“It’s a waste of time to read The Lord of the Rings. You should read the Lives of the Saints instead.”

Doubtless you could imagine my confusion after hearing these words. Compound this with the fact that they were spoken by a traditional Catholic while I was on a discernment visit with a traditional religious community—the weight of this statement was not insignificant. But from the outset, I was skeptical of this view. I hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings yet, but I knew that, at best, Tolkien was Catholic, there was Catholic symbolism in the book, and many of my good Catholic friends loved it. How could it be a waste of time? Why replace it with the Lives of the Saints? Sure, the Lives of the Saints are immensely important and deeply beneficial: but—bear with me here—couldn’t The Lord of the Rings be, too? Why not read (and value) both?

In the above well-meaning but misinformed bold assertion leveled against Tolkien’s masterwork by someone of a mindset that I otherwise share, there is revealed an unfortunate yet understandable tendency that can root itself very deeply in the hearts of Catholics who sincerely desire to love and serve our Lord. 

This tendency, at least at its core, seems to be nothing else but the joy-destroying spiritual illness known as scrupulosity—the habit of seeing sin where none exists, and that of making smaller sins seem greater than they are. It is a malady to which traditional Catholics seem especially subject, and understandably so: as our culture continues its mad rampage, heedlessly stampeding over all that is true, good, and beautiful, the Catholic of right conscience may often veer too far in the other direction (swing the pendulum, as it were) in an effort to safeguard that which ought to be held most dear. 

Though sometimes manifested without an explicit accusation of sinfulness, it is clear that there is some moral weight involved in statements like the one I quoted at the beginning of this article. If something is a “waste of time,” then it must be at least morally imperfect, if not actually sinful. An obvious moral judgment need not be made: one may only be advocating for certain practices or ideals over and against others, but with the implication that the others are at least “lesser,” if not problematic. Often these scruples are simply a result of a lack of information—such as grouping The Lord of the Rings together with generic “fantasy” novels.

As St. Paul says, we are one body in Christ, though many parts (cf. 1 Cor. 12:12-31). The Body of Christ is necessarily made up of vastly different individuals, and certain practices and spiritualities appeal to some more than they do to others. Some are more severe, some are more gentle. There are many goods to choose from: the fault of the scrupulous traditionalist is, more often than not, advocating for the severe and looking down upon the gentle—even though the gentle is a legitimate and good option, at least for a certain group of persons. Virtue, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us, is the “middle road” between two extremes. In this case, I would say it is the recognition of both aforementioned options, the severe and the gentle, as goods—and leaving it up to the individual’s choice, informed by grace, as to which of them will be more beneficial. 

This tendency toward the severe is particularly exemplified in an overemphasis on the doctrine of Hell. True, hell is rarely mentioned—even among fellow Catholics—and traditionalists, desiring to remedy this apparent problem, sometimes go overboard and talk about hell far too frequently, often at the expense of speaking about God’s love, which can easily turn ourselves and/or others into terrified, scrupulous messes, viewing God as a harsh judge rather than a loving Father. “Perfect love casts out all fear,” as St. John tells us, and when someone (especially of a scrupulous disposition) sincerely desires to love God and has the “good fear” of offending him, it seems that an overemphasis on hell does more harm than good.

This obsession over hell has ripple effects throughout one’s spiritual life. As one attempts to avoid hell, one is easily tempted into an overbearing piety that casts out even good, healthy elements of culture, for example, good and moral secular music, and replaces them with that which is “explicitly Catholic,” like gregorian chant—even though, in actuality, Catholicism also cherishes those natural and cultural goods that help us become well-rounded and holy individuals. After all, we are a union of body and soul, not pure spirits. In St. Augustine’s words, grace builds on nature.

Replacing “good” with “explicitly Catholic” is also observed in some traditionalist responses to the vocations crisis. Sadly, it is true: we don’t have as many vocations to the religious life and to the priesthood as we used to. We ought to have more, we should be praying for more—but allow me to suggest that the solution to this crisis is not to put undue pressure on individuals to pursue a particular state in life, nor to promote books or other media on vocational discernment that put forth messages like “if you don’t get it right, God will revoke all the graces he was going to give you and you’re going to have a lot harder time being saved.” It seems that young men and women are often deeply confused when it comes to discerning a

vocation—messages like the previous example might be helpful in a different context, but in our time, it seems that they serve only to increase the confusion and distress of the discerning individual. 

I think that the central fault of these examples, and of others that may come to mind, can be summarized in this way: the answer to an absence is not to create another absence.

Despite living in a country that claims to have an unprecedented abundance, we live in a time of unprecedented lack. We (as a nation) are isolated from each other, addicted to technology, ignorant of the faith, and deprived of many skills that our forefathers possessed. The scrupulous traditionalist perceives this lack, and attempts to remedy it, but often goes too far. His well-meaning excesses, such as an overemphasis on hell, create a void: the love of God is talked about less frequently. This only serves to increase the overall scrupulosity of the faithful, and may even drive others away from the faith. In the words of St. Francis de Sales: “You catch more flies with a drop of honey than a barrel of vinegar.”

I believe that what we need is a wholesale return to Catholicism and Catholic culture—but let that not be misunderstood to mean a culture where all everyone does is pray, fast, think about hell, enter religious life, and read explicitly Catholic books. No indeed: be it folk dancing or Tolkien-reading, divine office-praying or spending time with friends, beer-brewing or pipe-smoking, singing or instrument-playing, cooking or mountain-climbing, religious life or married life—we ought to relish in all the good things that God has given us; in all those things that form us, in one way or another, into holy men and women, soul and body, to the greater glory of God.

(If you struggle with scrupulosity, find a good spiritual director/confessor and obey his advice unquestioningly.)