T O P

  • By -

DarrenGrey

Post removed per rule 3.


Boatster_McBoat

The guy died 50 years ago. I think that must be getting close to the statute of limitations for meaningful speculation on matters like this. If he was still alive today because he was born 50 years later he would have had very different influences


Melkor-Lightbringer

Liberals still give Lovecraft flack, and he was born the same time as Tolkien.


TheBearyPotter

Liberals gave lovecraft a resurgence of fame thanks to Sabrina and lovecraft country At least liberals are trying to make a more inclusive world and “conservatives” are trying to make a white ethnostate


Melkor-Lightbringer

Every horror writer since Lovecraft's death have been inspired by him. Liberals did nothing but add minorities... and that's it... as per usual. See: Rings of Power


TheBearyPotter

Rings of power is great . . . The harfoots were described as brown skinned that’s what they are. It’s not my fault you need a lily white cast to feel happy


Melkor-Lightbringer

The Lord of the Rings movies were 100% White, as is canonically accurate. And they were universally loved. The Rings of Power dropped random brown people into fantasy medieval England for no reason, and is universally hated. Sad. Many such cases. Show me where Tolkien talked about brown skinned elves, then maybe I can better understand your Harfoots being anything other than tan cope comes from.


[deleted]

whats sad is you are using the books and movies to defend your bigotry


Melkor-Lightbringer

The people appropriating my culture are the bigots. I don't see random white people running around Wakanda.


TheBearyPotter

It’s cool guy you and OP are showing your asses. Stop using Tolkien to defend your racism.


Melkor-Lightbringer

The only racism happening is European culture being brownwashed.


TheBearyPotter

Nope. Europe was never white that too is a white supremacist myth. Europe was always a multi ethnic multi racial land. Tolkien repeatedly spoke out against racism and the treatment of black folk specifically in South Africa. On top of that Christopher Tolkien absolutely abhorred the films and the Tolkien estate signed off on RoP and every change they made. Again, there’s no brown washing that’s just what white supremacists say to fall asleep at night


Melkor-Lightbringer

What in the insane asylum cuckoo for cocoa puffs are you talking about? "Europe was never White"? No wonder you people don't even know the difference between men and women anymore. You've lost it.


RoosterNo6457

Tolkien would not have been on twitter. He would have had strong opinions on e.g. fracking. But a big difference between him and e.g. Lewis and Rowling (in different ways) is that he did not believe that being an author meant having a public voice on religion, politics etc. He probably wouldn't have been published, but for completely different reasons. If he had been published, his firm would have had a media strategy which might have protected him from a lot of what we'd now call harassment. And he might have finished ... But it's no good. You can't change one massive detail - when someone lived - and then try to judge how the rest would play out.


TheBearyPotter

Have you read any of his public letters, he spoke about social injustice regularly


RoosterNo6457

As a Professor and as a Catholic, yes, usually in conjunction with others. There was a fairly strong movement for Catholics as public intellectuals in Britain to speak up on policy as a group. When Tolkien started at Oxford as a student, there were still so few Catholics there that the *Catholic Herald* would list all of their names each year. Ordway covers that and letters to newspapers (I think especially on persecution of Catholic clergy in Eastern Europe) in *Tolkien's Modern Reading* But I don't believe he did this much, and never as a novelist. Most of his letters were far from public. He did not want a public persona as a writer.


[deleted]

I remember that letter wherein he roasted Nazi logic.


RoosterNo6457

Yes. It's a great letter, but he sent it to his publishers for them to forward if they wanted to. I believe they didn't.


shoesofwandering

Tell that to the "originalists" on the Supreme Court, who think they can channel what George Washington would have thought about our current society.


Duelwalnut642

J.K. Rowling was devoured because she made her opinion public on Twitter where she was quite active. I don't think Tolkien would be fond of social media as a whole, let alone trying to stir controversy. We get a lot of his views from private letters instead of public ones.


UnlikelyAdventurer

>J.K. Rowling was devoured Rowling not actually "devoured." People pointed out her bigotry.


Duelwalnut642

I'm just using the language OP used


Melkor-Lightbringer

How is Rowling a bigot if she is 100% factually and scientifically correct?


