Saints and psychiatry

Summary The Irish Saint Dympna, a distant and misty figure, with her martyrdom inspired a millenary tradition of family and community care for the mentally ill at Geel, in Belgium. She is the Catholic patron of the mentally afflicted.The French Saint Vincent de Paul, a powerful leader, took care of the insane and the poor in gentle ways; worked for reforms in hospitals, education, delinquency, and penology; founded religious orders dedicated to the sick; and set in motion the hospitals of La Salpêtrière and Le Bicêtre.The portuguese-Spaniard Saint John of God, a humble shepherd, a marginal soldier, an ignorant construction worker, and a modest salesman of books, has had more relevance to psychiatry than has Dympna, the martyr, or Vincent de Paul, the social reformer. No other saint has had more practical and sustained influence on hospital psychiatry than he, and it is a mystery of sorts that his name still awaits the distinguished place of honor it so richly deserves.     

Aids and All Saints

A sermon given by a London senior social worker on All Saints' Day 1986, during the Spode House conference 'The Catholic Church and Aids'.     

Moral Theology with the Saints

The article explores the way that the lives of the saints, and the church's remembrance and veneration of them provide a practical setting for moral reflection, for drawing near to God amid the ordinary, and for living graced and virtuous lives. It reviews recent developments in a theology of sanctity and inquires about the difference that the saints make to moral reasoning. Finally, it considers the life of Venerable Solanus Casey, O.F.M. Cap. as an extended example of the article's thesis.     

Let Us Be Saints if We Can

Stanley Hauerwas's Gifford Lectures are, at least in part, an interpretation of the Giffords that came before him. As a contribution to intellectual and theological history, however, I wish Hauerwas had given witness to Santayana's Hermes the hermeneut, along with the considerable, indeed considerate, witness he does give to his own Christian faith. Hauerwas seems to dislike Reinhold Niebuhr and, by my account, misreads William James. Thus I have to conclude that With the Grain of the Universe does not measure up to his own more capacious and incisive works.     

Celtic Saints and the Ecology of Death

Romantics mislead us when they depict nature as a garden where we feel at home. What drives nature is death, death with all its blood shedding pain. Death drives natural selection in evolutionary biology. The Celtic Saints in Ireland developed a rich spirituality that acknowledged the dominant role of death while trusting profoundly in divine providence.     

Saints, heroes, sages, and villains

This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is a thesis about moral worth that I??ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I think that account gets at one important sense of moral goodness, I argue here that it fails to capture several ways of being worthy of admiration on moral grounds. Moral goodness is more multi-faceted. My title is intended to capture that multi-facetedness: the essay examines saintliness, heroism, and sagacity. The variety of our common-sense moral ideals underscores the inadequacy of any one account of moral admirableness, and I hope to illuminate the distinct roles these ideals play in our everyday understanding of goodness. Along the way, I give an account of what makes actions heroic, of whether such actions are supererogatory, and of what, if anything, is wrong with moral deference. At the close of the essay, I begin to explore the flipside of these ideals: villainy.     

Saints With Glasses: Mexican Catholics in Alcoholics Anonymous

Observers of religion in the contemporary United States have interpreted participation in quasi-religious organizations as evidence of dissatisfaction with traditional religious institutions. In Latin America, the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of AA New York Alcoholics Anonymous World Services 1983  [Google Scholar] are associated with Protestant spirituality and membership in the group has been seen as rejection of the Roman Catholic Church. However, instead of abandoning their religious affiliations, Catholic men in one Mexican Alcoholics Anonymous chapter put their new beliefs and practices into the service of the old. They revised both their conception of God and their manner of participating in fiestas to become better functioning Catholics.     

Fearful Saints: Comforting friends in a hospital setting

The article examines the role of courage in breaking barriers which prevent friends unfamiliar with the health care industry from providing the needed support to sustain a friend during critical illness. “Fearful Saints” offers ways of understanding the complex issues which distance friends during illness. Close friends feel compelled to enter the world of suffering, but must first confront the terrifying images of illness. By examining Henri Nouwen'sThe Wounded Healer, and the story of Jesus asking his disciple Peter to wait with him in the garden, the concept of extending compassionate understanding during times of adversity becomes manageable. Although miracle potions may not be accessible, the reader learns to identify the role of comforter as one who will not permit an afflicted friend to travel through the experience alone.     

