About 800 people representing 25 states came to Westerville St. Paul Church from Thursday to Saturday, Dec. 1 to 3, for a conference on “Healing the Whole Person” sponsored by the John Paul II Healing Center of Tallahassee, Florida.
Event co-chairman Bill Gavin said more people wanted to be on hand, but an attendance cap was set to avoid overcrowding. He said about 120 additional people viewed the conference on livestream video.
Speakers were Dr. Bob Schuchts, a therapist who founded the John Paul II Center; his brother Bart, with Church on Fire Ministries; and Sister Miriam James Heidland, SOLT, of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, who has spoken at Columbus diocesan conferences at the state fairgrounds. The three also presented a program for priests on Wednesday, Nov. 30.
The presenters discussed the conference theme, with their presentations throughout the weekend centering around the healing journey of the Schuchts brothers as described in Bob’s book Be Healed.
All three took part in a three-hour session on Saturday morning titled “Encountering the Father’s Love.” It began with Bob Schuchts continuing to share the story he began telling during the first two days of the event – how he, his mother and his four siblings had been devastated by their father’s leaving the family when Bob was 14 and Bart was 5 years old.
“I wouldn’t let God’s love penetrate the depths of my brokenness,” Bob Schuchts said. “We sometimes have a hard time letting love in because we go to areas where we have built up walls, and they have become both a barrier to hurt and a barrier to love.”
He said that in his spiritual development, he has realized that after his father’s departure, he was dealing with anger and an excess of pride. “I had become so self-righteous in my determination not to be like my father that my attitude of protection had become a prison,” he said.
“Friends began praying for me because they had a sense long before I did that this misplaced attitude was pride taking hold of me.”
Schuchts said his pride and a determination to be in control of his life made him feel “like a pretzel inside, because I was so twisted up and determined not to let go of that control.”
He was successful on the outside, having played football for, and graduated from, Columbia University, then eventually obtaining a doctorate from Florida State University and establishing a practice in marriage and family therapy.
But inside he was in turmoil, facing panic attacks and stress in his marriage, all of which he realizes were caused by refusing to acknowledge the pain of his childhood experiences.
Through attending Life in the Spirit seminars and Marriage Encounter and Christ Renews His Parish programs, he learned “that the source of my pride was all the sources where love was deficient. The remedy for pride is love. … Jesus comes to set a new foundation in our life, and when we allow Him to do that, our life comes into balance and becomes integrated.”
Attending his first Christ Renews His Parish (CRHP) weekend was especially important for Schuchts because he found other men sharing an intense hunger for God and willing to acknowledge hidden pain.
Several months later, at another CRHP weekend, he was in a late-night prayer service with other men when he said he felt “an explosion of joy” in which “God was teaching me baby talk, how to pray with Him in simplicity, laughing and praising.”
“I was overjoyed like a little child at Christmas,” he said. “I knew God was real in a way I never had before. After coming home, I began to love my wife in a way I never did before.”
Schuchts’ brother Bart, who was dealing with his own spiritual issues, attended that same CRHP weekend. Bart resumed the family’s story following a talk by Sister Miriam James and a 15-minute break.
Bart said that because he is 9 years younger than Bob, the end of his parents’ marriage had even more of an impact on him than it did on his brother. He, too, felt a sense of betrayal by his father.
“As a little boy, I could hear Mom crying herself to sleep,” Bart said. “I hated my father. It hurt that he wasn’t there for Mom or for me. I didn’t know what to do with that anger. I wanted to be somebody, but I felt like nobody.
“Eventually, I made a vow: ‘I will never be like my father. I will never hurt a woman that way.’ That was an unholy vow because it was made out of judgment and set me up for failure.”
He said his shame and self-hatred made him determined to live for pleasure only, and instead of living up to his vow, he was treating women worse than his father did.
Bart became a football player like his brother and thought that would be his way to success. He was on the Florida State team of 1987 that finished No. 2 in the nation and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but he was cut by the team.
“I was a wreck, but my life began to change at that point while I was sitting on the toilet in the Bucs’ locker room,” he said.
“I sat there and said, ‘What I thought would make me happy has made me miserable.’ I cried out to God, ‘Show Yourself. If not, I have nothing to live for.’”
