EWTN Live - Psychology and the Church- Fr Mitch Pacwa, SJ with Dr. Ray Guarendi - 03-09-2011

tonight on EWTN live we'll look at the relationship between the world the psychology and the Catholic faith so please stay with us [Music] [Music] thank you thank you very much and welcome I'm father Mitch Pacwa and welcome to EWTN live our chance to bring you guests from all over the world before we go to our guests this want to remind you today is Ash Wednesday didn't have to put as much makeup on because of the ashes this time the the the importance of this feast is that we begin Lent in the Roman Rite the eastern rites began on Monday the Western right begins on Wednesday and you know with this we begin 40 days of fast and abstinence let's really try to keep this a great Ash Wednesday and a great Lent so that it either be a blessing and a preparation for celebrating the great feast of Easter you know and I know a lot of people I always like to bring this up a lot of people will say I don't want to give stuff up for Lent I want to do something positive well you don't have to make that choice you can do both you can give up stuff that's a good thing to do to remind you what you don't really need and you can also do positive things with the money that you save by giving stuff up and help out the poor and do a variety of other good deeds so that's a great thing to do in this Feast of Ash Wednesday also it could also mention that today would have been the feast of st. Francis of Rome she was born in 1384 and died in 1440 she wanted to be a nun but her parents arranged a marriage that married there off and she married a soldier with the Roman army and it's very interesting that one of the they they really had a successful marriage that they even though was an arranged marriage they fell in love and had a very successful marriage so one biographer said that partly that was due to the fact that he was off at the wars all the time but I don't know that that was true but they they did lose a child to the plague and this gave st. Francis a sensitivity to care for the sick so with her husband's permission lady right after he died she opened up hospitals for the for the sick and for the poor sick especially and she started an order of nuns too to help care for those who are poor and sick and when her husband died she became this appear that community and they still exist doing good for those who are poor and in ill health all right tonight our guest is a clinical psychologist and the co-creator of the DVD series what Catholics really believe got a copy of it right here and he's here to help us understand some of the links and disconnects between the Catholic faith and modern psychology so please doc welcome dr. ray guarendi hi follow me I know you wouldn't say this yeah let's do these folks know how many languages you are fluent oh they don't need to know too much about that okay I gotta say it this doesn't count as bragging if you don't say the man knows 12 languages well well you know it's easy no wife no kids not money lots of times don't know one language well you know it's just something that you do along the way it's like for me it's like tools in a kit you know studying Scripture and theology just needed to know these languages so just kind of learn incredible you just keep gathering them up don't you well I had to say I I don't know anybody knows twelve languages well we'll have to get you around there are plenty of folks out there do especially in Scripture scholarship you kind of need to know all the languages you know what you've done what's that you have destroyed my respect for those pikers that only know five or six not impressed with them anymore well they're doing great work that's for sure but speaking of great work so are you and the work that you do you know in terms of psychology and the faith is a very important one but I want to give our folks a little bit of background you know that psychology and Christianity has had a very rough relationship Sigmund Freud was very anti religious and he saw religion as the psychological problem that needed to be eradicated and that he would take the place of priests hearing confessions now not all psychologists saw that Carl Jung had a more positive attitude toward religion not that he was a Christian he was a gnostic he was a Halloran yeah but he had a respect for religion and he even said that less than two percent of his patients were Catholics because they took care of their problems in the confessional so he was more tolerant and more open-minded but there were there's been this tension between psychology and Christianity and Catholicism in particular um how do you manage as a psychologist and who's living at Catholic faith when I was in grad school one of the overwhelming themes was no values in therapy you are morally neutral and that's how I had to study and I remember thinking how is that possible exactly to be morally neutral is a value so that was my first crisis right then and there raised Catholic thinking well obviously if God exists his ways the best way he's smarter than we are even my PhD profs God is probably smarter than so if he says do it this way don't do it this way he must know what he's talking about so that was my second crisis I'm being told by my training oh don't don't don't get into this moral stuff the problem you're running to father is almost everybody who walks into that office has moral struggles exactly they won't label at that but they do and all it takes is one little question if you say something are you a religious person floodgates open up you get everything from oh I'm so glad you asked that too I'd like to be but I really don't know what that means but it's there for almost everyone it is there in some form either in a germ or fully manifest here's the tricky part there is a veneer of consistency between psychology and religion I mean think about it five psychology tolerance understanding healing healing and empathy I mean come on that's Christian stuff the problem is it's a superficial