The Partnership of Grace and Mental health

Last Friday I took the day off for a psychotherapy course as required by law to continue my good medical standing with the State of Florida. At this advanced stage of my life, retired status, I can select more mental health courses on subjects of particular interest to maintain an active license. When I opened my private counseling practice a generation ago, I had to register my “specialties” or competencies with my third-party payers, the medical insurance companies, who in turn posted them for prospective patients to review. Most companies listed about two dozen counseling specialties for their patients to select; the assumption being that the therapists in their system would designate areas of competence, gained by experience in the field and special training in grad school. I always got a laugh over comparing my “specialties” to my professional competitors. I listed two: mood disorders [depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder] and EAP or employee assistance counseling for work related stress. My diocese provided EAP benefits through one of my companies, so I had a fair amount of ecclesiastical traffic drawing free coffee in my lobby.
 
But a lot of my competitors were truly shameless with what they registered with insurance companies; some would check all the boxes, claiming special competences from pediatric play therapy to mental assessment of readiness for stomach bypass surgery. From time to time, I did review my own “shingle” with the insurance companies. “Religious counseling” was an option with some companies. I figured I could credibly check that box based on my professional history. But I forgot that I had done my two-year license admission internship in marriage and family counseling [a happy mistake], and I was getting enough requests from that population, so I checked that box, too. I was up to four specialties when I closed my practice.
 
My license is still active though I am not currently practicing. The State of Florida requires that, to maintain my license today, I take 30-hours’ worth of classroom/on-line courses every two years. Except for a handful of legal updates, I can generally take courses involving counseling issues of particular interest to me and/or the work I am doing. To tell you the truth, I usually take courses that I can relate to the Catechist Café readership for ministerial and personal use. Last Friday was one of those times: the subject was Domestic Violence.
 
…WHICH GOT ME THINKING…
 
Years ago, I noticed a curious quirk in my own admissions after I included “Christian Counseling” in my advertising: my marriage counseling cases spiked. One woman was very direct on the phone with me: “I figured we would see a Christian counselor because they try to keep marriages together.” I am not aware of research regarding Christian counselors and marital endurance, or even whether most Christian counselors are predisposed to keep all married couples together. For most of my professional life I believed that diocesan/parochial pre-Cana or premarital preparation programs were [are?] woefully weak in the area of evaluating future growthful marriage in the areas of mental health maturity and disposition.
 
Friday’s workshop was highly informative, and for me, profoundly disturbing. As an old therapist sitting in with generations of younger practitioners coming into their own, I was struck by how seriously and thoroughly they were taught to discern the clues of perpetrators of violence in relationships. I knew some of the material, but now there are screening tests and exercises to diagnose the likelihood of a serious domestic abuser. The sheer numbers of individuals who have been beaten, traumatized, or even killed in marriages or relationships is hard to pinpoint. The FBI uses a figure of about one million cases of domestic violence per year, but those are cases where law enforcement was involved. We know today that adult and child trauma may take victims considerable time—many years, in certain cases—to break loose from years of fear and insecurity, if they ever do, and share the experience[s] with a “professional,” including a cleric or lay minister of the Church. Another major consideration is the number of couples in which one partner is held in less overt but very real threatening circumstances.
 
Discussions about reducing excessive male control and abuse in relationships are appearing on multiple fronts. Of note is the declining birth rate in the United States, reported to be at its lowest point in history. If you read social media responses to this research, it is common to see that women are held responsible for this drop, in a negative way. The argument is that the typical eighteen-year-old high school senior is breaking [Christian?] tradition by managing her own future in terms of going to college [and especially grad school], buying her own home, mapping her career, and marrying later in life and then having children. Having thus set a career path, the likelihood of a freshman collegian succumbing to the lusts of a college junior—and, in many circumstances, engaging in a youthful marriage--is much less likely. This trend seems to trouble young men. About 40% of female college graduates reported unwanted physical advances during their college years. Among the poorer segments of society, the only gateway to just about anywhere is a relationship/marriage to a stronger partner in terms of finances and security. It is easy to see that among the poor such arrangements are not equal with the “rescuer” holding all the cards. I came across a case recently where a male threatened to burn his partner’s U.S. citizenship papers and make a report to I.C.E. after his partner had spoken up for herself in their home.
 
In 2025 Forbes Magazine published an interesting analysis of American males in terms of their anger/fear of women and the D.E.I. movement, with very recent research of white males finding “nearly 70% report feeling “forgotten” by diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Political polling among white males indicates that young adult men continue to support “macho” politicians and celebrities. Are we creating a new fuel for male dominance and violence, particularly in couple relationships?
 
Marriage counseling—pre-Cana or remedial—is a key point where the state and the Church have overlapping concerns, and these include legal legitimacy of the marriage itself and danger to persons. A clergyman must meet certain qualifications to perform a civilly legal marriage. We in the Church work in tandem with the civil authorities. In Florida, clergy are expected to be in good standing with their religious authorities. [Technically, “valid faculties from the local bishop.”] This is one of about a dozen Florida statutes which apply to those who perform weddings. The bottom line seems to be that the state is not unsympathetic to the quality and safety of domestic life, and it entrusts clergy [and other state-approved officers] to prepare and screen couples in the interest of quality and safety of home life. Florida Statute 741 now includes a variety of policies on spouse abuse/domestic violence that the Church must consider in marriage preparations.
 
