The USCCB meeting starts today: 5 items the bishops will consider

Denver, Colo., Apr 9, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In 1970, there was one priest for every 800 Catholics in the United States.

Today, that number has more than doubled, with one priest for every 1,800 Catholics.

Globally, the situation is worse. The number of Catholics per priest increased from 1,895 in 1980 to 3,126 in 2012, according to a report from CARA at Georgetown University. The Catholic Church in many parts of the world is experiencing what is being called a “priest shortage” or a “priest crisis.”

Last month, Pope Francis answered a question about the priest shortage in a March 8 interview published in the German weekly Die Zeit. The part that made headlines, of course, was that about married priests.

“Pope Francis open to allowing married priests in Catholic Church” read a USA Today headline. “Pope signals he’s open to married Catholic men becoming priests” said CNN.

But things are not as they might seem. Read a little deeper, and Pope Francis did not say that Fr. John Smith at the parish down the street can now ditch celibacy and go looking for a wife.

What the Holy Father did say is that he is open to exploring the possibility of proven men (‘viri probati,’ in Latin) who are married being ordained to the priesthood. Currently, such men, who are typically over the age of 35, are eligible for ordination to the permanent diaconate, but not the priesthood.

However, marriage was not the first solution to the priest shortage Pope Francis proposed. In fact, it was the last.

Initially, he didn’t even mention marriage.

Pressed specifically about the married priesthood, the Pope said: “optional celibacy is discussed, above all where priests are needed. But optional celibacy is not the solution.”

While Pope Francis perhaps signals an iota more of openness to the possibility of married priests in particular situations, his hesitance to open wide the doors to a widespread married priesthood is in line with his recent predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as well as the longstanding tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.

So why is the Church in the West, even when facing a significant priest shortage, so reticent to get rid of a tradition of celibacy, if it is potentially keeping away additional candidates to the priesthood?

Why is celibacy the norm in the Western Church?

Fr. Gary Selin is a Roman Catholic priest and professor at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver. His work Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations was published last year by CUA press.

While the debate about celibacy is often reduced to pragmatics – the difficulty of paying married priests more, the question of their full availability – this ignores the rich theological foundations of the celibate tradition, Fr. Selin told CNA.

One of the main reasons for this 2,000 year tradition is Christological, because it is based on the first celibate priest – Jesus.

“Jesus Christ himself never married, and there’s something about imitating the life our Lord in full that is very attractive,” Fr. Selin said.

“Interestingly, Jesus is never mentioned as a reason for celibacy. The next time you read about celibacy, try to see if they mention our Lord; oftentimes he is left out of the picture.”

Christ’s life of celibacy, while compatible with his mission of evangelization, would not have been compatible with marriage, because “he left his home and family in Nazareth in order to live as an itinerant preacher, consciously renouncing a permanent dwelling: ‘The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,’” Fr. Selin said, refering Matthew 8:20.

Several times throughout the New Testament, Christ praises the celibate state. In Matthew 19:11-12, he answers a question from his disciples about marriage, saying that those who are able by grace to renounce marriage and sexual relations for the kingdom of heaven ought to do so.

“Of the three manners in which one is incapable of sexual activity, the third alone is voluntary: ‘eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs [emphasis added].’ These people do so ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,’ that is, for the kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming and initiating,” Fr. Selin explained.

Nevertheless, it took a while for the “culture of celibacy” to catch on in the early Church, Fr. Selin said.

Christ came to earth amid a Jewish people and culture who were instructed since their first parents of Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28, 9:7) and were promised that their descendants would be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore” (Gen. 22:17). Being unmarried or barren was to be avoided for both practical and religious reasons, and was seen as a curse, or at least a lack of favor from God.

The apostles, too, were Jewish men who would have been a part of this culture. It is known that among them, at least St. Peter had been married at some time, because Scripture mentions his mother-in-law (Mt. 8:14-15).

St. John the Evangelist is thought by the Church fathers to be one of the only of the 12 apostles who was celibate, which is why Christ had a particular love for him, Fr. Selin said. Some of the other apostles likely were married, in keeping with Jewish customs, but it is thought that they practiced perpetual continence (chosen abstinence from sexual relations) once they became apostles for the rest of their lives. St. Paul the Apostle extols the celibate state, which he also kept, in 1 Corinthians 7:7-8.

