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well the Lord of the Rings is one of the
great Catholic novels of the 20th
century j.r.r tolkien was the member of
a writers group at Oxford called the
Inklings CS Lewis was part of them so
was Charles Williams and these writers
decided that they wanted to use their
literary work to propagate Christianity
and j.r.r tolkien in the course of many
years read to the members of this group
the manuscript of the Lord of the Rings
he said to in one of his letters that
Lord of the Rings began implicitly as a
Catholic novel but as it unfolded it
became explicitly Catholic so where is
it where do you see the symbolism in the
Lord of the Rings first of all remember
tokine was a soldier during the first
world war for a lot of people who went
through that war that was the great
cataclysmic event they saw human
dysfunction on full display and tokine
is not the least bit naive about the
human condition he knows the power of
sin and so at the heart of the Lord of
the Rings is a story of human depravity
you have the ring which is identified as
a Ring of Power Sauron wants this ring
of power back and with it he will be
able to dominate the world and to impose
upon it this terrible oppression Saint
Agustin defines sin as the libido
diamond on D
it means the lust to dominate power is
at the heart of sin
well Toki knows this he saw that
powerful people wreaked havoc in the
20th century that that empirically he
could verify power was very destructive
and that's why the Ring of Power is
central now was it due to you it empties
you out the great Catholic tradition
says that evil is not a thing it's a
lack it's a privation like the cavity in
your tooth
the tooth is good but the cavity is sort
of a it's an eating away when your
organs are compromised it means
something in them that ought to work
isn't working so evil is a type of non
being well look at Sauron in the movie
he's depicted beautifully he's like this
great vapid something just this eye
floating you know there's no substance
to him Gollum is a fallen hobbit he was
a hobbit many many years before but
through his own evil his own sin he had
become deformed the orcs are deformed
elves
they're beautiful elves who have now
become caved in on themselves and
deformed the ring wraiths these terrible
figures that fly around you know and
they're looking for the ring well
they're just cloaks there's nothing in
them well that's Tolkien's point that
the lust for power eats away at you it
turns you serve into non-being look at
the countryside of Mordor the land of
evil was just all arid and lifeless and
emptied out that's what sin does that's
a picture of sin okay now what's the
solution and here you see how deeply
Christian Tolkien is somebody has got to
take this ring of power has got to go
back to where it was made and destroy it
in its own country our instinct is
always to say get the strongest most
powerful most cunning and wily and maybe
even unjust person to take on these
unjust enemies no you find the smallest
humblest least likely character and he's
the one that will effectively undermine
them you know in martial arts there's a
thing called Aikido and Aikido is a
martial art that engages the enemy but
in an odd way non-violently its purpose
is to get out of the enemy's way and to
use the aggression of the enemy against
him so you're a little person and here
comes charging at you your enemy well in
Aikido you don't fight him directly you
deftly get out of the way and send him
flying you use his momentum and you take
him and throw him down how does Christ
battle evil he doesn't come as a warrior
he doesn't come fighting evil on its own
terms I will beat injustice with a
greater injustice I will conquer
violence with a greater violence rather
he allows the violence of the world and
the evil of the world to spend itself on
him
he journeys into Mordor so it journeys
into the land of sin and death and then
he explodes it from within by by
swallowing it up into divine mercy
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