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Letting Go of Libido Dominandi: Tolkien and Niebuhr meet Leo

Letting Go of Libido Dominandi: Tolkien and Niebuhr meet Leo

Last updated on: June 13, 2026 at 8:47 pm by Julia Smucker

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Letting Go of Libido Dominandi: Tolkien and Niebuhr meet Leo 2026-06-13T20:47:47-05:00 Julia Smucker

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Among many things that have drawn attention in Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is the

Image by Kaitlyn Fascista at Tea with Tolkien. Used by permission.

appearance of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The simple delight in this fact alone is understandably irresistible to any LOTR fan. But I hope that on recovery from our collective swoon over the fact that “the pope quoted Gandalf,” attention might be drawn to a potentially seismic shift this encyclical may be bringing into Catholic thought and teaching, if properly received: a shift from what H. Richard Niebuhr called the “Christ of culture” toward a stronger emphasis on “Christ transforming culture.”

Christ and Culture

When I first read Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture as a college student, I was quite shaken – naive as it seems in retrospect – to realize how deeply my own thinking about what it means to be Christian had been shaped by a classically Anabaptist “Christ against culture” paradigm. Even growing up on the culturally assimilated, non-separatist end of the Anabaptist spectrum, certain core axioms remain dominant: Christ and his Kingdom necessarily have a higher claim on Christians than any other loyalty or identity, especially those (such as nationalism) that make the most demanding counter-claims on us; followers of Jesus are to be a “sign of contradiction” (cf. Luke 2:34) exhibiting lives lived in radical contrast to the world’s violent power structures; and if the culture at large in which we find ourselves looks at us askance or even hates us for the right reasons – for truly following Jesus and serving him in the least, the humblest, the most inconvenient of his and our human siblings (cf. Matthew 5:11-12 and 25:31-45) – that’s a sign that we’re doing discipleship right.

I still believe these things deep in my bones. And so it’s been a frequent source of dissonance for me to realize more gradually that in entering the Catholic Church, I migrated from a deeply “Christ against culture” tradition to a deeply “Christ of culture” one.

Granted, Catholic thought, spirituality and practice are diverse enough to contain versions of all five approaches to the “Christ and culture” relationship named by Niebuhr, which is one of Catholicism’s redeeming qualities. Granted, too, the “Christ of culture” paradigm, like all the others, has some redeeming qualities of its own.

At its best, it can remind us of God’s enduring love for the world he made, broken as it is, into which he sent his own son not ultimately to condemn but to save it (cf. John 3:16-17).
Christian missions is generally at its best when incarnational and, in certain ways, inculturated – not “of” the missionary’s culture and “against” that of the evangelized, but affirming what is good in the latter and the “seeds of the Word” that already exist within it.
Arguably, even a prophetic and countercultural witness to the world requires some degree of engagement with it (though the more separatist Anabaptist groups such as the Amish, as well as some contemplative monastic communities and hermits, manage to bear their own kind of witness through quiet nonconformity), some ability to speak a language it can understand (though it should still shock and baffle at times), some willingness to “get our hands dirty,” not in the sense of becoming morally compromised for the sake of influence, but also not missing the call to serve for fear of losing our sense of righteous purity.
The characteristic Niebuhr identifies with “Christ of culture” that resonates most strongly with me is its its affirmation of reason and intellect, which, while not the only way of knowing God or of knowing in general, is surely a great gift from God and one of the ways we humans reflect his image.

Moral Perils of Libido Dominandi

That said, there is a much more insidious strain of “Christ of culture” thinking that runs deep through Catholic history and thought, which I have sometimes struggled to name. At times I’ve referred to it as “the Catholic impulse”: an impulse toward a collective upward mobility, a pursuit of social privilege and political power, all under the deeply held assumption that all society will invariably be better off under Church rule. It may have been a commenter here on Vox Nova who I once saw refer to such pursuits as libido dominandi – literally, the lust to dominate – and that term stuck with me, as good a name for the impulse as any.

Tragically, not only has the social betterment that’s assumed to automatically follow from ecclesial power often failed to be borne out, but such power has all too often borne the opposite fruit, resulting in some of the ugliest stains on the collective Catholic conscience: from violent conquests attributed to divine intervention under Constantine and swordpoint “conversions” under Charlemagne, to literal wars over doctrine (and control) in the Crusades and the Reformation, leading into the brutal executions of my own Anabaptist ancestors, to theological rationales for the worst abuses of colonialism, to self-protective deals with the Nazi regime, to the large proportion of Catholics and other Christians who participated in the Rwandan genocide and much of the history behind it, to an international pattern of sexual abuse too often met with more concern for protecting the Church’s structures and finances than her abused and vulnerable members, and so on. All of these are examples of what Pope John Paul II in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (35) – quoted by Pope Leo in Magnifica Humanitas (25) – described as “intolerance and even the use of violence in service of truth” which requires repentance.