Because marriage was such an integral part of Jewish culture, even for the apostles, early Church clergy were often, but not always, married. However, evidence suggests that these priests were asked to practice perfect continence once they had been ordained. Priests whose wives became pregnant after ordination could even be punished by suspension, Fr. Selin explained.

Early on in the Church, bishops were selected from the celibate priests, a tradition that stood before the mandatory celibate priesthood. Even today, Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, most of which allow for married priests, select their bishops from among celibate priests.

As the “culture of celibacy” became more established, it increasingly became the norm in the Church, until married men who applied for ordinations had to appeal to the Pope for special permission.

In the 11th century, St. Gregory VII issued a decree requiring all priests to be celibate and asked his bishops to enforce it. Celibacy has been the norm ever since in the Latin Rite, with special exceptions made for some Anglican and other Protestant pastors who convert to Catholicism.

A sign of the kingdom

Another reason the celibate priesthood is valued in the Church is because it bears witness to something greater than this world, Fr. Selin explained.

Benedict XVI once told priests that celibacy agitates the world so much because it is a sign of the kingdom to come.

“It is true that for the agnostic world, the world in which God does not enter, celibacy is a great scandal, because it shows exactly that God is considered and experienced as reality. With the eschatological dimension of celibacy, the future world of God enters into the reality of our time. And should this disappear?” Benedict XVI said in 2010.

Christ himself said that no one would be married or given in marriage in heaven, and therefore celibacy is a sign of the beatific vision (cf. Mt 22:30-32).  

“Married life will pass away when we behold God face to face and all of us become part of the bridal Church,” Fr. Selin said. “The celibate is more of a direct symbol of that.”

Another value of celibacy is that it allows priests a greater intimacy with Christ in more fully imitating him, Fr. Selin noted.

“The priest is ordained to be Jesus for others, so he’s able to dedicate his whole body and soul first of all to God himself, and from that unity with Jesus he is able to serve the church,” he said.

“We can’t get that backwards,” he emphasized. Often, celibacy is presented for practical reasons of money and time, which aren’t sufficient reasons to maintain the tradition.

“That’s not sufficient and that doesn’t fill the heart of a celibate, because he first wants intimacy with God. Celibacy first is a great, profound intimacy with Christ.”

A married priest’s perspective: Don’t change celibate priesthood

Father Douglas Grandon is one of those rare exceptions – a married Roman Catholic priest.

He was a married Episcopalian priest when he and his family decided to enter the Catholic Church 14 years ago, and received permission from Benedict XVI to become a Catholic priest.

Even though Fr. Grandon recognizes the priest shortage, he said opening the doors to the married priesthood would not solve the root issue of that shortage.

“In my opinion, the key to solving the priest shortage is more commitment to what George Weigel calls evangelical Catholicism,” Fr. Grandon told CNA.

“Whether you’re Protestant or Catholic, vocations come from a very strong commitment to the basic commands of Jesus to preach the Gospel and make disciples. Wherever there’s this strong evangelical commitment, wherever priests are committed to deepening people’s faith and making them serious disciples, you have vocations. That is really the key.”

He also said that while he’s “ever so grateful” that St. John Paul II allowed for exceptions to the celibate priesthood in 1980 – allowing Protestant pastor converts like himself to become priests – he also sees the value of the celibate priesthood and does not advocate getting rid of it.

“…we really do believe the celibate vocation is a wonderful thing to be treasured, and we don’t want anything to undermine that special place of celibate priesthood,” he said.

“Jesus was celibate, Paul was celibate, some of the 12 were celibate, so that’s a special gift that God has given to the Catholic Church.”

Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield is another married priest, who resides in Dallas and is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He recently wrote about his experience as a married priest, but also said that he would not want the Church to change its celibacy norm.

“What we need is another Pentecost. That’s how the first ‘shortage’ was handled. The Twelve waited for the Holy Spirit, and he delivered,” Fr. Whitfield told CNA in e-mail comments.

“Seeing this crisis spiritually is what is practical. And it’s the only way we’re going to properly solve it…. I’m simply not convinced that the economics of (married priesthood) would result in either the growth of clergy or the Church.”

A glance at what the priest shortage looks like in the United States

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the largest diocese in the United States, clocking in at a Catholic population of 4,029,336, according to the P.J. Kenedy and Sons Official Catholic Directory.

