Video Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell, and today we have a great episode. I’m very excited about our guest today. He is the founder of the JPII Healing Center and the author of the bestselling book Be Healed: Encountering the Powerful Love of Jesus in Your Life. He spent more than 30 years as a therapist—also in parish ministry,—has taught on the collegiate level on marriage and family relationships and therapy, has a ton of amazing credentials. I think some of the most important is that he told me he has 11 grandkids, and I’m very excited to have here today Dr. Bob Schuchts. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Thanks, Edmund. Glad to be here.

Edmund Mitchell: So, I’m really excited about this. The last couple podcasts, we’ve been walking through the 10 Commandments, and this episode is on the Sixth and Ninth Commandment. And so for those of you Catholics that were raised like me and had a hard time memorizing these, this is “Thou shall not commit adultery” and “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” I’ve been really excited to have you on just to speak from your background in healing and ministry and family therapy. In my experience, often these Commandments—especially these more particular ones—they just kind of were something that was put in front of me and it was like, “Hey, don’t ever do this.” And it was like, “Cool.” And then going into ministry and having to teach people about this or explain these things, realizing that I was missing and other people kind of missing the practical experience or background to even know how to talk about these things or people struggling with these things, or even—heaven forbid—people who are currently in situations where either adultery has happened or it’s currently happening.

So I just would love to pick your brain about these Commandments and your experience and your ministry and work, but I would love for you to give people your superhero origin story. For like the one or two people that aren’t familiar with you and your work, if you could give people a little background on yourself.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. I grew up in a strong Catholic family that fell apart. And it fell apart because of adultery. And I wasn’t a stranger to the violation of the Ninth Commandment or the Sixth in the sense of, from when I was in third grade, somebody showed me Playboy magazines, which was pornography back then. The working through that and the working through my dad’s adultery. I just love talking about and helping people in these areas because I know what it’s like to experience the woundedness of these violations. If people haven’t read the Catechism on these, it’s beautiful. It’s just really incredible the depth of insight and wisdom that’s in the Catechism under the “Life of Christ” section. It just brings it from a set of rules to this deep understanding of how we’re created as human beings and what relationships mean and what our sexuality is for. And I think people would be surprised at the violations of these two Commandments in terms of it far surpasses adultery and coveting. It gets into a lot of really deep things. It affects all of us.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I had an uncle that would just always say, “Hey, looking is fine. If I’m looking, I’m not doing anything.” I also think about another group of people. I also was raised very sheltered, and I had heard stories of one of my parents, who their parents had had unfaithfulness and a marriage broke down. But other than that, I just didn’t—other than on TV or something—no experience with it. So then when I went into ministry and I’m 20-something around other people that have been married longer, and they’re really struggling with some of these things, it was hard having no experience or just no practical understanding of “Can people recover from this? Can marriages recover from this? How do we even give practical advice or help to people?”  So I’m interested just kind of starting in general with parish ministers who might think this isn’t that common. Surely, people coming to RCIA are coming to “this is something that affects some people, but not very many.”

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. Let me broaden the field for a second. And again, read through this section, because we’re talking not only about adultery in its formal sense, but St. John Paul II says, “A man can commit adultery with his wife by treating her as an object.” Even in marriage, even in a faithful marriage, sex outside of marriage is a violation of this Commandment. Statistics say about 90 percent of people have sex outside of marriage. Pornography is a violation of this, sexual fantasy, masturbation, immodest, in terms of the Ninth Commandment. Listening to music, watching television or watching movies, the ways that we look. This touches all of us.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: And if it doesn’t touch us directly, it touches us in the closest circles of our relationships, because these areas of concupiscence; the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life kind of underscore these areas. And so I think divorce and remarriage without annulment is a violation of the Sixth Commandment. And I think we’ve so watered down our understanding of what God’s nature for sexuality and relationships are, that we don’t know how much it’s been violated in our culture and people around us.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I agree. For people who might not be familiar with the healing work that you do and talk about, could you talk a little bit? Because I can imagine that these Commandments—all sin—but that there’s this relationship between wounds, family history, and struggling with sin. And I think in particular, this one that’s kind of much more front and center, I would think.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. Our work at John Paul II Healing Center is working with people in the Church at every level—and often at the deeper areas—of life like this. And usually wounds that result from sexual wounds, sexual sin, are some of the deepest wounds. Sexual abuse, pornography, adulteries, sex outside of marriage, and then trying to love in marriage when our heart’s been wounded by broken relationships prior to that. So, it really affects a large range. And a lot of my work as a therapist was working with couples in these situations, or working with individuals helping to get free, and kind of bring that into John Paul II Healing Center in our conferences and the books and teaching.

