Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: A Catholic Journey

Every so often on this show, I set the conversation aside and simply read something. This is one of those episodes. Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. And in paragraph 213, in the middle of an argument about the small and steadfast acts of fidelity that stand as a bulwark against dehumanization, the pope quotes a wizard. The wizard is Gandalf, and this is what he says: "It...