With 1,051 diocesan and religious priests combined, the archdiocese has one priest for every 3,833 Catholics – more than double the national rate.

Despite the large Catholic population, which presents both “a great blessing and a great challenge”, Fr. Samuel Ward, the archdiocese’s associate sirector of vocations, told CNA he doesn’t hope for or anticipate any major changes to the practice of priestly celibacy.

“I believe in the great value of the celibate Roman Catholic priesthood,” he said.

He also sees great reason for hope. Recent upticks in the number of seminarians and young men considering the priesthood seems to be building positive momentum for vocations in future generations.

The trend is a national one as well – CARA reports that about 100 more men were ordained to the priesthood in 2016 than in 2010. Between 2005 and 2010, there was a difference of only 4.

In the Archdiocese of New York, the second largest diocese in the United States, there is a Catholic population of 2,642,740 and 1,198 diocesan and religious priests, meaning there is one priest for every 2,205 Catholics.

“I think we’re probably like most every other diocese in the country, in that over the past 40-50 years, the number of ordinations have not in any way kept pace with the number of priests who are retiring or dying,” said Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the archdiocese.

It’s part of the reason why they recently underwent an extensive reorganization process, which included the closing and re-consolidation of numerous parishes, many of which had found themselves without a pastor in recent years.

“Rather than wait for it to hit crisis mode we wanted to be prudent and plan for what the future would look like here in the Archdiocese of New York,” Zwilling said.

Monsignor Peter Finn has been a priest in New York for 52 years, and as rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary for six years in the early 2000s, he has had several years’ experience forming priests. While he admits there is a shortage, he’s not convinced that doing away with celibacy would solve anything.

“After 52 years of priesthood I’m not really sure it would make any big difference,” he told CNA.

That’s because the crisis is not unique to the vocation of the priesthood, he said. The broader issue is a lack of commitment – not just to the priesthood, but to marriage and other vocations of consecrated life.

Fr. Selin echoed those sentiments.

“It goes deeper, it goes to a deep crisis of faith, a rampant materialism, and also at times a difficulty with making choices,” he said.

So if marriage won’t solve the problem, what will?

Schools, seminaries, and a culture of vocations

The Archdiocese of St. Louis, on the other hand, has not experienced such a drastic shortage. When compared with other larger dioceses in the country (those with 300,000 or more Catholics), the St. Louis Archdiocese has the most priests per capita: only 959 Catholics per priests, in 2014.

John Schwob, director of pastoral planning for the archdiocese, said this could be attributed to a number of things – large and active Catholic schools, a local diocesan seminary, and archbishops who have made vocations a pastoral priority.

“…going back to the beginning of our diocese in 1826, the early bishops made repeated trips to Europe to bring back religious and secular priests and religious men and women who built up strong Catholic parishes and schools,” he told CNA. “That has created momentum that has continued for nearly 200 years.”

These three things also ring true for the Diocese of Lincoln, which has a smaller population and a high priest-to-Catholic ratio: one priest for every 577 Catholics, which is less than one third of the national ratio.

As in St. Louis, Lincoln’s vocations director Fr. Robert Matya credits many of the diocese’s vocations to Catholic schools with priests and religious sisters.

“The vast majority of our vocations come from the kids in our Catholic school system,” Fr. Matya said.

“The unique thing about Lincoln is that the religion classes in all of our Catholic high schools are taught by priests or sisters, and that is not usually the case … the students just have greater exposure to priests and sisters than a kid who goes to high school somewhere else who doesn’t have a priest teach them or doesn’t have that interaction with a priest or a religious sister.”

The diocese also has two orders of women religious – the Holy Spirit Adoration sisters (or the Pink Sisters) and discalced, cloistered Carmelites – who pray particularly for priests and vocations.

Msgr. Timothy Thorburn, vicar general of the Lincoln diocese, said that when the Carmelite sisters moved to the diocese in the late ’90s, two local seminaries sprang up “almost overnight” – a diocesan minor seminary and a seminary for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter.

“Wherever priests are being formed the devil is going to be at work, and cloistered religious are what we would consider the marines in the fight with the powers of darkness, they’re the ones on the frontlines,” Msgr. Thorburn told CNA.

“So right in the midst of the establishment of these two seminaries, the Carmelite sisters… asked if they could look at building a monastery in our diocese.”

A commitment to authentic and orthodox Catholic teaching is also important for vocations, Msgr. Thorburn noted.

