What does it mean to be truly free? And what does Tolkien have to do with it?
In this discussion, Tyler and Sadie explore The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of three Tolkien reads the Great Catholic Book Club is taking on this year, and why it may be the most Catholic novel ever written by someone who never wrote a word of theology.
They cover the themes at the heart of the book and the study guide: the objective moral standard that every character in Middle-earth reaches toward (and why that's not simplistic, it's true), the Catholic understanding of freedom as the capacity for virtue rather than the license to do anything, and Frodo's fiat at the Council of Elrond as one of the most quietly powerful images of faith-as-action in all of literature.
Sadie also shares why she came to Tolkien late, through a Tolkien Studies course at Franciscan University, and what it was like to encounter a world where Catholic moral theology wasn't explained, but lived. And Tyler shares why reading it again as a convert was like seeing a childhood home with new eyes.
Plus: Gollum as the face of the freedom the world is selling us, Aragorn as the face of the freedom only virtue can give, and why Tolkien is Catholic the way water is wet.
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