Raimond Gaita on Saints,Love and Human Preciousness

Raimond Gaita’s work in moral philosophy is unusual and important in focusing on the concept of sainthood. Drawing partly on the work of George Orwell, and partly on the life and work of Simone Weil, as well as on further material, I argue that Gaita’s use of this notion to help make sense of the concept of human preciousness is unconvincing, not least because he does not properly explore the figure and psychology of the saint in any detail. I relatedly argue that the notion of human preciousness in question is implausible and, in some ways, sentimental. I also explore Gaita’s concept of “speaking personally” in moral philosophy, and suggest that matters here are a great deal more complicated than he supposes.

Sinning Saints and Saintly Sinners: The Paradox of Moral Self-Regulation

ABSTRACT— The question of why people are motivated to act altruistically has been an important one for centuries, and across various disciplines. Drawing on previous research on moral regulation, we propose a framework suggesting that moral (or immoral) behavior can result from an internal balancing of moral self-worth and the cost inherent in altruistic behavior. In Experiment 1 , participants were asked to write a self-relevant story containing words referring to either positive or negative traits. Participants who wrote a story referring to the positive traits donated one fifth as much as those who wrote a story referring to the negative traits. In Experiment 2 , we showed that this effect was due specifically to a change in the self-concept. In Experiment 3 , we replicated these findings and extended them to cooperative behavior in environmental decision making. We suggest that affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally. However, when moral identity is threatened, moral behavior is a means to regain some lost self-worth.     

Icons,Liturgy, Saints: Ecological insights from Orthodox spirituality1

The technical language and specific images that we adopt when we speak about preservation of the natural environment depend on values and images that we promote and even presume in our daily behaviour and lifestyle. In Orthodox Christian spirituality, such language and images certainly play a crucial role. This presentation considers the central importance of: 1) the world of icons as the way we view and perceive creation; 2) the beauty of liturgy as the way we celebrate and respond to creation; and 3) asceticism in the lives of the saints as the way we respect and treat creation. It draws on classic Orthodox Christian texts as well as contemporary literature to provide fundamental spiritual insights into the way we comprehend God's creation and the way we should confront its exploitation in modern times.     

Prayer to the Saints or the Virgin And Health Among Older Mexican Americans

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a conceptual model that assesses whether praying to the saints or the Virgin is associated with the health of older Mexican Americans. A survey was conducted of 1,005 older Mexican Americans (Mean age = 73.9 years; SD = 6.6 years). Data from 795 of the Catholic respondents are presented in this study. The findings support the following relationships that are embedded in the conceptual model: (1) older Mexican Americans who attend church more often are more likely to believe in the efficacy of prayer to the saints or the Virgin; (2) stronger beliefs in the efficacy of intercessory prayer are associated with more frequent prayer to the saints or the Virgin; (3) frequent prayer is to the saints or the Virgin is associated with greater God-mediated control beliefs; (4) stronger God-mediated control beliefs are associated with greater optimism; and (5) greater optimism is associated with better self-rated health.     

播种圣贤教诲 读经己立立人——浅谈儿童读经教育

《大学》指出:“自天子以至于庶人,皆以修身为本。其本乱而末治者否矣。”现在的人们,实实在在早已忘记“正心修身”这个做人的根本。当今世界,我们看到的是:问题的青年,问题的学生,校园的暴力,青少年的犯罪以及由此衍生的家庭问题、社会问题层出不穷,已经到了触目惊心的程度。究其根源:我们丢弃了文化教育“承前启后,继往开来”的基本精神,我们已将国家民族的根本文化忘掉,已将古圣先贤的伦理道德抛弃,由此而导致的种种恶果,自然也就成为事所必至、理有固然的程度!慎终追远,民德归厚。要亡羊补牢,我们必须重新去认识我们的文化,去根植文化…