Tolkien's Faith Quotes

“Whilst deploring war and its dreadful effects, Catholic bishops were unequivocal in their support of the government. At their behest, congregations prayed for peace but only for one that followed victory over a tyrannical and warlike nation that had transgressed Christian principles and violated the integrity of both Catholic Belgium and France.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“Benediction does sometimes occur in the Church of England, despite one of the Thirty-Nine Articles (the twenty-fifth) appearing to outlaw it: “The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“a pathetic and shadowy medley of half-remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“the most important issue was that he was a Catholic, she was an Anglican, and Tolkien did not want them to have a ‘mixed marriage.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“Tolkien’s advice to Michael also contains the rather counterintuitive suggestion to strengthen his faith by going to a Mass celebrated by “a snuffling or gabbling priest”—that is, one who mumbles the liturgy or rushes through it in a mechanical manner—or by “a proud and vulgar friar.” This, he says, “will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man.”12 Why would Tolkien, with his great devotion to the Eucharist, consider that a slipshod liturgy could be “the same” or “better” than a beautiful and devoutly celebrated one? It is precisely his Eucharistic spirituality that undergirds his thinking.¶ Here Tolkien is emphasizing his belief that the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is brought about ex opere operato (“by the work worked”), meaning that sacramental grace comes from the validity of the rite and of the priest’s ordination; it does not depend on the aesthetically pleasing nature of the liturgy or on the personal holiness of the priest who has consecrated it. Tolkien had by this stage in his life of faith learned to relax into the sheer objectivity of the Blessed Sacrament, undeflected by exterior irritations or distractions—or at least he felt there was spiritual value in making the attempt.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography

“From 1871 to 1895, Catholic students wishing to study at Oxford had to receive special permission from their bishop to do so. The prohibition was imposed because the university was officially and culturally Protestant—chapel attendance was expected—and, furthermore, because the intellectual environment of the university showed a strong tendency toward theological modernism, treating the Christian religion as chiefly a cultural and social phenomenon rather than in terms of divinely revealed truth. Given that Catholics were a tiny minority in this environment, the ecclesiastical hierarchy believed that Catholic students would be at serious risk of losing their faith.”
― Holly Ordway, Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography