Interior Integration for Catholics

Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR, president of Franciscan University joins us to discuss the integration of personal formation for college students.  We address the danger of over-spiritualizing – spiritual bypassing – and how many of the struggles in the Church in the last 50 years are due to human formation deficits.  Fr. Pivonka shares his insights about how transformation first happens interiorly, inside oneself – and then radiates outward to change the world.  We discuss the difficulties that college students frequently face, the importance of community, concerns about pietism, and embracing our true identity.  College students and their parents will not want to miss this episode. 

Join Dr. Jared Staudt, the Director of Content at Exodus 90 and guest host Dr. Gerry Crete to discuss the integration of personal formation in Exodus. Join in to learn how asceticism is part of human formation, and how both are oriented toward love. Dr. Staudt and Dr. Gerry discuss the difficulties that secularism and individualism cause in our culture and within ourselves, especially for men. What do vulnerability and authenticity look like for men? And finally, how can I be different, how can I change and grow? The Exodus website is at https://exodus90.com/ 

Joey Pontarelli joins guest host Dr. Gerry Crete to share the impact of his parents’ divorce on him as a child, the ways that divorce rocked his world, and his journey of recovery. And that journey of recovery includes his founding of Restored, a ministry for teens and young adults whose parents' marriages failed, giving them a place to share their stories, help for them to find healthy responses to an unhealthy family situation, to seek “integration, rather than amputation” of their internal experiences and to correct the lies beneath their fear, anger, and shame. 

Dr. Edward Sri, Catholic theologian co-founder of FOCUS shares with us the origin story, how young Catholic adults are starving for love and truth. He lays out how FOCUS forms their missionaries to live out the four dimensions of personal formation (human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral) in a “vision for life.” He offers a pyramid model for the integration of formation with human formation as the base, and he describes how open FOCUS is to bringing in other Catholic organizations, apostolates, and professionals to help in the formation of their missionaries and those they serve. And we discuss where FOCUS missionaries can turn when they recognize they need help. 

Jason Evert of the Chastity Project joins Dr. Gerry and me to discuss the integration of personal formation and chastity. We begin this episode with a brief experiential exercise to check out your spontaneous reactions, briefly discuss What the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about chastity and interior integration, and then Jason shares with us his decades of experience in working with youth. He shares with us how the concept of chastity needs to be rehabilitated and framed in the positive light of love. He shares stories of how young people have responded to the call to chastity in their own formation. He also discusses the importance of starting formation in chastity early, not just prior to marriage. And he shares the connection between chastity and joy. 

Fr. Mike Schmitz, Sr. Josephine Garret, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone engage us in discussing integrated personal formation at the National Eucharistic Congress.  Fr. Mike highlights the importance of silence, which is "the great magnifier" that allows us to know ourselves and draw closer to God. In a homily, Archbishop Cordelione exhorts us to rediscover the silence that sensitizes us to the sacred. Finally, Sr. Josephine links human formation to pastoral formation and discusses how we, as Catholics, we should take what the secular sciences have to offer and claim it for our own. Sr. Josephine also defines proper integration as allowing God to work through all the places of our life.  Join in to learn what these modern Catholic thought leaders share with us about human formation, along with some thoughts from Blaise Pascal and St. Augustine.  

Dr. Peter Malinoski shares some dark moments of his story of medical trauma from when he was 11 years old in 1980 with Kathryn Wessling and Gabriel Crawford from Catholic Story Groups at CatholicStoryGroups.com. Discover the power of exploring stories. Join him for this episode to discover how essential story is to your personal formation. We first discuss what a story is, review tips for writing your story, and offer recommendations for listening to a story well. 

Tim Glemkowski and Joel Stepanek, key planners and executives for the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress, join Dr. Peter Malinoski on this episode to continue our series on integrated personal formation and discuss the kind of transformation you can expect at the NEC, as well as what you can do to prepare for it, both in the natural and spiritual realms. We explore how the four dimensions of Catholic personal formation -- human, intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral -- are incorporated into the NEC revival sessions, impact sessions, breakouts, exhibits, and all the other offerings. Finally, Joel and Tim offer you suggestions to help you get the most out of this experience whether you attend in person or virtually. 

Join Dr. Peter and our audience members to experience a guided meditation on your parts’ needs for integrated formation. Guided by John Paul II’s four dimensions of personal formation (human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral) you have an opportunity to see what a part of you needs. Several audience members debrief from the exercise and we all discuss with some Q&A. 

Our guest, Dr. Bob Schuchts, shares with us his decades of experience as a healer through his discussion of his four identities of love, the four dimensions of formation, the integration of personal formation in the work of the John Paul II Healing Center, the centrality of love in healing, the necessity of felt safety and trust, and the importance of distinguishing the natural from the spiritual, especially with parts and demons.