Guest post by Paul Burnham.

I didn’t believe in Mary in the same way my Catholic friends did. My own faith accommodated her immaculate conception and her divine errand. There was room for that. But I didn’t believe in her intercession—not on my behalf.

And I dismissed her apparitions. I knew of these—in Lourdes and Zaragoza and on a hillside in Mexico City, where I had once witnessed a procession of pilgrims, penitentes, ambulating on their knees toward a shrine built to Our Lady of Guadalupe. These apparitions were fantastic and incredible accounts, and far from my own experience; so I dismissed them. I remained chained to an anchoring bias, to the dogma of my initial exposure to faith and belief. I resisted her.

Then, in a community art studio in Montana, her image appeared to me—arms extended—ready to embrace me, ready to forgive. She had been in the periphery of my belief all along, where she had waited for me, patiently, until I was ready. How could I resist her any longer?

My daughter was there, and her friend, and the studio manager. But they didn’t receive the vision. In this Damascene moment, only I heard the clatter of scales falling from my eyes. I held the vision close. I kept it secret.

Two weeks earlier, I had brought my daughter and her friend to the art studio—to glaze bowls or cups or other practical articles. We were there in early October. The studio had seasonal ceramic skulls—an inch tall and of pure white clay, dried and ready to glaze—to observe the Day of the Dead.

I was bored. The girls were chattering and painting, absorbed in a world separate from mine. I picked up one of the little skulls and painted it. Dark blue—azul—the same blue I had seen on Madero Street in Mexico City, on the exterior walls of the Casa de los Azulejos. The blue of an evening sky. Light enough to still see the silhouettes of swallows crisscrossing high above the street. Dark enough for stars to appear.

I painted the entire skull with this blue glaze, and the teeth white and the gums red and the eyes lemon-drop-yellow, with tiny black pupils. On the back I painted a multi-colored sun. I imagined this sun—El Sol—burning the back of this poor man’s head for all the years he worked in the maguey fields. El Sol was now quenched by an evening sky, cool and refreshing. This man—this campesino—would at last have peace and rest.

The skull went into the kiln with the bowls and cups and pitchers and all the useful things visitors had made that week. 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. We went back the next week to collect our shiny items. But the studio staff couldn’t find my skull. Sometimes these small pieces show up later. Another week passed. They called me at home. They had found my skull. Not sure how we missed it. It survived a second firing.

Ceramic glazes can be unpredictable, temperamental. The kiln’s fire can also produce varied results. But the blue was just what I had hoped—the blue of Madero Street. Azul. The gums and teeth were perfect too: blood-red and white, smiling. But the pupils had spread, and the eyes were not the intended yellow. They had turned black—aboriginal—like those of a fresco-God from the interior of an Aztec tomb. No matter; my laborer in the maguey fields was finally at rest—no longer tormented by the burning sun—content and smiling in his celestial home.

I turned the skull in my hand. Another part was different than I had intended; the sun was entirely gone. The intense heat of the kiln—maybe in the second firing—had transfigured El Sol into another divine being. Walking through that dark blue sky was Mary. María. All alone. Our Lady of Solitude. María de la Soledad.

The glaze had run down the back of the skull, and the unmistakable image of Mary had appeared. Tender. Pure. Arms extended in a gesture of generosity and compassion. Yellow rays shot from behind her—a radial halation centered on her heart. She moved toward me, floating in the blue sky. I had not expected her here—here in the center of my own narrow perspective, so far from my own experience. Yet here she was standing in front of me, on the back of this little ceramic skull: María de la Soledad.

Only then did I remember I had seen her image on one other occasion. Or I may have seen more than her image. But I didn’t recognize her then—I resisted—and only after three decades of my own perfidy was that vision given back to me.

On that other occasion, I was passing through Mexico City—not far from that hillside where she had appeared to a young Indian man, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, four hundred fifty years before. A large plaza and basilica mark the place—the same shrine where I had seen her devotees kneeling. Some had walked many miles to worship. Some had gone to their knees for the last few hundred yards, until the fabric and skin over their tibias wore away and their blood ran on the black basalt cobblestones. I had dismissed her there, too—in that plaza. But my transgression was greater than a mere dismissal; I had resisted her. I had felt her there, and I had denied my feelings—the worst of all crimes.

An hour’s walk south of that basilica, in a dark bus station, I found her. The sun was rising on the waking city, and the mercurial morning light only allowed brief glimpses of people and signs and movement there. Many years of diesel exhaust had etched the concrete walls grey and black. These walls reflected little of the sunlight that found its way into the bowels of the station.

In that subdued light I found the sign I had been seeking: a black slate board above the bus stall, and on it, written in pink chalk, the destination: CUAUTLA.

