Article:
Daneo Human and Spiritual Development Services - A Project of Love John Friel C.P.
Paul Daneo was an 18th century man whose intense interest and actions around human suffering and its profound meaningfulness, has applications for us today. His theological reflections brought a powerful and positive image of how God is drawn to us in our brokenness and how we can unite our suffering to His, in such a way that brings light and life out of darkness and death. Thus the memoria passionis becomes a memoria resurrectionis. As we reflect on these themes we come to see the cross as God's solidarity
with men and women, young and old, in the condition of human suffering.
In his book: Passion of Christ - Passion of the World, Boff shares with us that Christ was rejected by a world oriented toward the preservation of power. He succumbed to these forces. But he never abandoned his project of love. The cross is the symbol of human power - and the symbol of Jesus' love and fidelity. Love is stronger than death, and power collapses before it. The loyalty of the cross then, the love on the cross, has triumphed. The name for this, Boff points out, is resurrection: a life stronger than the life of power,
biological life, the life of the ego.
And so the cross enters the history of love. Paul Daneo referred to the cross as an unfathomable sea of Divine Love. In this the traveller can find hope, a hope that draws us out of cruel despair. Hope in the face of self-rejection transfigures the meaning of the sufferer's torments:
Hope is the sensation that the last word does not belong to the brutality of facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is far more complex than realism would have us believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that, miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will open the way to freedom and resurrection. (Rubem Alves)
Daneo Services is a hope based initiative that seeks to embrace the radical implications of the memoria passionis particularly as it translates itself in the lives of those plagued by despair. We seek to be a project of love that strives to draw hope and resurrection from within the face of human suffering. We work to integrate the strengths of psychotherapy and healthy religion.
We acknowledge the tension that has long existed between psychotherapy and religion. Many psychologists and psychiatrists look on religion with great suspicion, they see it as overly magical and superstitious and insufficiently scientific. Similarly many religious individuals have been mistrustful of psychology and psychiatry, which they see as overly humanistic, promoting rampant individualism, and lacking in any deep spiritual dimension.
However, this tension between psychotherapy and religion is unnecessary. Both theological and psychological researchers are searching for answers to similar questions. Questions that bring us to reflect on the mystery of suffering, such as: Why do so many people hate and torment themselves mercilessly? Why do violence and aggression exist? What is the reason for so much human suffering? What can we do about it? How can we develop greater compassion for ourselves and for others? These questions pose an
urgent challenge to us all and invite us to engage in reflection, collaborative dialogue, and action.
Bringing together the strengths of a sound psychological framework coupled with a healthy religious discernment can facilitate greatly the process of change, liberation, and the realisation of the key goal - the installation of Hope.
Hope is at the core of pastoral psychotherapy. Hope allows us to risk greater vulnerability. It enables us to continue struggling when growth is blocked or is very slow. There is a growing realization that a strong, explicit emphasis on hope has been lacking in pathology-oriented therapies. Like the "Kingdom Spotter" in Eamonn Bredin's Disturbing the Peace, perhaps the
unique contribution of pastoral psychotherapy is as a "Hope Awakener". Paul in his letter to the Corinthians links hope with faith and love (1 Cor. 13:13 ) as crucial factors in constructive relationships.
Studies of prisoners of war show that many of the deaths were the result of hopelessness. Bruno Bettelheim, in reviewing his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, observed that prisoners who became hopeless (because they believed the repeated statements of the guards that they would never leave the camp except as corpses) became like walking corpses. These prisoners stopped even getting food for themselves and soon died. This story finds echoes in the lives of many in the North of Ireland.
People who have lost loved ones as a result of merciless torture and slaughter and who themselves have given up on life, and wait for death. It is precisely into this place that memoria passionis becomes a "Hope Awakener" its energy is released in order to help us seek life and not death.
