Content provided in partnership with
The hero is us: bringing a new, religious vision to life is a great adventure - Essay
National Catholic Reporter, Jan 25, 2002 by Rich Heffern
After being raised Catholic and attending Catholic schools, Campbell eventually formally rejected Catholicism. "All the meditations have to do with something that happened two thousand years ago somewhere else to somebody else," he explained. "Unless those can be read as metaphorical of what ought to happen to me, that I ought to die and resurrect, die to my ego and resurrect to my divinity, it doesn't work."
The poetic church
Campbell acknowledged though that his Catholic upbringing had proven a rich resource for his life. "I think anyone who has not been a Catholic in that sort of substantial way has no realization of the ambience of religion within which you live. It's powerful; it's potent; it's life-supporting. And it's beautiful. The Catholic religion is a poetic religion. Every month has its poetic and spiritual value.... I'm sure that my interest in mythology comes out of that."
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Campbell's comparative approach to mythology, religion and literature concentrated on, similarities. He was convinced that there is a fundamental unity at the heart of nature. "Truth is one," he said, "and the sages speak of it by many names." The common themes and images in our sacred stories and images transcend the cultures from which they come. He believed that a reviewing of such primordial images and themes in mythology such as death and resurrection, virgin birth, the hero's quest and the promised land -- the universal aspects of the soul, the blood memories -- could reveal our common psychological roots. "They could even show us, as seen from below," Campbell wrote, "how the soul views itself."
They can even heal and renew us, today and tomorrow.
Eugene Kennedy's long acquaintance with and interest in Joseph Campbell and his work led to the groundbreaking New York Times interview. Just recently Kennedy edited a book, titled Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, that brought together some of Campbell's unpublished work.
In the book Kennedy describes, too, a kind of reconciliation with his Catholic faith that Campbell experienced shortly before he died. In his hospital room in Hawaii was a small brass crucifix hanging on the wall. Instead of the usual suffering Christ with bowed head and bloody body, this one was fully clothed, with head erect, eyes open and arms outstretched "in what seemed an almost joyful embrace of the divine." Campbell's wife Jean Erdman said, "He was thrilled to see that, because for him this was the mystical meaning of Christ.... He experienced emotionally what he had before understood intellectually.... This image in a Catholic hospital room helped release him from the conflict he had with his childhood religion."
After a full life and an unconventional career, Kennedy told NCR, Campbell himself experienced a death and resurrection. After his death in 1987, the televised interviews by Bill Moyers brought his ideas national attention. People would get together into discussion groups after watching an installment to talk over what they had heard and seen.
Find Research Guides for:
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »