Scott Weeman, founder of Catholic in Recovery, sits down with us to talk about how Jesus is the answer to finding healing from addiction.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I am Cy Kellett, your host, and today we got one of our favorite guests from Catholic Answers Live and someone who’s doing just wonderful work in the field of healing from addiction and obsession and all of these kind of things. He’s the founder of catholicinrecovery.com. He’s the author of the 12 Steps and the Sacraments and the Catholic In Recovery Workbook. Although that might be more of a team effort, I don’t know. We’ll ask him. Scott Weeman, thank you very much for being here with us.
Scott Weeman:
Great to be here. Nice to join you on the podcast.
Cy Kellett:
First of all, maybe I should just ask you real quick, because people will want to know what is Catholic in Recovery? How can I participate in that? How can I mention it to my family member? Because we’ve all got a connection to addiction one way or another. I don’t know that anybody, not even a hermit out in the desert. Maybe that’s why he’s in the desert as a matter of fact.
Scott Weeman:
Addiction does tend to be pretty isolating. Yeah. Catholic in Recovery is a community of men and women who seek freedom from a variety of addictions, compulsions and unhealthy attachments. I say, I kind of broadly define that. The two include, but not limited to alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive overeating, restricted eating, gambling addiction, pornography and lust related addictions, codependency, technology, the things that keep us obsessed, as you kind of mentioned in your introduction. And so that we blend 12 step addiction recovery wisdom with the traditions of the Catholic church, have meetings throughout the country, around the United States, some in Canada, some in Mexico, and virtual meetings that meet on a regular daily basis.
Cy Kellett:
Wonderful. Yeah.
Scott Weeman:
Growing community with growing resources.
Cy Kellett:
Everybody figured out the virtual stuff during the pandemic, so now everybody can-
Scott Weeman:
People have become much more comfortable with it. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
So we want to talk with you about Jesus as a healer today because one of the things that this podcast is for is to help people, as we say at the beginning, to defend and share the faith. And I think in many ways Catholics have lost touch with the tradition of healing, the tradition of Christianity as a healing encounter with Jesus and with Jesus himself as a healer. Will you agree with that?
Scott Weeman:
Yeah, totally.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I want to read you just a little bit at the end of the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel so that people will remember what Jesus’ ministry was like. This is just Matthew’s brief description of what it was like, what Jesus’ ministry was like. “And he went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics, and he healed them and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.” That description of Christ’s ministry is, seems upside down from what we have. It seems like the primary thing he was doing and why thousands and thousands of people came to him is he was healing people.
Scott Weeman:
Yeah. I mean, he was effective. He was effective as a healer and his results, people want to see results and I think similar during Jesus’ time as well.
Cy Kellett:
So why is he not effective as a healer anymore?
Scott Weeman:
That’s a good question. I would say that he still is an effective healer.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. All right.
Scott Weeman:
I don’t need think that we need to question that, but I do think that the way that we approach him or maybe our unwillingness to approach him for healing probably limits the healing that he provides today.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Do you think we’ve kind of outsourced the healing to an industry, so to speak, or to various industries?
Scott Weeman:
Yes, I absolutely agree with that. I think, and this is part of the reason why Catholic in Recovery was founded. So if we’re looking at a addiction, for example, as the industry, addiction recovery as the industry in a lot of ways, 12 step recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Al Anon. There are 12 step groups that apply 12 sorts of different addiction types have saved my life, helped save my life was developed in the 1930s. Alcoholics Anonymous was developed and I think was blessed by God in many ways, that there was a divine intervention and has helped millions upon millions of people find freedom from alcoholism. And then that’s spread to be applied to other addictions and compulsions, and that’s found provided healing for hundreds of thousands of families across the world and continues to. And so I think that within the church today, we oftentimes will delegate healing to other secular groups, institutions, if you will.