The bus’s engine was running, belching black exhaust from a polished chrome pipe. The acrid fumes burned my eyes and nostrils. I blinked, dispersing the tears so I could see the way forward. And as I blinked, a ray of sunlight fell across my face. The spreading of watery film over my eyes refracted and scattered the light for a moment. I saw a man standing next to the bus—toward the front—inviting me to approach. I moved alongside the rumbling and snorting beast, back to front, carefully, as though walking next to a horse that had never smelled my hands. He greeted me and I offered my ticket. He wore grey slacks and a navy blue jacket, with a faded patch over his heart: conductor.

A thin ray of sunlight, nearly horizontal, passed over us and reflected off the windows of an exiting bus. The reflection illuminated a woman standing next to us. I hadn’t noticed her before, though she stood close enough that I could have touched her hand. She wore a white blouse, embroidered with red and yellow and blue flowers, and a navy blue skirt—ankle-length—trimmed with red and white bands at the hem. Her leather sandals were light buckskin, almost gold in color, and she had bright ribbons in her hair. The exiting bus disappeared, and with it the reflected sunlight. My eyes adjusted to the darkness again, and I could hardly see the woman any longer. Had I not seen her before, I doubt I would have noticed her in that moment. She stood still and appeared thin, slight, almost transparent.

The man inspected my ticket, punched it, and invited me to board. I found a window seat that allowed a view of the man and woman outside. The darkness dissipated as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

When the last passenger entered the bus, the woman turned to the man—I could see her more clearly now. The man bowed his head and closed his eyes. The woman removed a rosary from around her neck and gently placed it over the man’s head and arranged it on his neck, so the crucifix rested in the center of his chest. With her right hand, she touched her own forehead and began. I watched her lips move—En nombre del padre—The man bowed more deeply—y del hijo—She touched her breast—y del Espíritu Santo—She touched her left and right shoulders. She then produced a small cup, and a wooden aspergillum with a short brush on one end. The man raised his head and opened his eyes, looking straight up at the ceiling. The woman wetted the brush in the cup and flicked holy water onto his face and into his open eyes—que los ojos vean—He raised his hands, palms together, as though praying. She flicked the water again, onto his hands this time—y que las manos conduzcan bien en el camino. She lifted the rosary from off his neck and replaced it on her own neck. The blessing was finished. Her blessing was finished. His eyes would see the way ahead and his hands would guide us safely along the road.

The sun’s glare off another bus blocked my view for a moment. The woman disappeared in that flash of sunlight. The bus driver boarded and closed the door. Air brakes snapped and hissed. We rolled back into the great roundabout and turned toward the street. The sun was now coming right through my window. Blinding. The driver announced our departure to Cuautla. But I wasn’t going to Cuautla. I would go only as far as Amecameca—toward the twin volcanoes that are sometimes visible through the lingering haze of Mexico City. He would let me off on that road.

I looked for the woman again, but the sun was in my eyes. The driver brought us to the street—called General Emiliano Zapata—and waited for a break in the traffic. The sunlight poured into the bus station. For a moment I saw her again—the woman who had offered a blessing on our driver, on us all. A column of light shone at her back. Bright yellow rays shot from behind her.

Our driver pulled into traffic. I blinked again, looking for her. But she was gone. We arrived at the outskirts of Mexico City—where the sunlight was no longer hindered by buildings and walls. The driver lowered the visor to block the morning sun falling on his own face. I closed my eyes against the light and felt the warmth bathing my face. The light passed through my eyelids. Red and yellow.

I placed the heels of my palms over my eyes, pressing hard, blocking every bit of light. I saw her again—a perseveration appearing on my retina—red and yellow and blue flowers embroidered on her white blouse, yellow rays emanating from her heart.

Only many years later I saw her again—in the art studio—between a flash of sunlight and the dark blue sky. She extended her arms again—that familiar gesture of generosity and compassion. I recognized her this time. I didn’t resist her. She had waited for me, patiently, until I was ready.

Paul Burnham is a civil engineer, writer and river-runner in Montana. He has also been a missionary in Brazil, and speaks Portuguese and Spanish.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the horrific pictures of Notre Dame Cathedral being consumed by a massive fire. During the fire itself, while the roof of the building was an inferno, a rescue effort began.

What was saved first? Was it the priceless art, the statues, the moneybox, the gold candlesticks? It was none of these. The first and greatest treasure of that Cathedral is the same treasure that our parish contains – The Blessed Sacrament. A priest, at great risk to his own life, went into a blazing, super-heated 800 year old building as melting lead was literally pouring from the ceiling and he retrieved the Blessed Sacrament. Why? Because Jesus is everything.

