Can a friend be my spiritual director? Is anyone ever too old to be in spiritual direction?

Q: Dear Dan, I’ve been going to spiritual direction for several years with a good friend. At her suggestion I have recently begun seeing a Catholic counselor to deal with issues from my past which have made it difficult for me to progress spiritually, to trust God, etc. Actually she insisted that I must see a counselor if she was to remain my SD. I was heading this way anyway, however, I was stunned and hurt by the way she presented this to me.

One of the first things the counselor suggested was that perhaps I should find another spiritual director because we are so different in temperament and have had some problems in communication resulting in her feeling I’m resistant and me feeling misunderstood and misjudged. And then we both are frustrated. I strongly feel that God brought us together and I want to remain with my present SD as long as she is willing, because she understands many things about me and knows my strengths and weaknesses and background. And I’d like to try to improve the way we communicate and the way I react (which may improve anyway as I go through counseling and find ways to deal with my emotions).

I think my question is: can this work? (With God’s help and our good will I hope it can.) How does one know when to change spiritual directors? If you fail with one what are the chances of making progress with another, even if you should find one?

Are you ever too old to start spiritual direction? Ever too old to change? I’m in my sixties and feel older than that some days.

A: Dear friend, you are an inspiration! So many get stuck because they make some progress, become satisfied, and then complacent, and then, well, it usually doesn’t turn out so well. In the book of Revelation (3:16) the Lord warns that the lukewarm will be spit out of his mouth. So, to answer the age question first, you are never too old to start, never too old to fight, never too old to love and be loved, never to old to make spiritual progress, never too old to be absent of sin, imperfection, and blind spots, and thus never too old for spiritual direction. In fact, you are closer to the Lord than ever (in time), it is even more important to do your best to be prepared to meet him face to face.

Your counselor is probably right. Your experience is the reason why I recommend that spiritual direction come outside of the context of a friendship. As an aside, I have no doubt that God has brought you together – but probably for a different reason than you might think. Here are a few more specific examples of the problematic nature of these relationships (these are generally true but not always true and may not all apply to your situation):

• The nature of friendship lends itself to emotional attachments. How do you know when you have gone beyond healthy inter-dependence into the realm of attachment? The best indication is when emotions regularly begin to hinder progress in communication. Healthy director/directee relationships have an element of detachment that helps the director see and diagnosis without the emotional clouding that can be present in a friendship (more about this in a minute).
• Healthy friendships, by their nature, are encouraging. They focus on the up-side of each person. This means that confrontation is not a frequent element. I am not arguing that this should be true, but that it is most often true. So, when friends shift into spiritual direction relationships, the director, by the nature of their role, rightly begins to judge (make assessments) and suggest changes (provide direction) and these then trigger emotions in the directee and the relationship begins to feel less safe than it was before. This is very difficult to overcome.
• When a director is a friend, we are more likely to be attached to the need for them to have a positive perception of us. Thus, when they make assessments, we feel judged (in the negative sense) and will likely begin to quibble about the minute errors in their assessment. This is usually not received well by the director in this case. This reaction comes out of pride and vanity and the concomitant need for approval (sometimes from both sides of the relationship).
• Blind spots and delusion are what they are because we don’t see them – we cannot see them on our own. This often is true because of our familiarity with them. Have you taken a close look at your car lately? Walk around it. Take note of each nick, dent, or other flaw. Why don’t you see those every day? This is because they have become “normal” to you. The flaws are there, but daily exposure minimizes our awareness (unless, of course, we are obsessive about such things). Spiritual flaws disappear because we see them every day and they are thus normal to us. The same can happen with friends. If we have defects or attachments that don’t annoy our friends, then they will disappear to them, and thus they will be unable to help us overcome them. Even worse is when they share the same sin or defect and thereby encourage our own sin and weakness. This is common with the sin of gossip. Our blind spots become theirs because they are so close to us, or so much like us, or regularly participate in the sin or dysfunction with us.

All that said, spiritual friendships are very powerful and important. I suspect that you and your friend can rekindle a beneficial spiritual friendship once you take a break for a while. You can do this by taking up a spiritual reading and discussion program with them.

Though my limited exposure to your situation could yield misdiagnosis, I think that your question reveals, clearly enough, that this relationship has too many distracting elements for it to be a healthy spiritual direction relationship. It is time to make a change. The good news is that God has revealed many things to you in the challenges of this situation. It would be good for you to make note of them and begin to step back and evaluate them from a distance. My instinct is that the insights you gain from this exercise will provide the seeds of your future growth in Him.