The preparations of Catholic marriage for couples in the Catholic Church has seen multiple stages of development over my lifetime. In the pre-Vatican II era, prior to 1965, the primary concern was Catholic established validity—baptism certificate, no prior marriages, promises to have children and raise them Catholic, etc. As the post-Conciliar era unfolded, many dioceses tried to progress to a more enriched marital preparation program, though enthusiasm often outraced skill in programs’ execution. True story: as a pastor I used to lend my parish hall to the diocese for regional or county wide marital preparational talks. It was my day off—a Friday night and I was watching the Atlanta Braves—when my newly ordained associate pastor came over from the hall in a fury. “You won’t believe what they’re teaching. A speaker just said that ‘using the pill turns the wife into a prostitute!’”
 
I did bring this up later with the chancery but, to borrow a baseball analogy, we simply did not have many good “position players” to conduct key ministries in a prudent and professional fashion such as marriage preparations. I began pairing my marriage applicants with parish married couples for candid home discussions about common life. They did a remarkably respectable job, but most of the veteran couples shared with me serious incidents of overt or subtle anger or other behaviors exhibited by engaged couples in the privacy of a real home as opposed to a meeting in the sterile atmosphere of the clergyman’s study.
 
I worried about the health and stability of a sizable number of folks I encountered in my routine of counseling in the parish and teaching for the diocese. Many people come to church offices because they can’t afford counseling. [Health care costs are a major moral issue but the subject needs to be treated separately.] Someone once stopped in my office on the way to commit suicide. By my tenth anniversary of ordination in 1984 I came to the conclusion that pastoral healing and mental health circumstances were profoundly intertwined. I decided to undertake a quest for a master’s degree in mental health counseling at nearby Rollins College, and after four years of night school and summers, I completed my degree. Things were quite different back then. “Abnormal psychology” was an elective in my studies. [Today that course would be required and called “Personality Disorders.”] One of my summer research projects involved incest and domestic child abuse.
 
Domestic violence did not get the attention that it does today, at least in my classes and reading in the 1980’s. In my church work I did encounter the occasional fleeing spouse, but I tended to generalize those situations as alcohol induced on the part of the abuser. There was and is truth to that in many cases. It had never [or rarely] occurred to me that there were deeper dynamics in play, or that children might be traumatized and/or influenced to repeat the abusive behavior of a husband or a boyfriend. I have written in recent posts that confession generally does not provide the time to grasp the mindset or condition of the penitent. Inadvertently we may be condemning individuals to repeat triggering behaviors, as in “…just be more patient with your husband.” Spiritual healing is not a substitute for actual personal healing. Religion is wholistic.
 
In 2026 there is [somewhat] more attention and legal protection for victims of domestic violence, but unfortunately things need to get to a high bar of crisis before existing support kicks in, where it exists. Ironically, many abusers tend to create an aura of excellence about themselves and their families. A professor once told us that “homes with incest have the best lawns on the block.” Obviously, an overstatement, but we know at many levels there is truth here metaphorically. People are not always as they present themselves. Men in particular “look askance at shrinks.” Some years ago, I was asked to do a television interview involving a child holding police and classmates hostage with a toy gun, and as I recall, the crisis ended tragically. When the reporter finished, the cameraman brushed past me and muttered softly, “No shrink like you is ever getting close to any kid of mine.” For a long time, I wondered what that was all about.
 
From time to time I will bring select mental health issues that intermingle with how the human mind intermingles with conscience and faith. [Domestic Violence: What Every Pastor Needs to Know, just arrived with Prime, but too late to include in today’s post.] I would like to draw this post to a close with an observation. It’s a strange thing that we use the term “saving souls” without much thought about the mind which processes God’s word, i.e., the human disposition: sometimes scarred by pain, cruelty, trauma; sometimes handicapped by physical and/or neurological disfigurement; sometimes blessed with optimism and energy. Jesus was a masterful “counselor”: he healed minds in all sorts of troubling ways to open the doors of grace. In this past weekend’s Gospel [March 22-23] Martha had her mood and her mind changed…that one need not be dead to experience the new life brought to fruition by Jesus [read: depressed]. Consequently, her new wisdom opened her eyes to the true nature of the saving Christ [read: joy and optimism.]
 
In Catholic theology we use the term “full consent of the will.” The Catechism speaks of the necessity of “full consent of the will” to commit a mortal sin. An engaged couple is expected to give each other and God “full consent of the will” as they make their wedding vows. We give “full consent of the will” when we profess the Nicene Creed at Mass. Thus, the willful component of our mental makeup deserves nurturing and strengthening. The challenge here is the nurturing of our minds and hearts. Many of us—myself included—need to tend to that dimension of our Christian life. Antidepressants have partnered with me for years in my quest for the Kingdom of God.
 
Mental health is a necessary component of religious faith and ministry in the sense that we imitate Jesus’ amazing openness to the psyches of the searching souls…including our own.