Stephanie Cottle
Orson Scott Card
ENG 375: Tolkien and Lewis
March 13, 2006
A
Summary and Commentary on C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church
When Joseph Pearce
set out to write a book about the rocky relationship that C. S. Lewis had with
the Roman Catholic Church, he knew he was dealing with a touchy subject. It is
clear, however, from his preface, that he had every intention of discussing the
“contentious and controversial issues…in a language that will engage, but not
enrage, the reader” (xxvii). I will address, as I summarize C. S. Lewis and
the Catholic Church, how well I feel he accomplished this goal, but I would
first like to present the issues that he admits probably will have an effect on
his opinions and this book. First, Pearce is a Roman Catholic. His aim was to
write a book that would appeal to lovers of Lewis and Lewis’s writing,
regardless of their feelings toward the Catholic faith, but he understood that
his beliefs would inevitably have an effect on his thesis. As I will show
later, I believe that Pearce’s Catholic viewpoint had more to do with his
thesis than he suspected. Secondly, Pearce never aimed to stay completely
neutral. He writes, “I have endeavored to treat the contentiousness and
controversy that must inevitably surround this subject as an edifying and
efficacious argument. It is never (Heaven forbid!) a quarrel” (xxx). Though
never a quarrel, his obvious purpose in this book is to, after objectively
presenting the facts, derive from them a logical conclusion. I believe that
his attempt was valiant, but his end result was unsuccessful in persuading me
of his views.
Pearce’s book is
organized chronologically, and he begins in Lewis’s childhood, where his first
encounters and impressions of religion took place. It is critical to
understand “Lewis’s childhood in the Puritanical atmosphere of Protestant
Belfast” (2). The world of his youth was one of “inherent anti-Catholicism”
(5), and that point of view, as Pearce argues throughout the book, made a
strong impact on Lewis’s religious philosophies until the day he died. In
fact, as we will see, Pearce believes that had Lewis not grown up amidst such
bias and prejudice, he would have converted to the Roman Catholic faith. In
any case, in Lewis’s young world, he became increasingly aware of the political
nature of his childhood beliefs. His brother, Warnie, recorded, “We went to
church regularly in our youth, but even then one sensed the fact that church
going was not so much a religious as a political right, the weekly assertation
of the fact that you were not a Roman Catholic Nationalist” (8). Lewis decided
that was not where he desired to place his faith. Instead, he found himself
touched by the “doctrines of Christianity…taught by men who obviously believed
them….the effect was to bring to life what I would already have said that I
believed” (10). However, the confusion of the contradicting theologies of his
youth resulted in his eventual 0“escape from Puritania” and his solace in the
world of atheism.
It is interesting
to note that, though Lewis’s atheism was sound and perhaps even logical for
where he was in life, he still made an effort to hold himself to a moral
standard. He wrote:
I believe in no
God, least of all in one that would punish me for the ‘lusts of the flesh’: but
I do believe that I have in me a spirit, a chip, shall we say, of universal
spirit; and that, since all good and joyful things are spiritual and
non-material, I must be careful not to let matter (= nature = Satan, remember)
get too great a hold on me, and dull the one spark I have. (14)
It can never be said that Lewis was
unintelligent in his beliefs—even as an atheist he was drawn to people with an
inherent goodness. As he continued his education, he grew to love such
authors and friends as G. K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. Of Chesterton,
Lewis later wrote, “Strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I
can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a
liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself”
(20). In reference to MacDonald’s book, Phantastes, Lewis wrote that
“the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence… What it
actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize…my imagination” (22).
Though MacDonald
was not Catholic, Chesterton and the works of others such as John Newman and
Dante helped to expose Lewis to, as Pearce put it, “real Catholics” for the
first time. Though Lewis remained a “loyal Protestant atheist” (17), he began
to become acquainted with good, religious men, and began to “dislike the
anti-Catholic propaganda” out of fairness rather than faith (25). He was
slowly being prepared for the friendships that would change his views on
religion forever.
Of one of his
greatest friends, Lewis wrote, “At my first coming into the world I had been
(implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the
English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both”
(30). The friendship between these two men grew until it was clear that each
was deeply indebted to the other. Tolkien felt that without Lewis, he would
never have had the confidence to pursue his completion or publication of The
Lord of the Rings. Lewis, on the other hand, was “indebted to Tolkien for
his final conversion to Christianity” (36). Pearce narrates the pivotal
after-dinner walk:
Lewis explained
that he felt the power of myths, but that they were ultimately untrue. As he
expressed it to Tolkien, myths were “lies, even though lies breathed through
silver”.
‘No,”
Tolkien replied emphatically. “They are not.”
Tolkien resumed,
arguing that myths, far from being lies, were the best way of conveying truths
which would otherwise be inexpressible. (36-7)
Twelve days after their talk, Lewis
wrote to his long-time friend Arthur Greeves that he had “just passed on from
believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity” (39).