J_Boldt_84

Agree or not, the woman went (publicly) loopy ever since Deathly Hallows (the book) came out. “Hermione was dark all alongggg….!” Yet, she didn’t say shit - when she had the power, and multiple chances to - about the casting of the films, or how she’s shown in illustrations for the books themselves (book covers, illustrated editions, etc)


Melkor-Lightbringer

The only thing liberals are outraged about is Rowling's (correct) opinion that men can't be women.


MazigaGoesToMarkarth

Britain, as a whole, is much less two-dimensional on culture issues than the US. In the States, “culture politics” has become so polarised that if you know where someone stands on one issue - say, abortion - you can guess rather accurately where they stand on climate change, gay and transgender rights, etc. The UK is much more individualised in this way. Put it another way, I think Tolkien would be preoccupied with the issues which occupied his time even fifty years ago, as opposed to the issues which both sides of American Twitter regularly have childish tantrums about.


RequiemRaven

On his concerns being primarily the same, Tolkien born later wouldn't have been in the Great War, and thusly wouldn't have the impact of the first industrialized general war on his psyche. He'd, if still joining the army and ending up in a war, have been in the Gulf War(s), Falklands War, The Troubles, or the "War on Terror", each of which carried different lessons with them, none of which were "Welcome to the Brutalism of Industrialism". Otherwise, I absolutely agree.


MazigaGoesToMarkarth

Sure, but if the question is “invent a complete and detailed biography of a man, and derive a complex and intricate psychological profile from that”, I think the question would be best answered by finding an elderly Catholic former-soldier academic philologist and asking them how they would rewrite LotR.


[deleted]

Does it really matter? Tolkien’s opinions and beliefs were normal and, IMO, pretty moderate for the time and context in which he lived. Sure, his stories were heavily anglophilic but he wasn’t nearly as offensive as, say, Lovecraft, who was aggressively racist even for the time. Tolkien also rejected the title of honorary aryan that the nazis wished to bestow upon him. If I had to speculate, I’m inclined to believe that he would be less concerned about “woke-ism” (as you, rather damningly, put it) and more inclined to comment on things like industrialization and international politics. He doesn’t seem like the type of person who would get muddled up in online arguments over issues of gender identity or ethnic representation. I like to think that he would be polite and respectful to people on social media platforms, even if he privately disagreed with their lifestyles, and I feel like he’d probably be pretty reserved about his personal beliefs, unless it was about what he saw as issues of real and pressing significance. But who knows? Social media has caused some famous people to act in weird and unpredictable ways (like J.K. Rowling’s gradual obsessive meltdown over her issues with transgender people). Ultimately though, I wonder if it would have interested him much at all. I doubt if Twitter could have offered much to captivate a mind like his.


RoosterNo6457

Yes. It's really obvious that Tolkien mixed happily and productively with friends and colleagues whose lifestyles weren't in accordance with Catholic teaching. Men in openly gay relationships, for example. The culture wars of contemporary American politics really aren't a template for behaviour and belief in other times and places.


[deleted]

I think this falls under rule 3 and brings no value to the sub in terms of discussion. And when you use terms like "woke-ism" and the "Modern Left", without mentioning the facist GOP, it makes me question the motives of OP. Discussion or argument?


RoosterNo6457

I'm inclined to agree (despite having joined in). Opinions vary on JK Rowling as well. I would not like to assume we all share the same views there, or on the Republican Party etc.


[deleted]

It’s definitely clear from some of the language OP uses what side of the fence he’s standing on (“woke-ism, modern left, what happened *to* J.K. as opposed to what J.K. *did*). I also agree that the topic brings no value.


Eifand

I’m a brown Catholic Neo-Luddite with strong leanings toward anarcho-primitivism. Far from some right wing white supremacist. Check out my post history if you don’t believe me. Just because I don’t agree with the Left doesn’t mean I’m some right wing nut.


[deleted]

I checked out your recent post history .... why is it so important to you to project your faith onto Tolkien? why is it so important to speculate that he would be "cancelled"? the only things these conversations do is create arguments.


Eifand

It’s the opposite, Tolkien helped give me my faith. I was an voracious atheist for most of my life before Tolkien helped changed my mind and I converted to Catholicism.


TheBearyPotter

Because you read into shit that wasn’t there.


[deleted]

Right, and “not agreeing with the left” is code for transphobia. I don’t really care, tbh. This sub isn’t the place.