relationship because psychology basically looks at the world with a whole different set of rules how so tell us about that one of the most dominating things psychology has done lately the self-image movement this thing exploded on the scene in the 70s the theory was kids in particular we need to foster healthy self-esteem and from self-esteem will flow all other things that are good and I remember thinking I wonder if Jesus went to the apostles and said excuse me Simon now I was gonna I was gonna change your name to Peter but I didn't want to mess with your self-image okay you've already solidified your self-image I don't wanna go changing names as an adult now the reason I picked you to head this church is your self-esteem I like that in my boys if you can conceive it you can believe it if you can believe it you can achieve it Peter twelve more weeks of Tony Robbins management courses and I'm gonna put you in charge of this operation I just can't fathom the father no no no I don't think so there is an exercise that I sometimes give folks I'll say okay I want you to do a little test you go to the computer you type in child self-esteem search hundreds of thousands of options type in child humility search [Music] right there the experts do not foster something like humility as a virtue one should chase so you don't see child humility you don't unless there's a very select group of morally traditional mental health people who focus on humility you will not find it among general psychological principles you will find it but yet for Christians that's a very core of who we are I'm very proud of my humility as well you should be some I've got I've got down pat I think you know as a matter of fact this is one of the things that would be a major difference between a value-free psychology approach to Catholicism that talks about seven you know vices and seven virtues vices father that's value judgment father yes it is and I ain't scared of it just say it another language they won't know what you're talking exactly exactly but you know pride being you know the probably the worst oh the seven capital sins are you familiar at all with the language used now especially in educational settings that I call morally and to septa sized know if you're talking to a child in a proper way to talk to which I'm in a lightened way to now talk to a child um excuse me that behavior is inappropriate unacceptable choices you see what we've done no bad no wrong no right no good unacceptable inappropriate because we we have whitewashed morality out of the language even among Christians I see him do this you know in CCD classes or in Bible studies you see the teacher guard sticker that's a very appropriate behavior but guess tell him no that's a good behavior that's a moral behavior no it's appropriate I always tease my clients they say you know Johnny I'm not comfortable with the icepick and your sisters armed inappropriate choices inappropriate choices take two stickers off your system do you know what else psychology does and I got this heavy when I was in grad school focus on the positive ignore the negative so if a kid's throwing a major league fit or if somebody is verbally upgrading another person focus on the positive wait for the chance to give them a compliment and to affirm when they're using good language of course they would never say good language appropriate language the idea that you point out negative I was taught I was taught punishment doesn't work negative simply pushes people away and to basically what we would call hold somebody accountable for their behavior would be viewed as kind of a Neanderthal throwback to a time when we were much less enlightened it it's it pervades fathers it's like a it's like a seeping SAP just kind of pervades the way we think this is one area that really has changed as you said in the 1970s there were Freudianism was pretty much rejected because some experiments have shown that everything didn't help therapy yes and so so in the 70s there began to be from my perspective as an outsider to psychology and looked at there were searching for mental health sometimes in all the wrong places but there was a scramble to search for new therapies and new identity definitions of mental health and I'm not so sure that it's settled down yet that's been my passion it hasn't father what you saw was the momentum of the 70s was value-neutral Raj Aryan therapy where you don't make judgments if the client says you know I I just feel like punching my mother in the face well a good therapist might say so you're feeling frustrated about your mother yes I'd like to push her downstairs I'm sensing a lot of bad feelings go with that you know share with me what those are you know there's that that avoidance that diligent avoidance of you want to push your mother down the steps and that strike you is hurtful see that would be far too directive right that would be according to the Rogerian so little school and and that dominated for a long time right it's still there I mean now it's kind of a kind of a pick and choose but there still is I remember when I sat in grad school one time I was in a class that basically said you got to get to the point where you trust people and we're gonna do exercises to make you trust people so we're gonna turn all the lights off we're gonna have you put your hands down to your side we're gonna have you walk around in class bumping into people so that you can get in touch with invading the space well I don't know I I was I was wondering the fact that I shower I was bumping into people all over the place and after I was done I thought okay now what did I get out of that exactly you'll you'll love this I was sitting in class one time and the prof said this well the way you take in information is similar to the way you eat if you chew your food that means you're very critical thinker and you take your information in and grind it up so I went is there any research support for this he said now this father this tells you where we were at ray I noticed that