Don’t Settle for a Small Life; Practice Magnanimity Instead

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The 2022 film Father Stu tells the true story of Stuart Long’s improbable journey to becoming a Catholic priest. After a hard childhood, he struggles with alcoholism as he restlessly pursues greatness, first as a boxer, then as an aspiring actor. He accepts baptism in the Catholic Church to win the heart of the woman he loves, but remains skeptical of God’s goodness.

After a near-death experience, he begins pursuing a deeper relationship with God. The journey unsettles him, though. While receiving confession one day, he complains that God is “[messing] with” him. “Another term for that,” says his beleaguered confessor, “is grace, God’s grace. It appears you are the recipient.”

For all of Stu’s shortcomings, he didn’t settle for a small life, but instead pursued greatness—even if he initially did so in the wrong places.

Later, that drive toward greatness would be refined into magnanimity, the virtue that propels us toward “greatness of soul.” And as Dr. Greg Popcak and Lisa Popcak explained on a recent episode of their radio show More2Life, magnanimity is the virtue that keeps us from settling for less than what God wants for us.

Why We Settle

Few of us would claim to have an all-around “great” life, and most of us can identify at least one part of our life that feels—well, not so great: a marriage that has gone flat, a job that stopped meaning much, a grown child you worry about, an aspiration that has gone unfulfilled.

As Christians, though, what matters is what we do next: Do we settle for the way things are, or do we make the changes that will lead to our best life?

All too often, the Popcaks say, we settle for the status quo out of fear or a lack of imagination or simply because it seems like the easier path.

“God calls us to live lives that reflect the greatness of God’s grace,” Lisa Popcak said. “And it can actually be sinful to live a small life rooted in a lack of courage, or small mindedness, or the idea that ‘that’s just the way it is.’ God wants more for us than we can even begin to want for ourselves.”

Sometimes, too, people mistakenly dress up their inclination to settle for the status quo as an act of humility. But neither humility nor self-denial are about accepting less than what God wants for us.

“Being humble doesn’t mean leading a powerless, limited, unfulfilling life of settling,” Dr. Greg said. “It means acknowledging that I don’t have the first clue how to live an abundant life…but simultaneously professing that with God’s grace, it will be done.”

Magnanimity: Pursuing Greatness

The restlessness that Stuart Long felt—and tried to satisfy in so many ways—comes from our God-given dignity.

“God built a longing into all of us, a longing for a love that doesn’t fail, for relationships that fulfill us, for a life that shows off God’s grace,” Lisa Popcak said. “That restlessness you feel when part of your life is stuck on ‘just okay’…is God saying, ‘I created you for more than this.’”

The virtue that drives us to seek more is magnanimity, which St. Thomas Aquinas defined as the virtue that disposes a person to undertake great things worthy of honor. It does this while avoiding, on one hand, presumption (attempting what exceeds one’s capacities), and on the other hand, pusillanimity (shrinking from the good one is capable of—a fancier word for “settling”).

“Magnanimity is the virtue of living a life that glorifies God, a life that really shows you at your best, that enables you to participate in relationships that witness to the power of God’s love in our lives,” Dr. Popcak explained. “In a sense, living in a way that glorifies God and asking God every day, Lord, teach me how to respond to this in a way that would really help me glorify you.”

Three Steps for Moving toward Magnanimity

Just as people sometimes confuse settling for less with the virtue of humility, people also sometimes get confused about the pursuit of greatness. Stuart Long, for example, initially sought greatness in the boxing ring, then in Hollywood, and then in a romantic relationship. None of those goals were necessarily bad, but he was pursuing them as an end in themselves, not out of true magnanimity.

Jacob Popcak, a pastoral counselor with CatholicCounselors.com, joined Lisa and Dr. Greg to share a process for discerning what, exactly, we ought to be striving toward as we pursue the greatness God wants for us.

“I don’t want to assume that just because I want a Cadillac automatically means that God desires a Cadillac for me,” he said. “I want to understand what in my desires is really calling me to God.”

Here’s the three-step process he suggests.

1. Write the desire at the top of the page

Put it in plain words: to meet someone you could marry, to find peace in the marriage you already have, to get a particular job.

2. Ask open-ended questions that uncover the real desire

From a calm, prayerful space, ask questions such as:

  • What would it say about me, or what would be true about me, if this desire came to pass?
  • What would change about how other people saw me?
  • What virtues do I imagine I’d have, or would need to have, for this to come to pass?

For example, if you really want a new Cadillac, your investigation of the deeper desire might reveal that you are proud of your success, and you want to enjoy that success and be reminded of the gratitude you have for God’s hand in your life. You might identify the virtues you would need to achieve this goal as hard work, prudence, or patience.

Those revelations might prompt you to dig even deeper. In any case, you are looking for the deeper emotional and psychological underpinning of the desire.

“We’re really sitting with the desire,’ Flores-Popcak said, “and we’re unwrapping it like a present that God wants to give us.”

3. Bring the deeper longing back to God

Once you can name what lies beneath the desire (to feel capable, to be known as someone who didn’t give up, to belong), hand it to God. Ask God: “But how do you want to fulfill the deeper, more vulnerable underpinnings of my desire for more that you’ve placed on my heart?”

Pursuing a Great Life

Later in the show, the Popcaks applied Jacob’s process to a situation that a listener named Joan asked about. Her older sister cut off the whole family sixteen years ago, and Joan still sends letters, emails, and the occasional text in the hope that they might reconnect. Joan asked whether that was wise.

Dr. Popcak affirmed her basic approach, but also named where she might be tempted to settle. “Where we start to settle in these situations,” he said, “is believing that this one person is the only person who can give us healing.”

He invited Joan to ask what a restored relationship would say about her (perhaps that she is a good person, or that she hasn’t given up on her sister) and to bring those needs to God: “If you can identify that and then bring those to God, then he can start to fulfill those deepest longings of your heart, even if your relationship with your sister never improves.”

Rather than waiting on a relationship she can’t control to be her only source of healing, this approach invites her to ask God, “What’s your plan for helping me to heal this part of my heart and to move forward and celebrate the life that you want me to have?”

For more help discerning the path to a great life, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

Dr. Popcak’s book The Life God Wants You to Have also offers a faith-based plan for discovering the divine plan when human plans fail.

Big Decision? Don’t Wait for God to Text the Answer; Try These Questions Instead

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Rindy had prayed a nine-day novena to St. Thérèse. She had prayed the rosary nightly. She had asked God, plainly and repeatedly, to help her decide whether to go back to her job after her maternity leave or stay at home with her children.

Despite all that prayer, she was still unclear about what to do when she called into the More2Life radio show on the EWTN radio network.

“I’m not getting that text message (from God),” she told hosts Dr. Greg Popcak and Lisa Popcak. “I’m not getting that clear answer.”

Like Rindy, many people want to do the right thing, the thing God is calling them to do, but as much as they ask for clear direction, they are still left wondering which road to take.

While the Popcaks were not able to point Rindy in one direction or another, they did share some advice that could help her, and others in her position, move forward with a big decision more confidently.

Don’t Wait for Angels and a Light from Heaven

Most of us feel it would be great if God were super clear about what direction we ought to take, Lisa Popcak acknowledged. “We just want to hear the angels singing, and God’s light shining upon (the correct) decision,” she said.

But as the spiritual master St. Ignatius of Loyola pointed out, God doesn’t tend to send us angels (or text messages) unless there is no other way for us to discern his will. Yes, St. Paul got blinded by a light from heaven, but he was utterly convinced that he was serving God by persecuting the early Church. It took a dramatic intervention to point him in the right direction.

In most cases, though, God “tends to incline our hearts toward (the right path) as we sit and reflect on (our options),” Dr. Popcak said. As generations of holy men and women have learned, God wants his people to grow closer to him, and that requires the work of discernment.

But this can lead to another question: How do we know that it is God who is inclining our hearts in one direction or another? What if we’re just following our own selfish desires?

A Compass for Discernment

Drawing on St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the Popcaks offer a simple way to interrogate the inclinations of our heart. Ask: “Is this inner prompting pointing me toward meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue?”

