In response to Protestant critiques of the new dogma, Ong fired off his widely read spirited critique of Protestantism: "The Lady and the Issue" (1951). Subsequently, after the Second Vatican Council, he reprinted this essay in his collection of essays titled IN THE HUMAN GRAIN: FURTHER EXPLORATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE (1967, pages 188-202).
But Dr. Jung didn't join the ranks of Protestant writers who criticized the new dogma, even though he was the son of a Swiss Reform pastor and had established his credentials as a well-informed anti-Catholic polemicist, most notably in his commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA. On the contrary, Dr. Jung viewed Pope Pius XII's new dogma as signaling a new attitude toward the feminine.
I would agree with Dr. Jung about that much: It does signal a new attitude toward the feminine in the Roman Catholic Church and, by extension, in Western culture.
Hey, if symbolism counts for anything, then the new dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven should count as a signal of a new attitude toward the feminine in Western culture.
Granted, this new dogma may not be exactly equivalent to Jupiter aligning with Mars that the 5th Dimension sing about in their 1969 hit song about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. But it's a good omen.
If my explication above about the feminine archetype in the human psyche (of both women and men) is correct and valid, then the new dogma formally declared by Pope Pius XII is also a step toward the spirit of spiritual democracy that Steven B. Herrmann discusses in his new book.
See Dr. M. Esther Harding's book WOMAN'S MYSTERIES: ANCIENT AND MODERN (1935) and Charlene Spretnak's book MISSING MARY: THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND HER RE-EMERGENCE IN THE MODERN CHURCH (2004).
According to the dust jacket on her book, Charlene Spretnak "holds degrees from St. Louis University and the University of California at Berkeley. She is a professor in the philosophy and religion program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a graduate institute in San Francisco." Disclosure: I hold three degrees from SLU: 1966, 1968, 1974. Evidently, she and I were undergraduates at SLU about the same time, but I do not remember knowing her there at the time.
(Article changed on October 19, 2014 at 16:44)
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