I'm father Charles Sikorsky, president of Weimar University, and I'm really blessed to be joined here today by doctor Bob Schutte, who is the founder and director of the John Paul the second Yealink Center.
And welcome, and thank you so much for taking time to be with us.
Yeah.
Thank you, Charles.
It's really good.
I love the work that you guys are doing.
Well, thank you.
And we admire what you do.
And and maybe you could give us a little bit about your, your background and and how you ended up where you are today.
Okay.
Yeah.
I I got my, I'll just start at the point of my degree.
I got a psychology degree at Columbia and then master's and doctorate at Florida State.
So it was a secular degree, but I had two Catholic friends that went through all my doctorate program with us and so it was a great opportunity to start to integrate, and yet there is still something really missing in terms of the foundation, which is what I love about what you guys are doing.
Yeah.
And, I I went into counseling and then I I started to run into my own, healing after I was a therapist and teacher and I was teaching, college programs.
And that drove me both into therapy for the first time and also to a renewal, spiritual renewal.
And it was the combination of those two things that the doing the work in therapy and the spiritual renewal that all of a sudden, they came together in a way that up before that, it was more here.
And as that like, it spiritually became real, like, the the intimacy.
And from that point on, I really developed a hunger to integrate and that's what we do now at John Paul the second healing center is this this integration of the psychological world with the Catholic faith and John Paul the second.
You know, you mentioned that.
I I one of the things that I shouldn't have been surprised by, but it did surprise me over the years working here at DMU, is some of our graduates saying, I feel perfectly prepared for my career and I loved everything I learned, but I ended up learning more about myself in studying this field.
And and I think people will hear that when you study counseling or psychology or even our spiritual director, you have to think that there's less self reflection that goes into it and Yeah.
You know, you can really hopefully, it'll be your experience that really helps you go on further.
Yeah.
It it shakes you up at first.
Yeah.
So then you practice for a while and then Of thirty five years.
Thirty thirty five years.
That's a long time.
And then you decided to stop that and and Yeah.
I mean shifted to the Hatcherty too.
Decide is probably too strong.
I eventually decided, but I started working with priests and seminarians way back while I was still a therapist.
Then I was doing marriage conferences and men's conferences and all of those things developed such a momentum, and the Theology of the Body Institute, I was working up there.
And so it all just kinda came together and it I couldn't do my therapy work anymore because this was just really growing and so that's when John Paul the second healing center started.
And what was it that made you see the need for that?
Well, the need was just so apparent in every every every group.
It was like people just needed permission to have that integration and they needed permission they needed a language.
And so, you know, the language of the church and the language of the experience as a therapist and a teacher just came together like aren't you?
Yeah.
But tell us a little bit about what what the John Paul two Healing Center does.
I know I've heard many great things from from priest who've gone through the the different retreats, but you also do a lot for lay people and, I suppose are they all Catholic or are people with the spiritual life or others?
Mostly Catholic.
We get a portion of people who are other Christian denominations or people who are searching.
But we have a bishop's retreat once a year.
That's been beautiful and powerful.
We have three retreats for religious women.
One for superiors, one for leaders, and one for sisters.
We we have, we just had, twelve years of seminary and a month long retreat and now we work with the formators in the seminary.
We have a thing for married couples, a thing for the general population called healing no person, podcasts, restoring the glory, and then we have a men's conference and a women's conference.
So Okay.
We're kind of a whole you're busy, the whole church.
And when you talk about the healing center, can you tell us a little bit of what what are the aspects that need to be healed and how like, the you have the we're incarnational beings.
There's a human part.
There's a spiritual part that's, that's just the truth.
It's just reality and so much of, you know, secular psychology kinda reduces the gist of a human.
And sometimes you can over spiritualize it as well.
You know?
How do you go about that?
And maybe in your experience, like, what yeah.
I I think because of my own experience of integrating that, it just naturally gets expressed in everything.
It's just seeing it together.
So we talk about the effect of sin is wounds.
So we talk about the seven deadly sins Mhmm.
And the seven deadly wounds.
And that if we only deal with the sin like in confession Mhmm.
And we're not attending to the wounds, the wounds become the festering ground for the sins.
Yeah.
And and so we wanna address both of them but we wanna address them not in a secular sense but with the understanding of science but also with the understanding of the Holy Spirit and how the teaching of the church.
And John Paul the second's teaching kind of like GMU comes just through everything.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
We had a bishop who visited one time.
He was he was home.
He said, you know, without the fall, there'd be no need for a psychologist or a therapist.
Right?
