Quelques passages extrêmement intéressants de sa biographie par Joseph Pearce (merci à l'abbé anglais qui me l'a prêté et se reconnaîtra peut-être !). Si quelqu'un a le temps de les traduire en français...

Letter to his son Michael (novembre 1963)
'The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals...'
'I suppose the greatest reform of our time was that carried out by St Pius X: surpassing anything, however needed, that the Council will achieve'.

Tolkien was apprehensive about many of the reforms instituted by the Council :
George Sayer (who met him often in the 60s) : 'Tolkien was a very strict Roman Catholic. He was very orthodox and old fashioned and he opposed most of the new developments in the Church at the time of the Second Vatican Council'.
Father John Tolkien (eldest of his sons, ordained in the 40s) : 'he was against the changes' brought about by the Council, 'especially the loss of Latin'.
To his son Michael : 'Trends in the Church are [...] serious, especially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a 'pax' in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change. [...]
Now we find ourselves nakedly confronting the will of God, as concerns ourselves and our position in Time [...] I know quite well that, to you as to me, the Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go ! (I wonder if this desperate feeling, the last state of loyalty hanging on, was not, even more often than is actually recorded in the Gospels, felt by Our Lord's followers in His earthly life-time ?) I think there is nothing to do but pray, for the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves, and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it. [...]
The 'protestant' search backwards for 'simplicity' and directness – which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because 'primitive Christianity' is now and in spite of all 'research' will ever remain largely unknown, because 'primitiveness' is no guarantee of value, and is and was in great part a reflection of ignorance. [...] There is no resemblance between the mustard-seed and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. Very good : but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites, and so forth (with trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!). But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils.' [cf. Comparison with Chesterton's philosophy of the Tree]

The 'other motive' behind the calls for reform of the liturgy which caused Tolkien consternation was aggiornamento, which, Tolkien believed 'has its own grave dangers, as has been apparent throughout history'.

There are distinct similarities between Tolkien's view and that of Evely Waugh, who also singled out the alliance of 'primitivists' and 'aggiornamentists' for scorn. In an article in the Spectator at the very start of the Council's proceedings, Waugh had written of the threat posed by the new liturgists :
'It is not, I think, a mere etymological confusion that the majority of English-speaking people believe that 'venerable' means 'old'. There is a deep-lying connection in the human heart between worship and age. But the new fashion is for something bright and loud and practical. It has been set by a strange alliance between archaeologists absorbed in their speculations on the rites of the second century, and modernists who wish to give the Church the character of our own deplorable epoch. In combination they call themselves 'liturgists'.'
Unlike Waugh, he never became embittered and was not tempted to rebellion or stubborn opposition. Tolkien sought to see the good results of the Council, as well as the bad :
'I find myself in sympathy with those developments that are strictly 'ecumenical', that is concerned with other groups or churches that call themselves (and often truly are) 'Christian'. We have prayed endlessly for Christian re-union [...] There are dangers (of course), but a Church militant cannot afford to shut up its soldiers in a fortress. It had as bad effects on the Maginot Line.

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