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The Tragedy of Sin — Part 2

June 20, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Emily Dowdell

As we began to explore last time, at the beginning of human history, there was a fundamental break from the state of original innocence enjoyed by our first parents, who enjoyed harmony within themselves, in their friendship with God, in relationship with each other, and in relation to the rest of creation. The “ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9) succeeded in inducing our first parents to sin by sowing seeds of doubt into their minds and hearts. Let’s dig deeper into the nature of this temptation and see what relevance it has for us today.

Recall that, in creation, God bestowed a special dignity to man by creating us in His image and likeness and establishing man as lord and steward of the visible world. Even more, God breathed divine life into us, placing us in a special relationship with Him and destining us to someday partake in His glory. In this context, God commanded out first parents not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While this may seem an arbitrary prohibition, Pope St. John Paul II, in his catechesis on sin, highlighted how this command is essentially a reminder to man that we are creatures. Through this command, God was saying to our first parents and to all of us,

“Remember that you are a creature called to friendship with God, who alone is your Creator. Do not wish to be what you are not! Do not wish to be ‘like God.’ Act in accordance with what you are, and all the more willingly since this is already such an exalted status, that of being ‘the image and likeness of God’… [This] status… obliges you to act in conformity with what you are. So be faithful to the covenant that God the Creator has made with you, a creature, from the beginning” (Nov. 12, 1986).

To be a creature, is to be the recipient of the unmerited gifts of life and existence. God loves His creation into existence and sustains it in being through the power of His love at every moment. With our creaturely status comes dignity, love, blessing, and obligations. All creatures are called to act in accord with the nature they have received and toward the end for which they were created. Being created as free, rational persons, man is called to freely cooperate with God’s will, using his gifts of freedom and reason to reign over the earth and make it more and more a reflection of God’s infinite love, beauty, wisdom, and goodness. Even more, man is called to come to know and love God with his whole heart and mind and enter into eternal communion with Him.

The prohibition from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, more than an arbitrary rule, is a loving reminder of man’s status and a protection against pride. Through this prohibition, God was telling our first parents that He alone has the authority to determine what is good and evil. Man cannot decide these things but must — for his own good — act in accord with the order established by God.

Satan casts doubt on God’s intentions and plants the idea in man’s mind that we can take good and evil into our own hands. We can become like God and determine right from wrong. He entices us to think that God is suppressing us, alienating us from our potential. In order to be fulfilled, we must reject His laws and embrace autonomy (i.e., become a law unto oneself). Only then can we truly be free and come into our own.

This dynamic between Satan and our first parents reveals the inner logic of sin, which affects us even today. How often does modern man seek to reject his Creator and the created order? How often do we try to re-create ourselves according to the image we conceive rather than receiving our nature and identity from God? How often do we reject God’s laws and those of His Church as arbitrary impositions that keep us from our happiness rather than seeing them as the royal road to happiness? How often do we suspect God of oppressing us and having evil intentions toward us rather than trusting fully in His infinite, unchanging, Fatherly love for us? How often do we take matters into our own hands rather than waiting hopefully upon the Lord?

In truth, it is not God who robs us of our dignity and blocks our deepest desires. Rather it is sin that alienates us from God, from ourselves, and from one another. It is sin that wounds our dignity, our hearts, and our world and robs us of grace, peace, and joy. By pondering further the tragedy of sin and its effects on us, we can learn to reject the lies of the enemy and receive more fully and gratefully the gift of redemption in Christ.

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: The Wounds of Sin

Dr. Sodergren’s Introduction to Theology of the Body: A Collection of Articles from the Catholic Telegraph

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, December 2022 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

The Wounds of Sin

June 20, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

In our last two reflections, we have explored the nature of the sin that occurred at the beginning of human history when Satan tempted our first parents to mistrust their Creator and seek to supplant Him. Being deceived, they grasped at divinity, thinking they could determine right from wrong and become gods themselves. In so doing, they broke faith with God, rejected their creaturely status, and allowed sin to enter the visible world. Let us reflect on the effects that this original sin had on our first parents and continues to have on their children.

