It has been announced that Pope Francis plans to issue an official papal encyclical about climate change. But the unprecedented new encyclical has not yet been formally promulgated and issued. However, the American Catholic right has already started decrying his anticipated encyclical. But is Pope Francis ready to fight the dragon -- the American Catholic right? Let's size up Pope Francis.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) March 5, 2015: Pope Francis is working on an official papal encyclical about climate change, which will be the first such papal encyclical when it is promulgated and published.

It should come as no surprise to liberals and progressives that the American Catholic right has already begun decrying the pope's anticipate encyclical. Who does the pope thinks he is anyway issuing an unprecedented encyclical about climate change when the American Catholic right represents climate-change deniers?

But Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, took the name "Francis" to honor the well-known medieval saint, St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), a mystic and the founder of the Franciscan religious order and the author of the "Canticle of Brother Sun."

St. Francis of Assisi could be considered to be the patron saint of Roman Catholics today who are concerned about climate change.

In the book The Canticle of Creatures: Symbols of Union: An Analysis of St. Francis of Assisi, translated by Matthew J. O'Connell (1977; orig. French ed., 1970) Eloi Leclerc, O.F.M., perceptively discusses the "Canticle of Brother Sun."

But it strikes me as extremely unlikely that Pope Francis ever read Leclerc's book.

However, there can be no doubt that Pope Francis is quite familiar with the short book known as the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), a mystic and the founder of the Jesuit order. The culminating spiritual exercise in this book sets forth instructions for contemplating and meditating on creation.

No doubt the so-called exercises in the book emerged historically out of the same medieval Christian cultural matrix out of which St. Francis of Assisi and his "Canticle of Brother Sun" had emerged in an earlier century.

However, for my present purposes, I want to turn first to another aspect of the medieval Christian cultural matrix, before I return to discussing St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola, and Pope Francis further.

In the book Mysterium Conjunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, second edition, translated by R. F. C. Hull (1970), C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), surveys the thought of numerous medieval Christian alchemists as set forth in their published writings. (In the present essay I am not going to italicize all the foreign-language terms that Jung uses in this book. I am not going to alter any quotes from Jung in which he uses masculine terms in a generic sense.)

I should note that Jung at times uses the descriptor "medieval" to describe certain thinkers who lived well after 1450, the conventional date used today to mark the end of the Middle Ages. In other words, today we would refer to certain thinkers discussed by Jung as living and writing in the early modern period. St. Ignatius Loyola lived in the early modern period, after 1450. (The Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s.)

No doubt all of the medieval Christian alchemists Jung surveys were faithful and orthodox Christians. As a result of their cultural conditioning in medieval Christian culture, they assumed that God had created the cosmos, including all matter. Like other medieval Christians, the alchemist thought of the material world created ultimately by God somehow also included the spirit of God, as though God had as it were left part of himself behind in creation (page 490-491). The alchemists referred to the part of God that was left behind in creation as the anima mundi, or the anima media natura (they used these two Latin expressions interchangeably).

Of course the medieval Christian alchemists did not have our modern understanding of chemistry. As a result, they devoted an enormous amount of time and effort to their invariably futile attempts to turn material components into gold, by which term they did not mean our ordinary substance known as gold.

They thought of themselves as working on a supposedly chemical opus. Of course "opus" means work. So the way in which I just worded my sentence contains a bit of redundancy. Nevertheless, we should explicitly recognize that they were working on a work. Today in psychotherapy, the expression of working through something can be understood as capturing and expressing the sense of working on a work.

In any event, Jung came up with the bright idea of interpreting what the alchemists say about the work supposedly going on in their retorts (containers) as somehow analogous to the work of certain psychodynamics going on at different times in our human psyches (which we can think of as containers of a sort). So based on this bright idea, Jung set to work to examine numerous alchemical treatises and align certain points in the treatises with certain alleged developments in the human psyche.

Now, the alchemists thought of their work with material substances in their retorts as representing certain alleged features that they thought of as three stages in the anticipated transformation of the material in the retorts: (1) the unio naturalis, (2) the unio mentalis, and (3) the unio mundus, or unio mystica (the alchemists used these two terms interchangeably). By far, the most extensive part of their writings centered on the unio mentalis.

(1) In the extended analogy that Jung works out, he sees the unio naturalis at the basic human condition.

(2) Jung is most interested in the unio mentalis, because he uses their terminology to characterize what many of the people he sees in psychotherapy as working through in their own lives and psyches.

