It turns out that the psychologists have finally come round to the view that “being Catholic is good for you”. As Jordan Peterson very recently observed, Catholicism is “as sane as you can get”.
Psychology has frowned on religion ever since Sigmund Freud believed he had made a connection between the practice of religion and mental illness. The connection was bogus, in fact, but the association between religion and mental illness, or religion providing a crutch for those who could not cope, stuck.
In fact, many of Freud’s research outcomes were based on bad science, but the most damaging may have been his campaign against religion. It led to a whole culture of secular psychological disdain.
The problem was that Freud, who in his capacity as an atheist with a chip on his shoulder and an “I despise my father complex”, embarked on a campaign against belief in God. Recent critics of Freud, applying his own theories on him, see this campaign as a wholesale and rather toxic act of projection. The conclusion many have come to was that it appeared that since he couldn’t deal with his contempt for his real father, he could at least take revenge on the ultimate father.
In his early research he made a fabricated and unsubstantiated link between mental illness and religious belief, as set out in his 1927 paper, “The Future of an Illusion”. At the same time, it’s not fair to make him carry all the blame for the subsequent popularity of his views. He doesn’t deserve the whole burden of blame. European society was only too ready to believe him. It allowed everyone who bought into the theory to expel God from their consciences and lead a life free of moral responsibility.
The way he fabricated the link was as absurd as it was untrue. Following time spent as a doctor in Viennese lunatic asylums, he believed he discovered a link between obsessive compulsive behaviour and the sophisticated, ornate choreography of the liturgy he had encountered in Vienna’s Cathedral. Too much wringing of hands, bowing in certain places in certain ways, and repetitive inexplicable behaviour that the casual observer would always fail to understand.
Unable and unwilling to make a distinction between correlation and causation, blind to the misery of compulsion on the one hand and the beauty of semiotic profound liturgy on the other, he developed a theory that religious belief and its liturgical choreographies were a subvariant of the mental illness in corporate form.
It was only in the second half of the 20th century, when his colleague and one-time disciple Gustav Jung took the completely opposite view, and suggested that religious experience and practice provided an important psychological junction box between the unconscious and the conscious striving for meaning in life, that the psychological climate began to change.
Suddenly, for the first time, and in the face of a great deal of prejudice and closemindedness, people began to actually do studies about the relationship between belief and well-being.
To most people’s surprise, it turned out that there was a strong, evidential correlation for the hypothesis that religion was good for you.
And slowly but surely over the last few years survey after survey has presented evidence that belief is a blessing; that believers are happier than non-believers.
A few days ago the Daily Telegraph published the latest.
More than eight out of 10 people who go to a place of worship at least once a week reported being happy. For people who didn’t go to a place of worship, only 50 per cent of them claimed happiness.
Over 70 per cent of those who said their religious background was important to their identity reported having good psychological well-being. But again, among nonbelievers it was only 50 per cent.
The authors of this report thought that this had political and economic implications, and it is easy see immediately what they are. Obviously, if the government wants to lower the cost of state support for people suffering from depression, mental illness and lack of purpose, all it needs to do is to promote good mainstream religion.
One of the most helpful side effects of the survey is that it shows that believers themselves have been badly impacted by the general consensus that somehow believing in God is something to be ashamed about. The Freudian myth about hearing voices, mental illness and needing crutches still makes people feel likely guilty about admitting believing in public.
Evangelism has, of course, become considerably more difficult since it became a wide social convention that while you talk about politics at your peril, polite people don’t ever mention religion.
Once you strip away the prejudice that comes from this level of social compulsion that we’ve inherited, it’s perfectly obvious why believing is good for you.
We live in a society that has recognised how toxic hate is both in the private and the public sphere. But since culture has detached Christian ethics from Jesus, it has no idea how to deliver its ethical aspirations. Just telling people that “hate doesn’t belong here” doesn’t actually work. It only produces frustration. You cannot legislate against hate any more than you can legislate against prejudice. You cannot legislate for morality.
Christians have been trying to help the secular society we live in hear this for some time, but have never been heard. The antidotes to the human condition are few and far between, but the evidence is that Christianity has access to them.
Revenge and hatred are deeply debilitating for the human condition and cause severe toxicity of the soul. Spilling over from the soul, they create a preoccupation with anger and rage. That is immensely difficult to break free from.
And yet Christians who practise the sacrament of reconciliation, taking confession seriously, find themselves in the well-resourced place that allows them to forgive because they have been forgiven.
However complex suffering depression is, part of the illness relates to fear of the future and a mistrust of the possibility of good. While it’s impossible to be able to distinguish symptom from cause, Christians find that their experience of the love of God and the assurance that out of evil, through miraculous providence, he brings good, is a perception that can hold both endogenous and reactive depression at bay.
Living a life that has a focus of compassion for others, rather than a preoccupation for defending the self, is more effective than trying to bolster up flagging self-esteem. It also creates a network of virtuous relationships that one can flourish within. “Looking after number one” in the context of mistrust, fear, prejudice and anxiety, begins to create a vicious circle of dysfunctional hopelessness.
The evidence is that the psychological surveys veered on the cautious side. Common sense tells us that so many of the human ills are dissolved by a sense of the presence of God, who touches us with radiant joy, soothing forgiveness and, perhaps most importantly of all, a sense of belonging that comes from believing.
Not knowing who we are, or why we’re here; not knowing what the purpose of existence is, is the cause of a level of existential angst that has burdened our society for the last 100 years.
To know that we are made in the image of God, to know that we matter sufficiently for God to pierce space and time so that, through suffering for us, he could then accompany us to bliss, works very well for the human psyche, both pragmatically and existentially.
Christians have always known that believing is a blessing – that God is good for you. But it takes a certain amount of courage to take on the prejudices of secular society that has such difficulty in re-examining its received folly.
Even if many of its critics think that psychology is mainly glorified common sense, Christians should welcome these sorts of surveys, republish them widely, and use them as a platform for reconfiguring the apprehension and ignorance of shallow secularism.
It’s not just a matter of “we told you so”. It’s also a matter of being compelled to by Love.
(People pray during a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz))
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