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Psychological Healing
in the Catholic Mystic Tradition


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Questions and Answers
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Where do you get the things you say on your website? The Catechism tells us that it’s not a sin to enjoy sports, fight wars, and defend ourselves. Pope John Paul II even blessed athletes. How do you justify yourself?

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Outline of the Answer
• Repugnance for the Cross
• The Necessary Minimum
• The Price of Least Obligation
• The Price of the Front Lines
• An Old Saying

  

You’re saying the same thing to me that the Pharisees said to Jesus. All that I say on this website has its basis in Biblical teaching. In fact, what Saint Paul said to dissenters of his time still applies today: For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their “shame.” Their minds are occupied with earthly things (see Philippians 3:18–19).

Sadly, you, and all those like you, object to my warning about the spiritual dangers of earthly things because these are the very things that you hold more sacred and more dear in your heart than love for God.

And why should this be? Well, because those “whose glory is their shame” have suffered emotional conflicts in their childhood families,[1] such that they desire more than anything to be “in control” of the world.[2] They are persons who so fear human weakness that, even though they take pride in calling themselves Christian, in the secret unconscious depths of their hearts they look upon the Cross itself with repugnance. And yes, even Popes have fallen into such heresy throughout the course of Church history.

Yet, Christ told us that salvation can be attained only in giving up our attachment to the world and taking up the Cross.

 
The Necessary Minimum

Now, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) instructs us in the necessary minimum (see CCC 2041) of what we must do to attain the salvation promised by Christ. That is, if you do all that the Catechism requires—which most Catholics fail to do because of their lukewarm “faith”—it will be likely that you will get to Purgatory rather than hell.

In contrast, if you want to be more than one of the crowd that followed Jesus at a distance—that is, if you want to attain personal growth, heightened wisdom, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and divine love—then it will be necessary to do far more than what is minimally required.

It’s your choice.

Either way, however, you will have to pay a huge price.

 
The Price of Least Obligation

If you take the way of least obligation, using your own wits and your own strength, hoping to squeak past hell into Purgatory, you won’t be fighting the darkness, you will be adding to it. Plus, you just might fall into hell anyway because of all the temptations from which you now refuse to distance yourself and because of all the sins you commit while telling yourself that you aren’t really committing sin. Even if you do manage to get there, Purgatory is not a Sunday picnic; you would drop dead in horror right now if you had to see what the most abject of the poor souls have to suffer.

At the moment of your judgment after death, you will have to face Christ Himself who will ask you, as you have scornfully demanded of me, “How do you justify yourself?” Suddenly you will see yourself in the light of divine truth, and—assuming that you recognized and repented your sins before you died—you will sink down into the torment of purgation.

But note well: only if you admit all your sins—even the ones you now say are not sins—before you die, will you be able to pay for them in Purgatory rather than sink into everlasting misery in hell.

You will have to pay in Purgatory for all the sins you have committed, including all the prayers you failed to say and all the sacrifices you failed to make for others during the course of your life because you were too preoccupied with arguing about politics, boasting about sports, and otherwise entertaining yourself with worldly pleasures. Plus, you will have to pay even for the sin of not believing that your behaviors were spiritually harmful when you were told that they were spiritually harmful. Everything, even the least blade of grass, will be accounted for. God’s justice is perfect.

God’s justice is perfect, but God is also merciful, and you can experience His mercy if you call out for it with a penitent heart.

But if you prefer to resist hearing what I tell you, then go ahead and do what you want.

 
The Price of the Front Lines

On the other hand, you could decide to step into the front lines of the spiritual battle against evil, armed only with love. Be prepared, however, to be despised, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed, wronged, suspected, set aside, and unnoticed—particularly by other Catholics—as the price for witnessing the truth to people who don’t want to hear it. The world has grown spiritually cold because of its seduction by sin, and, above all else, it hates the Cross.

 

arrowRead an excerpt of a reflection about inner witness
by Saint Gregory the Great

 
Every Christian has a natural repugnance for the Cross; yet, once you recognize this repugnance and understand how it inhibits you from living a spiritually fruitful life, you can start your penance now, before you have to stand in judgment before Christ. The price that you will pay during the course of the remainder of your life is almost nothing compared to what you would have to pay if you were to put off your penance until “later.” If you stop resisting the truth and change your behavior now, you can start to produce spiritual fruit that will spread seeds of holy influence on others.

Our world has now been taken over by diabolical powers of hate; hatred is evil, there is no crime that is beneath the “dignity” of a demon. The only force that can overcome demons is the humility of spiritual purity, and so that must be our primary weapon on the battleground. Sadly, those who are able to fight such a battle today are few and far between; the Church is lukewarm and filled with hypocrites. Even most priests today are incapable of engaging in such a battle—that is, they are untrained or unwilling, or both. We are on the slippery slope to doom, and only those who seek the spark of truth in the darkness can avoid being snatched by demons.

 
An Old Saying

Therefore, it all comes down to an old saying: You can pay now or you can pay later. It’s your choice. Just remember that what you will have to pay later may be far, far more expensive and horrifying than what you expected. But if you value your soul so little that you are willing to gamble with it, then go ahead, follow the devil’s reasoning and do what you want.

 
One Haunting Thought

I leave you with one haunting thought: Despite your smug self-assurance that I’m wrong, what if I’m right?

 

Who wrote this web page?
 

Notes.

1. For example, an early death of a parent or sibling, an alcoholic parent, an emotionally or physically missing father, a rejecting or controlling mother, and so on.

2. Prime examples of “control,” are sports and politics, right along with sexuality, intellectual mastery, and technical mastery.

 

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Though Demons Gloat: They Shall Not Prevail
by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.

 
Though we are attacked by liberal activists from without and by apostasy from within, the true Church—that is, the body of those who remain faithful to Church tradition—weeps, and she prays, because she knows the fate of those who oppose God.
     Our enemies might fear love, and they can push love away, but they can’t kill it. And so the battle against them cannot be fought with politics; it requires a pro­found personal struggle against the immorality of popular culture. The battle must be fought in the service of God with pure and chaste lifestyles lived from the depths of our hearts in every moment.

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Where Catholic therapy (Catholic psychotherapy) is explained according to Catholic psychology in the tradition of the Catholic mystics.

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