Friday, February 08, 2013

CATHOLIC SCHOOL: AN ALTERNATIVE MEMORY


In 1990, at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, Dr. William Coulson gave a talk in which he apologized to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for his part in a disastrous 1960‘s experiment which precipitated a mass exodus of nuns from their vows and harmed many Catholic students. I was one of them.

The talk was recorded (Psychology in Education) and was recently made available to the public. Upon hearing it I was immediately transported to a specific day in 1968 and to my Los Angeles Catholic school classroom. It was the day the “experiment” began, a day I can recall in detail like few others.

It would take a book (and someday I may write it) to recount the rapid succession of events which swirled to life like an angry genie released from his lamp - or more precisely, like demons released from hell - because, while the experiment may have commenced with the best intentions, it set in motion a series of events which would morally and spiritually cripple me and many others, and would lead (I believe) to the death of my brother, the divorce of my parents and the complete collapse of the pillars of faith and family upon which the surety of my young world was built.

I was riveted by Coulson’s talk. Forty years later, here was “the thing”, the epicenter of my formative history. It was an “I knew it” moment. In 1968, my 12 year-old psyche had been too young to know what was happening, but not too young to know that SOMETHING was happening, and that something felt very, very wrong.

“I’m sorry”, said Coulson from my CD player nearly 20 years after he had actually said it. “I’m sorry. I apologize. We tried to stop it, but it was too late.” Coulson was speaking of the experiment in Self-Actualization he and the eminent psychologist, Carl Rogers, had conducted in the Los Angeles Catholic schools in the late 1960’s. Coulson was Roger’s Chief of Staff and oversaw the experiment.

Rogers’ theory of Self-Actualization was founded on the supposition that humans are naturally good, that everyone has the “truth” within them, and in order for us to “self-actualize” we only need an environment where we can express our most intimate feelings which then allows us to get in touch with our inner truth.

The main vehicle for the therapy was the “encounter group”, a small group wherein the members are given a personal issue to discuss and then instructed to listen to each other non-judgmentally. There is no right or wrong, just listening and affirmation.

If this sounds familiar it is because Self-Actualization is now called Self-Esteem Theory and is widely employed in counseling and in education. The subject person is not to be judged. He or she is simply to be given information (not instruction) and the counselor/teacher is to guide the student to “the truth that is within”. This was thought to produce the self-esteem necessary for an individual to self-actualize, which would then provide the foundation for a happy life.

Up to 1968, Rogers had tested his theory with the mentally disturbed, and with some success. He then wanted to test it on normal people, believing that if it could assist the disturbed, it might help normal people even more. Rogers needed a large and willing control group. By chance he found it in Los Angeles with the nuns of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM’s) who ran many of the archdiocesan schools including a college.

Coulson recounts that the experiment was a “disaster”.  Within one year, over 300 of the original group of 560 nuns were petitioning Rome to be relieved of their vows. And by the end of the second year, though the experiment had been designed for three years, Rogers himself, alarmed at the results, terminated the experiment.

But though Rogers quit, the nuns did not. Enamored with the excursions into an “off-limits” world of intimacy opened by the encounter process - excursions Coulson recounts but are too scandalous to print here - the IHM’s continued, and continued until their schools closed and the order collapsed. “We thought we could make the IHMs better than they were; and we destroyed them”, said Coulson.

Unfortunately, before the IHM’s flamed out, several other orders caught the Rogerian disease, including the one which taught at my school. Through 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, I watched our own nuns “self-actualize” until they were no more. A teaching order from Spain was imported to replace them. But it was too late. The exodus of nuns from their vows was soon followed by an exodus of the laity from their faith.

Two decades later, the seduction of self-actualization would morph into the moral equivalent of a flesh-eating bacteria and would cost the Los Angeles archdiocese hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits, and the revelation of the damage and scandal  is just beginning. But no one knows the cost in souls. At least Coulson was sorry.