Even though Jung peppers his book with passing references to the unio mundus, he really does not say all that much about what the psychological parallel would be, except to indicate in passing that it is basically an ineffable mystic experience that has been reported in different terminology cross-culturally (see, for example, page 540).

(3) As I have explained, the medieval Christian alchemists assumed that God is somehow present in the matter in material substances, the anima mundi, or the anima media natura. Therefore, it should not surprise us that they thought of the third stage of transformation as resulting in the unio mundus.

No doubt St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius Loyola were mystics, which is to say that they had experienced and been initiated into the unio mystica in Jung's analogy with psychological development.

No doubt all Franciscans and all Jesuits, including Pope Francis, aspire to be mystics.

No doubt most Franciscans and most Jesuits, most likely including Pope Francis, were not and are not mystics.

But Pope Francis's entire Jesuit training was centered on and devoted to the unio mentalis in Jung's analogy with psychological development.

So let's consider how Jung sees the psychological development that is analogous to the unio mentalis:

"In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both [the one who conquers the dragon and the one who is devoured by it] have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is not a hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the 'treasure hard to attain.' He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby gained himself. This experience give him faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance, and attained what the alchemists called the unio mentalis" (page 531).

Now, we live in the Age of the Antihero in serious literature. As a result, many American adults may be antiheroes in their own lives, not heroes.

However, the Jesuit order is only for would-be heroes. No doubt Pope Francis has attained the unio mentalis psychologically.

Next, we should consider another statement that Jung makes:

"The uroboros [a snake with its tail in its mouth] is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e., the shadow [as Jung conceives of the psychological shadow each person carries]. This 'feed-back' process [Jung's pun based on the snake eating its tail] is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the uroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of prima material which, as a projection [in alchemical texts], unquestionably stems from man's unconscious" (page 365).

The uroboros as a symbol is obvious a rich symbol for Jung. But the psychological experience of the symbolic uroboros results in the result Jung describes in the above-quoted passage. The snake with its tail in its mouth is eating its tail. So according to Jung, each person should eat his or her shadow stuff, figuratively speaking, and consciously digest the shadow stuff and assimilate that stuff. In a published interview, Pope Francis has said that he recognizes that he is a sinner. This self-characterization probably means that he has digested and assimilate his shadow stuff.

In other words, the psychological experience of the symbolic uroboros is connected with the unio mentalis psychologically, not with the unio mundus psychologically (also known psychologically as the unio mystica).

As I say, I am reasonably sure that Pope Francis attained the unio mentalis during his years as a Jesuit.

Next, because the uroboros symbol is based on snake imagery, I want to mention that Jung says that "the transformation of the feminine element [in the human psyche] from a serpent into a queen" signals the royal marriage of the Queen archetype with the transformed King archetype in the psyche (page 380). The royal marriage is also known as the hierosgamos in the psyche. The hierosgamos in the psyche represents the gateway as it were to experiencing and living the unio mundus, or unio mystica.

Next, because Pope Francis regularly advocates dialogue, I want to point out here that the optimal form of dialogue involves what Martin Buber refers to as I-Thou communication.

I would characterize I-Thou communication as a mystical experience. No doubt persons who are capable of having the mystical experience of I-Thou communication are experiencing and living the unio mystica, or unio mundus.

Finally, I want to discuss Jung's repeated references to the experience of inner psychological chaos. No doubt the experience of inner psychological chaos primes people to over-react to external stimuli and catastrophize. Even though catastrophizing is not limited to the American Catholic right, the American Catholic right tends to catastrophize a lot. Perhaps they are experiencing inner psychological chaos. Jung actually describes different kinds of inner chaos. At times, according to him, inner chaos simply goes with larger psychological processes involved in psychological transformation. However that may be, the American Catholic right seem to be stuck in repeating cycle of catastrophizing -- instead of undergoing psychological transformation and moving away from catastrophizing.

Now, over at the website of The New Republic, Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has published a thoughtful piece titled "Francis Agonistes" (dated March 1, 2015). She portrays Pope Francis as facing the vociferous opposition of the American Catholic right. Fortunately for Pope Francis, he does not live in the United States. As a result, he probably does not pay much attention to the American Catholic right.

However, Pope Francis likes to urge people to engage in dialogue. No doubt he will be expected to set an example by engaging in dialogue -- and lead by example.

No doubt he plans to lead by example by issuing his announced encyclical about climate change.

No doubt the American Catholic right will be eager to engage in dialogue with him about climate change.

But Francis Agonistes may be ready to take on the dragon, figuratively speaking of course, that the American Catholic right represents.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview