FEATURE
A work of restoration Joseph Shaw on how some measure of ancient glory could be passed on to future generations ‘In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory… and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone.’ JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King, p260.
However, the English Catholic programme of restoration suddenly came to a halt, in the 1960s, ushering in a period of extraordinary hatred of the past, and a kind of spiritual as well as physical vandalism. In the words of Saruman, near the end of the Return of the King: ‘I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives.’ Like many of his generation, Tolkien found himself betrayed by those placed in positions of authority in that Church. He is said to have made loud responses in Latin On May 14th, 1854, Bishop Ullathorne at the English Mass, which first appeared called on the [Curé d’Ars] and asked in 1965. It can give us little satisfaction to him to pray for England. The bishop of note that the new programme, an attempt Birmingham relates that the man of God to make the Church relevant to a modern said with an accent of extraordinary world in which medievalism seemed conviction: ‘Monseigneur, I believe that to be losing its allure, coincided with the Church in England will be restored to the most disastrous period of apostacy its splendour.’ and lapsation, of priests and religious Dom Ernest Graf, The Cure of Ars abandoning their vocations, and the closure of churches and communities, he century and a bit from about the which is possible to imagine outside of a 1830s to the end of the 1950s was a period of severe persecution. period of restoration. Tolkien’s own literary One aspect of this was the achievement, which in its revival of interest in the own way ‘preserves the Middle Ages, not as a period memory and the glory of darkness, horror, and of the years that were Catholicism, but as intriguing, gone’, has on the contrary romantic, and profound. endured and proved an Although not only a project extraordinary success. of Catholics, the Catholic May it continue the work Church in England played an of making imaginative enthusiastic part in this. The room in its readers for the glory the Medieval Church restoration which we need might seem unattainable, but today even more than at some things could be saved, the time it was composed. some new things could be Towards the end of the Lord of Rings, Merry built in the ancient spirit, contemplates the corpse and, to paraphrase Tolkien, of Saruman and hopes it some measure of the ancient glory could be passed on to Tolkein: ‘He is said to have made loud responses in Latin at the English Mass’ marks the ‘very last end of the War’ future generations. ‘I shan’t call it the end, till we’ve So, in Oxford, once a great Catholic the point, this restoration is described university filled with every kind of twice, first for Gondor, and then for the cleared up the mess.’, said Sam gloomily. religious order, in the late 19th and Shire. And this indeed is the Christian ‘And that’ll take a lot of time and work.’ early 20th centuries it was possible for vocation: the restoration of God’s image the Benedictines, Dominicans, and in man, with respectful gratitude to our A longer version of this paper was Franciscans to return. Around the predecessors in the Faith, and in unity of delivered to ‘More than Memory: Tolkien country impressive Cathedrals and spirit with them. Spiritual Conference’ on 25th May 2019.
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monasteries were built: in Buckfast, the monks themselves raised a stunning new church, literally on the foundations of a 12th century monastic church, which had been destroyed in the Reformation. The ancient landscape of holy places, too, was painstakingly restored, at first with pitifully modest shrines, but with increasing confidence and splendour as time went on: Walsingham, Holywell, Glastonbury, Willesden, Caversham: the list goes on. [All of these shrines are honoured by pilgrimages organised by the Latin Mass Society: Ed.] The parallel with the world of the Lord of the Rings is too obvious to labour. The melancholy of past glory is everywhere present in Middle Earth, but it is not the melancholy of despair. It might not be possible to turn the clock back, but it is possible to restore the King, to save the still-free lands, to defeat the enemy in his current incarnation, and to make some measure of repair and renewal, morally, spiritually, and physically. Underlining
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