If it is, then there is a good chance that prompting is from the Holy Spirit. If, on the other hand, it points you toward powerlessness, isolation, or self-pity and self-indulgence, then it likely does not come from God.

Why test any inner prompting against these three criteria? Meaningfulness is what lets you use your gifts to bless someone else. Intimacy is all about building deeper, healthier relationships. And virtue helps you become the person God made you to be. Together, these three conditions act like a compass, pointing you toward the abundant, fulfilling life God wants you to have.

“The next time you’re standing at a fork in the road asking, ‘Which way, Lord?’” Dr. Popcak said, “stop hunting for the secret answer. Check your compass: Ask which road makes you more of a gift, brings you closer to the people in your life and gives you healthier relationships with and enables you to become the stronger, healthier, more virtuous person God’s calling you to be.”

Three Ways to Put the Compass to Work

Besides this three-question compass, the Popcaks offer some additional advice for people discerning big decisions.

  1. Give God all the options, not just two. “Instead of just saying to God, ‘Okay, Lord, do you want me to do this or that,’ say, ‘Okay, Lord, help me to see all the possibilities,’” Dr. Popcak suggested. Rindy, for instance, had more than two possibilities (staying home or going to work full time) open to her. Be open to all the possibilities, and let God point out ones you might not have considered.
  2. Ask, ‘Is it possible,’ not ‘Is it perfect?’ As she was explaining her thinking to the Popcaks, Rindy offered a long list of considerations: How will we handle tight finances without the extra income? How will being home all day affect my mental health? These are valid considerations, but it’s important to distinguish which of them are serious enough to take an option off the table entirely, and which are logistical questions that can be figured out later. The truth is, whatever path you take is going to have its challenges (and its joys)—that’s just life. And it’s also true that, whatever path you take, God will be right there with you, helping you to manage those challenges.
  3. Bring the questions back to prayer more than once. The three-question compass is not a one-and-done silver bullet. Rather, plan on sitting with the questions across several days of prayer. Collect facts about each of your choices, too; in Rindy’s case, this might mean talking to her employer and her spouse, and taking a close look at the family finances. Both strategies will help you to have more certainty about the direction you should take.

Don’t Wait for Absolute Certainty

Once you have tested your options against the three “compass questions” over several days, don’t wait for 100% certainty—because it’s not likely to show up. Instead, trust that as long as you have been discerning in good faith, God will have your back.

Dr. Popcak said he will often entrust his decision to God with a prayer: “Okay, Lord, based on the fact that this is possible, and it seems to lead to greater meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue, this is what I’m going to do. But if that’s not what you want me to do, please hit me upside the head and let me know.”

As long as you’re generally moving toward meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue, a wrong turn isn’t fatal; God will help you adjust your course along the way.

If you’re wrestling with a decision and could use help applying this discernment framework to your own life, the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com are ready to walk with you. Dr. Popcak’s book, The Life God Wants You to Have: Discovering the Divine Plan When Human Plans Fail, goes deeper into this exact process for anyone facing a fork in the road.

Are Political Arguments Ruining Your Family Relationships? Here’s How to Change the Dynamic

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Rose and her 28-year-old son get together regularly, often to cook or bake—an activity they both enjoy.

That’s the good part. Unfortunately, their time together often ends up spoiled by political arguments.

“Our conversations always seem to devolve into political arguments,” Rose said in a call to the More2Life radio show hosted by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. “His facts and my facts. He wants to convince me of his position, and in many cases I just can’t go there.”

Political rancor can cause real problems in families. Studies show about 35 to 40 percent of Americans report having heated arguments over political differences. A smaller number (15 to 20 percent) have gone so far as to cut ties with a relative.

And yet, for most of us, family ties trump political ones. In 2021, the Pew Research Center asked 2,596 U.S. adults: “What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying? What keeps you going and why?” The top response among both Democrats and Republicans was “family.” Politics wasn’t among even the top five responses.

For people who value family relationships more than their political affiliation, the good news is that political differences don’t need to spoil those relationships.

