In the words of Gandalf. The wise speak only of what they know.... Have you read the books. Do you have any idea who Tolkien is. Do you know anything at all about Tolkien's religion or philosophy
Yea Yea, ive read the books many times. Also, the Simirilian and other Tolkien books related to such. Gandalf performs magic in the Lord of the Rings. He creates fire to a tree branch to ward of wolves and puts a spell on a door in the mines of moria. Yet, as i said, magic, spells and wizards are evil and also the one who performs it, yet Tolkien portrays him as good.
It's a fairy tale, written by a devout Catholic with a worldview so Catholic that mainstream communism-loving critics couldn't stand him or his work.
Exactly. It is steeped in Catholic sensibility. Sacramental in its presentation of Middle Earth. Its so obviously a symbolic story of the fall of man and the cost of redeeming that fall. I resisted it for years. But then I entered it and I love it. It is a tale for our times. There is a very fine scholar on EWTN originally from England who prizes it as one of the all time top Catholic works of literature.
I would compare this feeling of time speeding up more to when animals act differently right before a natural disaster. Like the animals we sense something is coming.
I remember ,as a child my grand mother used to tell us stories about the little people, the fairies and the Ban Shee, the female ghost, loads and loads and loads of magic. None of it was true ( I guess) but none of it did any of us children any harm. Even as children we knew it was just stories. Not real. The same with say Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins works magic and so I could, I suppose call her a witch. But it is just a story and does no harm. There is a danger of being a kind of cultural and theological Puritan and sucking the joy, the magic out of life. Such a pity. It was the same with Harry Potter books. They are just stories for children like my grandmother used to tell. I wouldn't get too het up about it all. We must beware of turning into book burners.
Portraying something evil as good. Not good. The point is, if magic or spells or wizards are in books or a movie, it should be portrayed as what the Church teaches it is. And they teach they are evil. Any thing else contradicts the teaching of the Church
It is fantasy, it is not real. I remember there used to be a TV series called, 'Bewitched', on TV where a lovely, fun good lady called Samantha was a witch.. There was never any harm in it all. But we will agree to disagree. It is better not to take these things too serious. JR Tolkien was a daily communicant. Very devout indeed, they are pushing him for sainthood.
I actually dont think they are harmless. Fr Ripperger Fr Reehil and Msgr Rossetti all think they are extremely dangerous spiritually.
It's been a while since I read LOTR (about 20 years, I reckon) so I had a look at Wikipedia to get a sense of what Tolkien had intended him to portray. As well as noting his probable origin in Old Norse tales and the figure of Odin, among others, there were references to a Christian interpretation that I thought were interesting: Christ-figure edit Further information: Christianity in Middle-earth The critic Anne C. Petty, writing about "Allegory" in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, discusses Gandalf's death and reappearance in Christian terms. She cites Michael W. Maher, S.J.: "who could not think of Gandalf's descent into the pits of Moria and his return clothed in white as a death-resurrection motif?"[15][16] She at once notes, however, that "such a narrow [allegorical] interpretation" limits the reader's imagination by demanding a single meaning for each character and event.[15] Other scholars and theologians have likened Gandalf's return as a "gleaming white" figure to the transfiguration of Christ.[17][18][19] The philosopher Peter Kreeft, like Tolkien a Roman Catholic, observes that there is no one complete, concrete, visible Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings comparable to Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series. However, Kreeft and Jean Chausse have identified reflections of the figure of Jesus Christ in three protagonists of The Lord of the Rings: Gandalf, Frodo and Aragorn. While Chausse found "facets of the personality of Jesus" in them, Kreeft wrote that "they exemplify the Old Testament threefold Messianic symbolism of prophet (Gandalf), priest (Frodo), and king (Aragorn)."[20][21][22]
Padraig, yes without these beautiful stories, especially Mary Poppins, I would have never survived my childhood. We all need to run away for a little bit from the craziness of life. I also grew up on the Hobbit books ...it started in highschool and I'm glad I had something good to read. We are not puritans... burn the books and the writers.. lol
But he does! He's St. Nicholas, just with lots of legends built up around him...some of which may be partially true! Once a guy called into a radio station, maybe 30 years ago, and said that when he and his wife packed up his kids to drive across the country to his parents' for Christmas, they realized with dismay when they arrived that they had forgotten to put the Christmas presents in the vehicle. They were all devastated, but when the dad went back out by himself to get the luggage out of the vehicle, he found all the presents there, where they weren't before! He believed it was St. Nicholas and says he heard sleigh bells in the sky. I believe St. Nicholas still loves Christmas and children and works miracles if we believe! But my children know who he really is and that he lives in Heaven, not necessarily the North Pole.
