By Robert Royal.

But first a note: There's an old French saying: reculer pour mieux sauter, which means "to step back to jump better." It's got many uses, not least in the Church. When we find ourselves at an impasse, it's wise - and often more effective - to look carefully at what we've done in the past as we confront the future. Today's column tries to recover some often misunderstood things about St. Francis of Assisi who lived at a time of political and religious turmoil different than our own. But he faced them with an attitude and a spirit that is worth getting to know better because it's something quite different than the remedies that don't seem to be doing much in our day.

At The Catholic Thing, we're all in favor of aggiornamento, the term Vatican II used for the Faith facing up to contemporary challenges. But that won't succeed without something we also pursue, ressourcement, the Council's wish to recover the ancient sources. We're committed to pursuing both of these necessary paths today and into the future. Please join us in these endeavors. We can't do it without you. Make a donation - there's a monthly option if a one-time lump sum is too much. But do something. The work is urgent and the time is short.

Now for today's column...

Pope Francis left the Church with multiple controversies, some that he inherited, some that he induced. Indeed, amid the complaints about clericalism and "backwardists," the considerable presence of LGBT and feminist concerns in recent Church pronouncements, we might ask where to find a more robust, dare one say militant and masculine Catholicism - much needed given the challenges from renascent Islam and Western decline. Much of this might be viewed in light of the late pope's decision - as a Jesuit! - to take the name of the little poor man of Assisi, St. Francis.

I've been thinking about these questions while reading Augustine Thompson O.P.'s Francis of Assisi: A New Biography, which is "new" not only because it's relatively recent, but in that it takes an interesting path towards identifying the "historical Francis." Which is to say, insofar as we can reconstruct him from the more reliable sources, amid the traditional myths and recent "Francises": the hippie Francis, the Francis of a poor stripped-down Church, the environmentalist Francis, etc. And while Thompson doesn't entirely dismiss the old stories or modern romanticized versions, he offers correctives worth the attention of any reader concerned for historical truth.

To take a prominent instance, most people believe that the saccharine "St. Francis Prayer" ("Make me a channel of your peace") is by St. Francis. It was actually composed around 1912, in French. And more significantly, "Noble as its sentiments are, Francis would not have written such a piece, focused as it is on the self, with its constant repetition of the pronouns 'I' and 'me,' the words 'God' and 'Jesus' never appearing once." Thompson reports that the discovery of all this is quite often very painful for his students, who have been led to believe otherwise.

As this example shows, Thompson is meticulous about sources and clears up numerous misunderstandings. In fact, this biography is also "new" in that it has a curious form. It's - nominally - just under 300 pages, but only the first half is biography. The second half consists, not of footnotes, but of brief discussions about questions raised, chapter by chapter, among the scholars. As such, it's an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to approach the real St. Francis instead of the one often concocted to serve contemporary agendas.

Clearly, it's not easy to map what Francis did in the thirteenth century onto our current age. But there are multiple interesting points of contact. For instance, as per the "Francis Prayer," the saint did seek "peace" among the Italians of his day, who were almost perpetually at war, not only among the different city-states (in which Francis had fought himself), but also betwee...