“I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, and many in the Church thought if we just became more hip, young people would be attracted to the priesthood and religious life … and the opposite occurred. Young people were repelled by that,” he said.

“They wanted to make a commitment, they wanted authentic Catholic teaching, the authentic Catholic faith, they didn’t want some half-baked, watered down version of the faith; that wasn’t attractive to them at all. And I’d say the same is true now. The priesthood will not become more attractive if somehow the Church says married men can be ordained.”

Pope Francis’ solutions: Prayer, fostering vocations, and the birth rate

Pope Francis, too, does not believe that the married priesthood is the solution to the priest shortage. Before he even mentioned the married priesthood to Die Zeit, the Pope talked about prayer.

“The first [response] – because I speak as a believer – the Lord told us to pray. Prayer, prayer is missing,” he told the paper.

Rose Sullivan, director of the National Conference of Diocesan Vocation Directors, and the mother of a seminarian who is about to be ordained, agrees with the Pope.

“We would not refer to it as a ‘priest shortage’ or a ‘vocation crisis.’ We would refer to it as a prayer crisis. God has not stopped calling people to their vocation, we’ve stopped listening; the noise of culture has gotten in the way,” she said.

“Scripture says: ‘Speak Lord for your servant is listening.’ So the question would be, are we listening? And I would say we could do a much better job at listening.”

Another solution proposed by Pope Francis: increasing the birth rate, which has plummeted in many parts of the Church, particularly in the west.

In some European countries, once the most Catholic region of the world, the birth rate has dipped so low that governments are coming up with unique ways to incentivize child-bearing.

“If there are no young men there can be no priests,” the Pope said.

The vocations of marriage and priesthood are therefore inter-related, said Fr. Ward.

“They compliment each other, and are dependent upon one another. If we don’t have families, we don’t have anything to do as priests, and families need priests for preaching and the sacraments.”

The third solution proposed by Pope Francis was working with young people and talking to them directly about vocations.

Many priests are able to trace their vocation back to a personal invitation, often made by one priest, as well as the witness of good and holy priests that were a significant part of their lives.

“A former vocation director took an informal poll, and he asked men, ‘What really got you thinking about the priesthood?’ And almost all of them said ‘because my pastor approached me’,” Fr. Selin related.

“It was the same thing with me. When a priest lives his priesthood with great joy and fidelity, he’s the most effective promoter of vocations, because a young man can see himself in him.”

Msgr. Thorburn added: “There is no shortage of vocations.”

“God is calling a sufficient number of men in the Western Church, who by our tradition he gives the gift of celibacy with the vocation. We just have to make a place for those seeds to fall on fertile ground.” 

[…]

Denver, Colo., Feb 5, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Here’s a story about Dick and Diane.

“We met in December of 1965,” Diane said.  

“December 7,” Dick specified.

Dick and Diane Baumbach have been married for more than 50 years – but not every year was happy, they say.

After something of a whirlwind romance – “We told each other we loved each other after three weeks” – they were married by September of 1966, just nine months after they’d met.

Seven years later, they were each at wits’ end in the marriage and were ready to call it quits, just before they found themselves on a weekend retreat with Worldwide Marriage Encounter.

Dick was working as a journalist, and had been doing some freelancing for the local Catholic paper in New York, when he and Diane heard about Worldwide Marriage Encounter retreats through an event he’d been asked to cover. Although they weren’t going to Church at the time, the couple decided to sign up for a weekend.

“From then on our lives were totally different, we put God in our relationship and it’s made all the difference,” Diane told CNA.

Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME) began as a Catholic movement in Spain in the 1950s when a priest, Fr. Gabriel Calvo, began developing a series of conferences aimed at strengthening marriages. By the late 1960s, the marriage enrichment weekends were also being offered to couples in the United States, and continue to be offered today in various languages and in nearly 100 countries throughout the world.  

The encounters typically consist of weekend retreats, which begin on Friday evening and end on Sunday afternoon. Couples who attend the retreats are encouraged to turn off their cellphones, and are guided through various aspects of their relationships through a series of talks by couples and priests. They are also given time to discuss everything they’ve learned privately with their spouses. Priests are also encouraged to attend a WWME weekend, to gain new insights and perspectives on marriage, in order to better pastor married couples.

