Is Lord of the Rings a Catholic work?

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dude, i think the question should more be like, is the bible a work of lord of the rings. it obviously copied a lot from it.
 
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Mycroft:
dude, i think the question should more be like, is the bible a work of lord of the rings. it obviously copied a lot from it.
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Dude, are just really this obtuse, or is it just an act? Catholicism and Fundamentalism is a Catholic work, because it was written by a Catholic to explain Catholic things. Its intention is to teach Catholic specifics in a direct manner. LOtR is a Catholic work because it was written by a Catholic to paint a picture of the Catholic worldview, albeit in an indirect manner. Most of the people here have said that Tolkien never ment it to be an allegorical parallel to Catholicism, or Christianity in general. Certain characters represent ASPECTS of Catholic beliefs, not as direct parallels. If you can’t see that, you are either intentionally denying it or are just here because you like to argue with people.
 
Steve Andersen:
Frodo is just a whiney little…… 😛
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Hey! No dissing my Fro! 😛 😃 (Frodo was only whinny in the movie, not in the book - well, not much. )
 
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Cairisti:
Hey! No dissing my Fro! 😛 😃 (Frodo was only whinny in the movie, not in the book - well, not much. )
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Don’t get me started. The fact that they cut out Tom Bombadil still grates my nerves.
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
Don’t get me started. The fact that they cut out Tom Bombadil still grates my nerves.
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It was the prancing, multi-colored clothing, yellow boots, dithering Tom Bombadil character that lead to the suggestion that J.R.R. Tolkein was a homosexual.
 
This book may not be “100%” catholic but it shows aspects that only catholics would truly understand. I just finished reading the “The New Stations of the cross” by Megan Mckenna.She quotes numerous aspects in her commentary about the struggles in “Lord of the Rings” and how that can be seen in struggles of our lives while carrying are crosses.(By the way this book is excellent on gaining a deeper meaning about the pope’s version of the stations) I think tolkien wanted to give us a story of good vs evil and how different people reacted to it. If you look at the chracters each one approches how to combat evil differently. Some were better than others but he made you think about how you would act in that same situation.

I also believe it’s a catholic work because none of the characters were perfect; each had flaws but each had a part to play. Middle earth would have been destroyed had people not forgon their own race and comforts to defeat evil. They had to embrace that they are all part of the “mystical body” and that together they could do anything. I think that this is more of a “catholic” view of people. Each one of us is a sinner but together we can do anything.

{Scott_LafranceQuote:
Originally Posted by Cairisti
Hey! No dissing my Fro! 😛 😃 (Frodo was only whinny in the movie, not in the book - well, not much. )

Don’t get me started. The fact that they cut out Tom Bombadil still grates my nerves.}

I loved Tom but Peter Jackson made a great point on his DVD that tom’s character didn’t help explain or move the chracters forward in the story. The movies were already long enough and to add another short scene of Tom would have confused the general audience who have never read the books.The book is thousands of pages long and not everything could have been put in the movies. Give the director a break he tried his hardest to put little details in the movies for the hardcore fans.Even with leaving characters out and changing some story lines the movies kept truer to the books better than most movies (like Timeline or Jurassic Park or Shara).

God bless
Beckers

"Even the smallest person can change the course of history"LOTR
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
Dude, are just really this obtuse, or is it just an act? Catholicism and Fundamentalism is a Catholic work, because it was written by a Catholic to explain Catholic things. Its intention is to teach Catholic specifics in a direct manner. LOtR is a Catholic work because it was written by a Catholic to paint a picture of the Catholic worldview, albeit in an indirect manner. Most of the people here have said that Tolkien never ment it to be an allegorical parallel to Catholicism, or Christianity in general. Certain characters represent ASPECTS of Catholic beliefs, not as direct parallels. If you can’t see that, you are either intentionally denying it or are just here because you like to argue with people.
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K first of all i was being sarcastic. im not sure if you got that or not because i cant understand the first 2 sentences you wrote. I really doubt tolkien spent his whole life creating and expanding on a world and its history just to show a catholic worldview or to explain catholic things. it really doesnt explain catholic things at all, it might have some similarities with our religion but thats it. i know the characters dont represent direct parallels, i was making fun of people who think that. you also just contradicted yourself by saying tolkien never meant it to be allegorical to christianity and then saying the characters represent aspects of our beliefs. how the hell would you know anyways. i could get 50 other fantasy books and im sure i could find a bunch of characters that “represent our beliefs” in each one. my point is that i hate people going off and saying how this represents that and making correlations between our religion and tolkiens fantasy world. it takes away from what the book was meant to be (something entertaining) and plus no-one here knows if anything they say is remotely true since tolkien is dead and what he said about it was that it was allegorical and meant to be entertaining.
 
