Of Gondorian Catholicism

The idea of a "Gondorian Catholicism" began as a joke. And it still is, really. But it is an illustrative joke. It comes from an urgent sense that we need a traditionalism which is more than merely Tridentine. It must react against the kitschy, plastic devotional art which abounds in Latin mass parishes, and the neoconservatism fostered there by party politics. It must have no fear of honest inquiry and education, rejecting the anti-intellectualism and conspiracy theorism that frequently plague traditionalist communities. Rather, we should embrace the high Medieval scholastic tradition of intellectualism, of the arts, and of civil society, that first drew many of us to seek a traditional expression of Catholicism in the first place.

I expressed this to Francois as my desire for a Catholicism like Tolkien's. He laughed and said, "Ah, you want a Gondorian Catholicism!"

So, without further ado Gondorian Catholicism is:

1. Traditional, not parochial. This means that it is acculturated without losing its Catholic reference point, being the meeting place of the Catholic tradition of faith and morals, with the customary civil and aesthetic structures of the culture. While we must never lose sight of the fact that Catholic philosophy and morals inherently refer to an absolute standard, and our traditional commitment to virtue ethics means that some actions are inherently wrong regardless of circumstance. However, none of this means that all application of these standards should look identical on the ground. Without writing an essay on acculturation, I can only point to a few examples. Look at the way the faith is practiced in the Ethiopian church, or the ancient practices of the Insular church. I am thinking especially of American contexts, because that is where I live, but the same process is relevant elsewhere. What we must avoid is either extreme of yielding our excellent standards to the worst habits of fallen human cultures, or of demanding that all local specificity be washed away in a desire for standardization.

But I should clarify that I think of Gondorian Catholicism as a particular church, a western expression, and particularly a North-Western one, of Germanic and Celtic extraction, because that is my context, as well as Tolkien's. I particularly want to see an Appalachian application, which takes account of mountain traditions of family and social organization, music, language, story, folk art, and geography.

2. Artistic and creative, avoiding both the modernist 'self expression' approach to the arts and the aesthetic-less/ossifying devotionalism of many traditionalists. Perhaps the best way to describe the aesthetic of Gondorian Catholicism is with examples. Images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in particular, come to mind when I think of Gondorian Catholicism. Like this one in my home:

Or the famed work of Hew Lorimer in South Uist, Our Lady of the Isles below. The long, elegantly curving portrayal of a Queen. I think of the incorporation of folk hymns like "Brethren, We have Met to Worship" into the Mass, and the Revised Grail Psalter's use of sprung meter. Perhaps even more encouraging, coming from the Orthodox, is the "Appalachian Christ is Risen," which has lately made the rounds on social media. While I also want to hear Hail Queen of Heaven again and again in mass, I am leery of a traditionalism that only wants to hear the old hymns, and does not make its own. Any notion of Tradition which does not participate in its continued growth is dead.

Tolkien talks about "an art undivorced from reason." This is the essence of the Gondorian Catholic aesthetic. Not the aimless self-expression of postmodern art, nor the mere repetition of existing canons: but the creation of truly new art that both continues and expands the tradition in a logical way, as a logical procession. I refer here to the whole complex notion of Tradition as developed by St. John Henry Newman and Hans Georg Gadamer, an organic extension of Revelation.

3. Agrarian with a focus on good stewardship, rejecting both industrialism and radical environmentalism. Here I might merely point to the work of Wendell Berry and be done. We cannot yield to the temptation to view all environmental concerns as merely a "leftist" ploy. We may even leave aside the question of man-made climate change if we realize that air and water pollution, mining practices that destroy farmland, and harmful farming practices, are problems for our health regardless of their contribution to climate change. All of this is of concern to us as those charged with tending the garden and feeding people, even without reference to what an industrial society does to human lives. As Tolkien points out, labor saving devices only create "endless and worse labor."

The harm caused by the toxic chemicals used in modern farming enter us and destroy us from the inside, while the appalling working conditions of factories and even merely depressing conditions of modern offices, erode our humanity from without. A Gondorian Catholicism requires that work befits a mankind made in God's image and fit for the Garden of Eden, and in a world that is not toxic to it.

An emphasis on such work requires a return to a different kind of economic priority. Namely, a concern with localism. No merely nationalist/protectionist interest in "Made in the U.S.A.," but a real interest in our communities, in our neighbors, in the fostering of community. A movement toward real association with real neighbors as real people, fully embodied and present. A move away from the isolating tendencies of technological capitalism to engagement with neighbors who are of different ethnic and social backgrounds. It means fostering skills and investing in local talent, and the development of common goods which are not state goods. Like its Distributist predecessors, Chesterton and Belloc, Gondorian localism must emphasize private ownership without yielding to the materialism that is the capitalist system, which puts a monetary value on everything, and sucks spirituality out of the world and daily οικονομια.

