The Empowered Catholic Podcast

Christ is born to be King! He IS King, now. Merry Christmas! That makes us agents of the New Creation because Christ has already started the New Creation. Paul talks about this a lot. God wants to dwell with man and will bring heaven down to earth and they will exist together in the new creation; think of the New Jerusalem descending in Revelations. Christ, he says, is the "first fruits" of the ne...

You are a citizen of Heaven - did you know that? Paul wrote that in Philippians 3. What does that mean about my situation?  Paul's listeners in Philippi would have instantly connected that idea to being a citizen of Rome because having Roman citizenship was so important. Philippi was a colony. Roman citizens there were agents and emissaries of Roman culture, law, language, customs, and power. Roma...

Happy Advent, my friends. We are getting ready to re-celebrate that first Christmas. Sometimes I get the impression that people think Jesus came to earth so that we could go to heaven. But if you think about salvation history, it runs in the other direction. It's always God wanting to come and dwell in his creation with his people. God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. God was present in the...

There's a theme that you may not be aware of that runs through the entirety of scripture from the distantly ancient text of Genesis to the merely ancient text of Revelation. You've heard of this idea but may not be aware of how it is an organizing principle for understanding Scripture. It's a theme explicitly present in the ancient books of Genesis and Exodus and throughout the New Testament - it'...

The creation account in Genesis is not understood by modern people. It's very unlikely that you have ever heard a correct account of what it means. As modern people, we have pretty much missed every important point in it. We have read all of our modern preconceptions into it and created pointless controversies about it. Listen to the podcast if you want to know what the creation story in Genesis i...

Reframing is the art of looking at a situation, thought, or belief and finding a different perspective that is also TRUE and MORE HELPFUL. We often lock in on the first interpretation of a situation that comes to us. But we can usually step back and see there are OTHER things that are also true about a situation and these other things can give us a different approach. A new approach that will focu...

We have an excellent and very doable language challenge for you this week! We discuss E-Prime, which is a way of using English without any forms of the verb "to be". That means without any words like these: is, be, been, were, is, am, was, will be, am, are. We think there is one situation where avoiding the "is" and "am" serves you particularly well. We ask you to listen to that situation and refr...

Your unconscious mind is always listening to what you have to say and will work to make things turn out the way you say. Do you like achievement? Accomplishing things? Improving? Then using positivity in your language is a big help for you! LISTEN to yourself this week. You might be surprised by what you hear. We discuss the possibilities and some limitations of being positive. Get your rational o...

"Hey, Mom, I'm moving back home!"  What do we need to think about if and when that conversation starts? Our first thoughts may be to ask ourselves: How can I help? A better question might be: Is this course of action helping my young adult child move to independence? Create an agreement with your young adult before they move in. Agree WHEN they are leaving and what they need to happen for them to...

How can you be HEARD? How can you HELP when they don't want to hear you? If you want her to hear you, then you must hear her first. Do you want him to see your perspective? You must see his perspective first. Being SEEN and HEARD is important to any relationship that has depth and vitality. When you are speaking with your young adults, and pretty much anyone, DO THIS: be on the lookout for how you...

We want to avoid giving unsolicited advice and comments whenever possible. How is that possible when we have conflicts? Or we are the landlord or banker and we have to spell out some requirements? COLLABORATING with your young adults during their transition to independence helps shift the relationship to a life-long, loving, adult, relationship. Shifting to COLLABORATION is a BIG shift for most pa...

We discuss some of the biggest DO's and DON'Ts for managing our relationships with our young adults. What's the best way to give advice? Our young adults generally don't want to hear it. They've had plenty of it from us in the past. We also discuss how our young adults really hate receiving or perceiving, judgment from their parents. We can carry a lot of judgment of them without realizing it. Or...

There's a huge goal to never lose sight of when relating to your young adult! Our expectations of them can conflict with that goal. It's human nature to focus on what's NOT happening and to be impatient for what we think SHOULD be happening. We have expectations rooted in our own personal history. Let's bear in mind that the culture is not what it used to be. Life's path is less settled and predic...

