Having spent a considerable amount of time in Durham Cathedral of late, I have also found myself immersed in The Last Office, a compelling work of narrative history that chronicles the sixteenth-century dissolution of the monasteries – most notably, Durham itself. Meanwhile, like many in recent years, I have been hearing the ever-growing clamour for reparations, primarily in connection with the Atlantic slave trade. Yet this led me to ponder: why not reparations in favour of the Roman Catholic Church? Think about all that was stolen.
It is beyond dispute that grand ecclesiastical monuments like Durham Cathedral were, in essence, plundered by Henry VIII to line his own coffers and those of his grasping, avaricious courtiers. The portly monarch – whose concerns, let us be honest, lay less with theological doctrine than with the logistics of ridding himself of unwanted wives – engineered the break from Rome with an eye on both personal liberty and financial gain. The looting of monasteries, abbeys, and priories was not merely a side effect of his so-called Reformation but a most convenient windfall. And those sycophantic vultures who circled his court? They stood to profit handsomely from the spoils. Indeed, they were on to a winner.
At this juncture, I have little desire to become entangled in the complexities of the European or English Reformations. Yet, the more I reflect – both on my own faith and on my place within the landscape of worship – the more I find myself instinctively drawing away from anything Protestant. Though I hold no malice, and indeed, I earnestly pray for the day when the whole Church is once more united under the See of Peter, my own path is leading me ever further from those traditions born of schism. And having been very closely and personally involved in one of Protestantism’s many misguided denominations, I do feel, ashamedly, a tad bitter.
And where, you might ask, is all this leading? Well, as if guided by some quiet providence – or perhaps a touch of divine serendipity – I recently found myself poring over Tolkien’s letters. And there, almost as if summoned by my own musings, I stumbled upon his thoughts on Protestantism. It was a moment of striking clarity, as though the great man himself had reached across time to share in my contemplation.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s words – “a pathetic and shadowy medley of half-remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs” – resound with the weight of deep conviction, sorrow, and perhaps even a touch of righteous indignation. To some, this may seem an uncharitable or even unfair condemnation of Protestantism, but to understand Tolkien’s perspective, one must step into the world of a man who saw faith not as a mere intellectual exercise, nor a cultural inheritance to be passively accepted, but as the living heartbeat of the universe, the very fabric of meaning itself.
To Tolkien, Catholicism was the fullness of revealed truth, an ancient and unbroken river flowing from Christ’s commission to St. Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Protestantism, by contrast, was to him like a once-mighty tree struck by lightning – fragments of beauty and truth remained, but the deep-rooted unity had been severed, leaving something splintered, diminished, and vulnerable to decay. His statement is not merely a historical judgement but an existential lament, echoing the regret of a man who saw Christendom fractured and wounded, its spiritual coherence unravelled.
The Pathos of separation. It is impossible to read Tolkien’s words without sensing the sadness beneath them. He does not say that Protestantism is wholly false; rather, he suggests that it is a medley, a collection of disjointed remnants – something once whole but now broken. This echoes the prophet Jeremiah’s lament: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). For Tolkien, the Reformation was precisely this – a tragic abandonment of the living spring of Catholic tradition in favour of fractured and leaking vessels, incapable of holding the fullness of divine truth.
His phrase “shadowy” suggests something insubstantial, ghostly – perhaps even illusory. Shadows resemble the thing they imitate, but they lack substance, just as a castle in ruins retains the outline of its former majesty but no longer houses its rightful king. Protestantism, in Tolkien’s view, retained the name of Christ and the echoes of sacramental life but had lost the apostolic lineage and doctrinal authority that made it fully real. This is not a novel argument; it aligns with the Catholic teaching that the Protestant churches possess elements of truth and grace but lack the fullness found in the Church of Rome.
The phrase “half-remembered traditions” calls to mind the words of St. Paul: “Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions you were taught, whether by an oral statement or by a letter of ours” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). Tradition, for Tolkien, was not a dead relic but a living inheritance, something passed down through generations like an unbroken golden thread. The Protestant Reformers, by rejecting the authority of the Church, had – in Tolkien’s view – also rejected the sacred duty of safeguarding these traditions in their fullness. They had retained some practices and teachings but had cast aside others, leaving only a partial and sometimes contradictory inheritance.
A melody half-remembered is never sung in full harmony; it is fragmented, discordant, a mere suggestion of the symphony it once was. The Protestant churches, by severing themselves from Rome, had retained Scripture but lost the unifying voice of the Magisterium, the interpretative authority that safeguarded it from error. The doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture alone), however noble in intent, had in practice led to endless division, each denomination becoming a splintering echo of what was once a unified whole. It is no coincidence that from the Reformation onwards, Protestantism has continued to fracture into thousands of denominations, each holding to different interpretations of the same sacred text. Tolkien would likely have seen this as the inevitable result of rejecting the authority of the Church Christ himself established.
And then there is the most damning phrase: “mutilated beliefs.” The image is visceral. To mutilate is to wound, to disfigure, to take something whole and break it into something barely recognisable. This evokes the words of St. Peter: “There are some things in [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). From Tolkien’s perspective, Protestantism had not merely abandoned traditions but had actively reshaped doctrine – sometimes with violent theological surgery – to fit its new framework. The rejection of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the denial of the priesthood, the abandonment of Marian devotion – these were not, to Tolkien, benign reforms but acts of dismemberment, tearing away sacred limbs from the mystical body of Christ.
Tolkien’s deeply Catholic worldview is woven into The Lord of the Rings, though never in a way that feels didactic or overt. The imagery of a broken world longing for restoration mirrors his belief in a Church fractured by schism yet still holding the promise of renewal. The Reformation, in his view, had left behind scattered remnants of truth – like shards of Narsil, the broken sword of Elendil – but these alone could not restore the Kingdom. Only through rightful kingship, symbolised by Aragorn’s return, could Middle-earth be healed.
Similarly, the character of Denethor, who claims to rule Gondor without a king, mirrors the Protestant rejection of Papal authority. He is a steward, not a true ruler – he administers but does not possess the fullness of kingship. Without the rightful king, Gondor is a kingdom in waiting, much as Protestantism, in Tolkien’s view, was Christianity in exile, estranged from its true centre.
And yet, Tolkien was not a blind polemicist. He had deep friendships with Protestants, most notably C.S. Lewis, whose faith he respected even while lamenting that Lewis did not become Catholic. There is no evidence that Tolkien despised Protestants themselves; rather, his words reveal the sorrow of a man who saw the division of the Church as a wound in the very body of Christ.
Tolkien’s words may strike modern ears as harsh, but they are born not of arrogance but of grief, not of hatred but of love. He saw Protestantism as a shadow of what once was, a melody missing its final chords, a road leading away from Rome but never quite arriving at another true home. His critique, however sharp, was ultimately a lament for unity, echoing Christ’s own prayer: “That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you” (John 17:21).
To dismiss his statement as mere Catholic prejudice is to ignore the depth of conviction behind it. Tolkien was not attacking for the sake of attacking; he was mourning for the sake of truth. And in an age when many have grown indifferent to such matters, his words remind us that faith is not merely a private feeling but a history, a heritage, and – above all – a call to unity in the fullness of truth.
Wording 