I want to highlight that the development of culture depends on this move. So much of what culture consists of, folkways, the arts and crafts, and cuisine, among a host of others, depend upon the local use of local products which are suitable to the locale. The result of a move away from agriculture and localism is easily seen in the pop processing of the canons of various folk musics until it emerges as an almost entirely undifferentiated electronic mass production which continuously erodes the production of distinct, local music in distinct, local language with distinct, local canons of melody and instrumentation. Wendell Berry has pointed out that we may talk all we like about "freedom," but in a consumerist society, that vaunted freedom often boils down to little more than choosing which mass-produced channel of television we watch, which mass-produced vacuum we buy. Real freedom requires that we be real producers in our households.

4. Academic, both in the sense of rejecting anti-intellectualism, but also in the collegial sense of a teaching community, and in the sense that it has a balanced view of expertise which respects knowledge appropriately, wisdom more, and possesses a deep epistemic humility.

This point does not require as much unpacking, particularly because academic reform and issues of intellectualism are our bread and butter here at The Fellowship of St Columbanus, so we have covered them thoroughly elsewhere. The Arthur F. Holmes quote "All truth is God's truth" has perhaps been overused lately, but that is because it so aptly and succinctly summarizes the proper Christian approach to study and learning. We have nothing to fear from any truth, as long as we engage in our academic pursuits wisely and circumspectly, not assuming that things are always as they appear.

And these academic pursuits should be pursued in a collegial environment, not in isolation from one another. Education and academia are fundamentally communal, dialectal pursuits which benefit from open discussion, exchange of ideas, and peer review. Furthermore, the fruits of academic labor belong to the wider community which supports them, and which deserves the academy's respect, both for its support and for its wisdom without which any of its achievements would not be possible.

Part of the circumspection I mentioned must be a recognition that there are severe limitations on expertise. Academic pursuits must be accompanied by a strong sense of epistemic humility, that we are limited creatures, and while we are capable of real knowledge, its scope and certainty are circumscribed. It must keep returning to the well of Revelation and never become self-satisfied or self-aggrandizing.

These are all things that I see in Tolkien's academic work. He was not afraid of contemporary developments in philology and source criticism of Beowulf, but he did not merely swallow its fads, and was willing to disagree with the consensus. On Fairy Stories is an exercise in praising the tradition of fairy tales and defending its wisdom against its modern detractors.

5. Localist in its social, political, and economic concerns, and Universal in its theological,

Kentucky Landscape, 1839. James Pierce Barton. Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal

philosophical, and charitable concerns.

I mentioned economic and social localism above, and I do not think I need to repeat that here. And I mentioned the absolute, and therefore universal, basis of our tradition above as well. Which allows me to use this space to briefly mention that all of this is interrelated. A traditionalism which becomes parochial, anti-intellectual, merely antiquarian, or capitalist, the whole project will eventually fall apart.

But worse, the world of a traditionalism divorced from real local community, real local people, and a real local context is susceptible to infection by the racism which plagues the OCA, becoming merely nationalist in an Enlightenment sense. It is rootedness in a particular soil and in a particular community which in America means white, black, and latin communities, that a real Catholic, that is universal, vision can be fostered. Attempts at a Catholic vision which are not rooted in a place tend to one of two extremes: the gnosticizing tendency of progressive internationalism, or the race-based nationalism of the 20th century nation-state.

6. Hierarchical, but not clericalist.

A traditional, Gondorian Catholicism means recognizing the proper authority of each person in its place, of a person's responsibility himself, as well as the responsibility he has to his community and the absolute standards of God's justice. Of the rights of civil authorities in their ranks, and of familial claims on each individual, as well as the proper degree of authority for a priest, the local ordinary, and the Bishop of Rome. Finally, it must recognize the over-arching authority of Christ over all of these, and the limits that His rule inherently places on the rightful authorities under Him. It recognizes, further, the distinction between a rightful authority and a mere despot who claims authority but only exercises power.

I cannot go into depth on the proper balance here, not least because this is not my area of expertise. What I want to stress at the moment is the need to avoid the traditionalist temptation to clericalism, but also to denigrate the Pope because we do not always agree with him.

It should be noted that traditionalism is not the only movement in contemporary Catholicism which is susceptible to clericalism. In fact, it may be more resistant to it than other movements because its attraction to clericalism is overt, rather than under the surface. This is not a uniquely traditionalist problem, but I will not address modernist clericalism here.

7. Watchful

Perhaps this is redundant, because most traditionalists already seem to be, if anything, too keenly on the lookout. But it is inherent to what it means to be Gondor, as Francois pointed out to me when I showed him my first draft. The well-worn statement by John Curran, despite his numerous faults, is correct: "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

These, I believe, are the tenets of a more sustainable traditional Catholicism, and one which is prepared to withstand the ravages of modernism. Much more could be said, and I have started to say more several times, but I believe for the present I will leave it there. I will leave you with my favorite passage from The Lord of the Rings, which seems to have been a prophecy for our time. Just before the siege of Gondor, Pippin is eating with Beregond of the tower guard:

'No, my heart will not yet despair. Gandalf fell and has returnd and is with us. We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.'

'Rightly said!' cried Beregond, rising and striding to and fro. 'Nay, though all things must come utterly to an end in time, Gondor shall not perish yet. Not though the walls be taken by a reckless foe that will build a hill of carrion before them. There are still other fastnesses, and secret ways of escape into the mountains. Hope and memory shall live still in some hidden valley where the grass is blue.'