Page 58 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

Church Traditions for a Christian Psychology

quently described as follows: Human virtues The glory of God is man fully alive; moreover
are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revela-
perfections of intellect and will that govern our tion through creation has already obtained life
actions, order our passions, and guide our con- for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much
duct according to reason and faith. They make more will the Word’s manifestation of the Fa-
possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a ther obtain life for those who see God. (Adver-
morally good life. The virtuous man is he who sus Haereses, 4, 20, 7; as cited in Catechism of
freely practices the good. (Catechism of the Ca- the Catholic Church, n. 294)
tholic Church, n. 1804) Catholic psychology is veiled in the mystery of
Wojtyła advocated the development of a new Transfiguration. In the words of St. Paul: And
and personalistic science of virtue and vice we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory
(aretology), “located at the crossing from me- of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness
taphysics to ethics”: This gift of self, which man from one degree of glory to another. (2 Cor.
can and should make in order to fully find him- 3:18, RSV)
self, is realized through particular virtues and For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face
through each of them….This gift of the person to face. Now I know in part; then I shall un-
is ruined and frustrated through man’s particu- derstand fully, even as I have been fully under-
lar vices and sins. (Wojtyła, 1974/2013, p. 284) stood. (1 Cor. 13:12, RSV)
Toward this end, Titus and colleagues (2006, Catholic psychology begins and ends in myste-
2009) have worked to develop a psychology of ry.
character and virtue.

Person and Communion
Catholic psychology is a psychology of person
and communion, a psychology of person and
gift: At the end of the pilgrimage of the human
race and the path of life of each person is the
call to communion, where the integral body-
soul unity is restored, where the uniqueness
and character of each person is realized, where
full self-possession freely surrenders to mutual
self- donation, where each person is given and
received as gift within the communion of saints
and the communion of the Trinity. In the words
of Pope John Paul II:
The reciprocal gift of oneself to God…will be
the response to God’s gift of himself to man….
This concentration of knowledge (‘vision’) and
love on God himself—a concentration that can-
not be anything but full participation in God’s
inner life, that is, in trinitarian Reality itself—
will….above all be man’s rediscovery of himself,
not only in the depth of his own person, but
also in that union that is proper to the world
of persons in their psychosomatic constituti-
on. Certainly this is a union of communion.
(1984/2006, 68:3-4)
Catholic psychology’s view of nature in this life
culminates with the beatific vision in the next.
In the words of St. Irenaeus:

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