Aug 13 Weekly Insight: Pope Pius XII pronounced it Dogma; Psychologist Carl Jung embraced it. What was it?

Pope Pius XII pronounced it Dogma; Psychologist Carl Jung embraced it.

(The August 13 Spirituality U. Weekly Insight from Interfaith Paths to Peace)

Pope Pius XII proclaimed that all Catholics must believe it; Carl Jung said the Pope’s words were the most momentous spiritual pronouncement of the 20^th Century.

What was it that could bring together such radically different thinkers?

It was “The Assumption of the Virgin Mary” which is celebrated on August 15 each year as a day of “Holy Obligation” in the Catholic Church. On this day all Catholics are required to attend Mass.

In November of 1950, Pope Pius XII made it a matter of official Church dogma that the Virgin Mary (believe by Catholics to be without sin) was “assumed” body and soul into Heaven at the end of her life. The Assumption had long been a popular belief among Catholics. Pius XII made that belief not only official, but mandatory.

But why did Carl Jung think this was the most important spiritual event of the 20^th Century?

Because, in a sense, it restored the Divine Feminine to the Godhead. Much of Western religion for millennia had been almost entirely patriarchal. Until recently theology in the Abrahamic religions generally conceived of God as male. There was no room for a feminine aspect of Divinity. Of course, there were hundreds of female saints in the Catholic and Orthodox religious world; but, God was decidedly male.

And in another way, the official pronouncement of the Assumption as dogma reached even farther. It symbolically brought Heaven and Earth back together. Here’s what Catholic scholar Eugene Kennedy says about Jung and The Assumption.

“As a master of the mythological river that nourished what he termed our ‘collective unconscious,’ Jung grasped the profound and fitting symbolism of such a declaration at mid-century.

The Assumption proclaimed the Mystery of the century, the return of Mother Earth to the Heavens and the end, therefore, of the split between Earth and Heaven and all the divisions, such as between flesh and spirit, that flowed from that. It heralded the unity of the universe and the unity of human personality. That is the richest and perhaps least plumbed aspect of this feast. The wonder is that the Assumption is rich and deep enough a Mystery to accommodate these various levels of understanding all at the same time.”

For more information on The Assumption and Jung’s response to it visit:


http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/theassumption.html