The fire at Notre Dame revealed, for me, a connection with that place that came out of nowhere as I found myself surprisingly emotional. I’ve never been there, but as I saw those pictures it was as if my own home was burning down. We all know that a building doesn’t matter as much as even a single human life, but as a watched one of the greatest symbols of Christendom going up in flames, I thought about the 200 years of loving care and labor that those French Christians put into creating their cathedral. That’s how long it took to build. The Church wasn’t a monument to themselves, to their wealth and creativity – the vast majority of craftsman and artists who made it are entirely anonymous – they built it for God. If God is glorious beyond compare, than his home also ought to inspire thoughts of awe, to lift up the heart to God simply by being within it.

In a world of ugliness, Notre Dame was beautiful, and harmonious, and technically challenging, a masterwork of love and devotion. Its destruction was the destruction of beauty and love. That is what is so sad.

It’s interesting, the work of the medieval builders survived much better than anyone would have imagined, and the main structure survived in conditions a modern building would have collapsed under, so the Cathedral will be repaired. It’s almost as if the medievals were very wise and cultured and, to the extent that we have lost the ability to create churches like that, we actually might be barbarians living in the remains of a superior civilization. This becomes noticeable also when we compare the quality of our artwork, literature, and music to what was produced in the 13^th century.

What was their secret? What raised up this great culture that we call Christendom? They were a people who understood that Jesus is at the heart of life, that he is the impulse, the principle by which we are freed from our lesser desires, freed from our addiction to pleasure, our mediocrity, the inevitable fading away into death. The resurrection of Christ is the sign that God would have us live life to the fullest. Christianity is not a religion that dislikes life. We are not attempting to escape this world and into a fairy tale heaven. On the contrary, Christianity gives us our lives back.

More than any cathedral, it is a miracle that the human soul can be redeemed and built up as a holy temple to the sacredness of life. Our faith is earthy and physical. Our Lord, in overcoming death, takes on a human body. Notre Dame was shaped by human hands who turned stone, metal, and glass into a beautiful house for God. You and I, we are shaped by God’s hand from the mud of the earth infused with his breath. You are God’s greatest work of art, a pure, fitting home for Christ. Death will not conquer you, the fire will not burn.

Rejoice, rejoice and be glad. Our Lord has overcome the grave and he is the innermost treasure of our heart.

…Until you return to the ground from which you were taken: For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return. – Genesis 3:19

Notre Dame Cathedral was built of earth—of stone and wood, of glass made from sand, of metals that were mined. For better or worse, she will be rebuilt. Perhaps she will stand eight or nine more centuries before fire, flood, or neglect claims her again. But in the end, she will meet the fate of her makers. Her sooty towers stand today as a testament to tenacity, to the skill and labor of her builders and the skill and labor of the Paris fire brigade. Today, she stands as an earthly symbol of Holy Mother Church against whom the fires of Hell have not prevailed. But her scorched skeleton also stands as a memento mori to us all. You, O Man, are dust, and all your works but ashes. Notre Dame is dirt, and to dirt she shall return.

By the mercy of God, no human lives were lost in the blaze that consumed Notre Dame on Monday, though all of us who saw it, even via satellite, knew that we were witnessing a death. Much has been saved, but whatever the future holds for Notre Dame, she has lost the illusion of immortality. Anything that has stood nearly nine hundred years, through ages of careless neglect, through the French Revolution and the Nazi occupation of France, was bound to seem immortal. Notre Dame is greater than kings, greater than wars or dictators. She stood above them, reflecting the beauty of the One whom she was built to glorify. Victor Hugo called the cathedral “a sort of human Creation, mighty and fertile as the Divine Creation, from which it seems to have borrowed the twofold character of variety and eternity.”* Today we are forced to remember all too poignantly that her divinity is borrowed. All things that are borrowed must one day be surrendered.

We humans often speak of our work that lives beyond us, of art as a kind of immortality. Paintings and cathedrals can burn, but other works can be duplicated ad infinitum. The original manuscript of Beowulf could be destroyed, but the text would still remain; likewise the score for the Vivaldi Gloria or the Bach Mass in B Minor. We take the perpetuity of such works for granted. They will only die when they have been utterly forgotten. But, unimaginable as it is, that day will come. Anyone who seeks to live forever through his art is chasing after phantoms, trying to hold a ray of sunlight in his hand.