More subtly, in the United States, Catholics have largely missed a great learning opportunity that could have come out of their historical experience as a minority group, with all the prejudice, scapegoating and dehumanization that go with it. This experience may indeed have played a role in the US bishops’ contributions to Vatican II’s declaration on religious freedom, which is hugely significant in itself. At the same time, much of the Catholic story in the US has been an upwardly mobile one, with Catholics increasingly – perhaps instinctively – climbing the ladders of privilege and power, to the point that we now have Catholics occupying powerful positions throughout all three branches of government, in both major US parties, invoking faith and morals when it’s politically convenient but all too willingly throwing those morals (most crucially, the intrinsic dignity of certain categories of human beings) under the bus when it isn’t. With a few remarkable exceptions, I have encountered a confounding proportion of (especially American) Catholics, even among those who show admirable consistency on issues related to human dignity, who seem almost incapable of imagining a Christian witness to the world that doesn’t involve a top-down exercise of power.

Tolkien Got It

One Catholic who did conceive of a radically different approach to power of a dominating kind, and the moral and spiritual dangers inherent in the temptation to seek and use it even for good, was Tolkien.

In my contribution to Solidarity Hall’s 2014 anthology Radically Catholic in the Age of Francis, I argued for a “kenotic ecclesiology” in imitation of Christ’s radical self-emptying (cf. Philippians 2:5-11). I opened that essay with a favorite LOTR quote of my own, showing the misguided reasoning of Boromir in the final chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. As Boromir becomes fixated on the idea of using the Ring of Power for “strength in a just cause,” he defends his desire “to use the power of the Enemy against him” by presuming himself to be more invulnerable to its pull toward corruption than more mature leaders like Gandalf and Elrond. But it’s in that very presumption that the Ring’s corrupting influence on him begins to show, as he fantasizes about war plans and declares, “The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory.”

By underestimating his own corruptibility, Boromir’s arrogance becomes his downfall. By his willingness to use evil means for supposedly good ends, his ends themselves become corrupt. In the end, it’s the plan Boromir derides as “folly” that ultimately wins the day, a plan that indeed looks like insanity from within conventional paradigms about power: sending the smallest and humblest creatures for the most crucial mission, not to overpower the forces of evil by the use of evil’s own forceful means, but to destroy the lust for power the only way possible, by rejecting it once and for all. It’s the story of a fundamentally different kind of power that is made perfect in weakness (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9), of overcoming evil with good rather than being overcome by evil (cf. Romans 12:21).

Frodo too, of course, is overcome by the Ring’s lure of libido dominandi, and in the story’s denouement, even the destruction of the Ring does not automatically equal the end of all greed and corruption. Yet it’s by the very “folly” of the quest that the Ring is brought to the brink of destruction, thwarting the power-blinded Sauron’s realpolitik expectations by seeking to destroy the Ring rather than to use its power against him. Gandalf makes this explicit in the passage of The Return of the King that Pope Leo quotes from, advising the human and elvish “lords” who possess some temporal power, whom Sauron suspects of being the real threat to his own power, that their true role is to be the bait, distracting him from the true threat so seemingly foolish in its rejection of libido dominandi that he could hardly conceive of it.

Making a Difference Without Dominating

Where Gandalf is steeling fellow leaders for their dangerous and essential yet decidedly secondary task, Pope Leo, at that point in the encyclical, is advising those of us not in positions of institutional power not to be defeatist about our own ability to make a difference, saying:

There are those who govern, make investment decisions, lead institutions, conduct research, educate, produce or provide information, and then there are those who only seem to live their daily lives. Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action, and it is precisely there — and nowhere else — that we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).

The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. (212-213)

“Against dehumanization” must be an essential touchstone for anyone seeking to live the Gospel. Too many, Christians included, easily forget this when seeking or wielding power, however sincerely they may once have intended (or, like Boromir, convinced themselves they intended) to use that power for good.

