The Spiritual Seductiveness of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung

It was the late 1990s, a theology course at Union Theological, NYC, was reading Joseph Campbell; almost everyone was enchanted by him. I was nauseated! I could smell his contempt for the historical religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. His was a sophisticated but thinly disguised apology for paganism. I was not surprised later to learn of his reputation for anti-Semitism. But I imagine his was not such a politically incorrect hatred for Jewish blood as much as a radical anti-Judaism, a disgust for the love of the transcendent God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Campbell was himself a disciple of a greater genius, and a darker figure: Carl Jung. In the study of the religious psyche, Jung is the GOAT: greatest of all time. (On further thought, maybe William James could challenge him?) However, he had also surrendered himself to diabolical forces: the occult, drugs and sexual sin. He is a fascinating, provocative but ominous figure. He exerted an immense influence in Catholic and Christian circles in the 1970s and continues to do so today, largely through his disciples like Campbell, Rohr, Jordan Peterson and Alexander Shaia.

The appeal of Jung is that he uses the language of Christian theology to propose an alternate gnostic spirituality which, usually implicitly, renounces the transcendent God of the Bible and Tradition in favor of an introspective exploration of the Self in all its archetypes, experiences, longings and travails. Jung is fascinated by religion and Christianity, but incapable of the simple act of faith in a God exterior to his own narcissistic psyche. He replaces the Trinity with his own 4-figured paradign that seems to be retrieved by Shaia. Campbell is worse: he hates that God as he glamorizes all the archetypes and idols proposed by the pagans.

In figures like Rohr and Peterson (Jordan, not Danny, and certainly not Ed or Eddy or David) we have a muted, modulated gnosticism. For example, Peterson has deep, solid intutitions about the nature of virility and our current crisis but he is unable to cross the threshold into simple faith in Christ. Rohr offers a rich stew of Jungian psychology, Catholicism, 12-step work and other stuff. He is immensely talented and charming. He may be growing beyond the hatred of institutional Catholicism that so offends red-meat Catholics like myself.

To be sure, what is offered within Catholic circles today is not the dark occultism of Jung or the shameless paganism of Campbell, but a more appealing, muted and disguised mixture. For example, a hip retreat house might offer a mouth watering smorgsboard (for the spiritual seeker who is lukewarm in his Catholicism) of: the Enneagram, mindfulness training, Zen Christian meditation, non-binary eco-organic-wholesomeness, and so forth. Now any of these offerings are in themselves innocuous and arguably wholesome in their right place and correct degree: like the daily walk or swim or fruit-veggy drink or vitamin regime. The problem develops when any (or any combination) is offered as an alternative "spirituality"...as a practice/belief system capable of organizing your life in place of traditional faith and practice. In that case they overreach and become in effect idols. This is done in a quiet, anonymous fashion: not a direct challenge to Orthodoxy, rather a compelling and fascinating distraction.

The new-agey, Jungian diet is a kind of spiritual vegetarianism. Now normal vegetarianism is entirely wholesome, assuming dietary needs like protein are satisfied, and apparently much healthier for the human body and the globe. A Catholic certainly can be a vegetarian, but not in an absolute or ontologial way: because we eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, literally. When Jesus clearly proclaimed this truth...this dogma...many left him. So today many Catholics are afflicted with an aversion to things like eating a body and drinking blood, to a sacrfice in its bloodiness, to poverty-chastity-obedience, to authority and tradition. So, what is offered to such sensitive, searching spirits is a bloodless, meatless, sacrifice-less, vow-less, authority-less "spirituality" without religion {"religio") and all its bonds, demands, boundaries, laws. This Jungian alternative offers itself to the idealistic as more enlightened than traditional faith in its simplicity and demands.

At the end of the day, what do we make of this veggy burger, lite, meatless Catholicism? It is hard to say. On this I come down as non-binary: it may not be clearly good or clearly bad. It seems helpful and inspiring for many "on their journey." But anyone who has feasted on the rich wine and meat of Eucharistic Catholicism will find it too watered down.