.... by consciously Catholic in the revision?
I know there was a thread on Books for this some time ago, but I simply cannot find it. As I recall, it was a decidedly unresolved discussion anyway. And some ideas have been percolating in my gray matter on the topic lately anyway, so I thought I'd raise this up, yes, one more time, to see if new light can be shed on a topic that seems more thorny than most. Okay, here goes.
First off, I'm not sure this necessarily clarifies anything other than my thinking about it, but I believe it should be noted that this phrase is pulled from a letter Tolkien never intended for popular consumption. He didn't intend it to be published. It was a personal bit of correspondence between two men who were like-minded in terms of their faith; it was written to a Catholic cleric.
Thus, when Tolkien says that LotR was consciously Catholic in the revision, he's saying something to a private individual and expects immediate recognition of what is meant; it's a kind of code.
Okay, now let's take a look at a few things Tolkien did NOT say. He did not say that LotR was consciously
* Christian
* Anglican
* Calvinist
* Nazi
* English
* British
* Northern
* World War I or II
...in the revision; rather,
Catholic.
Okay, now, here are the three things I've been able to come up with so far.
#1: I think it safe to say, considering what we know of Tolkien's anxieties regarding LotR, that this means, at least, that Tolkien removed, in the revision, anything that a Catholic, be he pope, cardinal, bishop, cleric, or true-to-the-faith layman, would find objectionable. But is this all Tolkien meant? I have my doubts. What else he may have meant by the phrase may best be assertained by the Letter itself.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tolkien's Letters
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.
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As ever, it seems that the final sentence is the key, but a very ambiguous one. He says there is symbolism. Yet elsewhere he says LotR is not an allegory. What 'bloody' symbolism is he talking about? Any notions?
#2: There is an idea running through LotR that has us "capture a renewed view of our world" such that we see trees and other growing things, but especially trees, as sacred. There is a sacramental attitude toward nature, as if it is imbued with more than the mere functionality of the wood that can be turned to boards, or the sap that can be turned to syrup, or what have you: a tree is a wondrous and very good thing in and of itself, and is alive and should remain so. To use Chesterton's speech, every tree "has a halo".
#3: In my latest "Mythlore" magazine, Volume 25, Number 1/2 (Fall/Winter 2006), A.R. Bossert writes an interesting article entitled, "Surely You Don't Disbelieve": Tolkien and Pius X: Anti-Modernism in Middle-Earth.
S/he shows that between 1908 (the dates of Pius' first encyclicals) and 1963 (Vatican II) the Catholic church took a strong Anti-Modernist stance, Modernism being described as an agnostic, immanentist, and evolutionist stance. Agnosticism represents the argument that human reason can only consider scientific phenomena (thereby excluding immaterial phenomena such as discerned spirits or truth). Immanentism represents the argument that religion proceeds entirely from within the human psyche, and that faith has no basis outside such an internal religious sentiment (therefore, everyone's opinion about deity is equally valid because it's all subjective anyway).
My point in bringing this up is that because of Vatican II, we tend to forget just how counter-cultural the Catholic church was between 1908 and 1963, standing root and stock, as it were, against the fundamental stances of Modernism. I'm reminded of Davem's comments regarding the Machine. Is not the Machine one of the phenomena that has grown out of (or grown alongside of) Modernism?
At any rate, what this says to me is that we have here another way that LotR may be considered "consciously Catholic in the revision", for it is Sauron who uses the most advanced technology; Saruman whose mind is made up of pulleys and gears (or whatever Gandalf said); it is Boromir who preaches the doctrine of "evil power in the hands of the good is still good". Since these kinds of things are what Catholicism stood against between 1908 and 1963, it makes sense that LotR can in this way also be considered "consciously Catholic in the revision".