From the January/February, 2002 issue of *Touchstone*

J. R. R. Tolkien Catholic The Lord & Lady of the Rings by Stratford Caldecott

The Lord & Lady of the Rings

The Hidden Presence of Tolkien’s Catholicism in The Lord of the Rings

by Stratford Caldecott

With the release in December 2001 of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of a three-movie series based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, public interest in the Oxford don whose private hobby has entranced millions has been rekindled. Yet how many of those who see the film will detect its original author’s Christian inspiration?

For once, this is not a criticism that can be directed against Hollywood for having bowdlerized the text. The author himself, though no admirer of popular American culture, did his best long before his own death in 1973 (as we know from his published Letters) to disguise or extirpate virtually all referen . . .

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