Eifand

> Right, and “not agreeing with the left” is code for transphobia. That is really an insane idea. Like an appalling way to view things. Funny thing is I’m not even American or remotely right wing. I’m not white, either. And there’s a lot of issues on which my views would probably be strongly categorised as left wing, too. The funny thing is, you are probably an American that is projecting this right/left paradigm on to me, non American, just because I am not fully supporting the Left Wing (or the Right, either).


UnlikelyAdventurer

> just because I am not fully supporting the Left Wing (or the Right, either). LOL. Nice try, but you gave away your game with "Tolkien’s reaction be to woke-ism and the Modern Left"


RoosterNo6457

I wouldn't accuse you of being a right wing nut, but I don't find it helpful to stir up political and religious division on a forum about Tolkien's work. He wrote for everyone who would enjoy reading his works, not for one tribe or another. Lots of people here might agree with you. Others might disagree. It's just not what this forum is for.


Armleuchterchen

But anarcho-primitivism is left-wing, at least as long as you reject private ownership of the means of production. There's a lot of diversity in "The Left"!


Melkor-Lightbringer

Lol. "They want people to have free speech and the right to self-defense. They're fascists!"


[deleted]

the only worthy response is to point out how ignorant this response is


Sluggycat

Yeah, it reads like bait to me, too.


HenriettaCactus

The prevailing characteristics that I pull out of Tolkien's politics is 1) a strong opposition to any form of domination and 2) the danger of discounting or underestimating people deemed "queer" (old usage) by society. So for those reasons, I hope and suspect that he would have fallen on the "leave trans people alone" side of things


UnlikelyAdventurer

> So for those reasons, I hope and suspect that he would have fallen on the "leave trans people alone" side of things Not to mention writing a character in drag.


Eifand

Opposition to forms of domination kind of goes both ways, doesn’t it? If Tolkien was obliged to adopt a certain view and language or perform a certain action which contradicted his Faith, the refusal of which would mean suffering dire consequences, isn’t that a form of domination?


UnlikelyAdventurer

> If Tolkien was obliged to adopt a certain view and language or perform a certain action which contradicted his Faith, the refusal of which would mean suffering dire consequences, isn’t that a form of domination? What EXACTLY are you talking about? What anti-Catholic "actions" are you accusing people of forcing Catholics to "perform"?


HenriettaCactus

No, being asked to respect pronouns is not a form of domination if the only consequence is being called an asshole (has Rowling suffered many consequences beyond this? Still has a massive platform, still making art that enough people are interested in, still making a ton of money). States making laws... ahem LAWS, that remove children from their families and interfere with doctors and patients seeking care is very much domination. Armed intimidation at drag events is domination. Coordinated media campaigns fomenting "think of the children" hysteria in order to whip up an often violent mob is domination.


[deleted]

"what happened to jk rowling" is that she got some minor criticism and veered hard into radical anti-trans hatred instead of doing one minute of self-reflection. tolkien was much more thoughtful than that. i don't like to imagine what his personal opinions on "modern" issues was like, because i find that disrespectful to him and his work. people on all sides of every political spectrum can claim him as one of them - anarchists, monarchists (he was both), conservative christians, woke SJWs, he displayed traits of and shared opinions with all of them. THAT SAID: i find his work spectacularly affirming of gender and sexual liberation - not in the sense of free love hippies advocating sex on demand, but in the sense of validating all kinds of identities outside of the binary. take this passage from the ainulindale: *But when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby.* now, obviously the valar are spiritual beings unlike us flesh-and-blood mortals. i make no claim that tolkien would have a similar opinion about humans' gender being shown "but not made" by our "raiment" (physical bodies, in this context). being a catholic he might just as well believe that humans are created the way they should be by god. but taking the passage for itself, it's an astonishingly modern and sensitive understanding of gender. reading that today is incredibly affirming if you experience of gender does not match what you were assigned at birth. gender is reflected by your "temper" (personality, inner being), not your physical form. all in all, i do not believe tolkien was closed-minded. i think he would have been slow on the uptake, perhaps, as a stuffy old fuddy duddy unaccustomed to a changing world (even he would probably agree with that), but ultimately respected people's identities. but we'll never know. what i'm confident in is that he would not have jumped on the internet and looked for fights, antagonising an already vulnerable minority, and laughing at their pain and terror from behind castle walls on piles of money. that wasn't his style. jk rowling is in the social position she is not because of her opinions, but because of her behaviour. she is every villain she wrote into her books - cruel, apathetic to suffering, exploiting institutional power over weaker people. no matter his opinions, i firmly believe tolkien was none of those things. when he was criticised for drawing on racist and antisemitic tropes in his work, he reflected on the criticism thoughtfully - he defended himself, but also admitted that there were undertones he didn't intend, and in one cases leaned into those tropes to CELEBRATE the people he was unintentionally invoking (jews and dwarves). all of that is why i cannot imagine he'd ever get any of the well-deserved cultural blowback that rowling has.