Join us as we take a quick break to remember the helpfulness of self-compassion practice, why it's important that you use this skill now, what it is, and how much we want it as part of our spiritual life. Self-compassion is a skill and a habit. What does that remind you of?? A virtue! Yes, a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. In this instance, to do good to YOU so you can bring God's go...

Bill Yoh shares how a love of neighbor lit up his life with the fire of the Holy Spirit and inspired him to live a simple, strong, unvarnished faith in a straightforward and consistent way. We were delighted to speak with him as he shared his experiences, from the dumpsters of Nicaragua to the boardroom of one of the largest privately held US companies. He shares lessons taught to him by the poor,...

How do you know if you have a Giant Killer Duty Robot looking over your shoulder? Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers continues to help us see the robot AND tells us what moral theory used to look like before that robot swept down like a terminator from Skynet and displaced the teachings of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the church fathers. It turns out that, if you want to get your ideas about what y...

Move over, Goliath, we got a Giant Killer Duty Robot to slay here. Good thing we are getting lots of help from Dominican Fr. Servais Pinckaers, who wrote a lot of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor and the Catechism of the Catholic Church with John Paul II.  Servais calls the robot "Moral Obligation Theory." He traces its roots back to the 15th and 16th centuries. It's a theory that has become a "l...

End your bad habit of "perfect" with us! End it today. "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect is what it says in Matthew 5:48," right? After all, PERFECT is an English word that we know very well. If it's perfect then it's flawless, without defects, and does not make mistakes. That's modern English. But the word used in Scripture does not mean the same thing as the modern English word "per...

Amanda is a young lady described in a recently published book reviewed in the August 23, 20023 Wall Street Journal. She's had perfectionism drilled into her, Barbie-style, and she's internalized it. "Self-directed" perfectionism is the perfectionism that's directed at yourself; it's what we normally think of as perfectionism. Amanda has hit all her milestones through her middle-class upbringing: t...

Barbie, the movie, has something to say about perfectionism. Remember that monologue by Gloria? Gloria was super frustrated with the contradicting and insatiable messages directed to her as a woman that required her to be perfect and to be judged inadequate whenever she fell short. It resonated with many, many women. Perfectionism messages are constantly being directly beamed into you from your en...

We take things personally because it cuts to our survival instinct. What's at stake, in our brains, isn't "do I get the topping on the ice cream?";  it's " Do I get to eat today?"  Our brains are always looking for threats. We quickly interpret what people say or do as being directed at "me." If you are trying to bring that virtuous, charitable, wise "you" to the party, it's so helpful to create s...

Ruminating undermines you. We can quickly move from necessary self-reflection into repetitive negative thought patterns that get in the way of growth and problem-solving. Midlifers love to chew on their mistakes and keep turning things over and over. And over and over. Rumination isn't solving your problems. It's not bringing health and new growth. Instead, it's making things worse. And some good...

Are you 'shoulding' on yourself?  (Don't lie!  We all do it)  And it's easy for those tricky 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts" to start defining your emotions and behaviors.  I should get up earlier.  I should work out.  I should get more sleep.  I shouldn't complain so much.  I shouldn't be upset. And what about what others should or shouldn't do or be?  Find out why this is distorted thinking and how i...

What? More thought traps? Yes, lots more. Hooray. Listen and spot your favorite one to work on this week. These traps derail us or leave us spinning our wheels. The ratio is great but awareness and curiosity are better for spotting and responding to them. We discuss and share examples of some of them, like Personalizing, Blaming, Unfair Comparisons, Regret Orientation, What IFs, Emotional Reasonin...

Humans (like you for instance) have some habits of thinking that are traps. We all fall into them, repeatedly. You have to laugh! These traps can shut down our thinking before we realize it, leaving us stuck or making poor choices because the traps often work at an unconscious level. Asking great questions is the key to uncovering thought traps. We discuss and share examples of some of them, like...