And this is one example of that. Not to say that we shouldn’t be making referrals or making working with institutions, even non-Catholic institutions, but I think that when we’ve gotten a little bit too … We’ve gotten away from getting involved in the mess, the mess of healing. Healing is a very messy mission. It’s getting involved with someone’s darkness, being awoken to the wounds that other people have, which oftentimes then reveals wounds that we have ourselves. And we don’t want to look at that. And so oftentimes I think that we would rather hide, and this is exactly what the devil wants us to be doing, to hide ourselves, to lie, to be dishonest, to deny that there is a problem, that there is a problem that with which we need to bring to Jesus. And so all of those are factors that keep us from leaning into the healing nature and power of Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
The avoiding the mess. There’s kind of, in our world, there’s just the way the world is set up, there’s a kind of conformity you’re supposed to have. The family is supposed to do certain things and have certain things, and there’s an enormous shame that comes with the mess, the fact that, nah, actually we’re a mess.
Scott Weeman:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that the next chapter that you, you’d read the end toward the conclusion of the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the fifth chapter is the Beatitudes. And he gets into a Sermon on the Mount and leads with “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.” And I think that claiming that poorness, that poverty of spirit is a hard thing for us to do to, we’ve been conditioned to have it all together to lead with our strengths in many ways. The man who helped save my life, who approached me after a 12 step recovery meeting, I was brand new, less than 24 hours sober, darted across the room, looked me in the eye and said, “I know exactly how you feel. You don’t ever have to drink again.” And that helped create a sense of unity with him.
He was speaking differently than other people had been speaking to me before, concerned loved ones and friends who knew that there was a problem and suggested that I tried to do things differently. But it wasn’t until he spoke with that kind of authority that he had been there before, did that penetrate through my denial and my unwillingness to recognize that there was a problem and gave me hope, it opened up this door of hope just opened up, cracked it open. God blew that door off of its hinges and just an abundance of hope from them. But I say all that, what he would say is he says “Out there, Scott, we lead with our strengths, you lead with your virtue, your strength. But in here” and in here, he meant kind of like within this, when we meet in recovery settings or when you and I are gathering together, “don’t lead with your strengths, Scott, lead with your weakness.”
Cy Kellett:
What a magnificent piece of advice.
Scott Weeman:
And that creates a sense of unity. It’s this sense of, I understand. I know where you’ve been. It’s like a man reaching down into the well to lift another person up in need of great help. Come here, got I’ve been exactly where you’ve been. Follow me. That’s not too different from the way that the church was formed in the early days, in the early form. I mean, people were sharing the good news. The good news was that Jesus was healing people. Yeah. That’s the good news. Yeah. The good news is that the people who were left poor, the people who were outcasted and not part of the culture or didn’t have great standing in the culture, Jesus came for us. And so I think we can return to those roots, those healing roots, to find Jesus doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. First of all, I didn’t know you were Protestant before. Were you Protestant before?
Scott Weeman:
No, I wasn’t.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, well, how did you know the Bible like that the Sermon on the Mount is in the 4th chapter. All right. I’m just messing with you. But what we’re not is, as Catholics is kind of name it and claim it Christians, we’re not the prosperity gospel. We’re not the Lord will heal instantaneously, and if he’ll just have enough faith, that’s not the Catholic faith. So how do we embrace Jesus as a healer without, I don’t know, be going over to the side of maybe superstition and unreason. Do you see what I’m saying?
Scott Weeman:
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s something that we’ve got to be careful about. I think that’s a lot of expectations, being mindful of the expectations that we have for Jesus, like the expectations that we have for others, or the expectations that we have from life, that things are going to go a certain way and we have this, if I do this, then this should be the result, kind of a attitude towards things. But within God’s grace and the way that God intervenes, it’s not always for what we want, but what we need. And so we can sometimes get into this realm of expectation. What’s my life going to look like if I do this? Now, there also, there’s a lot of unknown in doing something new. Oftentimes we won’t take new action until the pain of what we’re going through is greater than the fear of the unknown.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right. Yeah.