We let the Scriptures have the final and more eloquent commentary on the task of Daneo Services in Belfast , and the people and themes that form our work
We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of doubts, we never despair. We are persecuted but never abandoned; we are struck down but never destroyed... dead yet here we are, alive; punished, but not put to death; sorrowful, though we are always rejoicing; poor, yet we enrich many. We seem to have nothing, yet everything is ours! (2 Cor. 4:8-9, 6:9-10).
with men and women, young and old, in the condition of human suffering.
In his book: Passion of Christ - Passion of the World, Boff shares with us that Christ was rejected by a world oriented toward the preservation of power. He succumbed to these forces. But he never abandoned his project of love. The cross is the symbol of human power - and the symbol of Jesus' love and fidelity. Love is stronger than death, and power collapses before it. The loyalty of the cross then, the love on the cross, has triumphed. The name for this, Boff points out, is resurrection: a life stronger than the life of power,
biological life, the life of the ego.
And so the cross enters the history of love. Paul Daneo referred to the cross as an unfathomable sea of Divine Love. In this the traveller can find hope, a hope that draws us out of cruel despair. Hope in the face of self-rejection transfigures the meaning of the sufferer's torments:
Hope is the sensation that the last word does not belong to the brutality of facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is far more complex than realism would have us believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that, miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will open the way to freedom and resurrection. (Rubem Alves)
Daneo Services is a hope based initiative that seeks to embrace the radical implications of the memoria passionis particularly as it translates itself in the lives of those plagued by despair. We seek to be a project of love that strives to draw hope and resurrection from within the face of human suffering. We work to integrate the strengths of psychotherapy and healthy religion.
We acknowledge the tension that has long existed between psychotherapy and religion. Many psychologists and psychiatrists look on religion with great suspicion, they see it as overly magical and superstitious and insufficiently scientific. Similarly many religious individuals have been mistrustful of psychology and psychiatry, which they see as overly humanistic, promoting rampant individualism, and lacking in any deep spiritual dimension.
However, this tension between psychotherapy and religion is unnecessary. Both theological and psychological researchers are searching for answers to similar questions. Questions that bring us to reflect on the mystery of suffering, such as: Why do so many people hate and torment themselves mercilessly? Why do violence and aggression exist? What is the reason for so much human suffering? What can we do about it? How can we develop greater compassion for ourselves and for others? These questions pose an
urgent challenge to us all and invite us to engage in reflection, collaborative dialogue, and action.
Bringing together the strengths of a sound psychological framework coupled with a healthy religious discernment can facilitate greatly the process of change, liberation, and the realisation of the key goal - the installation of Hope.
Hope is at the core of pastoral psychotherapy. Hope allows us to risk greater vulnerability. It enables us to continue struggling when growth is blocked or is very slow. There is a growing realization that a strong, explicit emphasis on hope has been lacking in pathology-oriented therapies. Like the "Kingdom Spotter" in Eamonn Bredin's Disturbing the Peace, perhaps the
unique contribution of pastoral psychotherapy is as a "Hope Awakener". Paul in his letter to the Corinthians links hope with faith and love (1 Cor. 13:13 ) as crucial factors in constructive relationships.
Studies of prisoners of war show that many of the deaths were the result of hopelessness. Bruno Bettelheim, in reviewing his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, observed that prisoners who became hopeless (because they believed the repeated statements of the guards that they would never leave the camp except as corpses) became like walking corpses. These prisoners stopped even getting food for themselves and soon died. This story finds echoes in the lives of many in the North of Ireland.
People who have lost loved ones as a result of merciless torture and slaughter and who themselves have given up on life, and wait for death. It is precisely into this place that memoria passionis becomes a "Hope Awakener" its energy is released in order to help us seek life and not death.
We let the Scriptures have the final and more eloquent commentary on the task of Daneo Services in Belfast , and the people and themes that form our work
We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of doubts, we never despair. We are persecuted but never abandoned; we are struck down but never destroyed... dead yet here we are, alive; punished, but not put to death; sorrowful, though we are always rejoicing; poor, yet we enrich many. We seem to have nothing, yet everything is ours! (2 Cor. 4:8-9, 6:9-10).