#116: Priesthood and the Crisis of Masculinity—Dr. Suzanne Baars, PhD (Free Version)

The Roots of The Priestly Abuse Scandal—Part II

This is the second in the series on the roots of the priest abuse crisis. The renowned Dutch psychiatrist and Nazi camp survivor Conrad Baars, MD, diagnosed the roots of the current priesthood crisis some 50 years ago. His insights into what he and longtime collaborator Dr. Anna Terruwe called “deprivation neurosis” are unusually accurate and they anticipate today’s headlines.

As a therapist, writer, and editor, his daughter Suzanne Baars is carrying on her father’s work. She dives deep into her late father’s work and how it applies to the current scandals.

In this episode you will learn

• How Baars’ experience of enduring 19 months in the dreaded Buchenwald concentration camp formed and confirmed in him in the work of psychiatry
• The role played by the anthropology of St. Thomas Aquinas in Baars’ insights into emotional health
• Why true affirmation is so rare, and yet provides the answer to loneliness, compulsive habits, and deprivation neurosis
• How emotional immaturity has given rise to the porn pandemic, divorce, and a generation of beta males
• The relationship between essentially weak men and maternal ways of governing
• Why priests need to be willing to be hurt and to hurt

Resources mentioned in this episode

• I Will Give Them a New Heart: Reflections on the Priesthood and the Renewal of the Church by Conrad Baars, MD, edited by Suzanne Baars and Bonnie Shayne
• Born Only Once: The Miracle of Affirmation by Conrad Baars, MD
• Feeling and Healing Your Emotions by Conrad Baars, MD

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Question of the week:

What is one concrete way you can you affirm your pastor as a man and as a priest?

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