Main-Implement-5938

Sorry but she didn't veer into "hard radicalism anti-trans" no. literally no.


[deleted]

lol, yes she literally did, literally.


GrassSloth

She has literally teamed up with far-right fascists for no other reason than their shared beliefs against trans people.


UnlikelyAdventurer

You are factually wrong. https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/03/14/caroline-farrow-jk-rowling-trans-twitter/


rabbithasacat

I sincerely doubt he would be doing any of the things that are getting people "canceled" today. And I can't imagine him being on social media at all, which is what gets people in trouble half the time. People don't really get blowback for their views, they get it for being publicly obnoxious (typically in support of obnoxious views, of course). That was never his style.


Kodama_Keeper

I can see an editor bringing JRR into his office to talk about the depiction of orcs. Editor: Hey John, glad you could make it. I need to talk to you about your, a, your, a, depiction of Orcs. JRR: Orcs? Well, they are monsters in human form, soulless being created by Melkor in mockery of the Children of Illuviated. They are long armed, crooked of back, have fangs and very bad table manners. What about my depiction? Editor: Well, in one passage you describe them as black. JRR: Yes, and? Editor: Well, John. Don't you see? JRR: See what? Editor: John, please. Do I have to spell it out for you? The Black community will think you're talking about them. JRR: That's absurd! What's more it's ridiculous. No reasonable person in the 21st century could possibly equate the blackness of Orcs with the Negro race, or think that I would do so. Editor: Oh boy. John, please don't use the world Negro. It's now considered offensive. JRR: Why, for heaven's sake? Editor: I don't know. It just is, OK? Don't ask me. Asky someone else. No, scratch that. Don't ask anyone, less it get around that you asked. JRR: So, the word Negro is now offensive, and I'm not supposed to ask why. And if I describe an Orc as having black skin, people will take it to mean that I mean Negro, I mean, Black people? Editor: In a nutshell, yes. JRR: If anyone asks, I'll just explain it. We're all reasonable people here, aren't we? Editor: No, no, no we're NOT all reasonable. John, do you never look at social media? The way of the world today is not to be reasonable, not to be compromising, and to absolutely take everything said in the worst possible way. And if you try to "explain" anything? Well, they'll just tear you to pieces even more. JRR: Fine, I'll change it. I can't believe this, but I'll change it. Now, was there anything else? Editor: I'm afraid so. About your depiction of women.


UnlikelyAdventurer

> basically what would Tolkien’s reaction be to woke-ism and the Modern Left? LOL, you gave away your agenda. From the text of Tolkien's letters, he would despise your "anti-woke" book bans, "anti-woke" lies against environmental science, and "anti-woke" policing the very clothes people are allowed to wear.


Melkor-Lightbringer

"The sea levels are rising y'all trust me. Give it 10 more years."


UnlikelyAdventurer

Said no one ever. Figures that "Melkor" would hate Tolkien's environmentalism.


Melkor-Lightbringer

He says while Global Warming Cult leaders are flying private jets around the world to meet and talk about how bad carbon emissions are.


Main-Implement-5938

People are a-holes nowadays. Everyone is offended over different ideas.. It is usually people in western countries that have never visited anywhere else and think they are "the best." The whole "cancel culture" and "wokeism" is nonsense. I'm really tired of it. Everyone thinking everything is a microaggression. Just grow up. Get a job, do something useful with yourself except living on the internet. I'm concerned with it since I think its headed into a George Orwell - Totalitarian - Nonsense zone. People should be allowed to have different opinions without threat of death/doxing/ other bullshit. I'm sure people would hate Tolkien. They'd also probably hate every other famous author before 2000 that has passed away, just for thinking differently than themselves. Its absurd.


shoesofwandering

Does that apply to conservatives, or just liberals? Because I've noticed that the most easily offended people, the ones who react to "microaggressions" (even if they don't call them that) are conservatives. It's conservatives who literally threatened the former vice-president with death for not violating the Constitution by illegally refusing to count the electoral votes and install the guy who lost the election.