Prior to the Fall, our first parents existed in a sinless state marked by the four harmonies. When they accepted Satan’s lies and rebelled against God, those four harmonies were all disrupted. As the fathers of the Second Vatican Council said, “refusing to acknowledge God as his beginning, man has disrupted also his proper relationship to his own ultimate goal as well as his whole relationship toward himself and others and all created things” (Gaudium et spes, no. 13).

Most fundamentally, original sin effected a fundamental break in our first parents’ graced friendship with God. “In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned Him” (Catechism, no. 398). As representatives of the entire human race, our first parents’ act of rebellion resulted in the loss of divine grace and the preternatural gifts not only for themselves but also for their descendants. As John Paul II taught,

“The first human being (man and woman) received sanctifying grace from God not only for himself, but as founder of the human family, for all his descendants. Therefore, through sin which set man in conflict with God, he forfeited grace (he fell into disgrace) even in regard to the inheritance of his descendants” (Sept. 10, 1986).

The first and most important wound of original sin, then, is our alienation from God. However, the legacy and effects of our first parents’ sin remains extending to our very essence for we now inherit a human nature that is not only deprived of grace but is itself deeply wounded. As the Catechism describes, original sin damages the essence of man in the unity of his body and soul. In our fallen human nature, man’s intellect is darkened, his will is weakened, and his passions become rebellious. Even the unity of body and soul is wounded such that we are now vulnerable to a myriad of sicknesses and disorders and will ultimately succumb to the separation of body and soul, which we call death. Due to the uncorrupted quality of human nature and the abundance of God’s grace and gifts prior to sin, man was immune to these maladies and the inevitability of death. Clearly, our situation after the Fall is radically different.

All of us inherit this fallen (i.e., wounded) human nature. We experience sickness, decay, and eventual death. We experience interior conflict rather than harmony and struggle to know what is right, freely choose it, and follow through in action while our impulses and desires pull us to go astray. St. Paul expressed well our conflicted, fallen existence in his lament:

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:15, 18b, 22-24).

All is not lost. Our human nature, though wounded, is not wholly corrupt. It is still essentially good and capable of being redeemed, sanctified, and glorified. Just as we can join in St. Paul’s lament over our fallenness, we can also join with him when he immediately exclaims, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:25). For God did not abandon us to the power of sin and death but pursued man down the centuries, sparing nothing to bring about our Redemption, even taking up our human nature to heal and restore it and through His resurrection, re-open the path to eternal life.

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: Original Shame – Part 1

Dr. Sodergren’s Introduction to Theology of the Body: A Collection of Articles from the Catholic Telegraph

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, January 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

Original Shame — Part 1

June 20, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

As we have been exploring the nature and effects of original sin on humanity, it is now time to plunge into the reality of shame with the help of Pope St. John Paul II. We could hope for no better guide. As a poet, pastor, philosopher, and theologian, he reflected deeply on the experience of shame. In Theology of the Body alone, he used the term “shame” 136 times and another closely related term 33 times. He also wrote an extensive reflection on “the metaphysics of shame” in his prior book Love and Responsibility. Let’s see what we can learn from his insights.

The pope took Genesis 3:9-10 as his starting point. There we read, “The Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” John Paul II saw our first parents’ new impulse to hide from God and from one another because of their perceived “nakedness” as evidence of the birth of shame in their hearts. He described this shame as a “boundary experience” because it demarcates original man and historical man, now affected by original sin (TOB 11:3ff).

It is important to clarify that original shame pertains not merely to physical nakedness. According to John Paul II, “‘Nakedness’ does not have only a literal meaning: it does not refer only to the body” (TOB 27:2). After all, God sees not only the body but also the depths of man’s heart. Indeed, our first parents were ashamed before God in part because they perceived the loss of harmony within them. They perceived their lack of full self-possession due to sin. Their interior life is now marked by disharmony and conflict.

Furthermore, because of original sin, the visible world is no longer docile to man’s authority but rebels against him. The forces of nature now threaten man, and his work to cultivate the world is marked by suffering and toil. The “resistance of nature against man and his tasks” gives rise to “cosmic shame,” which expresses a “sense of insecurity” and an “awareness of being defenseless” in a now hostile world. “The end of this toil, of this struggle of man with the earth, is death” (TOB 27:4).