PS: I have a book coming out later this year that defines what a spiritual direction relationship should and should not look like. You can learn more here by going to www.NavigatingTheInteriorLife.com

How can a woman build an appropriate relationship with a priest?

Q: Dear Father John, I am a woman working hard to deepen my relationship with Christ.  In this process, I have begun to befriend priests.  I wonder how you would suggest molding relationships with clergy to maintain detachment yet create mutually beneficial relationships.

A:  This is a real issue.  We have all read or heard about tragic tales of priests having affairs with married or single women whom they were directing spiritually.  And many times, both the priest and the woman are upstanding members of the parish, honest and fervent Catholics.  None of us wants that to happen.

Two concepts can, I think, help answer your question and shed some light on the situation: realism and respect.

Realism

We have all got to be realistic.  People are people; men are men; women are women.  This doesn’t change when a woman begins to seek holiness.  This doesn’t change when a man becomes a priest.  Neither chastity nor celibacy is maintained and matured by pretending that certain circumstances will remove all temptation.  And temptation can be especially subtle precisely in the midst of a relationship that begins on a deep spiritual level – the level where a priest and a female directee are interacting.

In this relationship, the woman receives affirmation and guidance regarding the living out of her faith.  This can be deeply satisfying.  The emotional release and joy that overflows from spiritual growth can lead her, little by little, often subconsciously, to depend on the priest not only for spiritual support affirmation, but also for emotional support.  Temporarily, in moments of crisis, this can be fine.  But if it becomes habitual, the emotional momentum can easily, and tragically, begin to override the spiritual connection, and the chaste relationship can be compromised.

A similar dynamic can happen from the priest’s perspective.  If he feels a natural attraction towards a particular female directee, he can begin enjoying and looking for the emotional connection that he feels when interacting with her.  He may look for it consciously, or subconsciously.  At this point, his purity of heart is already being threatened, and he is vulnerable to temptation.  If he then enters a period of personal difficulty or spiritual dryness (and this happens periodically – it’s normal), he will feel drawn to look for tangible comfort and understanding, instead of courageously bearing his cross and renewing his faith-commitment until the storm passes.  At that point, going to a female directee with whom he is already emotionally involved will seem like a direct, clear, and satisfying solution.

The most obvious application of this concept is that women need to develop faith-based friendships with women where they receive emotional support.  They should be very clear about what they seek from their relationships with priests: spiritual support and guidance, encouragement and instruction in their faith and in their pursuit of holiness.  Priests need to have faith-based friendships with men, preferably brother priests, wherein they receive their emotional support.  They must take seriously their role as spiritual fathers in relation to the people God gives them to serve.

This doesn’t mean that priests and women can’t be friends.  What it means is that this particular friendship has a specific character and purpose, and that needs to be acknowledged and accepted.

By the way, this complex dynamism is often at work in relationships between lay people too, relationships that can lead to adultery.  We can never pretend that we are immune from temptation, that we have conquered perfectly and forever the beautiful, powerful, and fruitful virtue of chastity.  We need to be realistic.

Respect

As a result, in all interactions between women and priests, each party must have and show respect for the other’s calling in life.  This starts in the heart: being brutally honest with oneself about emotional charges and attachments as soon as they begin to appear.  But it has a lot of practical manifestations too.  A good rule of thumb is to avoid situations where outsiders could infer the appearance of something unhealthy.  Here are some practices that have been common in Church tradition, and that even married Protestant ministers (like Billy Graham) have found helpful:

• A priest and a woman (who is not a family member) should avoid riding in cars together, just the two of them.
• A priest should wear his clergy attire when giving direction to a woman.
• Spiritual direction should take place in a room with windows or an open space where others can see what’s happening.
• Spiritual direction should take place during normal working hours, not late at night.
• A priest and a woman (again, a woman who is not a family member) should avoid getting together tête-à-tête casually, or for simply social reasons.

I am sure we could each extend the list.  And, again, similar respect should govern other relationships too – a single man and a married woman, for example.

I want to be explicit about the reason behind this mutual respect.  It is not because the Church considers femininity intrinsically evil.  It is not because the Church considers sex intrinsically evil.  On the contrary, it is precisely because the Church herself respects the reality of gender in God’s plan and the sacredness of sexual intimacy that chastity is valued in the first place.  But the Church is not naïve.  We live in a fallen world and bear a wounded human nature.  Therefore, we must make a conscious effort to be faithful to God’s plan for our lives.  When it comes to a relationships between women and priests, that conscious effort must include sincere respect for God’s plan for each person.

Should spiritual directors charge for their services?