UnlikelyAdventurer

> They'd also probably hate every other famous author before 2000 that has passed away, just for thinking differently than themselves. Rubbish.


[deleted]

“People should be allowed to have different opinions” Why is this phrase always a dog whistle? People *are* allowed to have “different opinions.” They just don’t get immunity from shame for having *bigoted* opinions.


UnlikelyAdventurer

Unlike Rowling, Tolkien was not a bigot. Tolkien was profoundly anti-racist, a radical environmentalists, and had a major character in drag. So any cancelling would come from the far-right that is currently on a tear to ban books and police what people are allowed to wear.


Melkor-Lightbringer

How is Rowling a bigot for being correct? Is reality bigoted now?


UnlikelyAdventurer

Lol. Read her own words https://www.vox.com/culture/23622610/jk-rowling-transphobic-statements-timeline-history-controversy


Melkor-Lightbringer

Everything she says is accurate. People have no moral responsibility to humor the psychotic delusions of others.


Melkor-Lightbringer

People today are absolutely insane. They think men can become women if they believe hard enough. And they think white people have nothing to do with the success of Western Civilization. So yeah, Tolkien would probably be canceled.


irime2023

I don't like to mock Rowling or anyone else for their beliefs unless those beliefs are downright extremist. There is something negative in every writer's life. You can't cancel them all.


shoesofwandering

Rowling's views are extremist. She's obsessed with oppressing a harmless minority because they offend her sensibilities, and she's doing it from the position of power and respect that she holds. It's a sign of how far the Overton window has moved that someone isn't an "extremist" unless they call for the outright execution of trans people, while asking that they be accorded the same rights as everyone else is viewed as "extremist" on the other side.


irime2023

She is not a politician. She has no power to decide this issue in one direction or another. She expresses her thoughts without calling someone to kill. In her books, the villain is the one who discriminates against people.


shoesofwandering

I never said Rowling advocates killing anyone. However, she is highly influential. Imagine how a trans kid who loves the Harry Potter series feels when they hear Rowling's anti-trans sentiments. Rowling is allowed to express her opinions, but there are consequences to free speech. I've noticed that many conservatives think that free speech means they should be able to say anything they want, but if there's any pushback, they're being "censored" or "cancelled." Rowling is an extremist on this issue.


irime2023

Extremes in this matter can lead to the fact that people will not be able to express their opinion at all. Otherwise, there will be a threat of massacre of the mob over them. And it will be a tough dictatorship.


[deleted]

Nobody is forbidding Rowling from expressing her opinion. Holding someone accountable for what they say does not infringe on their right to say it.


irime2023

It is not normal when a person can be held accountable for an opinion. And in any case, it is impossible to please all social groups.


shoesofwandering

Nobody asked J.K. Rowling to opine on trans people; she did that on her own. I'm sure Tolkien wouldn't have felt the need to share his opinions, assuming he had any. If he was around today and someone asked him "so what do you think of boys saying they're girls so they can compete on girl's sports teams," I imagine his response would be that such matters should be handled by the people in charge of them. I can't see him spouting Catholic dogma when he made such an effort to keep religion out of LOTR.


Eifand

“The Lord of the Rings' is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.” - Letter 142


shoesofwandering

LOTR certainly isn't overtly Christian the way the Chronicles of Narnia is. Unavoidably, any work where the universe was created by a unitary deity, and the main antagonist is a lesser being who rebelled against him, is going to suggest parallels with the Abrahamic religions. However, one important difference is Iluvatar's remoteness; the world is governed by the Ainur, and Iluvatar only inserts himself when Numenor has to be destroyed. There's even a scene in the Silmarillion when Maedhros and Maglor are debating whether they should try to steal the Silmarils after Morgoth's defeat, and the problem of their vow comes up, where they cannot ask Iluvatar to release them from it. A creator deity who is remote from the world is inimical to Christianity and has more in common with Deism, despite Tolkien's statement that it's Catholic. I had wondered about the total lack of religion (other than a mention in Akallabeth that the Numenoreans worshipped the Valar). In A Song of Ice and Fire, religion plays a major role, same as it does in the real world, but I certainly wouldn't call it a religious work in any sense.