Thus, our first parents experience shame over the loss of harmonious self-possession and mastery over nature. But why would they — or us — wish to hide from the God who is love, who created humanity out of nothing, and who bestows wondrous gifts? It is because they have become “alienated from the Love that was the source of the original gift” of creation, “the source of the fullness of good intended for the creature” (TOB 27.2). Through the influence of the tempter, man doubted God’s goodness and that Love is the ultimate meaning and motive behind creation. By believing the words of the tempter and acting upon them, man turned his back on our loving Father and “in some sense cast him from his heart” cutting humanity off “from that which ‘comes from the Father’” leaving only “what ‘comes from the world’” in its place (TOB 26:4). “Shame touches in that moment the deepest level and seems to shake the very foundation of their existence.” It gives rise to an urge to hide from God showing that “a sense of fear before God has matured: a fear previously unknown” (TOB 27:1, italics in original).

This fear is entirely different from the “fear of the Lord” praised in Scripture. The latter refers to awe and wonder in the presence of the all-holy God. It is closely related to reverence and is an essential and wholesome spiritual attitude for all of us to cultivate. Conversely, the fear that flows from original shame stems from doubting God’s goodness. If God is not pure goodness, then how can we let Him “see” us? How can we trust Him enough to let Him come to us at our worst moments? I invite all of us to reflect on the many ways we, like our first parents, hide from God because we struggle to believe that in the face of our brokenness and sin, He could possibly continue to see good in us, just as we in turn struggle to see His pure, infinite goodness.

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: Original Shame – Part 2

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, February 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

Original Shame — Part 2

June 20, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

As described in my previous article, Pope St. John Paul II regarded the emergence of shame in the wake of the original sin committed by our first parents as a “boundary experience” that demarcates original man and historical man. Prior to this experience, man and woman were naked and felt no shame, but after their rebellion and fall from grace, they hid themselves from God and from each other. Last month, we looked especially on the impact of original shame on man’s relationship with God. Let’s now look at how it has impacted the relationship between the sexes.

Original shame reflects a decisive shift in the relationship between man and woman. Prior to original sin, we have seen that our first parents experienced a “fullness of consciousness of the meaning of the body” reflected in their experience of being naked without shame (TOB 12.3). The purity of vision they enjoyed enabled them to see the inner reality of the person made in God’s image revealed through the body and moved them to affirm the dignity of the person in all their interactions. Their desires, including for sexual union, were fully integrated with this purity of vision and intention toward one another. Being in the state of original innocence and filled with God’s grace, their interior and interpersonal lives were fully ordered toward love and respect for the person.

After their fall from grace, the situation of our first parents radically changed. The man begins to experience shame in regard to the woman and vice versa. This “reciprocal shame” “compels them to cover their nakedness, to hide their own bodies, to withdraw from man’s sight what constitutes the visible sign of femininity and from woman’s sight what constitutes the visible sign of masculinity” (TOB 28.1). Pope St. John Paul II attributed this sexual shame to the emergence of concupiscence.

Concupiscence refers to the inclination to sin that all of us experience because we inherit a fallen, wounded human nature. It emerged in our first parents after original sin, which damaged the harmonious integration they had experienced within themselves and in their relationships with God, each other, and the rest of creation. In particular, after original sin, “the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman become subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (CCC, 400).

The disharmony within the human person naturally leads to disharmony between man and woman. Their desires for one another are no longer properly ordered and instinctively guided by truth and love. Rather, when they see one another’s bodies, they now see primarily the exterior features rather than the interior reality of the person. The purity of vision that previously enabled them to always behold the dignity of the person now gives “up its place to the mere sensation of ‘sexuality’” (TOB 29.3). With concupiscence, man and woman are now prone to see each other as objects of use. Indeed, we struggle to see the inner reality and dignity of the person revealed by the body and tend to settle merely on the exterior features, judging and evaluating according to our selfish purposes.

This situation gives rise to shame between man and woman in two ways. First, we experience shame because we are aware that we are not in control of our desires toward each other and the bodily manifestations of these. We experience sexual feelings and respond to sexual signals even when we do not will it. Shame moves us to hide this inner state of disorder and the bodily manifestations of it from one another. Secondly, shame emerges to protect us from the now disordered gaze of others. Sensing that others may see us in a disordered way, shame takes on a protective function, moving us to conceal the sexual features of our bodies and exercise modesty. We will delve more into this positive, protective aspect of shame next time.

