Here, Here
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Reviews on Thursday, November 19, 2009 5:00 PM
Oh, Rachel, you are so right about how great those Fr. Emmerich Vogt tapes are!
Funny coincidence: I intended to promote them myself on the blog today.
Rather than scramble for another topic, I’ll take the risk that readers will enjoy an anecdote from the series. (Fr. Vogt is not compensating us for these plugs!)
As Rachel notes, the talks are about how to achieve interior freedom. Although he rarely uses the word, what the tapes teach is the virtue of prudence: practical wisdom.
It’s all very well to know as a Christian that I must be just and I must be merciful, but how do I know right here and now, in this situation, what to do or say to this person in front of me?
Prudence is called in antiquity the “charioteer” of the virtues because it guides us in how to apply the other virtues properly.
St. Bernard teaches there is no virtue which won’t be turned to harm without the wise regulation of prudence.
Here’s a story Fr. Vogt tells as an example.
There was a woman who’d been married for 20 years to a miser.
It’s not that they were poor and carrying that cross together. He made a tidy income, but pretty much from the moment they married he informed her that he made the money and so it was his.
She had an allowance of sorts to allow her to run the household, but there was nothing for herself.
Every so often her friends would take her out shopping and buy her a new dress so she would have something decent to wear.
For 20 years she just took this. As she was pious and a daily communicant, she had among her friends a reputation for sanctity.
How nobly she carried this terrible cross!
When the woman came to Father Vogt for direction, however, he helped her see that putting up with a stingy husband was not her cross at all.
“Your cross, ” he told her, “is that you are called as a wife to be a witness to your husband of Christian dignity so he can grow, yet you so fear conflict you have been avoiding your task all these years.”
He wasn’t advising her to pitch a fit, file for divorce, or become a feminist. But he did advise her to stop envisioning herself as a noble victim and take responsibility for her own contribution to the state she was in.
Christianity has nothing to do with being a doormat; it has everything to do with loving truly—which we can only do if we know who we are in Christ.
How do we tell the difference? Fr. Vogt says that as Christians we may never do harm to another person, but sometimes in order to do what is right, we do have to hurt them, which is different—and we confuse the two.
If I need to set a boundary with you—or confront rather than enable an ugly behavior in my spouse—that conversation is going to hurt. But handled well, it will help us both to grow, because we will both live in truth.
Detaching With Love is the wonderful 5-CD series about letting go of fear and the need to control that Rachel mentioned.
Pricier (because twice the length) but also incredible is The Spirituality of the 12 Steps—which is by no means only for those dealing with an addiction in the family.
It is about how the 12 steps are derived from the treasury of the Church and how to radiate Christian peace and joy in every situation.
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