This year, the movement is celebrating the 50th anniversary of marriage encounter retreats in the United States, with a special anniversary convention with the theme “We Remember, We Celebrate, We Believe.” According to the leadership team, couples and priests are registering from as far away as New Zealand and South Korea.

As many as 500 couples are expected to attend the June 22-24 weekend in Lombard, Illinois.

Since their life-changing weekend 45 years ago, the Baumbachs have been helping with the movement in some capacity ever since, giving presentations and now serving as the North American media relations coordinators.

Diane said that after nearly every weekend, there are amazing stories of transformations in the couples that have attended.

One of the highlights of the WWME 50th anniversary event will be highlighting the stories of couples or priests who have impacted, or have been impacted by, a WWME weekend.  

Diane said that she particularly remembers the story of one couple who were planning to get divorced the day after their marriage encounter retreat weekend ended – they had an appointment with their lawyer at 10 a.m. on Monday, and the divorce papers all filled out and ready to go.

“They had told their children: we’re going away for this weekend, this is our last try, but while we’re gone you need to decide which person you’re going to live with – mom or dad,” Diane recalled.  

But by the time the couple left their marriage encounter weekend, “they had torn up their divorce papers and they were going home to their kids as a couple,” she said.

Diane said she thinks the structure of the weekend, as well as the intensive focus on the relationship away from distractions, makes marriage encounter weekends particularly powerful.

“You’re away from the busyness of the world, you’re in a protected setting. We ask them not to get on their cellphones, just try and focus on each other,” she said.  

The basic message of the weekend hasn’t changed much in 50 years, she noted, but “the atmosphere of nurturing support, and a lot of prayers, and the fact that the holy spirit is really with them on that weekend” can often provide what some couples are unable to find in counseling or therapy.

Dick and Diane said their involvement in WWME has also made them hopeful about the future of marriage – they said they see many couples who recognize the challenges that marriages and families face in today’s society, and they are earnestly seeking to strengthen their marriages.

“I think people are realizing – just like we get re-certified for our profession, we read and studied and are mentored for our careers…as the world’s pressures get greater and the attacks on the family and marriage are greater, that it’s important also that these couples get as much help as they can (in their marriages), and I think we’re seeing that,” Diane said.

Dick said if he could offer couples today any advice, it would simply be: “Love one another.”

Diane added: “Love is a decision.”

The 50th anniversary event in June is for couples who have already made at least one WWME weekend together.

“What we are hearing and reading over and over is that WWME truly impacted the lives of tens of thousands of couples and priests. We hope that as many as possible will be at the 50th Anniversary of the movement. They can then share with others the wonderful adventures they have experienced as a result of the weekend,” the convention leadership said in a press release.

“It’s a chance to try and connect all of us as we move forward in the next 50 years, it’s a time to get together with friends, but it’s also a time to look ahead to how we move forward for the next half a century,” Diane added.

Couples who have already attended at least one WWME weekend can find more information about the 50th anniversary event at https://wwme-2018-convention.myshopify.com/. Couples interested in attending a WWME weekend can find more information at: http://www.wwme.org/.

[…]

Denver Newsroom, Sep 12, 2020 / 04:51 pm (CNA).- Snuffy the Snuffleupagus’ parents were supposed to have divorced in 1992. The brown, fuzzy Muppet-quasi-mammoth, a beloved feature character on the PBS show Sesame Street, was going to chronicle his experience of the split in an episode intended to address a difficult topic with children.

But the episode never aired. Reportedly, during its screening, it “made preschoolers cry” and did not further their understanding of concepts surrounding divorce, and so it was pulled. It wasn’t until a decade later that the kid’s show would again take on the topic of divorce, in a small segment posted only on their website.

Divorce is a difficult topic to discuss with children, even though an estimated 1 million of them experience it every year.

Today, an estimated one-quarter of young adults are children of divorce – and many of them feel they were failed as youngsters in addressing their pain from the experience.

“That can come from messages from society, like a ‘happy divorce talk’,” Bethany Meola told CNA. The messaging of those talks often goes something like: “kids are resilient, you’ll be fine.” 

But divorces and separations often cause deep emotional, spiritual and psychological wounds in children that can last well into adulthood – and that are rarely formally addressed. This is why Bethany, along with her husband Dan, co-founded Life Giving Wounds, a Catholic ministry offering healing retreats, talks and resources for adult children of divorce.

