Psychology and American Catholicism. - book review

Psychology and American Catholicism
C. Kevin Gillespie, S.J.
Crossroad, $24.95, 214 pp.

One need only pay a bit of attention to what passes for spirituality to affirm Phillip Rieff's 1966 argument that therapy was replacing faith in people's estimation. Seminars, conferences, and retreats advertise--and I am only speaking of Catholics here--everything from twelve-step programs, enneagrams, and Jungian analysis to pottery and massages. How we got from a situation in which Catholics reacted against "psychology" in any but its narrowly Thomistic sense to the acceptance of all stripes of psychotherapy and its cousins is the subject of Gillespie's highly readable and informative history.

Fulton Sheen, that charismatic windbag, railed against psychoanalysis in print and on television. His attacks triggered a reaction from Catholic psychiatrists as well as those knowledgeable in both experimental and clinical psychology. Yes, Sigmund Freud was suspect both for his reductionistic theories about religion and his penchant for talking about that most delicate of subjects--sex. But there was a tradition of academic psychology at, among other places, The Catholic University of America that had been pioneered by Edward Pace and continued by Thomas Vernor Moore. Nor did Pope Pius XII eschew the field of psychotherapy, if one credits his allocutions to those who practiced in the field.

It is the merit of Gillespie's book that he shows how academic psychology spurred Catholic clinical work and experimental research. He devotes a whole chapter to Sister Annette Walters, a Josephite nun who not only had great standing in the field, but who saw early on the application of clinical psychology to the formation of those in religious life. The fruition of psychological research among American Catholics came on the eve of Vatican II with the work of Gregory Zilboorg, Francis Braceland, and John Cavanaugh as well as the extraordinary labors of the Dutch-born priest, Adrian Van Kaam. The bridge figures to our time include the Jesuit psychoanalyst William Meissner, the late Henri Nouwen, and others who drew closer lines between the traditional care of souls and the insights of psychology.

In a concluding chapter, Gillespie surveys the current scene. He notes the crucial role of psychology in dealing with sexual abuse, addiction, and other serious traumas, and the ongoing efforts to develop serious programs in pastoral ministry; he issues a sober warning about the trivialization of psychology in certain areas of "spirituality." I only wish that he had further reflected on theology where the category of "experience" threatens to replace "faith formation" as a central part of theological hermeneutics.

Although my own interest in psychology is tangential, I found this a most helpful book. It was good to be reminded of the brilliant work of Edward Pace (a fellow Floridian), the spiritual itinerary of Thomas Vernor Moore (who ended his days as a Carthusian monk in Spain), the work of the Italian priest-psychiatrist Agostino Gemelli (who, alas, had a dubious record during the Fascist regime in Italy for, among other things, his barely disguised anti-Semitism), the exemplary labors of Van Kaam, Nouwen, and Annette Walters. Anyone interested in the intellectual history of the American Catholic Church will find much to learn in this well-researched book by an active teacher and scholar in the field of pastoral counseling.

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the city of Paris provided a home for an extraordinary group of Russian Orthodox emigre intellectuals who, among other things, founded and sustained the Saint Sergius Theological Institute. Great thinkers like Vladimir Lossky, Paul Evdokimov, Sergius Bolgakov, and Nikoli Berdyaev not only provided a corpus of important theological writings, but also, because of their decades-long dialogue with Roman Catholic French thinkers, brought their insights to bear on the great flourishing of theological thinking that prefigured Vatican II.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

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