um I noticed that you're leaning back are you unsure of your question so I went is there any research support for this tie-in Tommy ray right now the way your leg is crossed there's there's a certain sense of closure here where I'm not he wouldn't answer my question because he's trying to analyze every in your body language I wanted to go what does this say yeah it was very frustrating and I was educated kind of as an engineer you know an engineer there well there are certain realities and if you ignore them the bridge falls down exactly you know so I had a hard time in psychology with this well we all just kind of think the way we think and what we have to do is make no judgments about what is a better way to think what is a poorer way to think we have to accept and affirm father that if he says that he thinks that it's okay to slap somebody upside the face then we have to explore why he thinks that no this does not sound to me as if you've taken up these approaches of psychology very much how does your faith have an impact on what you do if there's a God then he's a lot smarter than I am and if God says here is morality to the degree that you break this law it's like gravity you can stay up in the air in a plane for a while but eventually gravity wins you can jump off a 30,000 foot something down into a chasm in a cavern in the middle of the earth and you won't hit for quite a while you're going down hard but so far so good but eventually gravity wins eventually the moral law wins people will walk into my office Father and whether they're religious or not they'll describe their lives shambles shambles they've alienated their spouse two of their kids aren't talking to them they have lost a job because they struggle with Authority whether they understand it or not the degree they deviate from the way God says to do it the more mess they make they don't put it they don't put those two together so somebody will say to me on time okay you'll you'll appreciate this long ago I did a book call back to the family the premise of the book was this how do really good families raise really good kids we went around all 50 states talked to the folks a number one theme to emerge from the book was religious faith over and over and over again the family said our faith is at the center of our success now the first publisher rejected the book she didn't like that she didn't like the message the message was well you don't have to have religion to raise a good family so I got a question from an interviewer once she said are you telling me that you need religious faith to raise good kids no no a lot of people who aren't religious that raise pretty decent human beings I said what the question is how do they make the judgment if the kid comes to them at 16 and says hey mom I don't agree with what you're telling me about sex I love my girlfriend and I think we can be together and she says oh don't do that why not well well it's wrong who says it's wrong well well it is well mom that's what you say are you not mature enough I don't agree with you well yeah but that's just your opinion mom so it's a mature opinion mine's an immature opinion both opinions there's no plumb line how do you defend it if I can say the god of the universe says do it this way don't do it this way that's a lot more leverage in trying to teach somebody then well you know I've kind of stumbled upon some moral precepts in my life and I kind of want to tell you which ones I think are the decent ones the natural rebellious nough sand the human beings gonna go why should I buy yours I think psychology did that psychology said look a lot of what you guys did about religion you know you priest types and everything okay that was okay for a more primitive time but we have become enlightened especially in the last 50 years the 50 years of our enlightenment Dwarfs the thousands of years of human was just pass over that Nazi episode come on concentration camps passed over that we've matured don't make judgments yes I'm so sorry but you know what's interesting father scarily so more and more professors will tell you they're shocked when they ask their students was 9/11 wrong recently a college prof said I asked my students and they said well it was wrong but it wasn't morally wrong he said what does that mean he said well I don't know you know in their eyes in their eyes it was it was justified so I I don't know if we have the right to say that was wrong exactly that this has been the experience of professors dealing with Nazi Germany communist gulag and so many other human atrocities that kids will say well I think it's wrong but and I wouldn't do it but maybe I thought it was okay so it's alright for them yikes I know it yikes and the interesting thing is it isn't just immoral it's illogical if something is immoral it's dumb you can't defend it logically you try to defend it like okay well that's okay for them it's not okay for me so what if they want to take a ball bat to your knees is that okay for them well no because it would infringe upon my rights but wait a minute that's what they wish to do and that's their choice you may not prefer it but how do you say it's not by your own system how do you say it's not yeah had I not found some amalgamation I think I think up a healthy one between psychology and and Catholic faith I'd be selling t-shirts on Maui I couldn't live with the tension right and there's a lot more areas to father that we can talk about that like like what would be some examples for the longest time there was a theory that's said and most of the psychological world bought into this theory emanated from Freud emotions need to be vented you gotta let those feelings out let it out catharsis you're a tea kettle if you hold it in your gonna get a tumor you gotta let it out man that was a theory yeah Christianity over here gone well no wait a minute you know there's a huge difference between kind of talking about your feelings and venting them you know venting them does damage venting them hurts people venting is a nasty