Literature in the News: The Catholic Cosmology of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

It’s not really in the news but on a video piece from The Coming Home Network, but I didn’t have a category other than this.  The Coming Home Network is a Catholic evangelization organization that puts out information on why to “come home” to the Catholic Church and provides testimonies of people who have done so.  I find their testimonies very engaging.  They also have a series of short videos categorized as Insights, which is where this video comes from.  I found this video to be somewhat outside their norm.  Normally they provide some five minute theological insight, usually by a convert who found that particular insight significant to their conversion.  This insight is presented by Dr. David Russell Mosley, who according to his blog is a “theologian, Roman Catholic, poet, writer and speaker,” and apparently now also a novelist. 

He doesn’t mention his conversion on his blog “About” page but I did track down an article he wrote which provided his testimony on how his eight weeks old child getting cancer ultimately led him to the Catholic Church.  Titled, “How Catholic liturgy helped a father through family tragedy: Liturgy speaks when we can't find the words" it can be found at US Catholic Magazine, here.  It’s a moving testimony and worth reading, but I wanted to highlight his last paragraph where he mentions the influence of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

My path, and my family’s, into the Catholic Church has many strands of beginning: my study of the church fathers, my obsession in childhood with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien—and by extension England, Ireland, and Scotland—and my even earlier childhood obsession with Greek mythology. All of this and more is woven together to tell this story. But the central thread for me is the one that led through my son’s cancer, into that little parish church in Beeston, and ultimately across the Tiber. Where I found solace, I ultimately found a home.

As a writer and professor of theology, he does come with quite a bit of expertise on Tolkien. 

So that’s his background.  The reason this particular video caught my eye, enough so to have me post it, is because in my two separate readings of Lord of the Rings, and watching the film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson I never caught on that there was a Christian element to the work.  Albeit that both my readings were before I became religious, and I might not notice the religious dimension to the novel.  Still I have watched the movie and I have reflected on the work since I became religious, and still other than the good/evil moral element of the story, I still have not picked up on the Christianity.  So Dr. Mosely’s video is insightful. 

 

That helps a bit.  It’s a start, but it’s only a five or six minute talk.  I really should read Lord of the Rings a third time now, but given the length I’m hesitant to commit to that long a read with all I juggle.  One of these days.  Hope you found that as interesting as I did.