I understand that Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and while he meant to be somewhat religiously neutral in his works, his beliefs still shaped his final project. The Ring itself seems to be almost sin incarnate: It promises ill-gotten power, it is addictive (like with Gollum), it can take the weaknesses of the best men and make them utterly fallible, as it did to Boromir. And most importantly, it could not be permanently and totally beaten by sheer human will: Frodo succumbed to it! But evil is self destructive, and had Gollum not snatched the Ring from Frodo, the Ring would have never been destroyed!

It is not the Chronicles of Narnia, in which the Bible stories and figures are near-perfectly duplicated word-by-word, which some review as "forcing Christianity" (I like Narnia, but I completely understand why non-Christians are made uncomfortable by it, or even why some Catholics are made uncomfortable by it), but rather, it is a totally original study of sin and fallibility, which has Catholic values, philosophy, and perspective, but not the actual Catholic religion and stories; therefore, it can be identified with by everybody, and it ultimately reveals what we should have known all along: No man or woman is perfect enough to beat sin (unless Jesus counts, which is up to you to decide since there's actually no perfect or exact Christ-equivalent in LoTR).

With the Ring it can be a two way thing. In one of the lines of Fellowship the ring is described as getting heavy as Frodo hands it over to Gandalf. Now if the Ring is an external power it can be seen as forcing its will on Frodo, as though its reluctant to be handed over, on the other if its an internal source Frodo is reluctant to hand over the ring and so physiologically feels heavy. It can also be interpreted as a bit of both, the Ring can influence but its the dark side of ourselves that allows it to do that.

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Hey, good observations! That's right, a lot of Sauron live on in that Ring!