Lord of the Rings in harmony with good in pro-life

The 2026 Canadian Physicians for Life (CPL) Annual Conference, Nov. 6-8 at Ottawa's Lord Elgin Hotel, promises thought-provoking presentations and discussions on medical ethics, a full-throated championing of person-centred care and a dash of J.R.R. Tolkien lore.

Yes, J.R.R. Tolkien lore.

The Lord of the Rings will feature prominently in the opening-night keynote speech from Dr. Christopher Lisanti, a diagnostic radiologist at Brooke Army Medical Center and medical director for the Pregnancy Care Center in San Antonio, Texas. 

Advertisement

Lisanti, a fan of Tolkien’s books, Peter Jackson’s celebrated film trilogy and the Middle-earth Strategy Battle Games, was invited by CPL executive director Nicole Scheidl to present as his message harmonizes with the conference theme “Finding our Identity: Belonging & Healing.” He said there are many important identity lessons contained within the literary epic and its cinematic adaptation. 

“The premise of the talk will be if we're true to our identities in our community, then we will engender hope and encourage fortitude in the people around us to pursue the good even in spite of what seems almost to be insurmountable odds,” said Lisanti. “I think Lord of the Rings is a wonderful story that shows the power of the Fellowship of the Ring, for instance. They're encouraging one another (and) they're true to their identity.”

He cited a scene from The Fellowship of the Ring in the forest kingdom of Lothlórien. There, The elven queen Galadriel offers a glimmer of hope for the eight surviving Fellowship members after the wizard Gandalf the Grey fell into an abyss in the Mines of Moria battling a demonic monster known as a Balrog. 

Galadriel said: “Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the company is true.”

Lisanti, a longtime pro-life advocate, urges physicians to reclaim their identity as healers instead of succumbing to the temptation of serving as purveyors of goods and services. 

Advertisement

Practitioners striving to be “their best selves,” said Lisanti, will “encourage hope and spur on the fortitude” within patients to “overcome and push through the suffering and the difficulties they may have,” such as a terminal diagnosis or an unplanned pregnancy.  

But since “medicine has not been true to our identity,” he proclaimed, “the trust that people have with us is decreasing,” diminishing patients’ hope and fortitude.

The host of the Roots of Flourishing podcast will spotlight Saruman the White wizard and Denethor II, the Steward of Gondor, as two figures who corrupted themselves by pursuing their power-hungry ambitions. The minds of both were poisoned as they gazed into the Palantir, a magical, indestructible dark crystal sphere used for remotely viewing events taking place far away.

In Lisanti’s analogy, the Palantir could stand in for television or online screens depicting half-truths or falsehoods about unplanned pregnancies, euthanasia and other medical circumstances, and it can spur emotions and actions that “actually lies outside of the true healing arts.”

He said the danger emerges when physicians allow distorted information to influence how they exercise their medical authority.

“I'll make the analogy that the steward of medicine gazes into the Palantir, sees the half-truths, puts on the ring of medicine power to go ahead and start doing things that are not truly healing,” said Lisanti. “Then what we find out in the end is that it's just a half-truth. We see a variety of problems and harms that have come about from putting on the ring of power to do things that were not necessarily directed towards the objective healing of the patient.”

Advertisement

Waxing poetic about Tolkien will account for 15 minutes of Lisanti’s scheduled 90 minutes. Above all, he wants to “encourage people who are feeling beleaguered, misunderstood, maybe under suspicion, certainly not in power.”

Learn more at physiciansforlife.ca.   

(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)