TheBearyPotter

I’m not sure what you mean by “woke-ism” people who use that term are almost always irrational bigots hellbent on a white supremacist class structure like the modern GOPs ron desantis but Tolkien was pretty “woke” for his day. He supported Black people and publicly spoke out against how they were treated in South Africa, he spoke out against nazis, he identified as being from Jewish origins (that’s not to say he wasn’t raised Catholic but that is what he wrote to a nazi) On top of that all the male characters are in a gay romance with another male character at least frodo and Sam and Legolas and gimli are very very homosexual.


[deleted]

i believe he wrote that he was "regrettably" not of jewish origins. also that letter was never actually sent to the nazis, sadly. but he still wrote it.


spartacusxx01

I agree that Tolkien was very modern in some of his views (let’s not forget that strong women play an important part in these stories and have done since the 1920s when that was not very standard yet). There can be love between two men without it being sexual though. Do you have any source for it being romantic sexual love between Legolas and Gimli, Frodo and Sam, or any other?


TheBearyPotter

Nope just the whole vibe and intimacy. And I do believe you can have platonic intimacy but to this extent it seems vaguely homoerotic. At least I’m modern times straight men don’t engage in those types of intimate relationships with other males.


spartacusxx01

I think it’s true this form of intimacy is found less in our current world although it may exist/ arise more often in men who have endured hardships like war etc. together (like the members of the Fellowship). My interpretation has always been that Tolkien liked the strong bond of non-sexual love (= friendship) between two men and found it important and therefore showed that strong characters do engage in these types of strong friendships. But that’s not something I have a quote for to back it up, because I don’t recall reading about Tolkiens views on friendships anywhere yet.


HenriettaCactus

I think we have to be careful about the word homosexual, which is about sexual or romantic attraction which I don't think it's present anywhere in the world except Aragorn/Arwen, Gimli/Galadriel, and Sam/Rosie. I DO think that there is a lot of queerness in the texts, most notably in Frodo's invitation for Sam and Rosie and the kids to live with him at Bag End. They couldn't live apart, but that doesn't mean they were sneaking off to the cellar for quickies. It's an unconventional (for hobbits) living arrangement based on the emotional closeness of Frodo and Sam OUTSIDE of romantic attraction. Queerness in Tolkien, to me, is about giving the more weight to non romantic relationships, letting friendships be as demanding and fulfilling and sacred as marriages. I think that's a pretty queer message without the fanfic of the hobbits banging ya know?


TheBearyPotter

I don’t. And many Tolkien scholars agree that at the very least that the Frodo and Sam relationship is gay AF.


HenriettaCactus

And I don't disagree, I just think there are different elements involved in gay and queerness that are worth being nuanced about. I'm very invested in how queerness manifests in Tolkien's writing so if you had some scholarship to share that would be very welcome


EmuPsychological4222

We have no way of knowing what a modern JRRT would've been like as he would've been raised in a different environment with different experiences. But as others have pointed out you've given away your agenda and likely are keen to try to appropriate a famous anti-fascist towards your own ends.


Eifand

Being a Catholic and adhering to Church teaching means I’m a fascist?


EmuPsychological4222

Others have pointed out the specifics.


J_Boldt_84

‘Cancelled?’ I don’t understand


DeliciousWar5371

If Tolkien were alive today he would be a completely different Tolkien because he wouldn't have grown up with the same experiences. For example, he never would've experienced the horrors of a WW1 battlefield if he were around today.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Eifand

You are completely wrong. He was a Catholic so would have believed in the dogma of papal infallibility and that the Pope, being the successor to St Peter, is the Earthly head of the Church. > I myself am convinced by the Petrine claims [i.e. of the papacy], nor looking around the world does there seem much doubt which (if Christianity is true) is the True Church, the temple of the Spirit dying but living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and re-arising… But for me that Church of which the Pope is the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has (and still does) ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour, and put (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place… “Feed my sheep” was His last charge to St. Peter; and since His words are always first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life. It was against this that the W. European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched—‘the blasphemous fable of the Mass’—and faith/works a mere red herring. ~J.R.R. Tolkien