And that and we never, you know, call things by their appropriate for a priest.
There'd be no need well, that wouldn't be that.
We you'd be be be a be a lot different.
Yeah.
And so, so, how do you see I know you you have a great experience of integration and much experience in psychology and also working with priests, and the spiritual aspect of it.
It's kinda hard for a priest to be a psychologist.
It's kinda hard for a psychologist to be a spiritual expert.
What do you recommend?
Like, we we tried to do some things at DMU to get cooperation between priest, spiritual directors, and I'm sorry, counselors and psychologists.
How do you see that and and any suggestions to make that?
No.
I think that's tremendous.
I I think it's important for both to have some understanding of the other so that they're not speaking cross language.
But, yeah, there's a gift that the that the priest and the spiritual director has and there's a gift that the therapist counselors have and, you know, one starts at the human and integrates the spiritual, the other starts at the spiritual and integrates the human.
So as we work with the priest, they're needing their own healing and as they get their healing, they're then able to know kind of an internal level how to communicate the spiritual into the human in a way that they've experienced.
Yeah.
And dealing with those wounds.
Right?
Because the sins can be forgiven, but they leave a mark.
Right?
Some of the god god forgives but nature never forgives.
And so many times we walk around and really for grace to take its full impact, well, from more the psychological aspects of how we heal those wounds and that great it was like the calendar effect someone once called it.
Right?
The grace just kinda I get forgiven but I come back with the same sin all the time.
I can't break this bad habit.
Well, we gotta kinda heal that nature too.
Right?
One of the things we have in our teaching, you know, how Jesus uses the tree and getting to the roots of the tree all the way through.
So we have an image of a tree.
We have the sins up the top as a tree and then we have the the deadly sin at the trunk of the tree and then the ungodly self reliance which underlies the sin and then all the woundedness at the bottom underneath the ground.
And so it's often the hidden aspect that we don't see but it keeps manifesting in the sun as it does as it does.
So, for our students or aspiring students, who really wanna wanna be faithful Catholic professionals and really be but really do their scientific work well, based on your experience, what what would you what words would you have for them?
Well, one is at John Paul the second's anthropology which I know the anthropology of John Paul the second Mhmm.
Which I know is a core to to India.
That is so foundational because if you don't have a right vision for who we are as human beings and and that theology of the body and everything that he's developed in terms of the human person is actually the great integration of the human and spiritual.
So that is a foundation.
Second thing is our prayer life and our sacramental life.
If we're not doing that, then the knowledge puffs us up, Saint Paul says, rather than get build up.
Then the third is our own healing journey, you know, that there's there's and and that Jesus is the center of that.
Even in secular work, if Jesus is the center of that work and we allow the holy spirit to direct it, then we're not just rationalizing ourselves to it.
We're allowing the transformation to take place.
So understand, learn anthropology, be a man or woman of prayer, and put another crisis we put Christ at the center of all your work.
Yeah.
Very good.
Yeah.
And well, thank you so much for being with us.
Your thoughts, you I know you've mentioned a couple times of the anthropology we do have in your future DMU, and you didn't have that.
And I know some people, you know, have done like you know, I was talking to someone the other day.
You know, I actually, one of our faculty members went to very secular, so there's reason, but I had two friends and we just started doing it on our own.
But we try to give people a shortcut at DMU.
So, so it's never appreciated.
Yeah.
So so that that's kinda what we're trying to do.
So just thank you for for for, being with us and, appreciate it.
And any any words for our students as far as, you know, they're thinking about a career and, you know, you know, if you're not I think a lot of people who aren't we get a lot of former seminarians who are religious or religious sisters that focus missionaries who are kinda like, I want I don't I'm not called, right, to be a a priest or a missionary for my whole life, but I wanna help people on a deep level.
I I can't think of a better field to do that.
Yeah.
It's it's been incredible.
Just, there there are it's it can be taxing, so you really have to have self care.
But you get into the depths of the human person's heart in a way that hardly anyone else does and that's why it's so important that we have that spiritual House and cleanness, you know, purity of heart that we're continually growing in.
But, just it's a great, profession occupation, but it's more than that.
It's a vocation.
And so if you're called to that, just live it from your heart with Jesus.
Thank you so much.
Now you you've written so many great books and your your website, where would the people if they wanna get more information about the retreats and books and stuff?
John Paul the second Healing Center.
All the books are there, and restore the glory podcast.
We have a lot of stuff that you can get download for free and listen.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, doctor Eric Schultz, and, great to talk to you.
Thank you, Paul.
God bless you.
God bless.