“Our ministry looks at a number of the common wounds that children of divorce experience,” Bethany said. She added that the ministry is for adults whose parents divorced or separated when they were children or young adults.

“The first wound we address is the wound of silence,” she said. Children of divorce often feel like talking about the pain caused by the divorce is not allowed – that it just further burdens their parents, or that divorce is normal and therefore should not be a big deal.

“There’s a lot of testimonies now from adult children of divorce that they felt like, ‘I don’t know how to share this or where to go with this, or even if anyone will care’,” Bethany said.

Bethany herself is not technically an adult child of divorce – her parents separated a few times but got back together, and remained married.

But her husband Dan, co-founder of Life Giving Wounds, is an adult child of divorce. His parents separated when he was 11, but didn’t formalize the divorce until he was 26. That left Dan feeling like he lived in “somewhat of a limbo, though it was pretty clear they weren’t getting back together,” he said.

Dan said as a kid, he felt confused by the separation at first, and then hopeful about his parents possibly reuniting. It pushed him towards God, towards prayer.

“I was praying like crazy for my parents. A lot of rosaries, a lot of Divine Mercy Chaplets in grade school, sixth, seventh, eighth grade.”

But his understanding of those prayers was kind of “cold,” he said. He thought if he just prayed enough prayers, God had to grant him what he wanted. That eventually led to a lot of disillusionment and anger, Dan said, when it became clear a few years into the separation that his parents were not going to get back together.

“You’re caught between anger and love with your parents,” he said. “As a kid growing up, even as an adult…it’s still hard to navigate that – those complex, warring emotions.”

Dan waffled between not wanting to talk about the divorce – because the emotions were just too confusing and because he was worried how his parents would react – to feeling overwhelming anger because it seemed like there was an “unspoken rule,” particularly around his parents or siblings, that the divorce was something that was not to be talked about.

It wasn’t until Dan was a junior in high school that he really started to seek healing through the Church from the effects of the divorce, he said. He went on a retreat and he talked to some priests about what he had experienced for the first time. He told his parents he was seeking healing, and they were accepting of it.

“That really ushered in a path of healing that was going to extend over four more years very intensely,” he said, even though the process was “haphazard.” Not much existed in the Church to address this specific issue, and he had to seek out a lot of resources on his own.

As he studied marriage and family in graduate school at the Potificial John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America, Dan was part of a focus group that studied the effects of divorce on adult children. The project, called Recovering Origins, inspired him to create retreats that would help adult children of divorce – and these retreats would soon become the ministry, Life Giving Wounds.

The name of the ministry is taken from 1 Peter 2:24, “this beautiful passage which is, ‘by his wounds, you are healed’,” Dan said.

“It’s Christ teaching us the spirituality of redemptive suffering and helping people live that.”

That healing comes about in several ways, Dan and Bethany said. The first goal of the retreat is to “give voice to the pain,” to let retreatants know that their wounds as a result of divorce are valid, and giving them a place to grieve what was lost.

They share their stories and get their wounds “all out on the table.” Those wounds can take many shapes, Dan added, from protective behaviors like promiscuity and cohabitation, to broken relationships with parents or other family members, to identity crises and strained relationships with God.

Then they bring those wounds to the Holy Spirit in prayer, he said, and invite healing in. They also help facilitate further conversations with parents, spouses, friends, and therapists as needed.

“We also provide them resources on our blog to follow up with a support group. We give them recommended reading, so we give them a lot of the tools that they need in those different avenues, and we’re constantly creating more things,” Dan said.

Jennifer Cox was one of the first participants in a retreat for Recovering Origins, when Life Giving Wounds was still taking shape. Cox’s parents divorced when she was 7 in what she said was a kind of “best case scenario” divorce, at least on paper. Her parents were respectful to each other, they lived close enough to one another that bouncing back and forth between them was not too difficult. They both remained very involved in her life, attending her swim meets and other school events. Jennifer graduated college, became a nurse, and owned a home. By all measurable accounts, she was a successful adult.

“When I was in high school or my early twenties, if somebody said to me, ‘Wow, I’m so sorry that your parents are divorced. That must be really hard for you,’ I just would have looked at them like, ‘Okay. Well I mean, thanks, but I’m fine’,” she said.

But Cox started to notice something was wrong around her late 20s, she said. Although her life was seemingly going well, she experienced depression and anxiety, despite having normally been a very positive and upbeat person. She struggled with self-confidence and had an outsized fear of failing. 

