Fr. Benedict Groeschel: Pressures on the Christian Family and How to Respond to Them - Part II
The New York Times has called Fr. Groeschel a variety of names, including: "terrorist", "kindly bearded sage", and "a saint". He was called a "terrorist" for praying the rosary with another priest outside an abortion mill where babies were being murdered and women's lives were endangered. The Times called him a saint for giving out turkeys to the needy at Christmas. If it were that easy to become a saint, he joked, there would be a lot more people giving out turkeys. Father admitted that he does read the NY Times to keep an eye on "what the enemy is doing".
Fr. Groeschel, who earned his doctorate from Colombia University in 1973 and is a professor of pastoral psychology at St. Joseph Seminary of the archdiocese of New York, believes that "a lot of mistakes in this country are a result of psychologists." Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, an extremely intelligent and highly educated man (the first American to be awarded a rare postdoctorate degree from the prestigious University of Louvain) had two enemies: first, the Communists, and second, Sigmund Freud.
I'm going to interject my own opinion here as a (retired) psychologist. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen studied Freud and was very critical of him. For example, he once criticized Sigmund Freud as a supplier of "materialism, hedonism, infantilism and eroticism."
Freud was obsessed with sex and it shows up in all his theories. Why? For one thing, he was a regular cocaine user, and as most of us know today - cocaine is a powerful sexual stimulant as well as a very addictive, dangerous drug. Freud thought it would cure depression so he prescribed it to treat his own depression as well as that of his patients. He also used it as an analgesic. In fact, he prescribed it for a friend, Fleischl-Marxow, who developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis" and died a few years later.
From a scientific point of view, there is no research basis for anything Freud did, which makes it difficult to prove that anything he did ever made a difference in the treatment of his patients. In fact, Freud fabricated and falsified data about his patients in order to support his theories. His ideas were mere hypotheses and nothing more - they were never scientifically validated. He basically took his own distorted and perverted ideas about sex and projected them onto others.
I want to make it clear that Freud did make some meaningful contributions to the field of psychology (most likely before he became addicted to cocaine) and I am not discounting those.
Back to Fr. Groeschel:
Today the whole new positive psychology movement is based on virtue. Martin Seligman, President of the American Psychological Association (APA) and Christopher Peterson have been involved with positive psychology. Their view is much closer to that of Christianity than any of the previous psychological theories.
Virtue is a stable part of the human personality which is identified as good by religion. What are the Positive psychologists reading these days? Where are they getting their ideas from?
1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. The Old Testament
4. The New Testament
5. St. Augustine
6. St. Thomas Aquinas
Surprised? So was I. When I was in graduate school, the closest type of therapy that could be even remotely related to Christianity (and my professor did mention that it was a Christ-like in its philosophy and techniques of counseling) was Carl Rogers with his client-centered therapy. However, none of the above were required reading for any of my psychology courses.
The psychology of hope is also a part of this new positive psychology based on virtues.
Fr. Groeschel says that if you attempt to discuss the virtue of chastity, the academic world will laugh at you. On the other hand, when he brought up the need for chastity with his Courage group (recovering homosexuals), they agreed with him 100% on the need for all people to learn about the virtue of chastity and to acquire it. "It's the people who have tried the worst who come out of it best", he commented. "I'm going to write a book about why Catholics are so stupid before I die because we don't speak out about good things like chastity."
Fr. Groeschel said that when he heard that Harvard wanted to award Mother Teresa a honorary doctorate, he thought, "What?! Giving Mother Teresa a doctorate? That's like making Jesus a Monsignor!"
Mother Teresa desired to go, so he knew that she must have had a very good reason for doing so. When she was asked to speak at the Harvard commencement, Mother Teresa spoke for a solid 15 minutes on the beauty of virginity and chastity. There wasn't a sound from the audience during this time. When she stopped speaking, silence filled the air, then there was a thunderous applause that lasted for four minutes.
A friend of Father Groeschel's who was a Unitarian was sitting in that audience, so he asked him, "Will you tell me why there was this reaction?" The friend replied, "Because she was different." After hearing her talk, his friend who was Unitarian became an Episcopalian, then an Episcopalian monk, later converting to Catholicism, then becoming a Dominican, and is now a Dominican superior.
Lastly, Fr. Groeschel spoke about reverence in Church. He revealed that he never sees irreverence in the churches of other religions, but sees it frequently in the Catholic Church. People talk in church when they should remain silent. People dress immodestly in the Catholic Church. We need to talk to our families about modesty and practice it ourselves. "We have a long way to go." This is all part of religion. Religion is a virtue and is justice to God.