The original architects of Notre Dame sought no such earthly glory—or if they did, they sought it in vain. No one knows their names. We know nothing of their motives, their inspirations, the artistic sacrifices they made to satisfy the constraints of pragmatism or the whims of Bishop de Sully, their client. We know nothing of their faith. Were they ardent believers or closet atheists? Did they work for love or money? In the end, it doesn’t matter. It was not they who labored, but God who labored through them to lead millions of souls to Christ. This is the only glory a Christian can ever find through his creations: To do the will of the One who sent him. Our talents are all borrowed; they must all be returned.

A true memento mori must not only remind us of our earthly death, but of the heavenly life that is to come. Notre Dame is made of this earth but not for it—like you and me. The most miraculous images to emerge from Monday’s disaster are not those of the rose windows still intact (praise be to God!), but those of the faithful praying around the flames. The church blazes, but the Church is not consumed. This—the Body of Christ, the people of God—is the Church against whom the fires of Hell shall never prevail. This is the communion of saints into which we pray to enter, a communion not made of priceless statues but of men and women who comfort and console each other by the grace of God. And this, the flesh-and-blood Church ablaze with Christ’s love, is the Church that I pray will be rebuilt and renewed in the years to come, as we watch the spire of Notre Dame climb toward the heavens once again.

 

* I used this same quote several months ago in a very different essay. It seems a lot of sad themes lead me back to Notre Dame. Notre Dame des Douleurs, priez pour nous.

Many doctors of the Church write that the Virgin Mary died, not of a failing body, but of an excess of love. “Retaining in her memory,” writes St. Francis de Sales, “all the lovable mysteries of the life and death of her Son, and receiving always the most ardent inspirations which her Son, the Sun of Justice, poured out on men in the noon-day ardor of His charity… she was at length consumed by the sacred fire of this charity, as a holocaust of sweetness.”

While yesterday’s fire was still building and seemingly engulfing Notre-Dame de Paris, it was easy to believe that the worst was coming to pass: that the structure as a whole would go the way of the collapsing spire, and that all of the glorious artwork and architecture that has remained as the greatest jewel in France’s tarnished crown would be reduced to rubble and ash. Even worse was the worry that the Sacrament would be consumed and many irreplaceable relics of the Passion lost forever, and this only four days before the annual memorial of Good Friday. With the recent desecration and burning of so many Catholic churches in France, it was easy to speculate about the fire’s cause; with the recent moral state of the Church, it was impossible not to see it as a symbol of things in play and of things to come.

The worst, however, was not to be. Thanks to the life-threatening efforts of many, the Crown of Thorns was saved along with relics of the Cross and of St. Louis IX of France. Confirmation also came that much of the artwork which would have been most easily threatened had recently been removed for restoration. The wooden roof burned and collapsed into the building, but many of the ancient stained glass windows have survived. There were a few injuries, but no deaths.

No doubt we will hear more about the heroism of the police, firefighters, and other first responders in the coming days. Special attention is already going to Fr. Fournier, the Chaplain of the Paris Firefighters who rushed inside to save the Eucharist and the Crown. The full story of what happened and why will take time to unfold.

Already we see lovers of culture and history stepping forward to promise funds for restoration, prompting hope but also worry. The fact that the cathedral still stands prevents the building of something new from scratch. In an age as allergic to all kinds of custom and tradition as ours, one wonders what architectural abomination might have been set in its place. Thanks be to historical preservation societies for saving the Church from herself. Even as things are, the restoration plan is uncertain. One can easily imagine a medieval Rose Window replaced by glass stained with art copied from a book of cheap clip art, as one often sees in today’s churches. The debate about religious art is more important now than ever—does God deserve our best efforts, or will we be content to offer him our worst and call it “humility”?

Daniel Mitsui made some relevant observations in a presentation from two years back,

The treasures of Christian art and architecture are today endangered: by indifference and neglect, by misguided renovation, by war and revolution. They may be preserved for a time for the sake of national identity or lofty but indifferentist notions of cultural worth. But the Lindisfarne Gospels and Chartres Cathedral are things of this world, and will not last forever: Rust and moth consume, thieves break in and steal. More tragic than to lose such treasures is to lose the ability to make them; more tragic yet is to lose the desire to make them. That desire can only be provided by religious faith. It is religious faith that animates the tradition, that makes it live rather than linger.

We live in an age when we have nearly lost the ability to make great art and almost as nearly lost the desire so to do. Can any modern restoration of Our Lady’s church be better than the failed restoration of the Ecce Homo by Cecilia Giménez? Would we do better to merely maintain the structural integrity of the building and move most the art to a museum or private collection? On the other hand, will the Church ever relearn how to build something as vast, complex, cosmological, and simple as the Notre-Dame de Paris without its living example? We are weakened by skepticism and perfidy; do we deserve to look upon its like again?

