Getting Tolkien Wrong – “J.R.R. Tolkien did not write a story about why power is evil but about why domination is evil.” No Surprise, David French Completely Botches J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings (The Federalist)
A Diocesan Ordinary – “In one of the most significant U.S. appointments of his pontificate, Pope Francis has given Boston its seventh archbishop.” What does Archbishop Henning’s appointment to Boston mean for the US Church? (Our Sunday Visitor)
O’Malley’s Replacement – “The announcement Monday that Bishop Richard Henning will replace Cardinal Sean O’Malley as Archbishop of Boston has ended one of the longest-running points of speculation in the Church in the United States.” The long road to replacing Cardinal O’Malley (The Pillar)
Centro Aletti – “The artistic community founded by Father Marko Rupnik, the Slovenian priest accused of sexually, psychologically and spiritually abusing multiple women, dismissed calls from survivors to remove the artist’s work, saying such decisions are a symptom of ‘cancel culture.’ Art center founded by Father Rupnik pushes back on removal of artwork (Our Sunday Visitor)
Death to Self – “Catholicism has survived in every environment and flourished in most because its essentials are lean.” The Trad Family (The Catholic Thing)
People of God or Trojan Horse? – “Rafael Luciani argues that decentralized and non-hierarchical decision-making, as the German Synodal Way advocates, is integral to fully implementing Vatican II. Other theologians disagree, however.” Advancing ‘People of God’ Model at Synod Is Key to Sweeping Change, Key Adviser Says (National Catholic Register)
Feast of the Gods – “Christ-haters and online know-it-alls (many of them the same people) have been posting and sharing on social media that, ackshully, the scene was not meant to evoke the Last Supper but the Greek god Dionysius and his hard-partying pals.” Gaslit By the Olympic Torch (Catholic Answers)
How to Write – “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. —Kurt Vonnegut” Writing as Occasion for Grace (Dappled Things)
High Testosterone Levels – “Social media has amplified all of this to the point that the story of the moment, about a boxer from Algeria and another from Taiwan, is top of the news worldwide.” XY Athletes in Women’s Olympic Boxing: The Paris 2024 Controversy Explained (Quillette)
Restoration of Notre-Dame – “Formerly known as the “first daughter of the Church,” France has lately become known for its ‘zombie Catholics’: nominally of the faith but not truly faithful. And President Emmanuel Macron is Zombie-in-Chief.” Built with Faith, Renovated with Doubt – Notre Dame de Paris (The Catholic Thing)
Mary in Literature – “In the four centuries since the advent of the novel, [the Virgin Mary] has been almost conspicuous by her absence. There are exceptions, of course.” The Pope Just Asked Catholics to Read More Literature and Poetry — Here’s a Good Place to Start (National Catholic Register)
Africa’s Splinter Movement – “Splinter Catholic movements within Kenya have gradually found their voice in the country’s religious scene and have maintained a steady following despite strong opposition from conservative voices in the local Catholic Church.” Married Priests And The Rise Of Breakaway Catholics In Africa (Religion Unplugged)
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People of God of Trojan Horse?
1. It’s not the way of the Church to be detained so long trying to define itself and its mission in so many time-bound culture tropes, supposed connectivities and experimentation, said to be befriended by time.
2. “Synodalism” is a conflicted process as yet incomplete and so while it is on-going it is impossible to define what conflicted things will achieve the prominence and preeminence until distilled in its conclusions.
3. We are obliged in the meantime to notice where 1. offends the first great commandment and 2 offends the second great commandment, etc.
@ People of God or Trojan Horse
About “the people of God,” featured lay theologian Rafael Luciani again fails to distinguish between decision making and moral judgments. St. John Paul II anticipated such alchemists who would invert “the people of God” into a god-of-the-people:
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final DECISION [CAPS added; no longer a ‘MORAL JUDGMENT’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [‘thou shalt not…’]” (Veritatis Splendor, 1993, n. 56).