Scott Weeman:
And so pain can be a great driver, much like it was during the days of Jesus. People who are in pain, people who are outcasted, were the ones who are willing to take a risk to touch his cloth or to reach out to him or to put themselves in front of him. I think we need to be similarly taking the same risks while limiting the expectations that we have for what an abundant life looks like.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Scott Weeman:
An abundant life in the Christian life, in the Catholic life is one that provides, that relies on Jesus, that seeks his will on a daily basis, and that finds great purpose and meaning in sharing that with others.
Cy Kellett:
I’m thinking about the parish then as the kind of primary manifestation of the way of our extending Jesus’ ministry into the world now. And I do think there’s a lot of parishes where people know if I need food or clothes or something, I could go to the parish and they would help me. Certainly if I need the sacraments, I could go to the parish and they would help me. But do you think a parish could be a place where of healing, where people could say, I need healing and the parish is the place to go for that?
Scott Weeman:
I think there’s the potential for it to happen. I think that there are a lot of cultural barriers that prevent it from happening in most cases. So for example, we lead Catholic in Recovery groups and fellowships, mostly in parishes. We have some that are in retreat centers in person or at a Catholic charities location or a diocesan office of some kind. But I would say at least three quarters of our in-person Catholic in Recovery meetings take place in a parish, not different from 12 step meetings taking place at churches. Most of those will take place at the churches, which by the way, it’s kind of interesting. A lot of people in secular 12 step recovery groups, which I will say saved my life and continues to save my life. And so Catholic in Recovery doesn’t claim to be a substitute for other 12 step groups, but rather supplemental too.
I wouldn’t discourage people from going to a 12 step group, but those will take place in a parish or in a church, a Protestant church, sometimes a Catholic church. Sometimes you get a bunch of people who claim to be atheists in a room who are gathering in a church. And there’s a little bit of irony there. When I get back to the Catholic in Recovery meetings taking place in a church location or in a parish location, sometimes people are eager, and I think that the parish should be a place for healing where we come and find the healing of Jesus. We do so in the sacraments, but in a real human to human level sometimes there are some concerns about that. I think that shame, as you mentioned before, right, plays a big part into these cultural expectations of how we ought to present ourselves certainly plays into that. And a lot of, some, sometimes people will say, well, I don’t know. I don’t really want to go to my parish to find healing, to go to be in a group like that. What if someone sees me going in? Or what if someone sees me there?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Scott Weeman:
Well, first of all, if the people in that room in that meeting are all going to be there for the same reason that you are, so yeah, maybe they’ve overcome that shame or recognize that doing something different is better, even if it’s unknown than the pain that they’re going through now. But also, I think that that does speak to that kind of reaction of why I’m afraid to go to my parish to seek healing is pretty common. But also it speaks to this need for a cultural shift within the church, within what we do within a parish.
A lot of times the things that we do in parishes is we provide, I don’t know, some kind of spiritual connection or resources or Bible studies and things like that. But usually we usually put it together for the 7% of the parishioners that are just going to, we know are going to go to stuff. There’s this small percentage of people that are going to just, when we have an event at the parish, we’re going to see a lot of the same people there.
And I’ve heard it shared before too, a lot of things that we do within the church is giving swimming lessons to people who are drowning. Not everyone needs the Bible study, I guess what we need more is, as Pope Francis would say, is a field hospital. We need a parish to be a field hospital in a lot of ways because right out in the world, people are getting wounded, people are getting battered and hope is being lost, or just this sense of integrity in a lot of ways being lost. And so if we can provide a place within a parish where people can come, be honest with themselves and others and find Jesus and surrender to Jesus desperately, express their need for something new and something different, particularly as it relates to addictions which are cunning, baffling and powerful and have a really strong spiritual grip on us, we need a full-blown solution that is relying on Jesus Christ. We can’t do it ourselves.
Cy Kellett:
It seems to me that Catholic in Recovery, in my mind, I have two kind of models of how that we could work. One is what you do with Catholic in Recovery, and the other is this growing phenomenon of grief ministry, which is really beautiful. What’s going on in grief ministry? I think people think it’s just, and maybe in some places it is like, oh, the people that’ll help you make the funeral plans or get the flowers or something, and they do that. But there’s also the sense of the loss of someone you love is a deep wound that needs healing and we can heal together. And I feel like, so because I do kind of feel like if you say, well, the parish should be a place where people think of what to come for healing, we’re going to need models of how that works. And so I just wanted to say that maybe there are other models too where we could take care of people’s physical needs in some ways, or relationship healing or that, but that at least we’re starting to get the models.
Scott Weeman:
And there are other churches that do this that have created really a culture of healing within them. Protestant churches, there’s an organization called Celebrate Recovery, which is similar to what Catholic in Recovery does. They’ve been around much longer. They’ve been active for about 30 plus years, active in like 30,000 churches around the country or around the world. And in a lot of ways, they are the evangelical arm of those churches. People are coming in a place of desperate for healing, desperate to find Jesus healing. People don’t come into the church oftentimes just because the wind was blowing in a certain direction and they were like, oh, I think today’s the day I’m going to become more virtuous and begin living a sacramental life. Oftentimes they come because they’re driven by something. Pain can be a great driver. And so when we have a solution to someone’s hurting needs, particularly if they’re arrested in a spiritual disease or if they’re, there’s a spiritual malady, we ought to be able to provide a spiritual solution that really relies on Jesus Christ and also uses the resources that we have at our disposal in the world.
12 step addiction recovery, I think has a really consistent spiritual spirituality with our faith that can be integrated into a church setting that creates the kind of climate environment for healing so that we’re not ashamed to come to Jesus because we need help. We all need help. We all need help.
Cy Kellett:
It’s interesting that you talk about that as the evangelical kind of arm of the church because we talk about evangelization, evangelization, evangelization, and maybe just our mental image of evangelization is wrong, that when maybe you could go back and think about the early church that it was evangelizing that they took care of the sick, it was evangelizing that orphans could come and be cared for, and that so everyone who in the society who had a need or was not accepted, or they could find a place among these early Christians, maybe we could recover that as our model of evangelization, not as a service that the church does, but as the model of sharing the faith.
Scott Weeman:
Yeah. We do so much more than just come together on a Sunday to worship, to worship and praise and glorify God in the mass. I mean that is it. It’s all captured within the mass.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Scott Weeman:
But there is also a community that we have that we ought to be tending to, that we ought to be caring for each other. We’re approaching the season of Lent when this is published, it might be in the middle of the season of Lent or even afterwards, but that season of Lent per Pope Benedict 16th is created so that we can be walking with new Christians, new Catholics, people who are going to be entering the church for a designated period of time. We kind of go back to basics. We all kind of take on a spring training, if you will, returning to the foundations of our faith that include practices such as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
And we kind of slow down and we go through these rituals with the people who are going to be newly received into the church at Easter, and we all just return to the basics, return to what it was like when we were new to the faith, when we were getting that the foundations. And I think that that’s really an important thing that we do, that we walk with and accompany the people who are new to the church. This happens similarly in 12 step recovery groups or recovery programs where when there’s a newcomer, we all kind of take on this newcomer spirit so that we return to, we will share about, we’ll recollect the things that, what it was like for us when we were in our first days or weeks of recovery. And that helps give hope and provide hope for the person who is brand new, always looking to the newcomer, which fills the person who’s been there for a long time, returning back, recalling perhaps some of those very healthy spiritual practices that help get us sober and we stay sober by the same way that we get sober.
Over time we might lose, develop some more sophisticated spiritual practices, but it can be really healthy and helpful to return back to those simple foundational, spiritual practices, much like we do in the church when we’re walking with people who are going to be received into the church. I say all that just because it’s incumbent upon us to be taking on this newcomers spirit, which brings us to return to humility and much, and the be attitudes that poverty of spirit that we’re seeking, the more that we can be in touch with our poverty of spirit, I think that the more we are open to receiving what is the will of God for us and welcoming Jesus into our lives.
Cy Kellett:
So what’s the future for you? Because as I said, I really do think you have a model that other people can follow. Somebody’s going to look at what you’re doing and say, I could do a similar thing for people with diabetes in my parish, or I could do a similar thing with families struggling with a serious mental illness in the family. I really do think that that’s one of the services that as your ministry grows, it will provide, is that it won’t … I mean, there’s other people who can look at that and go, “Oh, okay, here’s a model I’ve got.” So tell us about what’s coming or how do you see the growth of Catholic in Recovery?
Scott Weeman:
Yeah, that’s a good practice to think about. I foresee it’s going to take some time, continue to take some time for a cultural shift to take place so that we are seeking the parish as the epicenter for healing. That we’re going to the parish, not the outer entities of the church that are on the fringes of the church that are, if you’ve got a problem, you go here. But when you’re coming to the parish, make sure you look good and look like you’ve got it all together. That attitude has to change, and I think that that can change by the parish and the community really coming together for healing purposes. And it’s going to take time. And the way that actually is going to shift and the way that I foresee it happening over time is that you’re going to find a bunch of people who are new to the church or coming back to the church, or maybe they’ve been sober for a while and they’re finding their way back to the church, or they find a Catholic in Recovery fellowship and start to heal.
And then once people start to heal, one of the key components of recovery is this notion of service that in order for us to keep what we’ve been given, freely given, we have to be willing to give it away. And so people, you’ll find people in recovery who are very much value service, service to the community, service to their fellow who is seeking the solution that they’ve found. And so once you see service starts to happen on a parish level, you see all these people who might not be the, oh, the people who have got it all together or looking good or look like they’ve got it all together, but just grateful, joyful and of service. Once people see, start seeing that in the community, they say to themselves, “What does that person have? What are they doing to have this spirit of gratitude, this spirit of service to their fellow brother and sister? I want some of that.” So it’s really just, and this is 12 step recovery principles speak to the value of attraction rather than promotion.
Cy Kellett:
We talk so much here at Catholic Answers because we’re basically an intellectual [inaudible 00:23:18] we don’t do any good for anybody except answer questions, which is, I don’t de denigrate. That’s a very high good, but that’s what we do. But there’s a certain way in which love is its own defense. When people see love in action, people loving one another, people able to be loved, that you don’t have to defend that.
Scott Weeman:
And even speaking in terms of evangelization, some people will come to know Jesus through an intellectual ascent. And I think that a lot of the listeners at Catholic answers probably have found it that way or maybe refine their spirituality by us intellectual understanding of God, which I think that is, I strongly encourage that. I think that once we get to know who God is, we want to know more and more and the mysteries of God make it possible that we could unfold, unfold these discussions our whole lifetime and still never come to full conclusions. And when people come to Jesus by means of healing, they’ve been healed by Jesus. That’s something that can’t be intellectually challenged in a lot of ways. Know I know God exists because I was once desperate, a desperate, drunk, hopeless, and didn’t think that there that was ever going to change.
Others didn’t think that I was ever going to change either, and they told me that, and I surrendered to him. I found him. I was the last road, last house on the block that I ever wanted to really have to enter, which basically the two were the 12 step recovery groups in the church. I came back to the church desperate, not thinking like, oh, I don’t know if this is going to work. I guess this is, my life’s going to be at a 60% handicap from now on. It is not going to live joyfully. But then once Jesus entered my life, removed the obsession to drink, which was a miracle, something I could not do for myself. Right. And I also found brothers and sisters within the church and other recovery fellowships that were walking with me being the hands, the eyes, the ears of Jesus. I mean, I’m convinced that Jesus is real, that Jesus has taken a place in my life that I don’t know, I don’t need to be intellectually convinced so much that’s seen it happen in real time. I’ve seen it happen. The evidence is in my life today.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, what you say reminds me so much of in John’s gospel with the man born blind where the, they’re trying to almost argue him out of it. The authorities are like, “Well, who healed you?” And they said, he said Jesus. And they’re like, “Well, by what right?” And they’re like, “Look, I don’t know. A man named Jesus came and he healed me. That’s what I know.” And that is irrefutable. The intellectual challenge has to just go well in front of that witness, either accepted or rejected, but you can’t argue it. You can’t argue it. And there was this man, Jesus, he came and he healed me. That’s the story of my life. That’s the story of your life. And when that’s the story of your life, you have such a confidence in, I don’t need all the answers. I don’t have to be the greatest apologist in the world, or the greatest preacher or teacher, and Jesus did this for me, and I can share it with people.
Scott Weeman:
Absolutely. And embracing his healing also means being open to miracles. A lot of times we can’t intellectually describe miracles, but think about, I think, and sometimes too, maybe we’ve become a little jaded to that term miracle, or it is just been overused. But think of that a miracle, I mean, a miraculous thing, which basically is something that is not able, not possible without the help of God. God has worked miracles in my life and the life of other people that I get to see on a regular and daily basis, and when they’re sharing gratitude, it rubs off of me on me, and that miracle happens. I think the scripture that comes to my mind as we’re discussing a lot of this is the paralytic who, or the paralytic man who’s four friends, I think bring him to Jesus. Jesus is in a home. It’s all full.
They can’t get to him, so they climbed the roof and they drop him down through the ceiling. And these four guys, this paralytic man or man who couldn’t do it on a own, not too different from someone who is struggling with an addiction, who maybe can’t get sober on their own, but has loved ones or people that care for him, that they can bring him to Jesus. We just need to get to Jesus. And the faith of those four people who carried him, dropped him through the roof. Their faith, I think, has done wonders much. I was in a place when I was active in my addiction, alcohol addiction, drug addiction, lust addiction, that I was incapable of finding Jesus on my own. And a lot of that is just, I was hiding. I was being dishonest. I wasn’t making it possible for Jesus to find me or for me to find Jesus.
But I think of the people who were, the four people who were carrying me, dropping me through the roof, were people who were praying for me, who were actively not enabling my behavior, but rather were this is providing resources, providing a hope, providing care, and providing personal touch throughout my life, even when I wasn’t incapable of returning what they were providing for me. I look back and I think they were the ones who brought me to Jesus in a lot of ways, and there’s a lot of gratitude, and that’s very similar to pretty much every person who’s found recovery or who’s found healing from Jesus is, there have been plenty of people along the way who have helped bring them closer to Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
Amen to that. Well, Scott, our association with you is a wonderful one for us. Thanks. We’d love it when you come in and talk about these things and you know you always are welcome to come back. You are a great witness for Jesus because you do have that quality of being able to say, “He healed me.” Not he’s some kind of theologically tenable theory, but he healed me, and I thank you very much for that.
Scott Weeman:
Well, because of that, I can’t take too much credit for it. I can just shine a light on the [inaudible 00:29:33].
Cy Kellett:
Amen to that, brother. Amen to that. catholicinrecovery.com is where you can go to find out about what Scott and all the folks at Catholic in Recovery are doing. The Catholic in Recovery workbook is available, and they’d love you to have it. You can find out all about that there as well and all the other things that Scott’s doing. As he said, you can start a group where you, maybe you can find a group where you are and there are virtual meetings that you can go to. Anything else you want that I should be saying before I sign off or?
Scott Weeman:
No, well done.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, thank you. I finally mastered it.
Scott Weeman:
Yep.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you so much for being here with us. We do appreciate that you take this time with us. If you’d like to communicate with us, send us an email focus@catholic.com, focus@catholic.com, and if it’s an email regarding healing ministry or some way that you’re interested in starting a group, if you send it to us, we will make sure we get it to Scott. There’s no concern there. focus@catholic.com. If you’d like to support us financially, it does take a few bucks to do this, then you can do that at givecatholic.com. And as always, if you’d be kind enough, please give us that five star review and a few nice words that helps to grow the podcast. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, Scott Weeman has been our guest, and we’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.