He said God responded, not right away but over time. When he was offered a chance to try out with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he told his agent he wasn’t interested because “something had happened to my heart and the desire to play was gone.”
Attending the CRHP weekend his brother Bob mentioned earlier in the program also was a life-changing experience for Bart. At another eye-opening weekend, he was influenced by the testimony of two men.
“One was a politician who talked about how he had been unfaithful to his wife and destroyed his family,” Bart said. “Another was a man who won his community’s businessman of the year award. He wanted this badly and said that for 10 years, he had sacrificed his marriage and his children to gain this honor.
“He received a plaque, made a speech, and as he was walking off the stage, he heard a voice inside telling him, ‘For this stinking piece of wood, you sacrificed your entire life.’ And he broke down and cried.”
The Schuchts brothers eventually reconciled with their father. They also were together during the last days of another brother, Dave, as he died from complications of AIDS. He had been a heroin addict but returned to the faith, with a CRHP weekend also playing a key role.
“I stand here before you, and I want to hug Dave again,” Bart said. “Through his death, his brokenness, our families were healed. Through the death of God’s son, all of us can be healed, all of us can be restored.
“Ask everyone you have hurt, or who has hurt you, for forgiveness. If you have kids and you’ve hurt them but didn’t want to – as a father, ask everyone, ‘Please forgive me.’”
Sister Miriam James’ talk also dealt with pride and control.
“God has all the qualities of love,” she said. “He loves us more than we desire. We may think this is an exaggeration and say, ‘If I don’t love myself that way, how can God love me?’ But His love is infinite and can never be in excess.
“It’s not a sterile love, not confined to heaven, but one that watches us and protects us unceasingly. … Not for one moment does God turn away from us. If this is true, then I have no reason to be disturbed.
“Every single one of us wants to love and be loved, and we also have places we’re ashamed of,” she said. “We can allow the Lord into these places, and it is then we become like Christ. We show Him our wounds, just as he showed the Apostles His wounds in the Upper Room on the night of His resurrection.
“We all have ‘sorrowful mysteries’ – areas which the enemy intends for destruction, but where Jesus comes to heal. We all learn barriers to keep ourselves safe, even from God. Bob was speaking of areas of control, where we try to manage our pain, but I renounce control of the spirit of control.
“Even sisters have struggles” with forgiveness, Sister Miriam James said. “I knew one sister who said, ‘I just avoid everybody I don’t like. That way I don’t have anybody to forgive.’ But simply avoiding people isn’t forgiveness,” she continued.
“Forgiveness requires vulnerability. You have to feel pain, to admit something hurts, that something’s not OK, to be able to heal. Christ takes full account of the ways we are wounded and brings us love in return.
“Forgiveness is about justice. Unforgiveness is about injustice. … Justice eventually will be served, and there will come a day when everyone who hurt you will know it – and you and I will learn every way we’ve hurt others. The Lord will set everything right. Justice will be served – not by you, but by God.”
Gavin, the conference co-chairman, said what made this event different from programs such as the annual diocesan men’s and women’s conferences was that it was focused mainly on interior renewal rather than evangelization.
“There’s a lot more prayer – intercessory prayer – built into this experience,” he said. “Bob Schuchts started the John Paul II Center in 2004 because, as a therapist, he wanted to take a deep dive into the human person and our shared feelings of brokenness.”
He said 500 of the 800 people in attendance were not members of the host parish, with some coming from Canada and the United Kingdom. Some online viewers were from Mexico, England, Canada and Denmark. About a dozen priests from outside the diocese were on hand, as well as groups of religious sisters on retreat. About 20 diocesan priests heard confessions.
The John Paul II Center sponsors similar gatherings about four times a year at sites across the nation. The next such event in Ohio will be at St. Basil the Great Church in Brecksville, near Cleveland, in February. Sunbury St. John Neumann Church and Newark St. Francis de Sales Church have hosted these conferences in the past.
Gavin said Father Jonathan Wilson, pastor at St. Paul, became interested in having his parish serve as a conference site after attending the event in Newark and a priests’ conference. He said about 80 parishes across the nation have expressed interest in hosting the event, and it’s not known when it will return to the Columbus diocese.