Three Tips for Avoiding Political Meltdowns in Your Family Relationships

Here are three tips from Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak about how to handle situations like Rose’s.

1. Put things in perspective

Ask yourself, what’s more important, scoring points or loving the person in front of me? The truth is, the outcome of our political arguments rarely matters as much as it might feel they do.

“We often think that we have to die on these hills that are just stuff on social media that’s freaking everybody out and will pass in the next four to eight years,” Lisa told Rose. “Things will change.”

Will the political battles that seem to matter so much today really matter that much in ten years? Probably not. But long after the news cycle has moved on, your family relationship will remain.

Here’s another reason to avoid engaging in political debates: As much as you might want to persuade your child to your perspective, that is unlikely to happen. In fact, pushing your views too hard will likely just reinforce your child’s stance.

“This is a time where it’s kind of better to bear the wrong patiently, in a sense,” Dr. Popcak said. “You’re not actually doing any good by engaging.”

2. Warmly redirect the conversation

When someone tries to engage you in a political debate, warmly but firmly redirect the conversation to personal matters.

“What you want to say to him is, ‘Hey, I respect your viewpoint on that, but it’s beside the point. I’m loving spending time with you. I’m loving cooking this with you. Tell me what you did this week. Tell me about your life,’” Lisa advised Rose. “You want to show him that you love him, you respect him, and you want time with him.”

Dr. Popcak agreed. “Then it really becomes about loving him, you guys loving each other, and not turning each other into projects on some kind of political or social level.”

Notice that by warmly redirecting the conversation, you’re not conceding the point or pretending to agree. You are simply telling your child that she matters more to you than the topic does, which happens to be true.

3. Hold out for the payoff

All of this restraint might feel like a lot. As parents, we are hardwired to guide and protect our kids, and by the time they are adults, we’ve had many years of practice doing just that. But as the Popcaks frequently point out, we can’t treat our adult children the way we did when they were two, ten, or even sixteen.

What we can do, though, is maintain a warm, personal relationship with our adult children so that we can be there for them when it matters most. If your child shares that he is struggling with work, for instance, you can empathize with him, and even offer a prayer: Lord, please bless my son and help him know how to handle this. Similarly, if he shares good news, you can pray: Lord, thank you so much for bringing that joy into his life.

“Let him know how much you love him, and then you move on,” Dr. Popcak told Rose. Communicating that love and bringing God into the relationship is where you can make a huge difference in your child’s life. “The political stuff is kind of a distraction from the real issues that you want to be addressing, in order to ultimately lead him to a place where he’s more open to the Lord. But you won’t get there by having the abstract political arguments. It’ll only be by redirecting things back to the personal relationship and how you can be a support to him there.”

For more on building the kind of relationship that makes your adult children open to what you have to say, see Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s book Having Meaningful (Sometimes Difficult) Conversations with Your Adult Sons & Daughters. And for personalized support with an adult son or daughter, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

What To Do When Your Adult Child Goes ‘No Contact’

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It’s been more than ten years since Patricia’s 49-year-old daughter last had contact with her—no phone calls, no visits.

Now, her 32-year-old son has cut off contact, too, leaving Patricia anguished and worried about his ongoing medical condition.

“I’ve been the best mother a mother can be,” she told Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak on their More2Life radio show recently. “As a mother, I am so worried. I wake up at three in the morning; I go to church and do the rosary.”

Another caller from Oklahoma shared a different version of the same story: her daughter went no contact two years ago, after the listener’s marriage ended: calls blocked, birthday cards returned. Worse, the daughter has maintained contact with her father (the listener’s former husband), even though it was his substance abuse and infidelity that ended the marriage.

The anonymous caller shared that she has been going to therapy for two years, working on various issues. Now, she simply wants to reconnect with her daughter. “I would give anything if my daughter would call me and say, ‘Mom, we’ve got to talk.’ Oh my goodness, yes! How do I reach out to her?”

Broken Family Relationships Are All Too Common

The Popcaks noted that they have received quite a few of these “no contact” calls in recent months. Cutting off all contact might be justified in some situations where the relationship is so unhealthy as to be harmful, they acknowledge. But for most situations, there is space for reconciliation in the relationship. 