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Mycroft:
K first of all i was being sarcastic. im not sure if you got that or not because i cant understand the first 2 sentences you wrote. I really doubt tolkien spent his whole life creating and expanding on a world and its history just to show a catholic worldview or to explain catholic things. it really doesnt explain catholic things at all, it might have some similarities with our religion but thats it. i know the characters dont represent direct parallels, i was making fun of people who think that. you also just contradicted yourself by saying tolkien never meant it to be allegorical to christianity and then saying the characters represent aspects of our beliefs. how the hell would you know anyways. i could get 50 other fantasy books and im sure i could find a bunch of characters that “represent our beliefs” in each one. my point is that i hate people going off and saying how this represents that and making correlations between our religion and tolkiens fantasy world. it takes away from what the book was meant to be (something entertaining) and plus no-one here knows if anything they say is remotely true since tolkien is dead and what he said about it was that it was allegorical and meant to be entertaining.
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So, what your saying is that your obtuse. Just admitting it would have been much easier than your circular arguement.
 
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Mycroft:
Lord of the Rings is a Catholic work only in the sense that it was written by a Catholic. They are fantasy books which Tolkien said were not supposed to e allegorical in any way. I don’t know why people even do think their religious in a catholic sense since their is polytheism and everything. They are excellent books, probably my favorites, but i am sick of people saying they have a religious meaning.
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Thanks for saying that - I thought I was alone in thinking this. C.S. Lewis’s books work as Christian allegories because he was an outstanding story-teller; the reader is not force-fed Christianity. The same is true of Tolkien’s mythology - it works as a mythology, quite apart from whether it is consciously Christian or not. If it did not work as a story, it would be a heap of rubbish, Christian or not. If Tolkien had intended to force-feed the reader Catholic ideas, he would have been unreadable, and would have contradicted his own preface to “The Lord of the Rings”.​

 
Steve Andersen:
The ring is a metaphor for original sin (I think) and the burden to carry it and striving to over come it.
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The Ring represents power. When Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel, she is sorely tempted to accept. She would use the ring to “make” everything right. She would begin by smiting Sauron, but it would not stop there. Next she would stop more ordinary violent offenders. Soon enough she would be forcing people to be “nice” to each other. She would make Middle Earth a nice place alright, but only by bending the globe to her will.

That is the temptation of power: to use it with the intention to make the world a better place, but only at the cost of subverting it.

This is, by the way, the same temptation Satan tried against Jesus.
the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Matthew 4:8-9
Jesus had to fight this temptation all the way to the cross. At any time he could have siezed the power and forced everyone to obey The Law. But it is not God’s plan to force anyone to obey The Law.

Frodo walked to the Cracks of Doom and could not destroy the power. Jesus resisted the temptation of power even while evil men murdered him.
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
So, what your saying is that your obtuse. Just admitting it would have been much easier than your circular arguement.
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Oh, come now, Scott-- he’s 16! Being obtuse is an artform for many a teenager! 😉
 
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Angainor:
The Ring represents power. When Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel, she is sorely tempted to accept. She would use the ring to “make” everything right. She would begin by smiting Sauron, but it would not stop there. Next she would stop more ordinary violent offenders. Soon enough she would be forcing people to be “nice” to each other. She would make Middle Earth a nice place alright, but only by bending the globe to her will.