Recommended Reading:
Cult and Controversy - Nathan Mitchell
The Virtue Driven Life - Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
Related Posts:
Fr. Benedict Groeschel: Pressures on the Christian Family and How to Respond to Them - Part I
A FEW PHOTOS FROM THE MIDWEST CATHOLIC FAMILY CONFERENCE
Fr. Groeschel, who earned his doctorate from Colombia University in 1973 and is a professor of pastoral psychology at St. Joseph Seminary of the archdiocese of New York, believes that "a lot of mistakes in this country are a result of psychologists." Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, an extremely intelligent and highly educated man (the first American to be awarded a rare postdoctorate degree from the prestigious University of Louvain) had two enemies: first, the Communists, and second, Sigmund Freud.
I'm going to interject my own opinion here as a (retired) psychologist. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen studied Freud and was very critical of him. For example, he once criticized Sigmund Freud as a supplier of "materialism, hedonism, infantilism and eroticism."
Freud was obsessed with sex and it shows up in all his theories. Why? For one thing, he was a regular cocaine user, and as most of us know today - cocaine is a powerful sexual stimulant as well as a very addictive, dangerous drug. Freud thought it would cure depression so he prescribed it to treat his own depression as well as that of his patients. He also used it as an analgesic. In fact, he prescribed it for a friend, Fleischl-Marxow, who developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis" and died a few years later.
From a scientific point of view, there is no research basis for anything Freud did, which makes it difficult to prove that anything he did ever made a difference in the treatment of his patients. In fact, Freud fabricated and falsified data about his patients in order to support his theories. His ideas were mere hypotheses and nothing more - they were never scientifically validated. He basically took his own distorted and perverted ideas about sex and projected them onto others.
I want to make it clear that Freud did make some meaningful contributions to the field of psychology (most likely before he became addicted to cocaine) and I am not discounting those.
Back to Fr. Groeschel:
Today the whole new positive psychology movement is based on virtue. Martin Seligman, President of the American Psychological Association (APA) and Christopher Peterson have been involved with positive psychology. Their view is much closer to that of Christianity than any of the previous psychological theories.
Virtue is a stable part of the human personality which is identified as good by religion. What are the Positive psychologists reading these days? Where are they getting their ideas from?
1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. The Old Testament
4. The New Testament
5. St. Augustine
6. St. Thomas Aquinas
Surprised? So was I. When I was in graduate school, the closest type of therapy that could be even remotely related to Christianity (and my professor did mention that it was a Christ-like in its philosophy and techniques of counseling) was Carl Rogers with his client-centered therapy. However, none of the above were required reading for any of my psychology courses.
The psychology of hope is also a part of this new positive psychology based on virtues.
Fr. Groeschel says that if you attempt to discuss the virtue of chastity, the academic world will laugh at you. On the other hand, when he brought up the need for chastity with his Courage group (recovering homosexuals), they agreed with him 100% on the need for all people to learn about the virtue of chastity and to acquire it. "It's the people who have tried the worst who come out of it best", he commented. "I'm going to write a book about why Catholics are so stupid before I die because we don't speak out about good things like chastity."
Fr. Groeschel said that when he heard that Harvard wanted to award Mother Teresa a honorary doctorate, he thought, "What?! Giving Mother Teresa a doctorate? That's like making Jesus a Monsignor!"
Mother Teresa desired to go, so he knew that she must have had a very good reason for doing so. When she was asked to speak at the Harvard commencement, Mother Teresa spoke for a solid 15 minutes on the beauty of virginity and chastity. There wasn't a sound from the audience during this time. When she stopped speaking, silence filled the air, then there was a thunderous applause that lasted for four minutes.
A friend of Father Groeschel's who was a Unitarian was sitting in that audience, so he asked him, "Will you tell me why there was this reaction?" The friend replied, "Because she was different." After hearing her talk, his friend who was Unitarian became an Episcopalian, then an Episcopalian monk, later converting to Catholicism, then becoming a Dominican, and is now a Dominican superior.
Lastly, Fr. Groeschel spoke about reverence in Church. He revealed that he never sees irreverence in the churches of other religions, but sees it frequently in the Catholic Church. People talk in church when they should remain silent. People dress immodestly in the Catholic Church. We need to talk to our families about modesty and practice it ourselves. "We have a long way to go." This is all part of religion. Religion is a virtue and is justice to God.
Recommended Reading:
Cult and Controversy - Nathan Mitchell
The Virtue Driven Life - Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
Related Posts:
Fr. Benedict Groeschel: Pressures on the Christian Family and How to Respond to Them - Part I
A FEW PHOTOS FROM THE MIDWEST CATHOLIC FAMILY CONFERENCE
What wonderful insight. Great post!!
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