Lots of people experience the pain of estrangement: recent polling finds that about 35 percent of Americans report being estranged from an immediate family member.

The good news is that it’s possible to heal these broken relationships, and many people do. Ohio State sociologist Rin Reczek tracked 8,495 mother-child and 8,119 father-child relationships for more than twenty years; of those experiencing estrangement, 69 percent of father-child estrangements ended, as did 81 percent of mother-child estrangements.

So, if you share Patricia’s pain, there is hope. But what’s the best way to get from “no contact” to a better relationship with your adult children?

The Road to Reconciliation Begins with a Question

A good way to begin, the Popcaks told Patricia, is to think about what your kids are trying to say by going no-contact.

“They’re sending you a message,” Dr. Popcak said. “They’re saying, mom, the way you care feels toxic.” They might even feel violated in some way.

The Popcaks had a similar challenge for the anonymous caller to consider: “If your daughter were the one calling this show, why would she say she cut you off?”

For Patricia, the answer was likely her habit of relying on her adult kids to manage her anxiety. The caller from Oklahoma acknowledged that her daughter would likely call her “controlling.”

In both cases, the callers insisted that they cared about their children and never intended to cause them distress. But that can be true right alongside the reality of the children’s feelings about the relationship. What is important, the Popcaks said, is that the first step toward reconnecting with your adult kids begins with acknowledging their account of the relationship — whether it seems fair or not.

Your goal here is to be able to state their case well enough that they would recognize it as theirs. That’s what provides the opening for renewing the relationship.

But what then?

Three Steps Toward Reconnecting with Your Adult Child

1. Don’t Argue Your Case

Above all, don’t argue your case, explain your actions, or otherwise attempt to persuade your child that what they are saying about you and your relationship is off base. It’s not that you don’t have a right to share your side of the story — eventually. It’s simply the reality that, no matter how unfair it seems, you need to “bite your tongue,” as Dr. Popcak put it, during the tender, tentative first steps toward re-establishing contact.

2. Help Them Feel Safe and Heard

When you make an overture toward reconnecting with your child, you want to remember that, in all likelihood, they have cut off contact to protect themselves. In order to re-establish contact, you need to make it safe for them to be vulnerable with you.

“Safe” in this context is about more than not yelling or saying hurtful things; you want to go beyond that, approaching the conversation with a humble spirit of acceptance and curiosity.

Dr. Popcak suggested the Oklahoma caller begin by writing her daughter a short note along these lines: I understand that you felt I’ve been controlling, and I’m sorry I’ve come off that way to you. That is not what I intended, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how you saw our relationship.

Then, the overture: I want you to know that I’m ready to hear whatever it is that you have to tell me, whenever you’re ready to tell me.

In your initial conversations, continue to hold this posture of patient humility: Don’t explain; don’t justify; don’t argue. You don’t have to acknowledge that their account is the whole truth or even factually correct, but you can and should listen to their account of how they felt relating to you in the past.

3. Give It Time and Go at Their Pace

At some point, you may be able to offer to share your own side of the story. But to get to that point, you need to re-establish trust, which means letting them set the pace.

What does this look like? Dr. Popcak offered this “script” as an example: Look, there’s a lot I could say about why I did what I did or what I was trying to do, and I could talk about that if you’re willing, but I just want you to know that I understand that none of that really matters. What matters in the end is the relationship that we have and that you haven’t experienced me as supportive or listening (or whatever they say is the case). And moving forward, I’d really like to figure out how to heal that, when you’re ready. But I respect your boundaries, whatever they might be. 

“It’s only by taking that humble but sincere and strong approach that you can find your way through it,” Dr. Popcak said.

A Little Humility Goes a Long Way

Part of what makes the process of reconnecting with estranged adult children difficult is the crushing sense that, despite our best intentions, we messed up as parents. Remember, though, that many other parents have been in the same position and come out on the other side with a closer relationship with their adult kids.