thing well psychology is a voice in a wilderness the voice in the wilderness or their psychology knows that venting all the better research that has come out now says those people who vent by and large you're not only more miserable human beings but they tend to vent even more it becomes their habit their style like like water running down channels just runs faster and faster every time it runs they said furthermore it does damage to the body venting basically goes after the vulnerable systems of the body was stress I remember a study I read it was such a classic they concluded they said perhaps it would be better sometimes to just turn the other cheek like I heard somebody mad somebody made that up yes because all of psychology would say that's not healthy you don't turn the other cheek you will just build up resentment you will you will be consumed with animosity if you do that I've gotta let you know father what you did to me was not very nice and you need to understand you know so ah I feel better now I just ripped on a Jesuit priest is that like an excommunication offence no but that Jesuit priest might get you I'm sensing a lot of aggression let's just say that vending is mutual it's it's an interesting thing I get an awful lot of folks in my office who really have not pondered religion they're there because they know something's not working right that's why they're there they're in crisis it's typically the way people do it they hit a crisis point they go I don't know what else to do call a therapist okay when they come in if the crisis drops below the trip switch they generally don't come back I'm down below my crisis point like I can live like this this is uncomfortable I can still live like this but some of them search and say why am i miserable what is it about the way I think the way I look at the world the way I interact with people and they want to know and I cannot tell you how many folks have said to me I am so glad that I'm going to a therapist who can talk about religion because almost without exception unless they go through a distinctly pastoral counselor that's that's not going to be a main right normally that's that's one of the things that I often times here and and this is a dimension of the human person that is very important to include you know that is religion is an important dimension of the person that's included in everything that goes on with a person's psyche so that the psychological and the spiritual and the physical need integration and that that's one of the things that we would look for I have to take a break but we're going to come back in a couple of minutes we want to get some of your questions and some of your comments so please stay with us [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back we have a nice audience of folks in different parts of the country and we'd love to have you come and join us if you can make a chance to come down here to Birmingham Alabama we'd love to have you in our studio audiences as well as join us at mass and get free tours of the studios and visit around here we really enjoy having you here if you're able to do so please contact our pilgrimage department at two zero five two seven one two nine six six that's two zero five two seven one two nine six six or go to our website WWE wtae.com also speaking of pilgrimages I'm planning to lead a pilgrimage to Catholic France that'll be October 3rd to the 14th if you're able to join us for those dates please contact 1-855-249-9867 in this cup they are really good and the coffee is great i love supporting mystic monks coffee calm because they very much are doing good work are the supported by the sale of the coffee and it's better than some of the coffee places that are promoting abortion and other things so i want to thank the brothers of mystic monks coffee calm for that for their great gift also before going to our studio questions when I remind you that the National Catholic Register has always worked hard to bring you the most accurate and up-to-date news from around the world and within the Catholic Church and now that they are part of the EWTN family they are stronger than ever and continue to bring you the need the news you need most so please feel free to subscribe by going to ewtn.com click on National Catholic Register banner and you'll be able to subscribe to this very good Catholic newspaper matter of fact we have some of the staff from the National Catholic Register who are joining our EWTN family right here in our studio audience tonight so it's great to have them here with us are you ready for some questions could you ask the people to make them true/false I'm better at those no no 50-50 chance I know I know we're gonna get some real answers out of you we're gonna start off with a lady named Jennifer hello Jennifer how about a Mitch hi were you from I'm from Florida great and what is your question father I'm a college student and I think seeing a counselor about some problems from my child in my past that's affecting my schoolwork I also have a spiritual director and confessor I was just learning what is the difference between what I share with my counselor and my spiritual director and if I should stop seeing my school counselor and just rely on the Lord and what my spirits director has to say thank you very much Thank You Jennifer for calling by and large they're going to come from different perspectives spiritual director will probably tap into where this young lady is more now if there are problems that the spiritual director says hey this is emotional stuff kind of little beyond my bailiwick here right then at that point yes but the difference here is there's a couple of differences one the counselor really can't share with anybody what this young lady says and the counselor can't even tell anybody that this young lady is coming to him or her first thing I don't know father what the the conditions surrounding spiritual direction are pretty much the same much pretty much saying I mean you can mention that you're given spiritual