/lit/ - Literature

>>20466553
nope, not him. That's kind of funny though, usually people accuse me of being Stephen Colbert (*shudder*) Don't even listen/watch him, though i have heard of him. I just think being honest is more important than rooting for your favorite religious sports team, and it's pretty clear that Silmarillion (and the rest of the books) aren't strictly speaking "Catholic".

1. There's reincarnation, which Catholics used to torture and murder people for believing.

2. There's no Mary figure.

3. There's no Trinity.

4. There's no Eucharist.

5. The only organized, practiced religion on the planet is that instituted by Melkor and Sauron. The Elves believe in Eru and know He exists, but they don't build churches to him or spin elaborate theologies about Him.

6. The world is thought of as evil and corrupted by Melkor. Catholics tortured and murdered the gnostics for having a very similar outlook on the world.

7. There's no Jesus figure. Gandalf comes closest to it, but he resembles more a bodhisattva archetype, a beneficent angel that agreed to incarnate in Melkor's realm (Middle Earth) and try to guide people away from the cycle of reincarnating, i.e. to escape to Valinor. And Aragorn and Frodo don't make for very good Jesus stand-ins, neither of them neither of their father's are God, neither were immaculately conceived, neither of them lived forever or will rule Valinor or Middle Earth after Melkor is finally destroyed. Aragorn only ruled as king for what, a century? I could see him being a King Arthur type, but not a Jesus. Frodo is an Everyman, just a normal person that we all can relate to.

8. the cosmogony of Silmarillion resembles more the Nordic/Greek/Roman conception, which is to say pagan, interwoven with strong elements of gnosticism.

there's prolly more examples i could give, but 8 should be enough to prove that the book isn't Catholic. The best argument a Catholic could make is that it's proto-Catholic, reeaally heavy on the proto.
Catholicism to me resembles more something Melkor or Sauron would create as an attempt to whitewash their religion to the non-Orc masses to make it more palatable. Melkor often tricked humans into worshiping him by claiming that Eru never existed, that "Middle Earth" was all there is, that the Timeless Halls don't exist, just space/void and more space/void. Tolkien even wrote that the one trait that could instantly distinguish whether the religion was at core "Melkor-ish" was whether human sacrifice was performed, since all the religions that Melkor/Sauron created had that in common. And Catholicism has the sacrifice of Jesus.... which i know, i know, he was supposed to be "the ultimate sacrifice" so that sacrificing would never be needed again, but it could also be construed as a white-washed way to continue the practice of sacrifice to appease Melkor, just like animal sacrifices were originally a way to continue sacrifices without resorting to sacrificing humans.