Even Dr. Popcak has had to swallow his pride when his adult child was critical about the way something was handled growing up.

“Not only am I his father, I’m the parenting expert!” Dr. Popcak laughs. “But I’ve got to get over myself.”

Our adult kids are no longer two or ten or sixteen, Lisa pointed out, so we can’t continue to relate to them as if they were. “They’re adults, and they want us to get to know them as adults, and we have to let our children get to know us in a way that they never have before.”

If your adult son or daughter has gone “no contact,” Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s book Having Meaningful (Sometimes Difficult) Conversations with Your Adult Sons & Daughters provides a much more detailed roadmap toward a better relationship. And for more personalized support, reach out to the team of pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

Helping Your Kids Discern the Big Decisions

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As Karen’s high school age daughter began looking at colleges, she set her heart on a large school across the country. That worried Karen, who felt that her daughter, though a good kid, was more of a follower than a leader. What if, Karen worried, her daughter fell in with the wrong crowd? But when she said that out loud, her daughter accused her of being controlling.

“I want to trust her, but I also feel like part of my job is to keep her from walking off a cliff,” Karen said in an email to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, hosts of the More2Life radio show. ”Where’s the line between helping her discern and just imposing what I think is best?”

Karen’s instinct is right on target. As much as we might want to shepherd our kids around every pitfall that life throws their way, it’s far better to help them make good decisions on their own. But how do we do that?

Making Room for Kids to Practice Discernment

If we’re trying to teach our kids how to make good decisions, then instead of just telling them what the right answer is, “we have to kind of give up the idea that we have the right to kind of tell the child what to do,” Dr. Popcak said.

Yes, we parents have the right and responsibility to protect our kids’ well-being. But just as our kids won’t learn to ride a bike if we aren’t willing to give them some space, we also need to make room for them to practice decision making.

That practice can begin early with small decisions, said Rachel Watkins, developer of the Little Flowers Girls Club and a guest of the More2Life show. Even young kids can participate in a conversation about what to do over the weekend or where to go on vacation, she said. Even when it comes to big family decisions, like whether to accept a job offer or move to another state, kids can be invited to pray with Mom and Dad about the decision.

Start by Praying Together

Prayer is key to discernment, Greg and Lisa told Karen. They suggested that she and her daughter pray together about the decision—out loud, and addressing God, not one another.

“You’re talking to God in each other’s presence,” Lisa said. “You’re listening to each other while you’re both talking to God, and you’re asking the Holy Spirit to help you clue in to certain things that each other is saying.”

For example, Karen might talk to God out loud about her fears and concerns. Her daughter, in turn, might pray about how she feels controlled and not trusted by her parents. For this to work, it’s key that the prayer be genuine, not a lecture disguised as a prayer.

“You can use that prayer then as a springboard for deeper conversation,” Dr. Popcak said.

God Wants Us to Have an Abundant Life

Kids and adults alike will often ask whether the fruit of their prayer is really God’s voice, or just their own.

Dr. Popcak suggests that question is a red herring. “The question we need to be asking is, what direction does this voice lead in?” he said. “We can discover God’s will by prayerfully leaning into three qualities, meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue.”

Those three qualities offer kids (and adults) a compass for making important life decisions because they are the three pillars of the abundant life God wants for us. Anything that points toward meaningfulness, intimacy and virtue is likely from the Holy Spirit, while anything pulling toward powerlessness, isolation or self-indulgence is not.

As you and your child practice discerning together, ask:

  1.   Meaningfulness. Which option gives your child the best chance to use their gifts to make a positive difference? Not which looks most impressive, but where this particular young person has something to offer.
  2.   Intimacy. Which option leads to deeper, stronger, healthier relationships?
  3.   Virtue. Which option will challenge your child to become more of the whole, healed, godly, grace-filled person God made them to be? 

You Don’t Need Trumpets to Move Forward

Sometimes people will fall into the trap of waiting for an explicit, obvious sign that they are making the right decision: a flash of light, a voice from the sky, a trumpet fanfare.

