"...and Consciously So in the Revision."

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I was reminded of this thread while reading yesterday; I am slowly working my way through Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien, A Celebration and reached the chapter ‘The Lords of the Rings – A Catholic View’ by Charles A. Coulombe. I found it very interesting to read about the specifically Catholic cultural point of view; though I am familiar with the basic differences between the Christian faiths, as an evangelical Protestant, I do not really understand their significance adequately.

I went through the trouble of rereading this thread (I had to, since I am always deploring those “I can’t be bothered to read what the others have written” posts! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ), so my post will be much shorter than I thought – much has already been said. The major point that the author makes is:

…the uniquely Catholic world-view…is a sacramental one. At the heart of all Catholic life is a miracle, a mystery, the Blessed Sacrament.

The connection to lembas has already been drawn in one of the above posts.

Even more so than Galadriel, Elbereth is compared to Mary, who is often referred to as ‘Queen of heaven’. Another comparison the author makes is one I have not heard before: Gandalf is compared to the Pope!

Gandalf, indeed, partakes of much of the nature of the Papacy. He belongs to no one nation, and in a very real sense he is leader of all the free and faithful. This is so because his power is magical rather than temporal.

There is more about the form of society and the relationship between church and state; I recommend reading it. I would like to mention one last aspect that fascinated me – the comparison between Tolkien’s ‘magic’ and the sacraments.

One may go so far as to say that the effect of magic, wielded for good, is in The Lord of the Rings the same as that of the Sacraments upon the life of the devout Catholic. Protection, nourishment, knowledge, all are held to flow in supernatural abundance from them. In a word, as the Sacraments are the means of Grace in the Catholic world, magic – wielded by the wise – is the means of Grace in Middle-earth.

These points to not answer the original question of this thread (Which revisions were made to be more Christian/Catholic?), yet it makes some of the specifically Catholic standpoints clearer to us, so that we can search for those changes.