What an online theology course got wrong about St. Francis of Assisi

By Julie Ferraro | FāVS News Columnist

In early July, I took an online course that was supposed to be on Franciscan spirituality, but it turned out to be something totally different. After the first of the four daily sessions, I was rather frustrated, but I stuck it out until the last day, when I had a legitimate reason to exit the Zoom class early.

Essentially, the course was meant to discuss St. Francis of Assisi in light of René Girard’s theories.

Except, from my perspective, Girard’s viewpoint doesn’t really apply to St. Francis at all.

Francis Deserves Better

Girard, who lived from 1923 – 2015, was born in France and emigrated to America after World War II. He didn’t really call himself a philosopher, and he progressed through a variety of disciplines in his life — from literary criticism to anthropology then to theology, according to our instructor (and various sources). From the first, I got the impression that he was a bit of misogynist, as well, defining women as “objects” of mimetic desire — something for men to fight over.

Losing count of how many times our instructor used the term “mimetic desire” over the course of those four days, I even emailed him privately to try and get a better grasp of just what he was talking about. 

One of the questions he fielded, in a long, drawn-out, typed statement that was emailed to all participants in the course, addressed Girard’s attitude about women — and made it clear (to me, anyway) that Girard was the kind of researcher who decides upon a theory. Then, no matter what information he might encounter to dispel that theory, ignores it, believing himself correct.

It also showed that Girard severely limited his research, which is another flaw that is practically unjustifiable. In his early literary criticism, for example, he only drew from novels written by men. This was in the mid-20th century, mind you, and he should have known better.

To break down the repetitive explanations offered by the instructor of this summer class: Girard believed that “mimetic desire” comes from imitating others. So, if a 5-year-old child suddenly wants a specific toy, for example, it’s only because another child has taken a fancy to it.

In my book, that’s called envy.

Girard blames that “mimetic desire” for violence and even killing, whether of one man by another (over his wife, let’s say), or of one nation against another (on the premise that the aggressor country wants the land, the assets, etc. of the other country).

As I listened to the instructor’s harangue, I puzzled why Girard over-complicated a simple concept in this way. Was it to sell books, or promote his reputation?

Envy is a very simple idea, after all. And, yes, it can lead to aggression, violence and  murder in the minds of those who haven’t the sense, or the conscience, to control themselves.

When the instructor tried to apply Girard’s rationale to St. Francis, I nearly blew my cork. He implied that St. Francis had deep, psychological reasons for every action, For example, in the story of the Little Poor Man of Assisi embracing the leper, he did it to become a “super leper” (yes, that’s the term the instructor used). 

What We Can (and Can’t) Know About the Saints

Also and, perhaps, correctly, the instructor noted how the biographers of St. Francis alternately tried to embellish his saintliness over time, then criticize his actions, then create a romantic hero-type out of him.

What I have learned, however, in my decades of studying Franciscan spirituality, is that you can’t believe even the earliest biographies — or hagiographies, as they are classified — of the early saints (Francis included), even those written by their contemporaries. 

St. Francis, like so many young people today, had experienced the ravages of war, spent time as a prisoner and came out of that trauma seeking something deeper in his life. He hungered for God and had the courage to step out boldly in his search.

Heaping all this extraneous mumbo-jumbo on him — that he was escaping “mimetic desire” and so forth, as the course instructor noted — really does a disservice to an individual whose simplicity continues to be emulated by many eight centuries after his death. 

He had taken God’s love into his heart and shared that love with others because it was the right thing to do, based upon the accounts of Jesus in the Gospels.

It’s complicated enough just trying to follow that example — we don’t need to make it worse with language that requires a dictionary to decipher, or apply the skewed viewpoint of flawed research to what is a forthright and honest reflection of God’s love.