Monday, February 04, 2013

OF POLLS AND PEWS: THE DANGERS OF "TOGETHER FOR LIFE"


Over the course of several columns we have documented the bewildering trend of Catholics increasingly accepting behaviors, acts, and lifestyles that are either condemned or strongly disapproved of by the church they say they belong to.

The trend is not rooted in an ignorance of church teaching - most Catholics appear to know where their church stands on abortion, contraception, and homosexual relations; rather, it seems to stem from a belief that they are wholly free to accept or reject such teachings and remain Catholics in good standing.

Many minds in Catholic leadership have puzzled over this trend, and the church has spilled over with documents and initiatives attempting to address it. One priest, Monsignor William Smith (now deceased) fingers an unlikely suspect.

Smith was a moral theologian who wrote for theological journals as well as a monthly column in Homiletic and Pastoral Review. In a1994 column he challenged a booklet widely used in marriage preparation, “Together for Life” (TL) by Msgr. Joseph Champlin, which was first published in 1970.

In TL (at least the editions used through 1994), Monsignor Smith exposes a pattern of teaching that, given its audience (pre-Cana couples), and its wide usage since 1970, may well explain why so many Catholics feel they are free to fashion their own moral code as well as pick and choose their religious obligations.

In addressing the regulation of births, Champlin quotes the relevant sections of the Catechism and Vatican II’s Guadium et Spes, but then, Smith observes, subjects the moral applicability of the teaching to the intentions and motives of the couple, and in so doing, sets the couple up to decide what is right and wrong “for them”.

Smith notes that this is something the Council expressly said NOT to do: “....with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards....spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily...” (GS 50-51)

The subjective relativization of an objective moral position, demonstrated in TL, is not an uncommon practice. It is common to many contemporary Catholic authors. It goes like this: 1) Catholic teaching is cited, 2) the reader is made aware of dissenting positions, 3) the reader is asked how he “feels” about it, 4) the reader is told that a mature Catholic will need to make his own decisions, 5) the reader is encouraged to pray and “listen to the heart”.

In short, its nothing more than a high school exercise in values-clarification with Catholic truth often only serving as a conversation starter, or as doctrinal cover so that an imprimatur, which TL has, will not be denied (and so that pastors in seeing the imprimatur will feel soothed).

But let’s back up. Many of us are so familiar with this process that we fail to see what is wrong with it. After all, isn’t this what freedom of conscience and religious liberty is all about? Ultimately, don’t we have to make our own decisions?

Yes and No. Yes, we are free to choose BETWEEN right and wrong. No, we are NOT free to choose what IS right and wrong (at least not in matters that are intrinsically wrong). “Conscience”, (literally: “with knowledge), assumes that one proceeds with the knowledge of what IS right and wrong as well as that of the temporal and eternal consequences of one’s choice.

In TL, Champlin leads the couple to decide what IS right and wrong...“for them”. And lest the couple shirk from the imposed dilemma, he assures them: “At those times we purify our hearts, search for God’s light in this special circumstance, then decide what is the best course to follow. And follow it without any fear or anxiety.”

Coming as it does in the section on birth regulation there is no denying what is the matter to be “decided.” So the couple, about to embrace Holy Matrimony, and with the help of their pre-Cana class, is thus freed to contracept “without fear or anxiety” so long as they have “searched for God’s light” in this “special circumstance.”

But Champlin doesn’t stop there. Wisely assuming that some couples might be yet pained by that “still small voice”, Champlin advises them to seek out a priest, BUT not just any priest, but an “understanding priest”, or in the words of Msgr. Smith: “shop around for an affirmative cleric.”

While Smith is primarily concerned with the damage done by TL in marriage preparation, it’s easy to see how its method of moral manipulation might later induce Catholics to feel authorized to arbitrate on everything from abortion to the Sunday obligation: a fact evidenced in both polls and pews - increasingly empty ones.

(Monsignor William Smith’s commentary can be found in the book “Modern Moral Problems”, published by Ignatius Press, and available at the Cathedral Gift Shop.)

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