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: Original Shame – Part 3

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, March 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

Original Shame — Part 3

June 19, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

With their fall from grace, our first parents experienced a decisive shift in their relationship marked by what I have been referring to as original shame. In my last article, I discussed how this experience emerged because of the new state of internal and interpersonal disharmony in which the man and woman found themselves. Original sin caused a weakening of “control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body” and brought about “tensions” between man and woman, “their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination” (CCC, 400). Catholic tradition refers to this inner state of disorder that leads to lust and domination, which we all inherit, as concupiscence.

Because of this new situation that the man and woman found themselves in, they experienced a new urge to cover the signs of their sexuality, which John Paul II referred to as “reciprocal shame” (TOB 28.1). Being a result of sin, it is not hard to see this new experience of shame as a bad thing. Clearly, it’s not supposed to be this way. We were made for communion, not hiding. However, God never abandons man and always seeks with His infinite power, wisdom, and love to draw good out of evil. In this light, even our experience of shame can be used to guide us back to a deeper appreciation of the dignity of the human body. Let us examine how.

In contemporary psychology, shame is typically seen as toxic for the human person. This is because psychologists tend to equate shame with the experience of seeing oneself as bad, defective, or unworthy. If I see myself in this way, I will dread self-disclosure because I anticipate that I will be harshly treated and rejected by others. In the face of such a situation, mental health professionals — myself and my colleagues included — work to increase self-acceptance and awareness of one’s goodness.

While this contemporary approach to shame is valuable, it differs significantly from Pope St. John Paul II’s use of the term in TOB and his prior work Love and Responsibility. When he spoke of shame, especially the reciprocal shame experienced by man and woman, he had in mind the urge to hide the sexual features of our bodies from one another. This flows from our experience of concupiscence. Shame moves us instinctively to shield from the eyes of the other those aspects of our bodies most connected with sexuality because we perceive that others may look upon our bodies not as the sacrament of the person but as mere objects to be used. Thus, shame, in this sense, is a reaction to the possibility of being used.

In TOB and Love and Responsibility, the saintly pope wrote extensively about how the dignity of the human person requires that we never treat another human being as merely an object of use. Rather, the only proper response to another person is love. He applied this “personalistic norm” especially to the relations between man and woman in which the sexual appeal of the body — in the presence of concupiscence — can become a source of temptation to use the other for my own selfish purposes. Shame moves us to prevent this by “concealing the sexual values in order to protect the value of the person” (LR, p. 165, emphasis added). In this sense, shame is very closely related to, and a building block of, the virtue of modesty. This has nothing to do with a prudish view of the body or sex as inherently bad or evil. Rather, as Pope St. John Paul II repeatedly affirmed, sexual shame can actually help reawaken in us an appreciation for how good and even sacred our sexuality is. He wrote that through shame, man and woman “become conscious of the spousal meaning of the body” and are moved “to protect it” (TOB 31.1). In protecting the spousal meaning of the body, we implicitly say to ourselves and others, “Behold, it is very good” (Gen 1:31).

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Continue Reading: The Problem of Shamelessness

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, April 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

The Problem of Shamelessness

June 19, 2023/in Introduction to Theology of the Body /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

In recent articles, we have explored the emergence of shame in our first parents and all subsequent human beings after original sin. We saw how the emergence of concupiscence results in the experience of reciprocal shame by man and woman, which moves us to conceal the sexual features of our bodies from one another. Because concupiscence has been born in man’s heart, we are aware that when we look on each other’s bodies, we do not easily and immediately see the person in his or her fullness. Our eyes have, in a sense, been darkened by sin such that our vision may only take in the exterior features of the body, which we judge and evaluate as to the potential pleasure or usefulness it may bring.

This awareness of our concupiscence gives rise to shame, which moves us to conceal the sexual features of the body so that we do not become objects of others’ disordered desires. This experience of shame has nothing to do with seeing sexuality as bad or dirty. Rather, shame understood in this way reminds us of our dignity and the sacredness of human sexuality by protecting us from being used as mere objects. This form of shame is a healthy building block for the virtue of modesty.

