Tolkien and Scandals in the Church

A Guest Post by Joseph Tuttle

Our Blessed Lord warned His disciples about those who would cause scandal in His Church: “And he said to his disciples: It is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom they come. It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones.” (Luke 17:1-2)[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines scandal in more detail: “Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.” (CCC, 2284) Many members of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, are scandalized at the sins of her members, especially those in positions of leadership. The most recent and prevailing example has been the “Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis.” As Fulton Sheen writes, “Scandals have the unfortunate quality of attracting attention. A murderer receives more space in our newspapers than a sacrificing mother. Saints never make the headlines...The wickedness of one man in authority is allowed to obscure a million saints.”[2] Hardly do we ever hear about the Mother Teresa's or the Vincent de Paul's in the world.

How, then, are we to respond to scandals in the Church? This is a question that has often been taken up by members of the Church. I would like to present the response of J.R.R. Tolkien on the subject matter. His position and perspectives are similar to the majority of the Church and therefore his response to scandals is rather important.

In a letter to his son Michael, Tolkien acknowledges his own personal struggles and difficulties with scandals:

I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the 'scandals', both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the Church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe anymore, even if I had never met any one in orders [Holy Orders] who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call Our Lord a fraud to His face.[3]

Tolkien notes that he would not leave because of scandal but because he would deny the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist – something not done lightly. Earlier in his letter, Tolkien writes that scandal acts as a temptation because it is easier to look at the faults of others than those of ourselves: “'Scandal' at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scape-goat.”[4] Again, the words of Our Lord come to mind “And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye? Or how sayest thou to thy brother: Let me cast the mote out of thy eye; and behold a beam is in thy own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)

Perhaps we like to fixate on scandals because they make us feel better about ourselves or perhaps they give us comfort in thinking “Well, at least I'm not as bad as that!” In a similar vein as Tolkien, Sheen writes in reference primarily to the Papacy,

Anyone who attacks such a long line of martyrs, saints, and scholars must be certain of his own sinlessness to lay his hand on the few who revealed the human side of their office. If they are holy, pure, and undefiled, let them pick up their stones. But if they are not above reproach then let them leave the judgment to God. But if they are without sin, then they belong to a different race from you and me, for from down deep in their hearts a cry comes to our lips: “Be merciful to me a sinner.”[5]

What Tolkien and Sheen are getting at is this: we can become hypocritical of those who cause scandal in the Church when we do not examine our own sins and failings. One has only to look at the case of the woman caught in adultery as it is told in verses 8:1-11 of St. John's Gospel. The scribes and the Pharisees seek to stone the woman and test Jesus. Jesus refuses an answer and begins to write in the sand with His finger. A number of the Fathers of the Church believed that Jesus was writing down the sins of those who were trying to condemn the woman. He then says that the one who is without sin should be the first to cast the stone. In the end, they all leave because they realized that none of them were free from sin. Tolkien and Sheen warn us to not be like the scribes and Pharisees – hypocrites when it comes to sin.

What then should be our response to scandals? Leave the Church? Abandon Christ!? Tolkien says neither. He notes that scandals existed at the very beginning of the Church:

[I]t began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord's behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalizers not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot 'take' Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd and cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James' mother, trying to push her sons.[6]

It is not easy for us to identify with sinners because we want to be identified with the saints. Jesus associated Himself with sinners but He did not leave them where He found them. He raised them up to sanctity or at least offered it to them. There will be some like Judas who will utterly reject the gifts of God. There will be those too, like Peter who will fail at times but keep getting back on track and attain sanctity. Tolkien's point is that scandals existed since the beginning of the Church and will continue until the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time.

Tolkien, then, makes two suggestions for us. The first is to receive Holy Communion as often as possible. Scandals should not be seen as causes for drawing away from Christ. Rather, they should cause us to draw ever closer to Christ, truly Present in the Eucharist. We should be like St. John the Evangelist, following close to Christ during His Passion, along with His Mother Mary and not drawing away at a distance as St. Peter did. The second suggestion is to pray for those who cause scandal and those who don't take their Faith seriously:

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find an opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children – from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn – open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people.[7]

What Tolkien suggests is essentially the message of Jesus Christ: “You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:43-45) Tolkien's advice is simple yet at the same time difficult to do. It is hard to pray for those who cause scandal in the Church but they are still called by God to be saints, they are called to repentance, and we are called to pray for them and their sanctification and salvation.

---

[1]All quotes from Sacred Scripture are taken from the Douay-Rheims.

[2]Sheen, Fulton J. The Mystical Body of Christ (Christian Classics, 2015), 103.

[3]Tolkien, J.R.R., Eds. Carpenter, Humphrey and Tolkien, Christopher. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (William Morrow, 2000), Letter #250, pg. 338.

[4]Tolkien, Letters, 337-338.

[5]Sheen, Mystical Body, 104.

[6]Tolkien, Letters, 338.

[7]Tolkien, Letters, 339.