FEATURE
A fundamentally Catholic work Charles A. Coulombe on J.R.R Tolkien’s deep commitment to the Faith
O
ne hundred and thirty years after his birth, J.R.R. Tolkien needs virtually no introduction to anyone literate in any major language read on Planet Earth. The unassuming Oxford Don was already a celebrity – especially among the Counter-Culture – when he died. The fact that his books are renowned world-wide while the depth of his conviction and devotion to the Catholic Faith are not says more about the Church in his time and ours than it does about him. Had this Professor of Philology flourished at a time when the Catholic Hierarchy were convinced of the absolute truth of the Faith over which they preside, then he would have been his age’s Chateaubriand or Sir Walter Scott: a literary catalyst for a period of strong Catholic revival. That he was not cannot be laid at his door, but at theirs. Oddly enough, this epitome of English literature was born in Bloemfontein in what was then the Orange Free State, less than a decade before the Boer War which would see it annexed by the British Empire and then incorporated into the nascent Union of South Africa. His religious life began at the still-extant baptismal font in the city’s Anglican Cathedral of St Andrew and St Michael. Tolkien’s father, Arthur, had been sent there with his newlywed wife, Mabel, to take up a banking position. But the hot, dry country (which JRRT remembered) was unhealthy; the future author almost died from a tarantula bite (which he did not remember). When the lad was three, his mother, Mabel, took him and his brother back to their parents’ native Birmingham. Arthur was to join them a little later but, tragically, he contracted rheumatic fever and died in Bloemfontein. Mabel and her sons were forced to live off the kindness of relatives. When his mother – a highly educated woman who taught the precocious brothers at home initially – converted to Catholicism in 1900, her family cut
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Tolkien: ‘his educated, urbane, but withal down-to-earth and completely believing style of Catholicism is one that resonates strongly with those reared in a world built upon the unreal’
them off. She managed to make ends meet, and was spiritually nourished by the Birmingham Oratory, founded by Cardinal Newman. She died of the then-incurable diabetes in 1904; years later, JRT would recall: “My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is 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.” Their Guardianship was given by Mabel to a priest of the Oratory, of whom Tolkien would write: “He was an upperclass Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old gossip. He was—and he was not. I first learned charity and forgiveness from him; and in the light of it pierced even the 'liberal' darkness out of which I came, knowing more about 'Bloody Mary' than the Mother of Jesus—who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists.” Father Morgan oversaw Tolkien’s education at King Edward’s School and his entrance to Exeter College, Oxford. Tolkien would meet and fall in love with Edith Brand; complying with Fr Morgan’s strictures, they did not marry
until the eve of JRRT’s 1916 departure for France to fight in World War I. His experiences in the trenches marked him as they did so many; a casualty, he was returned to England, and in 1920 mustered out of active service; all but one of his boyhood friends were dead. From that time he commenced the academic and literary career that has since made him universally famous. As is well known, it was during this time that he made the acquaintance of C.S. Lewis, in whose conversion to Christianity he had a major role – but whose Ulster-bred anti-Catholicism kept him out of the Faith, despite Tolkien’s best efforts. World War brought Charles Williams to Oxford, and while Tolkien did not really “get” a good deal of his work, when he died in 1945 JRRT had a Mass said for him at Blackfriars and served it himself. This of course leads us to the question of just how much Tolkien’s religion affected his work – and particularly his magnum opus. The answer is, very much so. To one correspondent he wrote: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” He was in fact quite explicit about it on numerous occasions; to cite one particularly clear letter: “…I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic. The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced; though one critic (by letter) asserted that the invocations of Elbereth, and the character of Galadriel as directly described (or through the words of Gimli and Sam) were clearly related to Catholic devotion to Mary. Another saw in waybread (lembas) viaticum and the reference to its feeding the will (vol. III, p. 213) and being more potent when fasting, a derivation from the Eucharist. (That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.)” Indeed, as any orthodox Catholic’s faith must be, Tolkien’s religious life
SPRING 2022