That all lies in the future. For the moment we wait. The coming days will tell us what can be done and what cannot. The days after that will be filled with argument, bitterness, and perhaps hope. Whatever the future holds for the French cathedral, it will not be identical with her past. We must remember that nothing is too good for the Mother of God. No work or effort is too strenuous for her glory. She is the Burning Bush, the tabernacle of God which was not consumed by the flames of his presence when he resided within her womb.

Beauty is unity radiated through diversity, and few religious works of art have demonstrated this better than Notre-Dame de Paris. May we make ourselves again worthy to built such a temple worthy of God and of his Mother.

The Open Culture site has a small feature on Franz Kafka’s drawings. “In those diaries, Kafka doodled incessantly – stark, graphic drawings infused with the same angst as his writing. In fact, many of these drawings have ended up gracing the covers of Kafka’s books.”

The Risking Enchantment podcast takes on the subject of Monsters and Morality in Romanticism.

Have you ever been perusing a Medieval manuscript and thought, I wish someone would turn these fantastic beasts into piñatas? “He uses the crepe paper creations as the basis for his sculptures. In the past, Benavidez recreated the strange beasts found in Bosch’s triptych but has more recently turned to the Luttrell Psalter, a famous medieval manuscript.”

Have scholars discovered Leonardo da Vinci’s only surviving sculpture? “It’s always been part of Leonardo’s legend that he made sculptures, including a giant horse, but not a single extant three-dimensional work by him had been identified. The Virgin with the Laughing Child is the miraculous exception, according to the curators of the exhibition Verrocchio.”

Joshua Hren writes about the Christ-haunted George Saunders. “Still, though Saunders may have formally left the Church, its forms didn’t leave him. Raised in parochial Catholic schools in the 1960s, to this day he traces his need for ‘mystery, and metaphor, and beauty’ to ‘the power of the Catholic Mass’ he encountered in childhood.”

Franz Klein considers the farming life, springtime, and Hopkins. “Everything about the spring– and about Lent, which occurs in the spring– evokes the impending freshness, to steal Hopkins’ word, that is buried deep in the dark, loamy dirt, hidden somewhere amidst last year’s dead growth. There is dearest freshness in Mary’s womb– and in the deep-down things of the earth, too.”

The poet W.S. Merwin died on March 15. It’s a date he celebrated ninety-one times in his life. Each year as it passed, the anniversary made a mark on him. He felt his powers fading but the final moment lay hidden until the very end when he breathed his last. It was then, and only then, that he was able to truly celebrate. Finally, he knew the moment.

Merwin has written, “Send me out into another life / lord because this one is growing faint / I do not think it goes all the way.” Well, dear friend, you are now on your way. For Merwin, the meaning of existence was revealed through loss. His life, as it circled round that fateful day of his death, always felt strange to him, as if he was traveling through a fairyland. Creation is powerful and the hearts of men conceal wonders, so much so that the universe seems to have slid off-kilter. The most important moment of revelation is not birth, when everything is given, but death, where everything is taken away.

Here one of his better-known poems.

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

In the very last poem of his last published book. Merwin fittingly leaves us a meditation on departure.

The Present

As they were leaving the garden

one of the angels bent down to them and whispered

I am to give you this

as you are leaving the garden

I do not know what it is

or what it is for

what you will do with it

you will not be able to keep it

but you will not be able

to keep anything

yet they both reached at once

for the present

and when their hands met

they laughed

Peggy Rosenthal writes in the Image Journal, “as Adam and Eve enter time, they enter inevitable loss.” The present is a double-edged sword. It’s the gift that takes away, of inhabiting each moment in plenitude but also the inability to hold onto it as it slides past. The horizon of past, present, and future is shifting sand and we are always in the middle term. We step out of the Garden and into the present, but the birth that brought us to this place has also delineated our boundaries. The special, intuitive knowledge of man to see the inner heart of nature, the flow of time through the universe, brings with it the sorrow and fear of death. In fact, it is death which is the culmination of laughter. It is loss that reconciles us. It is the final act of the tragedy that fully opens our eyes to the I AM to whom we bow our heads each moment we hear a wren sing, grieve the buds of a magnolia tree broken and cast down by a spring storm, or contemplate a poem by the irreplaceable W.S. Merwin.

A recent article on The Guardian tells us that novelist Francis Spufford has penned an unauthorized sequel to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series that may never see the light of publication, which is sparking a small flurry of debate about copyright. “Frankly,” one contributor opines, “copyright law [is] a bit of a mess. Much of the legislation dates from when making copies involved onerous labour with a printing press. Computers have utterly changed that.” Another day, another appeal to the Internet as a total game-changer?