Understanding the important role of shame in the lives of fallen human beings also sheds light on the problems of shamelessness so evident today. One form of shamelessness involves the normalization of lust (i.e., disordered sexual desire). When lustful actions and attitudes are given approval or even celebrated, an attitude of shamelessness is being expressed and promoted: the human body is seen only as a sexual object for use without any regard for the person. Another form of shamelessness is when the human body is portrayed in such a way that its sexual appeal is accentuated above and beyond the value of the person. This can be in forms of dress, behavior, and in artistic representations. The most common example of this today is pornography.

In TOB, Pope St. John Paul II contrasts pornographic representations of the human body with other artistic uses of the nude human form (see TOB 60-63). The difference between porn and an appropriate artistic rendering of a naked human being originates in the intention of the artist. In the latter case, the intention is to depict the human person revealed through his body in a dignified way whereas in the former, the intention is merely to present an anonymous human body as an object of lustful desire. Indeed, pornography obscures the reality of the person and overaccentuates the sexual features of the body. In this way, it turns the human body — and therefore the human person — into a mere object (i.e., an impersonal thing) to be used for selfish pleasure and even a commodity to be bought and sold.

The Catechism condemns pornography in no uncertain terms saying that it “offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act.” It goes on to say that pornography

“does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public) since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense” (no. 2354).

Indeed, the Church’s opposition to pornography is so absolute, that the Catechism exhorts governments to make it illegal: “Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials” (no. 2354). Given all that Pope St. John Paul II has taught us about the dignity of the human person and the spousal meaning of the body, this should come as no surprise. Next month, I will further diagnose the problems of pornography with the help of modern psychology.

Note: This article is part of a series of reflections on Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.”

Written by, Dr. Andrew Sodergren, M.T.S., Psy.D.,
Director of Ruah Woods Psychological Services

(Article originally published in The Catholic Telegraph, May 2023 Issue, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati)

Dr. Andrew Sodergren Honored at 2023 CPA Conference

June 12, 2023/in News /by Dr. Emily Dowdell

Dr. Andrew Sodergren was honored at the Catholic Psychotherapy Association’s 2023 Annual Conference with the Mother of Good Counsel Clinical Excellence Award.

Prayer to Our Mother of Good Counsel

Composed by Sandra McKay, founding President of the Catholic Psychotherapy Association. She drew upon writings attributed to Pope Saint Pius XII, who was devoted to Our Mother of Good Counsel.

Our dear and sweet Mother whose counsel is ever-wise and knowing, we consecrate ourselves to you, Our Mother of Good Counsel. Grant your intercession throughout the days of our world with people in need.

Place in our hearts and on our lips the words of healing that Your Son would have us know and say. Grant us the gifts of Healing and Wisdom that our work might always serve God and His desire for holy and healthy people, marriages, families, and communities.Oh Holy Mother Mary, we pray that you will intercede for us that we may teach and live the holiness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the Sacrament of Matrimony, or our vocation in this life, and that we may always have a full and complete respect for the dignity of each human being and that we may love and teach loveas we have been taught by Jesus Himself, you and all the saints. Amen.

Dr. Sodergren was featured as a plenary speaker at this year’s conference, In the Beginning…Treatment and Healing of Human Sexuality.

Dr. Sodergren’s presentation provided a sound theological and psychological understanding of the sexual difference (male and female) and a thorough review of the literature on psychotherapeutic approaches to working with gender dysphoria. The first part laid the foundation by reviewing Catholic teaching on sexual difference with special emphasis on the work of Pope St. John Paul II. Next, was an extensive review of the scientific literature on sex differences. Dr. Sodergren detailed a developmental approach to understanding male and female that incorporated key findings from biological, psychological, and neuroscientific studies. The second reviewed the extent of professional literature on psychotherapeutic responses to gender dysphoria. Clinical observations, theory, and case studies were reviewed spanning psychodynamic, behavioral, and integrative approaches. The testimony of and research on detransitioners was also be reviewed.

RWPS Expands Northward

July 5, 2021/in News /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

You spoke, and we listened. For 10 years, Ruah Woods Psychological Services has served the greater Cincinnati-area, providing high quality psychological services deeply informed by our Catholic faith. Almost from the start, calls have come in from individuals and families residing in the northern parts of our archdiocese such as Sidney, Dayton, Springfield, and so on, seeking our services or a referral to similar providers in those areas. After listening to their needs and experiencing firsthand the difficulty of finding Catholic faith-informed mental healthcare, RWPS discerned a call to expand its practice to two locations so as to serve not only the Cincinnati-area but also the greater Dayton-area and the northern parts of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.