My recent post encouraging directees to respond in gratitude to their directors met with a firm rebuke in the com box that I have decided to address. The post was, “Should I pay my spiritual director?” Here is what one reader had to say, “You are wrong, wrong, wrong Dan Burke.  Paying for spiritual direction is simony and it is priests along who have the charism for spiritual direction.  What you are suggesting is like going to the supermarket for surgery.”

Well, as disagreements go, this one is pretty tame. The problem is that the person argues against a position that I have not posed. The post was not arguing that directors should formally charge a specific fee to a directee. I merely echoed what St. Paul encourages in scripture – we should respond generously and materially to those who bless us spiritually. Now, I did state what I have seen as the norm out there for those who do propose a fee. However, stating a norm is not the same as advocating for a norm.

So, all this begs the question, “Should spiritual directors charge for their services?”

Well, to be frank, it doesn’t really matter to me. I would never base my decision on whether or not to seek direction from a particular individual because they did or did not charge a fee. The argument that it is “simony” is specious on its face and I can’t make out the rest of the argument. Simon (from whom the term “simony” is derived) was a man in the book of Acts (chapter eight) who was rebuked by Peter for trying to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism refers to simony as an issue where the sacraments are withheld to the poor because they are unable to pay for them.

2121 Simony is defined as the buying or selling of spiritual things. To Simon the magician, who wanted to buy the spiritual power he saw at work in the apostles, St. Peter responded: “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!” Peter thus held to the words of Jesus: “You received without pay, give without pay.” It is impossible to appropriate to oneself spiritual goods and behave toward them as their owner or master, for they have their source in God. One can receive them only from him, without payment.

2122 The minister should ask nothing for the administration of the sacraments beyond the offerings defined by the competent authority, always being careful that the needy are not deprived of the help of the sacraments because of their poverty.” The competent authority determines these “offerings” in accordance with the principle that the Christian people ought to contribute to the support of the Church’s ministers. “The laborer deserves his food.”

In my mind, there is nothing like that going on in spiritual direction, fee or no fee. In fact, I am aware that those who charge a fee often propose it merely as a suggestion and would not charge a fervent soul who could not pay but still needed the help. There may be good arguments against directors who charge for their services but the charge of simony doesn’t seem to me to be one of them (though I am open to argument).

That said, I have spoken with a number of prominent voices on the topic who hold that directors should not have a fee associated with what they do (including the director of a faithful school for spiritual direction). I have also talked with religious who are directed to never ask for or accept anything like a fee for their services. I have no issues with these positions. On the other hand, I know of faithful Catholic spiritual directors who do charge a fee. So, what is the true blue Catholic answer?

One of the things that I love about being Catholic is the absolute clarity on issues that are most important. To me, this doesn’t seem to be one of them. There is no magisterium faithful position on this one. So, it’s up to your better judgement. Still, since the number of responses was so high on the original post I thought it might be interesting to get your take on it. What do you think? What are the best arguments on both sides? Should directors charge a fee or not, and why?

My spiritual director has recommended centering prayer, what should I do?

Q: Dear Dan, I have recently sought the guidance of a Spiritual director which I would say was greatly influenced by your and Fr. John’s suggestions. My concern is that my Spiritual Director has suggested Centering Prayer. I’d appreciate it if you can share your thoughts on that. Thanks.

A: First things first – I am greatly encouraged by your steps toward deepening your faith through spiritual direction! With respect to your question, we actually get a lot of questions like this. Because of the effects of the fall and the inherent differences and nuances that effect each person’s ability to understand the other, communication is hard work. So, the key is to seek understanding by determining exactly what your spiritual director means by what they are saying or suggesting.

This matter is complicated when we approach the topic of prayer in general and is even more problematic in the area of “centering” prayer. Why is this? It is because there is no universally held definition of centering prayer. Different people mean different things when they use the term. The Church itself does not officially recognize “centering” prayer in any form. The good news, is that the time-tested prayer forms of the Church are clearly defined in part four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This makes things easier. When there is a misunderstanding regarding central matters of our faith, we can go to the source to clear things up.

So, the first step is to find out what your director means by the term “centering” prayer. They may simply be using it as a synonym for some traditional form of prayer. The issue becomes more problematic if your director is advocating a form of prayer or approach to prayer that the Church, in her wisdom, recognizes as problematic and leading to error, confusion, or even spiritual harm.

In the late 80s, recognizing the serious challenges with how some were developing and teaching ideas on prayer, then Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wrote a letter to all the Bishops regarding his concerns. As you might suspect, the challenges addressed were widespread and serious enough for the Prefect of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a very precise and authoritative warning. This letter was entitled, “A Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation.”

