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Originally Posted by davem
Precisely. And I suspect this is pretty much what Tolkien did. I don't think he 'consciously revised' LotR during the writing phase to make it a Catholic work. I think he wrote it, gave it to the world, & was very surprised at accusations of a lack of spirituality, of pagan tendencies, &, most importantly of being 'juvenile'. When some readers & reviewers started to suggest it had a Christian dimension, Tolkien happilly took this up & convinced himself that he had written a 'fundamentally Christian & Catholic work'.
What it is, rather (I would say) is a work that came from his heart, & one that he didn't have much control over - he wrote & re-wrote it, till he found out 'what really happened'. He then attempted to understand it, make sense of it - mainly for himself, but also for the readers who quizzed him on it. I think we're talking something much closer to [i]revisionism[i] than 'revision'.
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So you are saying then that Tolkien was lying?
I'm not saying that your theory is entirely discreditable, but it does make Tolkien's statement that it was CONSCIOUSLY Catholic in the revision to be either a misstatment, or- to take the facts in the most simply presented way, to be a lie.
Lies, as far as we are shown, are very much not in keeping with Tolkien's style (he was quite often blunt in his letters, as I'm sure you are aware), and it's very much not in keeping with his Catholic faith, which we know he was fanatical about.
There are definitely some thing about what you are saying that seem to ring true, Davem, but your theory is directly at odds with what Tolkien said, and I'm loathe to directly contradict a clear statement made by Tolkien himself.
Of course, the people on this forum would probably STILL give Balrogs wings even if Tolkien had deposited the same statement "Balrogs do not have wings" in the bank every year of his life, to be produced at the time of his death as the final authority in the Balrog wing debate. For some reasom, people seem to have a problem dealing with direct statements as meaning exactly what they say.