Beginning in July 2021, RWPS is partnering with the Transfiguration Center for Spiritual Renewal to open a satellite office on their campus located just northwest of Dayton. According to director Ron Mills, “The mission of the Transfiguration Center is to help people encounter the living God through the beauty of nature, the peace of prayer and the richness of the Catholic spiritual tradition.”

As Mills explained, “Our staff and board recognize a need in the local community and society in general for sound mental health services with an appreciation for an individual’s sense of faith. We believe this can serve the development of the whole person from not only a spiritual aspect but also from a mental health perspective, which is necessary, complementary and extremely important.”

The initiative to partner with RWPS was especially spurred by Fr. Eric Bowman, pastor of the Church of the Transfiguration in West Milton, who regularly encounters the need for faithfully Catholic mental health providers in his priestly ministry. “We were inspired to partner with Ruah Woods because of the great need in our surrounding area for a strong Catholic counseling service and the successful program at Ruah Woods,” he affirmed.

RWPS is excited to collaborate with the Transfiguration Center to meet these needs. Our newest provider, Alex Wallace, will be championing this project. He is a licensed clinical counselor and ardent Catholic. When asked what inspired him to join the RWPS team, Wallace shared, “I have long desired to be a resource for the Church and I greatly value what has been accomplished by Ruah Woods in that regard. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I discerned that it would be more effective to bring my talents, education, training, and passion alongside those who are already doing the work I feel called to do.”

Based at the Transfiguration Center, Wallace will serve the mental health needs of the greater Dayton area full-time. “I am extremely excited about this opportunity to bring counseling services to the area so that I can help people on their journey while upholding what is true, good, and beautiful,” Wallace said.

According to Fr. Bowman, “The Transfiguration Center is a wonderful place for Catholic faith informed mental health services for several reasons. The first is location. The Transfiguration center is located just 35 minutes from downtown Dayton, 40 minutes from Springfield, 30 minutes from Sidney. The second reason is the grounds of our facility.” As Mills explained, the Center is situated “on 173 acres of beautiful Ohio countryside” replete with “beautiful gardens, a goldfish pond, a reflection pond, and miles of walking trails near the scenic Stillwater River.” “There is an immediate sense of peace… That has always been one of the things people frequently comment about, so it is a wonderful refuge for anyone seeking a calm and quiet atmosphere to unplug and get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life,” he added.

Everyone at RWPS is overjoyed to announce this collaboration and the opening of the Dayton-area satellite office led by Mr. Wallace. Now with two locations, RWPS is poised to serve the needs of the entire Archdiocese, from Cincinnati to Dayton and beyond. Please join with the staff and board of RWPS and of the Transfiguration Center in welcoming Mr. Wallace, spreading the word, and praying for all involved as we endeavor to empower men and women to more fully embrace and live out their vocation to love according to God’s plan.

For more information or to make an appointment at either of location, call 513-407-8878.

Meet Alex Wallace, M.A., LPCC

June 24, 2021/in News /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

Communion in Quarantine
by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

January 24, 2021/in Blog /by Dr. Andrew Sodergren

Masks. Social distancing. Cancelling events. Virtual meetings. Dispensations from Mass. Quarantining. These are some of the isolating, unprecedented hallmarks of 2020. Those in authority justify these measures as short-term strategies to slow the spread of COVID-19. Whatever their short-term benefit, many people are understandably concerned about the long-term impact of these drastic actions on individuals, families, and society as a whole. Man — as we know from Theology of the Body — is not made for isolation but for communion. How then, are we to navigate a time when something so fundamental to our very being is challenged on every side?

