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SME114: Despair isn’t a mood. In Catholic theology it’s a choice — the deliberate abandonment of hope in God’s mercy — and it’s the sin that destroys Denethor, the twenty-sixth and last Ruling Steward of Gondor. This is the sin of Denethor, and it’s darker and more human than the films let on.

Patrick Mason, Rob Leonardi, Robert Story, and Fr. Bryan Shackett begin with the theology (Catechism 2090–2091): Denethor’s despair is a positive act of the will, the sin against hope, twinned with presumption. Then they turn to Gondor. Denethor was proud, wise, far-sighted, and “more kingly than any of his predecessors” — the blood of Númenor ran true in him. He was no cartoon villain. He was a great man who lost hope.

The engine of that fall was the palantír. How Sauron used the palantír to deceive Denethor is the heart of the episode: unable to dominate the Steward’s will outright, the Enemy showed him only true images, carefully chosen to breed despair — the black fleet sailing up the Anduin that was, in fact, Aragorn coming to the rescue. Robert Story reframes the seeing-stone as a screen: “far-seeing” as television, Sauron as an algorithm feeding an endless scroll of curated doom. Denethor doomscrolls himself into the grave.

The panel weighs book Denethor vs. movie Denethor — Tolkien’s tragic, competent ruler who still sends the Red Arrow to Rohan, against Peter Jackson’s spiteful figure remembered for a single grotesque scene. And they set Denethor beside Aragorn, who claims the stone by right, wrestles Sauron for it, wins, and then simply sets it down.

It all lands on Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which quotes Gandalf directly: “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.” The Pope Leo XIV Gandalf quote ties Tolkien, artificial intelligence, and the “polite form of resignation, often disguised as realism” that despair wears today. The answer, Gandalf and the Pope agree, is small: the hobbits, not the mighty, destroy the Ring.

Note: this episode discusses despair and suicide. If you’re struggling, help is available — in the U.S., call or text 988.

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