direction but you know what the the content of this virtual direction is no private it would be like the confidential very confidential I tell clients like this young lady if you are unsettled with the way your counselor is approaching that the deepest aspects of who you are your faith your morality your belief in God then you can do one of two things you can say to the counselor can you refer me to somebody else whose moves more able comfortable and willing to deal with these kinds of issues or maybe I will just head towards spiritual direction and see if in fact mice original director says look now you need to explore other ways people will come to me and say well are you a Catholic counselor say no what are you um psychologist well I thought you were Catholic well I am but but what if what if somebody comes you and doesn't want a Catholic worldview so I get a lot of that what do you do well I will still be able to help them deal with life you know there's a certain moral law that if you don't label it catholic it's god's way of doing things and it works and most therapists whether they label it that or not follow that Rogers absolutely even the most atheistic therapist is gonna say you should leave your wife and kids under certain circumstances anyway of course if you're unhappy then that that trumps all but for me if somebody comes to me and says I came to you distinctly because you're a therapist who is Catholic I'll say that's fine I have no problems interweaving the two but if they come to me and say look I don't have any religion and I really don't want any religion I said okay alright but that's interesting father even in the most inveterate cases like that you find out that's not exactly true they don't want religion as they are afraid of it right they're not ready to start going to church yes yeah religious stuff you know fear of Hell going to heaven all that kind of stuff that's what they are of course I help scare them but that's another question from our studio audience young lady were you from in fact you're on the staff of the National Catholic Register great good to have you here with us and what is your question um similar to what you were talking about I wondering if you could talk more about you were saying that some of your clients are happy that they can talk to somebody about religion but I was wondering if you could talk about the other side of things are as anyone hostile towards you and how you handle that I have had people storm out storm out of the office now I come back for religious reasons not usually usually because they didn't want to hear what I said no matter how delicately I said it you get a sense of how hard you can tread on certain turf and some people you got take your shoes off and you got to put oil on the bottom of your feet and you got to kind of tap in the water like this I don't get overt hostility very often not for religious reasons because I'm not gonna go there if they're not open to it right I'm not gonna push something like that but on the other hand I'm working with a fellow right now he's a very thoughtful guy very bright guy and this whole religion thing is a quest for him but he has enormous questions enormous questions I'm not gonna sit there and go like this with him okay because a lot of times folks dig in their heels and go don't don't don't try to push it on me I will simply ask well then how did you make that judgment how do you know that was right how did you determine that just kind of that that guiding shifting sort of tell me how you're looking at morality I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what morality is I just want to hear what you're saying because if you're going to be consistent in morality you can always bring it back around the person can go sometimes the best insights come from God's moral consistency you know if you can say well given what you just said taking your review wouldn't this follow anything I never thought of that kind of thing and know it almost sounds as if at times you're willing to use a non directive approach that there's that there's a role for the non directive thing that you mentioned from Rogers but it's not to be all end all it isn't that I will view all morals as equally relative right it is I'm going to ask a lot of questions to make you really look at stuff you haven't looked at most people live their lives not looking at who they are and how they make decisions right what matters to them so when you start pushing like that on them you got to be careful some people get threatened and other people go that's great dive in there you know let me have it I want to know so I've had to back off I've had to just kind of kind of just go like this and and wait a little bit but I would say over 30 years of shrinking because I used to be like 6 9 I would I probably had five people storm out of the office that's not bad that is 9 they were all family members now I understand let's go to another call we have Carmen on the line hello Carmen hi where are you from I'm from Puerto Rico great and what is your question my question is how do we approach the the morality issue with the CCD students and the computer competitions great question now you've got to pass a little kids you must have to deal with these things the average parent radically underestimates the moral shaping power of the pop culture one of the saddest things I will see in therapy when a parent walks in with a 16 year old and says I don't know who that is I didn't raise her that way sometimes I could say to them I believe you but you underestimated what did first thing I tell parents you have to have a vigilance on this stuff far beyond anything your great-grandma had to have you got to be vigilant all over the place first thing secondly kids don't just accept what we tell them much anymore adults don't if you know father you we were alive a hundred years ago you could have just simply said well I'll tell you you have to go to Mass on Sunday because it's a grievous sin if you don't and half of the Polish