Julian Kwasniewski, of the Imaginative Conservative, writes 

“… Far more of an academic than figures like Belloc, Chesterton, or Evelyn Waugh, Tolkien was not an apologist like his friend C.S. Lewis. Consequently there is less material in which he explicitly speaks of the Church or his relationship with the Church during the last decade of his life. However, Tolkien was a traditionalist in many senses of the word, and, while not extensively vocal about the state of the Church following Vatican II, was certainly troubled by it. Several comments on liturgy and the theological atmosphere of the 1960s are extant in Tolkien’s letters. Tolkien combines humility with criticism. He acknowledges that the changes and infidelities of churchmen and current ideas could not be equated with the defection of the Church, but he saw that they could provide an excuse for “scandal” and unbelief. His ecclesiology is sound enough both to be disturbed and faithful.

Start With Humility: Snuffling Priests and Women in Trousers

Writing to his son Michael, Tolkien the elder said on the feast of all saints, 1963, that “in the last resort faith is an act of the will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons.” Tolkien writes that the “temptation to ‘unbelief’ (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us.” When this inner temptation grows, our readiness to be “‘scandalized’ by others” increases…

In another letter, he wrote how, “in the course of [his] peregrinations” he had met “snuffy, stupid, undutiful, conceited, ignorant, hypocritical, lazy, tipsy, hardhearted, cynical, mean, grasping, vulgar, snobbish, and even (at a guess) immoral priest” but that the goodness of his childhood guardian, Fr Francis Morgan, outweighed them all.

Tolkien was not a snob. He advises Michael to make frequent communions and to make it “in circumstances that affront your taste….

This mature and thoughtful reflection is good evidence, I think, that Tolkien was not the sort of man to let himself be easily swayed by the bad behavior of churchmen. His comments on Vatican II and the state of the Church are similarly measured

Vatican II and the New Mass

In letter 306, Tolkien writes: “‘Trends’ in the Church are… serious, especially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a ‘pax’ in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change.” Being born in the midst of Queen Victoria’s reign, both the temporal and spiritual senses of security he once enjoyed have “been progressively stripped away from” him. And that now the “Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go!”

What to do, asks Tolkien? “I think there is nothing to do but to pray, for the Church, for the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves; and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it.”

Tolkien recognizes that there are many “various elements in the present situation” which are “confused, though in fact distinct” like modern youth which is partly inspired by good motives such as “anti-regimentation, and anti-drabness” and “is not necessarily allied to the drugs or cults of fainéance and filth”. Writing this in 1967 or ’68, the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council could hardly not be included in this description.

Tolkien saw (from the vantage of 1963) the reform of Pius X regarding regular communion and the age of first communions as “the greatest reform of our time” and “surpassing anything, however needed, that the Council will achieve.” Tolkien was deeply devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. “I fell in love with the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning—and by the mercy of God never have fallen out again.” He writes that the most striking thing about the Catholic Church is that it is the only one that has “ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour, and put it (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place.” The disregard for Eucharistic reverence and a correct theology of sacrifice which followed on the heels of the Novus Ordo must have troubled him deeply.

The philologist served the Latin Mass well into his adulthood: “Fr Gervase Mathew is saying Mass at Blackfriars on Saturday at 8 a.m., and I shall serve him” he wrote in 1945, and in 1963 of a Mass offered for C.S. Lewis: “I had a Mass said this morning, and was there, and served”.

In Letter 54, he writes to Christopher that he regularly uses prayers such as the Gloria Patri, Laudate Dominum, and Sub tuum in Latin. “It is also a good and admirable thing to know by heart the Canon of the Mass, for you can say this in your heart if ever hard circumstance keeps you from hearing Mass.” The disregard for the Latin liturgical patrimony would unquestionably have been hard on someone so intimately familiar with the beauty and pietas of the Catholic rites.

Simon Tolkien reminisced in 2003 about his grandfather’s attachment to the Latin liturgy:

I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My Grandfather obviously didn’t agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my Grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right.”

… until better, more balanced, times come again as Pope Benedict XVI tried to restore to us, and which Francis (temporarily, we hope) took away. SH

Excerpt from Tolkien’s Traditionalism: Conveniently Forgotten? The Imaginative Conservative

+

A 2021 Conversation With Declan Ganley: “A Future State Could Try to Ban the Catholic Church… The Establishment Hates the Catholic Church.” &  Many Important Topics.

Irish entrepreneur and businessman Declan Ganley sits down with Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne. 2021.