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63 Human Formation: The Critical Missing Element

Episode 63 Published 4 years, 11 months ago
Description
  1. Intro:  I am clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, and you are listening to the weekly podcast Interior Integration for Catholics
     
    1. Today in episode 63, we are discussing human formation -- what is it?  What do you mine it's missing for many people?
  2.  
    1. Windup: I am going to start with a bold claim and a controversial claim.  
      1. For many, many Catholic adults in our day and age, in our culture, there is a much greater need to focus on human formation than on spiritual formation.
      2. Let me repeat that:  Many, many Catholic adults at this point in their lives need solid human formation more than they need spiritual formation.
         
        1. Serious Catholic adults.
      3.  
      4. Commitment to human formation is so important in the Catholic married sexual life that it composes two of the four legs of my model of a Catholic marriage bed.  
        1. The husband's commitment to human formation -- one leg
        2. The wife's commitment to human formation -- the other leg
        3. Another leg is really understanding attachment and integrity needs (episode 62)
        4. Another leg is a model the Internal family systems-informed model of the person with a self and with parts -- we are a unity and a multiplicity -- episodes 60 and 61. 
        5. The floor is the a deep, abiding, childlike trust in Mary our Spiritual Mother and God our Spiritual Father.  
        6. Building a whole bed here, starting in episode 58.  No need to review all of it now.   
      5. So many Catholics with lots of spiritual formation who have built their spiritual lives on a very, very unsound natural foundation, with mediocre or poor human formation. 
        1. So their spiritual lives are unstable.  
        2. Example of early client -- extreme example
           
          1. Mid 30's, very earnest Catholic, very sincere, distressed --  I have to help his wife understand the Faith.  Wife was Catholic, but a lot of tension between them about his spiritual practices.  

          1. Danger of divorce -- wife: get to counseling or I'll divorce you 

          1. Wife concerns?
             
            1. Spending three hours per day in Eucharistic Adoration
               
              1. Bringing their young children
            2.  
              1. Our Lady of Lourdes
            3.  

            1. No gainful employment
          3.  
            1. Wife feeling constantly criticized by his fraternal corrections, his attempts to help her become more holy.  


          1. Spiritual Problems?  No -- problems in the natural realm.  
            1. Blended with a part that is so driven by fear.  
            2. Part desperately trying to please an extremely demanding God and Mary -- trying to become holy, Pelagian efforts
            3. Lack of attunement to children -- alienated from them, they were becoming alienated from the faith
            4. Wedge in the marriage, wife thinks he's a religious nutcase.  
            5. He recognizes there are problems, wife needs to change
               
              1. Praying the Rosary
            6.  
              1. Fatima Visionary Sr. Lucia:  There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.
            7.  

        7. Problems come from his distorted human formation.   
        8. Priest sex abuse scandal.  
          1. Can frame it all spiritually.  
            1. The priest who sexually abused children gave in to lust, it was a violation of the virtue of chastity, among other virtues.  Ok.  Hmmm.  So it was a spiritual problem, a failure, he gave into temptation.   No doubt there are spiritual dimensions to this, including a most grave and serious sin.  
            2. Or is a primary issue with his disordered sexual attraction to children and a real lack of impulse control --problems in the natural realm, a problem with his human formation.  That makes so much more sense to me as being p
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