ladies would have gone hey that's what father said that's the way it is I don't need any more reason than that father said it say that to somebody now they look at you like why is that you're rural father or is it God or is it the churches no I'm not sure I buy that so I think in dealing with kids in CCD you've got to give them the reason isn't just enough to teach them you teach them that Christ is present in the Eucharist how how I mean I look at that it's a white wafer okay I don't see the God of the universe there you teach them how the early church believes it why they believed it what the scripture said about it here's why many people who teach CCD will say this if I get too heavy I'll lose half my class I can't get him to come and I'll say don't sacrifice the substance for the numbers you're not going to keep them with the cheap stuff anyway give them the real stuff because there will be several kids in there who will who will want this real stuff and they will listen yeah okay so of your class of twenty eight by the end of the year you got sixteen but maybe those sixteen are a lot more open to this you may might someday be able to evangelize the others that left plus if you get a priest out of that you get credit yeah like your mom when you baptize babies show you've got like 2% credit yes that's a good deal to that we have another question from our studio audience man were you from from Birmingham great good to have you here and what's your question another issue these days is bullying and with teachers not labeling bad or good or doing much discipline what as parents can we do about bullying when a culture pushes God out of the way it's got to come up with its own sins sins now are smoking spanking having more than two point one two children and bullying what tends to happen is when a culture defines its own sins it broadens the sins out I I could no longer smoke in this room I can't smoke upside down matter of fact in some places you're not even allowed to smoke inside your own apartment right I can't just give my kid a SWAT on the bottom in love I can't SWAT him at all in bullying it isn't that I'm I'm knocking this kid down on the ground taking his lunch money it's that I looked at him with a disgusted look on my face so what happens is when you define these sins they go like this and the measure of the sin is how it affects me I don't want you to smoke why well because I don't like it I don't want you to to be nasty to a kid why well because it's not nice is it affects so what I would say in bullying a high percentage and this is though it's gonna give me an all kinds trouble high percentage what we call bullying is not bullying it's goofy nasty wrong conduct but we call it bullying and it has a certain valence to it does it if you if you talk bullying rather than yeah some kid at school was giving me grief no I I was bullied see this you see the visceral valence there and that is that relentless cultural this is a sin this is a sin they wouldn't use the word sin but it's a cultural sin there's if you do have a serious bullying thing and by the way father it is on the increase and the reason it is is because we're not raising as many good kids when you don't raise morally sound human beings are nasty and when they get nasty who they nasty with other people vulnerable especially you know their peers yes I know the I really recommend that people reread if they haven't read already Lord replies you know where you see that the bullies take over and dominate and destroy natural human proclivity I tell parents there's a continuum bullying certain percentage of bullying can be ignored it'll go away well go away another percentage if you keep a lower profile in other words the kid on the bus is bugging me all right I'm gonna sit six seats back I'll I'll put distance between me and him maybe he'll be distracted with other things and a certain percentage of those kids will quit some kids if they hang around other kids the other kids they say hey leave them alone and do anything to you there are a small percentage of cases where parents have to intervene the problem with that is it's delicate you know the you go you go to a school official or you go to some authority and say well here's what's happening you're counting on the the tactical delicacy of that that teacher to handle this without making it look like you had your mommy come in and stick up for you and narc on you okay good yeah that's that's that's the ticklish part but I will tell parents I say about Tim five to ten percent of cases I see I tell the parent you gonna have to go in you're gonna have to do something about this with the teacher low profile keep an eye on the kid see if you can catch him in the act do you sense that because this one of the things that you know when you hear it described on the the in the media times that the cases of bullying get extreme you know where there's really a viciousness that that that's going on do you sense that that's the case or is that just hype from the news the media is brilliant at making the extreme the norm they're not going to focus on some kid that push some other kid down you know they're gonna focus on the kid who comes into class and has nine pictures drawn with a gun at somebody's head or something like that okay so what they do wittingly or unwittingly is now all of a sudden it's all just kind of lumped together and yes the kid who pushes down another kid may only be pushing him down but you know that's how it starts so there's this this kind of sort of visceral jarring reaction to anything that smells no you know what bother when you were a kid there were jerks all over the place you know I can't tell you how many times I was running from somebody because okay yeah it's not cool they shouldn't have done it but yeah that's like for the playground yeah I don't I turn around pop the kid in the nose once you know I just did it is that a venial sin or mortal depends besides I don't anymore I don't want to come to you because your penances are rough just