From the first chapter of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo is pointing us toward a better way – specifically, a better way of being the Church within the world. While clearly affirming the importance of the Church’s participation in society as a moral voice, he affirms with equal clarity that the Church’s role should not be a dominating one. Rather than claiming the power of the State, the Church, by promoting human dignity and the common good, “stands alongside the world without overpowering it.” (20, cf. 19, 21)

He expands further on the vision of the Church as a non-dominating witness a few paragraphs later:

Understanding that the truth is a gift to be shared, not a possession to be monopolized, frees the Church from the temptation of seeking forms of presence based on power. In order to rediscover the evangelical approach of a gentle proclamation of truth that is not imposed, Saint John Paul II invited us to examine honestly the times when acquiescence was given to “intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.”… What matters most is not occupying positions of power or defending cultural strongholds, but initiating good processes and enabling them to mature. In this way, the truth of the Gospel is not imposed from above, but grows over time within the concrete interweaving of lives, communities and cultures…. (25)

Therefore, when the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, the Church — together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions — must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion. (27)

This is a vision of a Church that speaks with a moral clarity that can only come from a posture of humility, a Church that finds its prophetic voice by seeking not to rule the world, but to serve it.

Untwisting the Imago Dei

As a concrete application of this principle, the pope’s acknowledgement of the Church’s own institutional failures to live up to its own professed teaching, specifically with regard to slavery, is certainly noteworthy. The famous apology comes in par. 176, which has a lot going on:

In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.

The Magisterium has long found it necessary to walk a fine line, maintaining a sense of continuity in its teaching office along with any such acknowledgement of moral failings, and Pope Leo continues to walk it here – while taking a nonetheless significant step of acknowledging the Church’s self-inflicted moral injury. It’s both true and insufficient to say, as Leo does, that affirmation of universal human dignity has always been present in Church teaching. Or rather, it would be insufficient to stop there, but Leo also acknowledges another, more painful truth: that this essential Christian doctrine with its broad moral implications has at times been ignored, explained away or twisted beyond recognition as some Church leaders have tied themselves in theological knots for the sake of currying favor with the powerful.

A concise history of these moral gymnastics is given in the footnotes (emphasis added):

[174] As in the Papal Bulls Sicut Dudum (13 January 1435) and Etsi Suscepti (9 January 1442) of Eugenius IV, and in the Papal Bulls Dum Diversas (18 June 1452) and Romanus Pontifex (8 January 1455) of Nicholas V. Political and, at times, even economic needs overcame the demands of the Gospel. The need for evangelization was frequently compromised or at least misunderstood with regard to the needs of worldly powers, thus relativizing the problematic incompatibility of slavery with the Christian conscience.

[175] Cf. Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter In Plurimis (5 May 1888), Acta Leonis XIII, VIII, Rome, 1889, 169-192. Consider that, as late as 1866, the Holy Office distinguished between the immoral and moral aspects of slavery, without fully condemning it: Instruction of the Holy Office on various doubts of Monsignor Massaia, Vicar Apostolic in the country of the Galla, April 1866, response to question no. 15.

This is a long and deep “wound in Christian memory” that will take more than one encyclical to overcome, and not only in terms of history. Still today, Catholics are far too often implicitly catechized in the power-seeking impulse as if it were the true reign of God, taught to presume like the wayward Boromir that as long as we’re seeking “strength in a just cause,” our pursuits cannot become corrupted.

Human Dignity Where it Hits Home

I fervently hope and pray that the shift from this power-seeking impulse toward a more kenotic Church will trickle down from Pope Leo’s preaching and writing to a consistent formation of conscience. One already hopeful sign is the US Bishops’ “National Prayer Service Honoring the Many Journeys that Shaped America,” a template for public litanies centered on “the Gospel call to welcome the stranger and uphold the dignity of every human person,” which some have interpreted as a counterweight to Donald Trump’s more hubristic celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Indeed, while the litany’s tone remains appropriately pastoral, its truth-to-power overtones are hard to miss in the present context, in a way that feels resonant with an iteration of “Christ against culture,” tempered by strong elements of “Christ transforming culture,” that I know well. In a way, it also puts the affirmations of “Christ of culture” within a more modest framework of catholicity: Christ – and his transnational, multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural, in other words catholic church – can never be of one culture to the exclusion of others (unless perhaps it’s a first-century Palestinian Jewish one, which would still require a definite de-centering of major power centers then and since).

I find it hopeful, too, that a message the Church badly needs to hear, a call to turn away from the pursuit of worldly power and privilege, has come with cultural hooks that have attracted attention. The simple referencing of a widely loved literary work with multinational cultural significance – although there is of course much more to Magnifica Humanitas than this – may in fact have become a needed in-breaking, a missionary inculturation of sorts.

Even if we Christians are now the ones who need to be re-evangelized.

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