But such signs are rare, and in most cases, we don’t really need anything more than to trust that God will walk alongside us, continuing to guide us as we go along. A prayerful, open spirit plus the “compass” of meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue will keep you and your child headed in the right general direction, which is seeking God’s loving will. As long as we desire to follow God’s will, God in his mercy will help us refine the course we’ve charted.

Dr. Popcak said that as he settles on a direction in his own life, he prays something like this: Lord, I brought this to you and I’ve investigated the things that are truly possible. This direction seems not only possible, but it also seems like it will lead me to greater meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue, so this is what I’m going to do. But if that’s not what you want me to do, please hit me upside the head and let me know.

Teach Your Kids to Fly

Lisa used a vivid image for the role that parents ought to play in helping their kids learn to discern big decisions. Don’t engage in helicopter parenting, she said, hovering over your kids to direct their every move. Instead, teach them to fly the helicopter. That means sitting alongside them as a mentor and guide…until they are ready to fly on their own.

For more on raising children who can hear God’s voice for themselves, see Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s book Discovering God Together: The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids. And for personalized support with a big family decision, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

 

What Does the Theology of the Body Have to Do with Mental Health?

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Which is more important to your health, your mind or your body? How you or your health care provider answers that question has real implications for your well-being.

Most of us treat the body and mind as two separate entities, reaching for a pill for physical pain and going to therapy for emotional struggles. Inevitably, this divide leaves us feeling fragmented and poorly served by modern medicine.

But the Catholic Church has long insisted that body and mind are not competing entities, but are profoundly united. Spirit and matter “are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature” (Catechism #365).

It’s a radically countercultural doctrine. For centuries, influential thinkers have pulled this unity apart. On one side, Plato and René Descartes treated the body as a sort of prison for the mind; early pioneers of psychology like Freud and Skinner followed suit by largely ignoring the body’s role in mental health. On the other side, materialist philosophers claimed that the human being is nothing more than a complex biological machine—a view that resurfaced when the discovery of psychiatric medications led many modern experts to reduce mental health to “chemical imbalances” in the brain.

In recent decades, modern science has come to recognize that mind and body are a single, deeply connected system. The Catholic Church has known this for centuries, and in the writings of Pope John Paul II, now known as the Theology of the Body, that ancient truth has been developed into a comprehensive framework for understanding the human person.

The Theology of the Body is foundational to the way the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com approach pastoral therapy. Here’s what it teaches and why it matters for your mental health.

A Roadmap for Human Wellness

When St. John Paul II became pope in 1978, he brought with him a manuscript he had been developing for years on what it means to be a human person. His starting point, as Dr. Popcak describes on the More2Life radio show, was this: if we took everything God has given us—creation, Scripture, salvation history, all of it—what universal principles could we discover about living a more abundant life and having healthier, holier relationships?

The answer became a comprehensive vision of the human person: what it means to be human, how we are wired for mental and emotional flourishing, and how we relate to one another. This vision became known as the Theology of the Body, and several of its insights speak directly to mental health.

Your Body is Speaking. Are You Listening?

One of TOB’s central claims is that our bodies are part of how God communicates his design for us. As Lisa Popcak explains on the show, drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas, God speaks to us through every cell of our bodies. Aquinas called this the Book of Nature—the idea that how God designed us, body, mind, and spirit, reveals his plan for how we are meant to live and relate to one another.

“Theology of the Body reminds us that biology is theology,” Dr. Popcak explains. “By prayerfully reflecting on the way God built our bodies and brains, we can discern important insights about what it takes to live a healthy, holy life.”

The human body offers numerous examples of this principle at work.

