible. That is why J.R.R. Tolkien does not deny the influence of his Catholic faith on those values codified in his writings. For instance, in a letter addressed to Deborah Webster, he mentions and accepts the interpretation of a critic who thinks that the incantations to Elbereth or Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings are similar to the Catholic prayers addressed to the Holy Virgin Mary, or that the elvish bread called lembas symbolizes the Holy Eucharist. But this does not mean that he consciously and systematically set out to encode such religious elements in his literary works. They are rather signs—i.e., 'symbols’—meant to discreetly point their readers to specific sacred teachings and things pertaining to the Christian faith.
Thank you!
Beautifully written!