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Saint Tolkien Of The Shire?

MrRING

Android Futureman
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Aug 7, 2002
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Wait---- what's the possible basis for making JRRT a saint?

And also, I'm not sure Tolkien himself would approve of this. He was suspicious of fame and celebrity.
 
It's a Reddit article, so I may not have linked properly

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/70zkam/exciting_news_oxford_oratory_st_aloysius_hosts/

And this is the relevant post that I'll link in full because I'm not familiar with the website enough to know if it's easily seeable:
A SLIGHTLY UNEXPECTED GATHERING

Matt Showering

On Saturday 2 September, a Traditional Low Mass was held at the Oxford Oratory to mark the anniversary of the death of world-renowned Catholic writer & philologist JRR Tolkien (+ 1973). The Mass was offered, however, not for the repose of Tolkien's soul – but rather praying for his Cause for Beatification to be opened.

Many Catholics might be surprised to learn that anyone would consider the author of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ a serious candidate for sainthood, or indeed that he was a Catholic – which is a very sad indictment of the levels of knowledge and understanding prevalent among the faithful today. For within his most famous work alone are to be found deep and profound meditations on temptation, vocation, redemption and grace; unmistakable echoes of Our Lord's Farewell Discourses, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension; and the most distinctly Marian language that it would be possible to use to describe fictional characters.

The Mass itself was fittingly celebrated in Tolkien’s old parish church (dedicated to St Aloysius) with his granddaughter among the congregation. The Provost of the Oratory, Fr Daniel Seward, spoke in his short homily of Tolkien’s devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, describing it as “the great romance of his life – though I'm not sure what Mrs Tolkien would've made of this!” Years earlier, Tolkien biographer Humphrey Carpenter vividly described the scene on saints’ days when the author, “not an early riser by nature”, would wake early without fail to attend Mass before beginning his busy day of academic and family duties. A look at the sheer volume of his published work, which even now continues to hit our bookshelves anew, serves only to make such devotion seem all the more heroic. To say nothing of the fact that I personally have found such overwhelming spiritual quality in his earlier works of mythology that my inclination upon finishing a chapter is to bless myself!

After Mass (and lunch at Tolkien's later watering hole the Lamb & Flag), a group of us went to Wolvercote Cemetery to pray the Rosary for Tolkien’s beatification, the repose of the souls of his family members (including his eldest son Fr John Tolkien buried nearby), for an end to abortion and the conversion of England – together with the Beatification Prayer composed by the online group campaigning for his Cause to be opened. Also buried nearby is the writer Stratford Caldecott, for whom Tolkien’s works were instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism.

If you would like to follow and support the pre-nascent Cause online, please look up ‘Cause of Canonization of JRR Tolkien’ on Facebook. Here follows the Beatification Prayer.

"O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and for allowing the poetry of Your Creation, the mystery of the Passion of Your Son, and the symphony of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him and his sub-creative imagination. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Wisdom of God Incarnate, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore…,hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen."

Come join the FB Group! At the least, consider saying the prayer!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/54920519712/
 
Whilst I greatly admire all that JRR ever produced, I cannot see any resonance between that, and the divine ideals of sainthood as bestowed by the Roman Catholic church.

What precise reasons are being cited as their reasoning for considering this? Is the Church attempting to recognise his genius after death, in some curious way, because I didn't think that was what sainthood was about.

Isn't there meant to be an established sequence of miracles, petitioners, committees of cardinals....sanctification steps?

Perhaps becomng saintly has itself been recalibrated / recategorised.

Or is this some fixed lower destination point, perhaps the recognition of past brilliance with a posthumous honorific title?

I am sure that at one time, strict Catholics might have considered some of Tolkein's fiction to have had some satanic/paganic undertones.

And although there are numerous moral messages interwoven within his fictional masterpieces, I always understood them to be primarily vessels of fictional conflict in metaphorical proxy for WW1+2, blended with Beowulf/OE /Scando-Norse legends, and having a strong strand of expert ancient linguistics as a foundation.

More runes than rites...or, is there another aspect to Tolkein that we're all missing?
 
What precise reasons are being cited as their reasoning for considering this? Is the Church attempting to recognise his genius after death, in some curious way, because I didn't think that was what sainthood was about.

Isn't there meant to be an established sequence of miracles, petitioners, committees of cardinals....sanctification steps?
Yes, Tolkien has a long way to go if he wants to make it as a saint. This seems to be just one man's campaign at the moment. The first step will be to convince a bishop to petition the Holy See for permission to initiate the process; once that's done, Tolkien will be granted the title 'Servant of God'. Then his life and works will be examined for evidence of saintly virtues; if he passes this stage, he'll become 'the Venerable'. That's when they have to start looking for miracles; one miracle will make him 'Tolkien the Blessed', two will transform him into a bone fide 'Saint'.

According to their Facebook page, this group have already contacted the Bishop of Portsmouth, where Tolkien died, who suggested they put their case instead to the Archbishop of Birmingham, since Tolkien spent most of his life in Oxford. They're still waiting to hear back from him.

As you say, I'm not sure what this guy sees in Tolkien's work that strikes him as carrying an overtly Catholic significance, but he'd better hope the rest of the Church see it too. If the Cause for Canonisation goes ahead, everything Tolkien wrote will be carefully scrutinised for its "purity of doctrine". The slightest whiff of heresy will be enough to quash JRR's saintly aspirations for good.
 
Makes a sort of sense, if you read the spiritual/religious angle of Middle Earth as being directly influenced by the author's Catholicism: one creator God who got the ball rolling and directed an arch-angelic order - who specificly and explicitly are not in themseves Gods, merely servants of the one God - to do the grunt-work on creating a World. And one of those Sons of God leads a rebellion in Heaven and causes a significant number of his peers to Fall with him, wrecking Eden in the process. Hence the Good-Evil dichotomy which informs everything else - no greys, just those faithful to the One God against those who aren't. We get a fallen world and fallen peoples. God and the Maiar directly intervene - great destruction and smiting of the Ungodly ensues and we even get a Sodom/Gomorrah thing going on in the fall of Numenor - God's last direct intervention in the world. Then, reflecting the switch from Old to New Tetament thinking, divine intervention becomes more indirect and we even get a Saviour - Gandalf - coming into the world who is, indeed, allowed to die and to be reborn with more power. Tenptation (the Ring) is resisted. Satan (Sauron - Freudian name there, reptilian like the serpent in the garden) is thrown down along with his demonic hordes, and a New Age is ushered in. Faith becomes all. Also interesting how virtually every female lead - and there aren't many of them - could be seen as having something of the BVM about her. Galadriel, Arwen... I wonder how many readers of LOTR got the Christian sub-text and perhaps got into religion this way? Getting Catholic doctrine out in a stealth sort of way, and into the minds of millions - worth a St, perhaps, although JRR himself might have been horrifed at the thought.
 
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