Getting Tolkien Wrong
I hold that there are offenses committed by Tolkien against the Commandments trying to fictionalize God in the way he has done, with strange gods and taking God’s Name in vain.
In addition, Tolkien’s fiction “God” is only alluded to in places and is more like the Oriental “OM” -with its pantheon and its talked about conclusion of war that never finished. He “Europeanizes” it which finds a legitimacy in the “Kalevala” -Finnish “land of heroes”. Tolkien did in fact understand the Manichean ambiguities but did not eventually resolve them; and the reasons would be to excite interest and add causes for helping uphold his pewsitter collection.
What is Tolkien’s genius? Tolkien forged certain folkloric conventions and came through with them to a “new standard”. At least, I think that, that, at base, is what he tried to acconplish. It is Greek classic formula but I do not recall who uttered it: “Who has the convention has the standard.” (Simonedes?) If, however, there is “excellence” in Tolkien’s actual output, it could be the excellence was only achieved in and limited to certain parts like the new language he created. But not the literary expression itself, because there is nothing particularly striking about his narrative ability.
There is another “excellence” Tolkien achieved in the same Greek terms. What he produced, what he “worked”, is the quintessence of Oxford myth-making; in his case in five categories or curricula simultaneously, history, culture, religion-caricature/paganism, myth-on-myth, philology.
Even at the projected end of the war things would return to the orientalist creationism, the never-ending creator power. Like Tolkien bringing Oxford myth-making forward into (hopefully) new millenia.
‘ Tolkien described his works as a “legendarium” in four letters from 1951 to 1955, a period in which he was attempting to have his unfinished Silmarillion published alongside the more complete The Lord of the Rings. On the Silmarillion, he wrote in 1951, “This legendarium ends with a vision of the end of the world, its breaking and remaking, and the recovery of the Silmarilli and the ‘light before the Sun'”; and in 1954, “Actually in the imagination of this story we are now living on a physically round Earth. But the whole ‘legendarium’ contains a transition from a flat world … to a globe”.
On both texts, he explained in 1954 that “… my legendarium, especially the ‘Downfall of Númenor’ which lies immediately behind The Lord of the Rings, is based on my view: that Men are essentially mortal and must not try to become ‘immortal’ in the flesh”, and in 1955, “But the beginning of the legendarium, of which the Trilogy is part (the conclusion), was an attempt to reorganise some of the Kalevala”. ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_legendarium
@ Feast of the Gods
Gaslight 1944 starred Charles Boyer, the villainous husband who sought to mentally destroy heiress wife Ingrid Bergman. A tactic, secretly increasing and dimming the gaslighted home, seeking to convince Ingrid she was delusional, finally declared incompetent and institutionalized. Evil, artistic entrepreneur Thomas Jolly [including his vociferous legion of the morally delusional], is our Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, the outraged among us.
Formal Antichrist enactments lead up to moral outrages of the Paris Olympic kind. France had recently enacted a right to abortion in her constitution. Fiducia Supplicans, Dignitas Infinita, the Synod on Synodality Instrumentum Laboris agenda were preceded by the worship and enshrinement of the idol Pachamama. Satan is very clever. We by the grace of God are equally perspicacious and immovable [rigid].
@ A Diocesan Ordinary
We read that “Archbishop Henning also seems intent on avoiding the so-called culture wars, particularly regarding reception of holy Communion by pro-abortion politicians.” He mentions a “more nuanced” approach than under Cardinal O’Malley.
About this more nuanced approach, in general, maybe it refers to the wedding guest who was self-excluded and cast into the darkness because he presumed to not wear the wedding garment (Mt 22:11-13)? It’s almost as if individually and knowingly receiving the Real Presence “body and blood, soul and divinity [!]” of Christ unworthily, is a damning sacrilege, or whatever…
On the heels of the Eucharistic Congress, then, maybe some “nuanced” tutorial from those alter Christi “sent” (apostello: to be “sent”) on a mission about the fully alert, moral, graced, and sacramental life? Just wondering, might even the “culture-war” millstone thingy come into play?
So, “more nuanced”? Wait, what?