they don't know that because he you give penances like walk to your knees and in broken glass to the Holy Land to back yes exactly that's for forgetting to say blessing before meals see wait I get to the big city a culture has to make up at sins like you said we're going to suffer as matter of fact one of the things that strikes me is that there's a new Puritanism it's a secularism yes yes yes yes we're very intolerant for certain things exactly the environment smoking a variety of other things these and there are people who would try to influence the society so if for instance PETA that they be puritanical about eating any flesh or animal products and there'd be other groups who wouldn't be intolerant about their issues and that new certain ISM is secular it's the only difference from the old Puritanism and some of the issues are different from the old Puritanism usually it's not so sexual though it can be at times but it's a new Puritanism and it's for pervading the culture the new Puritanism shifts it'd be interesting to see the lifecycle of a secular puritanical sin how long does it last exam what finally kills it exactly we move on to another define sin yep and I suspect one of the things I suspect that will kill this as a as a sin is when enough Hollywood types or other prominent individuals do it and make fun of it then it becomes neutralized and then people say well okay we'll go into something else mockery is the death phase right you can mock something yes well I will I will tell you I left the church for eight years eight or nine years I was out of the church I didn't leave Christianity although I got very confused I didn't know what the belief and I remember at one point with my wife in the kitchen I was to the verge of tears and on the last time I was to the verge of tears was when the Cleveland Browns lost the playoffs on a draw play yeah do it yeah and I said I don't know what to believe anymore how do I know huh I I belonged to a church that says abortions wrong but contraception is not or I can't lose my salvation but that church says I can this one says you shouldn't get divorced but if you do will remarry yeah I said what it's it's sand under my feet and I had I was in spiritual crisis for a long time and I think some of that spiritual crisis brought me back to the church which essentially said here is the foundation of truth and then I thought well if that's the foundation of truth for religion it's got to be the foundation of truth for psychology they're not separate entities exactly let's go to one more question from our studio audience ma'am were you from California what's your question how can we experience and grandparents correct the psychological damage to our children and grandchildren the psychological damage to your own children or you what you see happening with the grandkids see the Yankees and the whole family yeah there was a study done that basically said one stable adult in someone's life has a salutary effect a healthy affect far beyond what you'd expect a coach Cub Scout leader CCD teacher nun Jesuit priest a grandparent is in that role yes I remember I used to have a prison ministry when I was outside the church they let me go into the jail with the guys and one of the things the guys would tell me in Bible study was well I only only went to church once but I remember it my aunt took me well I remember my grandma used to to have a have a rosary there I used to see her with that rosary and I didn't know what it was but I saw it and each of them had these little snapshot memories of this person in their lives and a grandparent is ideally suited for that but see the wear brand parents get frustrated grandparents are naturally saviors they want to undo what they see happening and I tell them your goal is not to undo it your goal is to just give the best influence you can let God work with that because what tends to happen is this father if a grandparent is driven to correct you know gee I raised my kids bad and now look they're raising their kids bad and it's my fault I can't believe this how am I ever gonna get into heaven what tends to happen is makes a grandparent desperate yes make some desperate pushy and they don't make wise decisions yes yeah ya know that's one of those things that you have to pay close attention to you want to be wise and and that's one of the things you look for from a grandparent is wisdom that stuffed animals I have 30 seconds left yeah Oh what do you do to choose a Christian counselor call them ask them interview them if any counselor will not talk to you when you call and say how do you practice what is your particular bent are you comfortable with Christian principles if they won't answer those questions move on right call them and ask them they should be willing to say no I'm not comfortable with that I don't do that or yes I do a lot of that okay good well thank you thank you very much for always it's really great to have you here and it's always very informative and want to give you all the blessing on this Ash Wednesday may Almighty God bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and lead you in all of your ways by his peace in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen you know we can bring you dr. ray guarendi as a guest on this program and I also have a make his series do radio and so many other things because this network is brought to you by you you make it possible for us to have these guests and these programs by keeping us in between your gas bill your electric bill and your cable bill so don't forget us you know at these different times and include us even in your Lenten fasting and stuff to pray for us so we can keep on growing closer to our Lord god bless you and thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 41,481

Rating: 4.784091 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, EWTN Live, Mitch Pacwa, Ray Guarendi, Psychology, Catholic Faith, Catholic

Id: WRPEaosGCMA

Length: 56min 33sec (3393 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2011