The bottom line is that if you 1) seek to understand what your director meant by what they said, and 2) seek to understand the time tested, true, spiritually safe, and efficacious forms of prayer that the Church in her wisdom recommends, you will be better able to navigate the situation safely.

No matter what, keep seeking to deepen your relationship with Him!

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

What if I disagree with my spiritual director about my root sin?

Q: What do you do when you are pretty sure your root sin is pride (based on self-reflection, common sins in confession, etc…) but your spiritual director doesn’t think it is true. Mine keeps telling me I am not proud — but we end up in this weird argument where I assert that I am and he says that my reply is what a humble person would say. And how much does it matter if he agrees with me on that major fault or not? It seems to me to be important, but on the other hand, things are otherwise fine in direction.

A: The good news is that it sounds like you have an honest and open relationship with your director. This is a great starting point for the answer to your question. The first step is to ensure that you actually do disagree. To do this, it would be important to make sure that you both agree on the definitions of the root sins in question along with the corresponding manifestations. Once you agree on definitions, then you can talk through your self-reflections and pattern of confession in order to find common ground on a proper diagnosis.

What if after all that work you still disagree? Well, this is where the idea of docility and obedience comes in with spiritual direction.

Docility is an area of great importance in the spiritual direction relationship and can easily be misunderstood. This is especially true of modern seekers who often recoil at the slightest idea of submission or subjection of one’s will to the guidance of another. With modern western Catholic writers on the topic of spiritual direction, you may find strongly stated cautions regarding this issue. Often this is because of sincere sensitivity to abuse and a legitimate concern to ensure that the directee remains totally free to follow or discard any of the guidance received in direction. In Eastern Church traditions (e.g., Greek or Russian Orthodox), you are more likely to find equally strong statements on the other end of the spectrum. In the East, any directee would be cautioned to avoid spiritual direction if they are not ready and willing to completely open and submit their soul to obedience to another. In the East, the sincere concern is that the directee overcome any delusion or self-deception. In reality, both of the extreme forms of these concerns can result in unintended problems. Simply put, if you are docile to misdirection, you will be misdirected to your own detriment and by your own choice. If you are stubborn toward sound direction, you will misdirect yourself, likely to great spiritual detriment. Because of the abuses on the overly submissive side of the spectrum, there is often an equal and opposite overreaction. As is common with opposite extremes, wisdom resides closer to the middle. The key is that you should always maintain your freedom to act according to your own will in your submission to God, and you should maintain an equal readiness to humbly accept the insight and direction of any director who is worthy of your trust. Here’s a little more insight into the ideas of docility and obedience.

Docility: True docility is an essential ingredient in any successful spiritual direction relationship. What is docility? Docility is a humble readiness to follow God’s will for our lives. This is sometimes expressed in the willingness to listen to and follow imperfect counsel from an imperfect person,  even when we disagree or don’t completely understand. It is critical to remember that we are in spiritual direction because we recognize that the human condition requires outside counsel to grow. The fact that we are finite fallen creatures requires that someone help us to see the areas of our souls that we cannot see without help. Even if our director is wrong on a particular matter (assuming the direction is not something sinful), we will most assuredly benefit from heading down paths that we would not have chosen on our own. This simple exercise of taking unfamiliar paths will reveal things to us that we would have never been able to see without having been prompted to do so.

Obedience: Some writers on the topic of spiritual direction make a distinction between what they call docility and obedience. Typically, they will point out that obedience is something that occurs only in a slave-to-master relationship when the slave has no will of their own. This approach is often a well-intended overstatement to make the point. It is true that no directee should act in such a way as to substitute the will and desires of the director for their own. It is also true that no directee is, by definition, sinning if they choose to disobey their spiritual director (unless of course their counsel echoes the commands of God himself or falls within the context of religious life). Yet it can be a profound act of holiness to obey our spiritual director, particularly when what they are suggesting is something that is very difficult but may nonetheless lead us to a deeper relationship with Christ. The key here is to remember that God never usurps our free will; neither should a spiritual director. It is important to reiterate that a spiritual director is not able to influence our lives without our consent. If what we are directed to do is in keeping with God’s law as reflected in Church teaching, and we are choosing to obey by our own choice, we are on solid spiritual ground and will likely find great blessings through our obedience.

All that said, you are in a very good place: 1) you are in spiritual direction; 2) you are working diligently in the area of self-knowledge; and 3) you are taking the entire process very seriously. I have no doubt that, whatever course of action you take in this situation, you will find yourself moving into a deeper relationship with Christ!

Happy New Year!

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan