Having
read, many years ago, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ I knew it dealt with timeless
religious themes and, in particular, the cycle of redemption and salvation and
was impressed by the way it did so in such a compelling way. But it wasn’t until I read an article by
Nancy Enright, an American professor of English, in the present copy of ‘The
Way’ (April 2018) that I discovered J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Roman
Catholic. ‘Tolkien, Middle Earth and Laudate si’, concerns, in particular,
his horror at the way the world was becoming corrupted not only nationally (it
was written between 1937 and 1949 against the backdrop of the rise of facism
and communism) but also ecologically to the extent that he gave up owning a car
because of the way he saw, even then, that motoring was contributing to the
destruction of the environment.
Enright
also points out the connection between Mary and Galadriel, queen of Lothlorien,
the uncorrupted land: ‘She shone like a window of glass … as a crystal fallen
in the lap of the land.’ Tolkien was close
friends with a Jesuit in Cambridge and Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, used the
characters of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins in a 2008 lecture to students in
Argentina. But it’s St Francis who
inspired both Tolkien and the Pope who made his own appeal for the future of
our planet in his encyclical, Laudate Si.
If we
approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and
wonder, if we no longer speak the
language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our
attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set
limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we are intimately united with
all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. (Laudato si, n.11)
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