That is the temptation of power: to use it with the intention to make the world a better place, but only at the cost of subverting it.

This is, by the way, the same temptation Satan tried against Jesus.the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Matthew 4:8-9

Jesus had to fight this temptation all the way to the cross. At any time he could have siezed the power and forced everyone to obey The Law. But it is not God’s plan to force anyone to obey The Law.

Frodo walked to the Cracks of Doom and could not destroy the power. Jesus resisted the temptation of power even while evil men murdered him.
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Another possibility 🙂​

The Ring = Sauron.

The Barad-dur collapses, with Sauron, when the Ring is destroyed: when the thing made is destroyed, so is the maker. This time, for ever, because the thing that enabled him to return, is no more.
  • Which is why he cannot return as he did in about the year 500 of the Second Age, until his temporary collapse in 3319 S.A.;
  • his return at some unstated time thereafter until his defeat in 3441 S.A. when he lost the Ring;
  • and his return in about the year 1000 of the Third Age.
Compare with this progressive loss of strength the progessive loss of strength of Melkor in the Silmarillion. Sauron is a much lesser being that Melkor, so he is less able to return from a defeat. And after 3319 S.A. he cannot any longer appear in a fair form. His native strength is exhausted sooner - so when he “puts himself into” the Ring (as any artist puts himself into his work) he runs the risk of being crippled for ever if he loses it. Which is precisely what happens. Melkor, by contrast, is far slower to find that he has gone too far to be able to return: he is by nature far more exalted & mighty than Sauron, has far greater native strength, and does far more damage after a much longer time.

The idea of an object that contains one’s life, the destruction of which means the destruction or ruin of its malker, is a very common motif in myths & fairy-tales: it would be incredible that Tolkien did not know of it.

So to use the Ring, would be to use Sauron in the war against Sauron - which would be madness. So “the Wise” do not. To do so, is to become a little Sauron. ##
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
So, what your saying is that your obtuse. Just admitting it would have been much easier than your circular arguement.
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yep, thats totally what i meant to say. obviously everyone goes around insulting themselves. your pretty intuitive. and its funny how you dont actually defend your view you just make fun of me. good work, i bet that made you feel good. and by the way, your a comic genius.
 
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juno24:
Oh, come now, Scott-- he’s 16! Being obtuse is an artform for many a teenager! 😉
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haha, your so funny i cant stand it! its a lot easier to classify me as being obtuse than to listen to what i say isnt it.
 
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Angainor:
The Ring represents power. When Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel, she is sorely tempted to accept. She would use the ring to “make” everything right. She would begin by smiting Sauron, but it would not stop there. Next she would stop more ordinary violent offenders. Soon enough she would be forcing people to be “nice” to each other. She would make Middle Earth a nice place alright, but only by bending the globe to her will.

That is the temptation of power: to use it with the intention to make the world a better place, but only at the cost of subverting it.

This is, by the way, the same temptation Satan tried against Jesus.the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Matthew 4:8-9

Jesus had to fight this temptation all the way to the cross. At any time he could have siezed the power and forced everyone to obey The Law. But it is not God’s plan to force anyone to obey The Law.

Frodo walked to the Cracks of Doom and could not destroy the power. Jesus resisted the temptation of power even while evil men murdered him.
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what do you mean the ring represents power? the ring IS power…that must have been a tough parallel to make…and if anyone here actually cares about what the author said instead of just making up their own stuff, tolkien wanted people to only take it as fantasy and to not mix it up with religion. to make it a catholic work wasnt the point of him writing it.
 
I don’t think any particular character is Christ. But we see many characters sharing and doing different things symbolic of Christ, sort of to show that collectively we are all a part of Him.
 
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jdnation:
I don’t think any particular character is Christ. But we see many characters sharing and doing different things symbolic of Christ, sort of to show that collectively we are all a part of Him.
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yeah and that doesnt make it catholic since i can find 50 million other books where lots of characters do stuff thats similar to what christ did. big deal.
 
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