Philosopher and journalist Jan C. Bentz talks with Michael Thomas about the Catholic Land Movement, tradition, perennial truths, and the inspiration of Chesterton and Belloc.
FROM THE FALL 2023 PRINT EDITION: In crossing the threshold into Middle-earth, I stepped into a moral cosmos unlike the relativist world in which I resided.
If nationalism engenders a sense of loyalty and devotion as it did in the case of John Paul II, it might be worth asking, to whom (or what) are those who have no sense of loyalty or devotion to their nation devoted?
“Tolkien’s understanding of creativity is that God gives us the things out of which to create. The clay, the leaves, the words, even the language. And we use those to make things by arranging them into new combinations. But in one sense, all of those combinations are possibilities already present in the mind of God. And Tolkien believed we would go on to do that in Heaven.”—Alison Milbank
How do localism and nationalism fit together? How do each of these philosophical approaches to place use and abuse the innate noble feeling of patriotism? Over the course of Chesterton’s story, we are challenged to confront these questions and answer how we ought to live.