Here, Pearce then begins to emphasize his major point. He wrote, “Certainly
the path [Lewis] had taken to ‘mere Christianity’ was very largely the Roman
road along which guides such as Chesterton and Tolkien, and Patmore and Dante
and Newman, had led him” (41). Pearce’s goal is to show that, though he never
became Catholic, Lewis’s beliefs were grounded in Roman Catholicism and all
that prevented him from being baptized into the Roman Church was lingering
childhood prejudices. In order to completely ascertain this fact, however, it
would help to give an overview of what Lewis did believe.
When Lewis wrote Mere
Christianity, he outlined what he felt were the three highest common
factors to “mere Christianity”: “baptism, belief, and that mysterious action
which different Christians call by different names—Holy Communion, Mass, the
Lord’s Supper” (127). Lewis states that he bases his arguments on the
following conclusions: “the divinity of Christ, the truth of the creeds, and
the authority of the Christian tradition” (134). He accepted the Nicene,
Athanasian, and Apostles’ creeds, believed in a “purification…after death”
(132)—according to Pearce, a sort of Purgatory—and did not approve of the
worship of the Virgin Mary. He felt that there was something real and holy
about the physical nature of the Eucharist. He believed that there was much
good to be had from confessions, but he did not agree with the Catholic
viewpoint that it was necessary.
It is easy to see
why Pearce might argue that Lewis was Catholic at heart. Actually, the
majority of Pearce’s argument lies in the logic that Lewis believed many things
similar to the Catholic Church. For example, in much of Lewis’s Christian
writings, he expresses a belief in a sort of Purgatory (a very Catholic idea)
and doesn’t believe in sola fide, or the belief that faith alone is
needed for salvation (what Pearce considers a very Protestant idea). Also,
Pearce sees much significance in the fact that there is “no significant
difference” between Lewis’s beliefs in many of the Catholic sacraments,
including baptism, the Holy Eucharist, marriage, confirmation, confession, and
the Priesthood. Pearce was very thorough when proving his point. He even
looked at the many authors of the time, listing such writers as Edith Sitwell,
Siegfried Sassoon, and others, linking their anti-scientist views (which Lewis
fervently shared) with their either current or soon to follow beliefs in the
Catholic faith. In doing so, his insinuation that Lewis was a reluctant member
of the same club is obvious. After taking all these points into consideration,
however, one point remains: Is Pearce’s thesis valid, and would Lewis have
become a Catholic but for his childhood bias?
I do not agree
with Pearce’s points. What I see in his arguments is shaky logic and poorly
applied generalizations. To summarize all his points, he shows that many of
Lewis’s beliefs are in line with Catholic theology, that many of his beliefs differ
from Protestant theology, and that (as he should have pointed out and I am
grateful he did) the reason Lewis never converted was a learned aversion to the
Roman ideas from birth. However, I do not believe that because beliefs are
similar they constitute total similarity, that because beliefs are different
from a broad and varied (Protestant) base they are the opposite, nor that
Lewis, intelligent as he was, was one to knowingly allow childhood prejudices
to impact the most important part of his life—his faith.
Now, though I
disagree with Pearce’s thesis, I am inclined to point out his fallacies in good
humor and with no bad feelings toward him. He did an excellent job of
presenting the facts and astutely analyzing them. As I mentioned above, I am
very grateful that he took so heavily into account the anti-Catholic world
Lewis was born into. It certainly was a very important part of his life, and undoubtedly
affected the way he saw the world. I simply find it difficult to believe that
as much as Lewis delved deep into the theologies of the world and the feelings
of his heart to discover the truth, that he still allowed a confessed prejudice
to keep him from that truth. I cannot deny that Lewis did share many Catholic
beliefs, but I cannot help but always come back to this excerpt from a letter
he wrote to a good friend of his, Saint Giovanni Calabria: “We disagree about
nothing more than the authority of the Pope: on which disagreement all the
others depend” (136-7). Lewis was intelligent, and I don’t believe an old bias
would keep him from what he truly believed salvation to be.
Without a doubt,
this book was an interesting and enthralling read. I would definitely suggest
it, as Pearce had intended, to any lover of Lewis’s writing. After all,
Pearce’s writing is not only astute and thorough—it is well written. He is
intelligent, and his only true fault is the one that invariably afflicts us
all—he has beliefs (a strong faith in the Roman Catholic Church) and is changed
by them. He was inevitably inclined to look for the Catholic in Lewis,
and I must admit, for the sake of fairness, that I am also, in all likelihood,
inevitably inclined to look for the lack of Catholic in him. This does
not make us enemies. I would like to conclude by recording something Lewis
wrote in reference to his wonderful friendships in the Inklings—a group of
religiously diverse individuals. He wrote: “In this kind of love, ‘Do you
love me?’ means ‘Do you see the same truth?’—Or at least, ‘Do you care
about the same truth?’ The man who agrees with us that some question,
little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our Friend. He need
not agree with us about the answer” (64).
