James Carroll Profiles Pope Francis in the NEW YORKER

 

Thus far, Pope Francis has not committed such widely publicized blunders.

 

DIGRESSION: Readers interested in Ratzinger/Benedict's crusade against the kind of liberal Catholics that Carroll likes should see Matthew Fox's fine book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (2011). END OF DIGRESSION.

 

As we might expect in a profile, Carroll highlights Pope Francis's life before he was elected pope, and he also briefly sketches highlights from his papacy.

 

Carroll claims that Pope Francis is not a cultural warrior like his two predecessors. But I claim that Pope Francis is a cultural warrior, but of a different stripe from his two predecessors.

 

The Jungian theorist Robert L. Moore of the Chicago Theological Seminary, himself a Protestant, says that Jesuit training is Warrior training -- that is, training of the Warrior archetype in the psyche. Arguably, all Christians engage the Warrior archetype in their psyches. In this way, they hope to cultivate their personal courage to live as virtuous Christians.

 

But if all Christians engage the Warrior archetype in their psyches, what is so special about Jesuit training that leads Moore to characterize it as Warrior training?

 

Because Jorge Bergoglio entered the Jesuit novitiate in Argentina when he was 21, Carroll briefly highlights Jesuit training. He says, "A man who chose the Jesuits over the other ways of being a priest was embarking on a harder path." True enough.

 

Carroll explains that "[21-year old Bergoglio] became a Jesuit novice, embarking on the intellectually demanding course of Jesuit formation that typically involves a dozen or more years of expansive study, teaching, and spiritual discipline."

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