Back to Basics

One of the key concepts that Pope St. John Paul II returned to again and again in his various writings, especially Theology of the Body, was communio personarum – communion of persons. While

this term can analogously be applied to marriage and family, the Church, communities and societies, the prototype of communio is the Blessed Trinity. In God, we see that the Source of our very being and the End to which we are called is nothing less than an eternal Communion of Persons. God is not a static, isolated being but for all eternity is a Personal Exchange of Love. In the Trinity, revealed to us by Christ, we see maximum distinction (each divine Person is fully distinct from the Others) and maximum unity (the Divine Being is in no way fractured or divided such that we can fully affirm One God). In the One Divine Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit give and receive one another in an eternal exchange of love, which John Paul II termed communio.

In reflecting on the nature of man who is made in God’s image and likeness, John Paul II further saw communio as essential to understanding our identity and our calling. In the Second Vatican Council’s document Gaudium et spes, which JP2 helped to write, we read:

John Paul frequently referred to this passage, citing it in all his major documents as pope and in his Theology of the Body. The bottom line is this: man is made for communio. We cannot understand what it means to be human — nor what is healthy for humans – apart from this.

The Hell of Isolation

As we have seen, God is a Communion of Persons, and man, being made in His image, is called to reflect that Communio on Earth and participate intimately in it in Eternity. It follows, then, that Hell is utter isolation, being definitively cut off from the Divine Communio. Indeed, if we were made to participate in the Divine Exchange of Love, what could be more painful than to be utterly isolated, cut off from God and others forever?

Indeed, we see glimpses of this even in this life. Psychologists have known for decades that isolation is inherently threatening and damaging to human beings. It goes against our fundamentally social nature. This is especially true for children who come into the world with an innate drive to form lasting emotional bonds with their parents and others. Their healthy development hinges on growing up in an environment rich with socioemotional cues that they are known, loved, valued, and cared for. Much has been written in theology and psychology about the essential role of the parents’ smile in communicating a sense of delight that forms the basis of a child’s self-worth.

This drive to form and maintain emotional bonds remains with us throughout our life and is a basic hallmark of human nature: we are made for connection! When we are cut off from others at any stage of life, our bodies and our minds are more prone to illness and early death. Indeed, social rejection has been found to stimulate the same pain pathways in the brain as physical injury as well as increase the risk for a host of mental and physical illnesses. Experimental studies have even shown that such rejection negatively impacts our cardiac and immune functioning.

Cultivating Communio

In order for us to survive these difficult times, we need to work together to build a culture of communio. How can we do this? First, we have to recognize that relationships are always risky. During this time of pandemic, people have a heightened awareness of the physical risks of being together. However, we have to realize that any time we reveal ourselves to another and make space for another in our hearts, we accept the possibility of hurt, rejection, betrayal, as well as the inevitability of loss. We can either allow fear of these experiences to drive us toward isolation, or we can draw strength from our Lord and follow the example of Him who made himself vulnerable out of love in order to give new life to us.

We must seize any opportunities we have for true connection. When in-person togetherness is blocked, we do well to avail ourselves of the various virtual tools at our disposal to communicate with others, especially those who are most isolated right now. However, virtual connection can never replace the value of incarnate presence. Just as Jesus gave us His True Body and Blood as His Real Presence among us, we too need to eagerly look for opportunities for incarnate presence with others.

When we are able to be with others but suffer the obstruction of facial coverings, we can concentrate on the other person’s eyes. The eyes have long been regarded as the window to the soul, and psychologists have shown how it is possible to decode the emotional state of another person with remarkable accuracy simply by observing the expression of the eyes. Look at the eyes of the people around you and try to guess what they are feeling. Allow yourself to feel with them, resonating with their emotional state. Take a risk and draw this aspect of the encounter into the open: for example, “As we talk about this and I look in your eyes, I sense how sad you are.” Or, “It feels good to see each other again, doesn’t it?”

Original Solitude — Divine Communio

Lastly, we must all seek to deepen our communio with God, the source of all love and connection. Solitude — not isolation — is an important and healthy component of a fully human life. We must intentionally choose regular periods of solitude to turn our hearts to God in prayer, worship, and sacrament. It is also a good practice to spend time interacting with the natural world, enjoying the gifts of Creation that are signs of God’s love for us. These moments of solitude serve to orient us toward God, the ultimate fulfillment our deepest longings for intimacy, and empower us to enter into communio with others, despite the risks. In the end, we must accept the call to divine and human communio anew every day and place our trust in Him who did not spare His only Son to draw us into communion with Himself.

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