She now recognizes that many of those wounds came from a place of not wanting to disappoint her parents and make life even harder for them. She said she also realized early on that she took it on as her “job” in the family to make her parents happy, so that they would not be sad because of the divorce.

“I started therapy, I started really digging into some of my struggles and a lot of the dots connected back to my parents’ divorce,” Cox told CNA. “And I was shocked, honestly. I just had no idea, because my parents divorce was a ‘good divorce’ and we had minimal issues. I have good relationships with both of them.”

The beauty of the retreat, Cox said, was being able to unite her wounds to Christ and to realize that she could use them to help others.

“When he was on the cross, Jesus suffered and had the ultimate woundedness of obviously physical wounds, but also the huge woundedness of being rejected,” Cox said. “Then that was redeemed. He rose again…he did that for all of us.”

“So for me, and specifically this wound of my parents divorce, in being able to acknowledge it and share my story…it makes it worth it somehow.”

Cox now volunteers with the ministry and helps coordinate content for their Instagram page. She said she would recommend the retreat to anyone whose parents have separated or divorced.

“If their parents are divorced, I’d want them to really take the time to reflect, to see where they are, did their parents’ divorce affect them. I think there are so many people walking around struggling with all sorts of things, but not realizing that there might be this route to (healing) that maybe we need to focus on. Think about it, pray about it, bring it to the Lord. Don’t ignore it, really lean into that.”

Samuel Russell is another participant in a Life Giving Wound retreat who now volunteers with the ministry, helping edit their blog.

Russell is a convert to Catholicism but grew up in a Christian environment, he said. Two years ago, when he was engaged to his now-wife, there were family issues and wounds that arose as he prepared for marriage.

Russell’s fiancee was the one who found Life Giving Wounds, and recommended that Russell try one of their retreats.

As someone about to get married, Russell said he was struggling with not having grown up with a marriage that lasted.

“It was the question of: Am I able to do this? Is this something I can actually do, live with? The phrase in the vows – ‘To have and to hold all the days of my life’ – not having that modeled, and having actually a broken model of that, it’s like you’re carrying that with you into something where you’re planning to say: ‘for the rest of my life’.”

“It was a challenge trying to grapple with the psychological level of, yes I can do this,” he said.

Russell said one thing that really struck him during the retreat was a song, Waiting in the Wound, by Michael Corsini.

The song “helped reframe how I think about Christ because…The song implies that Christ is already there. He’s in that wound that you know you have and he knows you have. He’s just waiting for you to come so he can heal it,” Russell said.

Russell said he encouraged other adult children of divorce to explore their own healing when they felt ready.

“I want people to know that they’re not alone in their suffering or grief on this issue,” he said. “And it’s okay to address it now, or address it in the future at a time when you feel more comfortable exploring it.” 

Dan said he hopes that Life Giving Wounds helps spark more conversations about healing from divorce in the Church, where sometimes there can be a stigma attached to the topic.

“I think the stigma is there for different reasons, like ‘Oh, I don’t want to bring up woundedness, that’s such a sensitive topic,’ or, ‘I don’t want to treat them as fragile,’ or, ‘I don’t want to upset their parents’,” Dan said.

“I would just say, I’d rather err on giving voice to the pain than saying nothing at all,” he said. “(Adult children of divorce) are getting the message, by and large, that this is something not to talk about, I can’t go to the Church and talk about this, I can’t go to the priest to talk about it. I haven’t heard many homilies from priests about divorce and the effect on children. I don’t know any I’ve heard in the last four or five years.”

Like countless ministries this year, Life Giving Wounds has had to cancel their in-person retreats for 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ministry is hosting an online retreat starting in October, the details of which can be found on their website, LifeGivingWounds.org.

Bethany said while they are disappointed to cancel their in-person retreat, they are hoping the online option makes it even more accessible.

“If you’re a child of divorce and you have seen ways that it’s affected you, it’s a retreat to go on. Or, if you’re not even sure, if you’re thinking okay, I’ve never really taken a good look at this, it’s a great retreat to go on for that, too. There will be people of all different places on that spectrum,” Bethany said.

“No matter what happened with your parents’ marriage, no matter when they divorced, no matter if they ever even were married, if your parents are not together, then the retreat is for you.

“You’re not alone,” Dan added.

 

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