The rights of artists and intellectuals to their work has been debated for as long as there has been art and intellect, although the widespread use of the printing press forced the creation of legislation. The late 1400s saw rights granted to certain publishers to print books, but it was not until the 1700s that laws worked more in the favor of writers with the Statute of Anne in England, a law that was soon imitated by other nations. This also created the realm of the “public domain” since copyrights had a set expiration. Intellectual property law today is a vast realm that encompasses copyright, patents, trademarks, and a variety of infringement possibilities.

The invention of the Internet makes the sharing of copyrighted materials in ways that do not materially benefit copyright holders very easy, especially in less regulated countries like Russia. Book publishers have found it nearly impossible to prevent PDF file sharing, and American film studios have sunk a great deal of money into legal and technical departments that limit their movies from spreading like viruses through the World Wide Web. All of which leads to that early clarion cry of hacker dens, that “Information wants to be free.”

Of course this is true, in a sense. Writers want their work to be read. Photographers want their pictures to be seen. Speakers want their talks to be heard. But these makers also want the capability to profit from their work. Even Socrates, who shamed the avaricious Sophists by dispensing his home-spun wisdom for free to anyone who would accept it, suggested to the jurors at his capital trial that he should be rewarded for his service with free meals at the Pyrtaneum in perpetuity. Does not the Scripture say, “The labourer is worthy of his reward”?

Somewhere there is a common-sense mean between the extremes of lawless intellectual property Marxism and the undying mills of corporate copyright extensions. Should not an artist be permitted to support his family with bequeathments of intellectual property, at least for one generation? The reductio ad absurdum arguments against passing intellectual property to one’s heirs lose their force when the laws keep their time limits, and when corporate interests do not bulldoze the law.

The aforementioned commentator also writes, “But should we have to obtain permission from, and pay fees to, Shakespeare’s or Euripides’ heirs before staging performances of Hamlet or The Bacchae?” It certainly is unfortunate that Disney’s corporate interests have warped copyright law into something many now wish to trash entirely, and the way many corporations suckered artists out of their own intellectual rights with “work for hire” clauses has allowed these companies to profit massively with toy sales and film adaptations while the creators die in relative poverty. Corporations increasingly hold copyrights and trademarks on intellectual works of all types—think not only of screenplays but of mechanical patents and search algorithms—and the luckiest workers are the ones with a 401(k).

Which leads to the deeper question: What moral rights do people hold over the intellectual and artistic works they create? Long ago such works were considered to be more or less common property, part of the tradition of a certain people. Artisans, teachers, and advisers were to be paid for their labor, but the fruit and imitation of their labor were not easy to hold in check. What they achieved most was honor and glory, not monetization, but even honor can be sullied with cheap imitations, clumsy adaptations, and false claims of authorship.

Think of the fake sequel to Don Quixote that Cervantes had to acknowledge and dishonor before he could get on with his own volume. Think of the many poor film or television adaptations of novels that have hurt book sales. Think of the endless debates over the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, which either sully or glorify his memory. Think of how a Narnia sequel could ruin the world and “feel” of the original; Neil Gaiman once wrote a short unofficial sequel which attempted to do just that. A philosopher who isn’t Ayn Rand would rather be cleared of the charge of writing bad philosophy than make a just percentage of a book’s proceeds, although all things considered he would prefer both.

I offer no particular solution, here. I am not suggesting we idolize the “poor, starving artist” as a symbol of moral purity and cultural magnanimity. I am not recommending we dismantle all corporations which thrive on gobbling up an endless stream of intellectual properties… but it is rather sickening to see superhero franchises basically print their own money while the original creators and their heirs are offered pittances to disappear from public view. We need a moral theology of creator rights and responsibilities, and I don’t think many Catholic thinkers have bothered to put much effort into considering these things in depth.

(See also Karen Ullo’s thoughts on copyright and exploiting the public domain.)

Guest post by Lucas W. Holt

Behind the Mind of Middle Earth: How The Lord of the Rings Presents an Imaginative Defense of the Catholic Faith (Conclusion)

An Imaginative Case for the Holy Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick

The role of authority and the reflections of Mary in Galadriel are two specifically Catholic elements in the series, but we also get a subtle taste of at least two of the sacraments, The Sacrament of the Eucharist and The Anointing of the Sick. It is subtle, but one can see in certain images, and through language Tolkien employs, that there is a Catholic feel to the story. The first of these, the Eucharist, can be seen in the miruvor and the lembas, which bear similarities to the wine and bread of Holy Communion, the former being a liquor and the latter being a kind of bread. Both miruvor and lembas nourish and strengthen the traveling companions on their arduous journey. Furthermore, one needs only to have a small amount in order to be aided. Consider the following passages:

