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I discovered
your Web site . . . in the way almost all gold mines are discovered
— that is, while looking for something else. What I had (perhaps foolishly)
hoped to find was hard and fast rules about the competency of a person to
give spiritual direction, and that is because I am distressed over the last
meeting I had with my own spiritual director. . . . perhaps
. . . my director is being controlled by his own flaws.
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 ven Saint Teresa of Avila had her
problems with spiritual directors, as she mentions in The Way of
Perfection (ch. 5, no. 3). In her time, only priests fulfilled this role,
so she referred to these directors as “confessors.” Many are the
men who caused her suffering and led her astray. And so she learned from
experience with these bad confessors that a confessor, to be good, had to
be “spiritual and learned.”
 Even though priests were the only men who were formally educated
and who understood theology, Teresa knew very well that the priesthood in
itself was not sufficient for spiritual direction. Teresa insisted (ch. 5,
no. 4-7) that her nuns have access, even outside of
confession proper, to a confessor who was
learned—i.e., to paraphrase things a bit, well-trained in Scripture
and Tradition and the articles of
Faith and with a good common-sense grasp of
psychology—if the appointed confessor was not spiritual and
learned.
In today’s world, many persons
are spiritual and learned, even according to Teresa’s standards, and
yet they are not priests, so lay spiritual directors can be legitimate. Still,
as in Teresa’s time, the greatest danger today—aside from outright
heresy—is that the director will inflict
his or her unconscious conflicts on the person
being directed.
The Director’s
Personal Conflicts
In fact, we can learn something
here from the secular practice of
psychotherapy. Just as any competent psychotherapist
must go through his or her own psychotherapy in order to avoid getting
unconsciously tangled up with the client’s issues, so it could be a
great benefit if a lay spiritual director were both a devout and spiritual
person and also a licensed mental health professional well-trained in the
practice of psychotherapy.
Nevertheless, personal psychotherapy
can vary in quality and depth—and this is testified to by reference
to all the incompetent psychotherapists in the world—so personal
psychotherapy is only one path to interpersonal objectivity. It’s also
possible for a spiritual director to avoid the entanglements of the unconscious
simply by living a devout Christian life detached from
the world and the psychological defenses
a worldly life engenders.
Interpersonal
Aspects of the Direction
Now, it may happen that events
within the spiritual direction will upset you and provoke you, for example,
to respond with anger. And there’s nothing
wrong with that if your reaction is understood therapeutically and treated
charitably. After all, you should consider it a blessing when your
weaknesses are brought to light, for then you
have the opportunity to overcome the very
obstacles within your unconscious that interfere
with true love.
Of course, the spiritual director
must not take your anger or confusion personally or retaliate with hurtful
(and sinful) behavior. There will be times when the spiritual director must
be stern and blunt, but there can be no room in spiritual direction for hostility
and argumentiveness. As Saint Paul says, “All bitterness, anger, fury,
shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And
be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven
you in Christ” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
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Although many
persons tend to believe that anger is just a sign of being human, all
anger, at its psychological core, is a dark and
cruel wish for harm to come upon the person who hurt you. And, like it or
not, that dark wish stands totally opposed to Christian
love. |
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The Necessity
of True Love
The spiritual director, therefore,
through his or her own attitude and behavior, must lead you into the reality
of true love. If he or she is caught up in pride
and intellectualism, and hasn’t truly
“died” to the world, then you both
are in danger. But when a person has “died” to identification with
the world and through devout prayer has surrendered
all personal ambition and desires completely
to Christ, then he or she will be capable of responding totally to the good
of those being directed onto the path of true
spirituality.
The sad thing, of course, is
that you will have to look far and wide to find anyone among the laity with
these qualities, and you will still have to do some careful searching to
find a competent director among the clergy or religious.
Asking Blunt
Questions
One quick test to sort out the
good from the bad (of those who meet the basic qualifications described above)
is to ask some blunt questions. There are many questions that could be asked,
but if anyone cannot answer an unqualified “Yes” to at least
the following questions, then he or she probably will not be able to lead
you very far into a life of purity and
holiness.
Personal
Criteria |
• |
Are you committed
to a life of chastity?
(How can someone whose life is not free of sexual desires
teach anyone to desire a life of purity?) |
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Do you watch
television or movies as a form of entertainment?
(How can someone who has been snatched
by the insanity of the world have the wisdom to guide anyone spiritually?) |
• |
Do you use Facebook
or other social media?
(How can someone who is so lost as to crave the acceptance of
the world have the courage to lead anyone to the Cross?) |
• |
Are you a
non-smoker?
(Someone addicted to a
substance “loves” the addiction more than God, so how
can this person teach anyone to love God as Christ commanded us: You shall
love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your strength, and with all your mind? Remember, any addiction can be
cured if the addiction is renounced out of love for God.) |
• |
In the absence
of any severe, untreatable medical disability, are you at or below the
ideal weight for someone of your
height?
(How can someone guilty of the sin of gluttony teach
anyone self-discipline?)
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Theological
Criteria |
• |
Do you believe in
the Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist? |
• |
Do you believe that
the only path to the glory of the resurrection is through the
suffering of the Cross? |
• |
Do you believe that
Christ will come in glory to judge the living
and the dead, that the imperfectly purified will pay for
their sins in purgatory while the unrepentant
depart to hell? |
• |
Do you believe that
abortion is a
sin? |
• |
Do you believe that
any sexual activity not oriented to the desire for the
conception of a child within a valid marriage between
a man and a woman is a sin? |
• |
Do you believe that
fornication, or a gay or lesbian or bisexual lifestyle, is a sin? |
• |
Do you believe that
remarriage after a divorce (in the absence of an
annulment) is a sin? |
• |
Do you believe that
the use of artificial contraception is a sin, as an act in itself and also as an act
of disobedience to the
Magisterium of the Church? |
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