  • The face. The human face has roughly 43 muscles dedicated almost entirely to emotional expression—far more than almost any other animal. Humans are also unique among primates in having visible whites of the eyes, which allows others to track exactly where we are looking and what we are paying attention to. We are, literally, built to be
     “read” and to “read” others. The body reveals that we are made for mutual knowing.
  • Mirror neurons. God wired the human brain with mirror neurons—cells that fire when we observe another person’s emotional state, producing a similar feeling in ourselves. This is the neurological basis for empathy. We are designed not merely to observe others’ inner lives, but to share them.
  • Touch. Physical touch—a hand on a shoulder, a long hug from someone you trust—triggers the release of oxytocin, a hormone that reduces cortisol, lowers heart rate, and builds a sense of safety and trust. Research shows that holding someone’s hand during a stressful situation measurably reduces their physiological stress response. The body is designed to give and receive comfort through physical presence—another form of self-donation.
  • Secure attachment. When people feel securely connected to God and others, their nervous system operates in a calmer, more integrated state. The body’s social engagement system is literally activated by felt safety in relationship. Isolation, by contrast, keeps the nervous system in a low-grade state of vigilance and threat. This is why withdrawal from God and others doesn’t just feel painful—it physiologically disrupts our capacity to function well.
  • Anxiety. Brain science tells us that anxiety is not primarily a response to external problems, but acts as a warning signal that something is wrong in our connections to God and others. “Rather than being a direct response to problems,” Lisa Popcak explains, “anxiety is actually a sign that we feel disconnected from people—the people that God has placed in our life to support us. The key to regaining our peace is working to restore that sense of communion and connection.” When we feel anxious, the body is sending a message: go find safe, healthy people.

Physical symptoms like panic attacks, chronic tension, and persistent exhaustion follow the same logic. They are often the body making visible some dysfunction in the mind or spirit. Medication may help manage those symptoms, but lasting healing requires attending to the whole person.

We Are Wired for Communion

These five examples point toward one of TOB’s most practically important teachings: we are made for communion. Not just in the sense that other people are nice to have around, but in the deeper sense that we are literally strongest when connected to God and to one another—physically, neurologically, and spiritually designed to give and receive love.

As Dr. Popcak puts it, isolation doesn’t just leave us running low; it actively drains us. When problems cause us to withdraw from God and the people we love, our brains change in ways that make us feel powerless, overwhelmed, and alone.

This understanding that we are made for relationship shapes the Popcaks’ approach to specific problems. When a caller struggles with anxiety, for example, the conversation might move toward examining what connections in their life feel threatened or broken. Other times, when someone lacks the confidence to tackle a tough problem, the Popcaks urge the practice of receptivity, which Lisa explains as “the ability to listen to God in the moment so we’re not just relying on our own strength or our own instincts or even our own fears to guide us.”

Suffering is Not the End of the Story

Perhaps the deepest gift the Theology of the Body offers to people in pain is a way to understand their suffering.

As the Popcaks explain, every human story follows the pattern of the larger biblical story of God’s relationship with humanity.

  1. Chapter one is original man—who God created us to be before sin: “secure, whole, capable of loving and being loved totally without fear.”
  2. Chapter two is historical man—the wounded people we are now, “living in a fallen world, carrying the scars of sins committed against us and the sins and mistakes that we’ve made.”
  3. Chapter three is eschatological man—the people we are becoming, day by day, through God’s healing grace. Ultimately, we are destined to be fully restored and glorified in Christ.

The paschal mystery—Christ’s suffering, death, and Resurrection—blazed a path for us from chapter two to chapter three. Because Christ took on a human body, he did not suffer abstractly. He suffered physically and emotionally (body and mind): exhaustion, grief, betrayal, abandonment, and death. Human suffering does not have to be meaningless: God himself has walked this territory, and because he has, he can lead us through it.

“Even in the middle of difficult times,” Lisa says, “God wants to show us how to respond to what we’re going through in a way that helps us to become the people he created us to be, and to work for the good of those around us.”

It is tempting to think that our wounds, our struggles, and our bad habits define who we are. But the Theology of the Body insists otherwise.

“Our past may explain some things about us,” Dr. Popcak says, “but it’s grace that defines us.”

Body, Mind, and Spirit Working Together

Pastoral counseling rooted in the Theology of the Body doesn’t treat the body, mind, and spirit as separate departments. It understands them as interlocking dimensions of a single human experience. Tackling relational or personal problems means taking all three into account, and the Theology of the Body offers a framework for doing exactly that.

If you’d like to explore what that kind of integrated healing might look like in your own life, reach out to any of the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.