‘Give them this,’ said Gandalf, searching in his pack and drawing out a leathern flask. ‘Just a mouthful each – for all of us. It is very precious. It is miruvor, the cordial of Imladris. Elrond gave it to me at our parting. Pass it round!’ As soon as Frodo had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs. The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigour.[1]

‘I thought it was only a kind of cram, such as the Dale-men make for journeys in the wild,’ said the Dwarf. ‘So it is,’ they answered. ‘But we call it lembas or waybread, and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts.’[2]

Furthermore, lembas “fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.”[3] Just as the lembas and miruvor strengthen and nourish the Company as they travel on their journey, so too in the Catholic’s life the Holy Eucharist is what nourishes and strengthens him/her on their earthly pilgrimage.

Not only do we see Eucharistic imagery in miruvor and lembas, but also we can see some Eucharistic language in the story. For example, after Merry and Pippin met Treebeard and were traveling with him, they come to a resting place to spend the night. The place they settled was Wellinghall, an ent-house, inside of which we see that “A great stone table stood there, but no chairs.”[4] Shortly after the hobbits go inside with the slow-speaking Tree, we read that, “Treebeard lifted two great vessels and stood them on the table. They seemed to be filled with water; but he held his hands over them, and immediately they began to glow, one with a golden and the other with a rich green light.”[5]This scene echoes what a Catholic encounters during the Mass. The language ‘a table but with no chairs’ is a similar description of an altar, or at least in reading that line one can visualize an object that would look similar to an altar. What follows is perhaps more interesting, though: Treebeard placing his hands over what ‘seemed to be filled with water’ and then the liquid transforming. This is evocative of the way the priest during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass places his hands over the Eucharistic bread and wine during the epiclesis in which the priest calls down the Holy Spirit to transform the Eucharistic bread and wine.

The Eucharistic language and imagery in the above passage is subtle, and one who is not familiar with Catholic teaching might not recognize these similarities. However, this serves to illustrate the somewhat hidden catholicity of The Lord of the Rings. What we see is not necessarily overt scenes where Christ or his Church are symbolized, but instead imaginative interactions and language that permeate the entire work so that when the reader steps into Middle Earth it has a Catholic feel to it, even though the reader might not be conscious that they are in that kind of a world.

The second sacrament the reader encounters in LOTR is The Anointing of the Sick. The similarities between what we see in LOTR and this sacrament, however, is more explicit. The chapter called “The Houses of Healing” in The Return of the King exemplifies the nature of this sacrament. The fact that it is Aragorn who brings healing to Faramir, Eowyn, and Merry reflects the teaching that it must be a bishop or priest—one in authority—who administers the sacrament. Also, that it must be used in severe instances. Of course, anyone can take care of another; and, indeed, other people in the house are caring for the three characters mentioned above. But it is Aragorn who uses athelas (which bears similarities to holy oil) and runs his hands over their heads and calls them by name to bring them back to health. “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.’”[6] This echoes the ministry of Jesus, the Wounded Healer and King of kings, who, during his earthly life cured the diseases of many, drove out demons, raised people from the dead, and by his Passion defeated death and opened up a fountain that cleanses people from sin.

A Meaningful World

These Catholic elements in the story––authority, typological characteristics of the BVM, the Holy Eucharist, Anointing of the Sick––, while important in themselves, nevertheless achieve their apologetic value most significantly in their cumulative effect.[7] All of these elements gathered up and mixed together point to an ordered, meaningful, sacramental universe. Nature has meaning (the trees fight in battle; when it is light/morning hope seems to spring; the air brings messages), food has meaning (lembas, miruvor), relationships have meaning, and the choices that the characters make are meaningful. All of Middle Earth is full of meaning and purpose. One does not read LOTR and think, ‘Ah, well, it does not really matter if the Ring is destroyed or not. After all, it is just one battle of many. If the Enemy prevails, there will be another confrontation in the future’. No. The fate of Middle Earth depends on what happens to the Ring, whether it is destroyed or not. This is true in our own world, too. The world we inhabit is filled with meaning: all of creation, and indeed the choices we make in our lives, matter and mean something. So when the reader enters into Middle Earth they can taste and see what it is like to have a Catholic worldview; they can try on a pair of spectacles and experience a sacramental vision of the world. Furthermore, there is this: just as the reader cannot simply shrug at what happens to the Ring, so too one cannot shrug at the Resurrection: the fate of the universe depends on whether or not Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. If this sounds incredible, it is because it is.

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 290.

[2] Ibid., 369.

[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 936.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 470.

[5] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 470.

[6] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, 860.

