The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

No. 142: letter to his friend Robert Murray, S.J. (December 1953) - The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)