[7] There are other elements that make LOTR Catholic as well: the theme of Pity, the care for the environment, the reflections of Christ in Frodo (Suffering Servant), Aragorn (King), and Gandalf (Resurrected Christ), the monastic nature of Tom Bombadil, the similarities between the duration of the Quest and the dates of events with the Church’s liturgical calendar. Addressing all of this, however, would require an entire book!

Lucas W. Holt is a missionary with Spiritus Ministries in Menasha, Wisconsin. He holds a B.S. from the University of Arizona, as well as a PGDip from the University of Oxford. He is also the creator of Pelican Poetry, which is a literary project dedicated to restoring a sense of wonder at the world.

Guest post by Lucas W. Holt

Behind the Mind of Middle Earth: How The Lord of the Rings Presents an Imaginative Defense of the Catholic Faith (Part 2)

Another specifically Catholic element of The Lord of the Rings is the typological characteristics of certain women, especially the Lady Galadriel, to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Caldecott writes, “There is another way in which Mary is present in LOTR, and that is through her reflections in Galadriel and Elbereth…. Tolkein himself calls her ‘unstained’ in Letter 353… He admitted that Catholic teaching and imagination about Mary lay behind the character as portrayed in the novel (L 320).”[1] One of the places where one can especially see Marian aspects in Galadriel is when the Company first arrives at Caras Galadhon. When they meet both her and Celeborn, the members of the Company feel like they are being tested when they make eye contact with the Lady. “At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. ‘Do not let you hearts be troubled,’ she said. ‘Tonight you shall sleep in peace.’ Then they sighed and felt suddenly weary, as those who have been questioned long and deeply, though no words had been spoken openly.”[2],[3] After this intense encounter Boromir becomes suspicious of the Lady’s motives but Aragorn says, “There is in her and in this land no evil, unless a man bring it hither himself.”[4] Furthermore, we see that “On the land of Lorien there was no stain.”[5] This goes with the ‘unstained’ comment referred to by Caldecott in Letter 353. Finally, Galadriel possesses one of the Three Rings of the Elves, which were made for “understanding, making, healing, to preserve all things unstained.”[6] This imagery of purity with which the reader is presented is similar to the Blessed Mother, who is ‘full of grace’, without the stain of original sin.

The bearing of gifts by Galadriel also reflects characteristics of the Blessed Mother. Two of the gifts seem to especially resemble the role of Mary. The phial of Galadriel—a powerful beacon of light in dark places—that she gives to Frodo is symbolic of the fact that Mary bore the Light of the world.

It is no accident that the light of the Phial comes from “Earendil’s star”, for Earendil is Tolkien’s version of Venus, which is both the Evening Star and the Morning Star.  The Morning Star is a Biblical name for Christ (Rev. 22:16, 2 Peter 1:19) and thus we can see that Frodo’s Phial is, in a sense (without unduly allegorising the story), a Christ-symbol.[7]

Not only does Galadriel bear the phial, but she also bears lembas, the Elvish waybread that gives strength and nourishment to the Company as they travel. “Often in their hearts they thanked the Lady of Lorien for the gift of lembas, for they could eat of it and find new strength even as they ran.”[8] Again, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary who bore the Bread of Life into the world. It seems fitting, therefore, that Galadriel is the giver of these gifts. What is also interesting is that this passage seems to be a subtle nod to the practice of praying to the saints, since ‘in their hearts they thanked the Lady of Lorien’.

These reflections of the Blessed Mother illustrate the both/and philosophy espoused by Catholics and would help a Protestant reader to see that in revering Galadriel it does not diminish the characters’ obedience to their Creator but actually enriches it; that we need not necessarily adopt an either/or philosophy when considering God but that we should have intimate relationships with all of his people. We see in the story that Galadriel, far from being a hindrance to the quest to destroy the Ring, or tempting the nine companions to worship her, actually was a major aid and comforter to the nine companions. So it is in this life: the Queen of Heaven, through her intercession and loving kindness, aids and comforts us during our exile in this valley of tears and can be a conduit of grace.

[1] Stratford Caldecott, The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, second edition, (Chestnut Ridge, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2012), Kindle, 77.

[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 357.

[3] This scene also seems to echo Luke 2:34–35 when Simeon prophesies and says to Mary, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 358.

[5] Ibid., 351.

[6] Ibid., 268.

[7] Michael Ward, “The Two Towers – Thoughts from Dr Ward”, discussion thread in the class Literature and Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, December 4, 2017.

[8] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 427.

Lucas W. Holt is a missionary with Spiritus Ministries in Menasha, Wisconsin. He holds a B.S. from the University of Arizona, as well as a PGDip from the University of Oxford. He is also the creator of Pelican Poetry, which is a literary project dedicated to restoring a sense of wonder at the world.