Edmund Mitchell: Could you share a little bit about how—and again, correct me. I went on the retreat and I’ve been reading a lot of the materials that you guys put out, but kind of my understanding is that there can be one of two responses to some type of wound. And what really resonated with me on the retreat was that sometimes we might think that “Oh, adultery happened, so all generations would be tempted to adultery.” And what really stood out to me—and I don’t know if it was yourself or your brother who shared—that this vow to never do a sin can actually also cause problems. And it resonated with my own personal background and story and experience. But I think that’s something that a lot of parish ministers would be really surprised to understand that it’s not just “Adultery’s bad and everyone’s tempted to adultery,” but these other angles of woundedness.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. You’re describing it well. So in my case, when you make marriage vows, those are vows made in the Holy Spirit. But when we’re coming out of a wound—like my dad’s adultery—I made vows, my brother made vows, “We’re not going be like my dad and do the same thing.”But those vows made out of judgment and made out of fear, actually put us in prison. And so we need healing from both the brokenness in those relationships, but also freedom from the vows that we made to protect ourselves and to make it better on our own or live differently than that. So yeah. Those are very powerful.

Edmund Mitchell: And how would you describe the difference between saying, “I never want to commit adultery.” Sounds like a good thing. How do you help someone understand what you’re talking about there?

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. So the difference between making it, it’s where our heart is when we make that. Is it made out of fear and judgment? In which case, we’re always fearing the thing that we’ve judged, and then we’re judging ourselves for even doing anything in the likelihood of that vs it’s living the Commandments. It’s living our baptism of vows to be able to say, “I’m going to follow God’s way in my life. And I’m going to do that in the power of the Holy Spirit, not in my own struggle to do it right and out of fear and out of judgment.”

Edmund Mitchell: And I’m so fascinated on how—part of the reason I thought of you immediately—was I thought, “Man, I wish I could sit in on an RCIA class with adults or married couples, and the topic being given to you as the catechist being these Commandments.” And just like how you would think through presenting the Church teaching, but also providing practical suggestions or the kind of pastoral context for some of these things. I know this wasn’t in one of the questions. This is throwing you a random question, but what comes to mind to you as a rough way that you would try to present these Commandments, keeping these contexts in mind?

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. I actually had that opportunity to be invited into RCIA classes to teach some of this.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s awesome.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: We also teach this in our Unveiled Conferences. So I love this topic. So I think the first is getting an understanding of God’s design for us as men and women in our bodies, which the Theology of the Body is a great background in that. Christopher West and Mary Healy and others have presented really usable things for that. But it’s going from the negative to the positive. It’s going from what to avoid; so much we live in fear and guilt and shame about. It’s kind of like a vow “I need to avoid this,” rather than “What are we being called to?” And the Catechism talks about chastity in a way that really is a beautiful picture; chastity and purity. “Chastity,” It says, “is the integration of our person, which is healing, and the integrity of the gift.” Which is to be able to look at our sexuality as a gift to be used for God’s glory, for the good of others, and for the good of ourselves.And to use it with integrity; to exercise it with integrity. 

So when you start with that point, all of a sudden now, we’re not living out of fear. We’re living out of this great desire to be fulfilled. I know my daughters had a big change when they began to see it this way. It was like they went from, “Oh, I can’t do that, and I can’t do that, and I shouldn’t do that,” to””Oh, that’s what I’m called to.” And it really changed both of their outlook on dating, their outlook on marriage, openness to life, those kind of things. So what is chastity? Chastity being the integration of the person. Whenever we sin, or whenever we live in any kind of shame, we tend to disconnect from ourselves, if you will. We tend to kind of shame a part of ourself; shame a part of our past; shame a part of our history. And that shame actually increases our likelihood to impurity, because it’s the opposite of chastity. We’re living in brokenness; we’re living in fragmentation. And here’s a quote from St. Augustine that is in the Catechism. So I encourage the readers, they can look it up under Catechism 2340. And he says this, “Indeed it is through chastity that we are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity.”

And that’s really the healing process, right? The whole healing process is God’s love and mercy allowing us to take everything in our life, all the wounds we’ve had, and all the sin that we’ve had, and bring it into light and bring it into His love. And as that happens, we go from what we talk about in the conferences. We go from a security; a deep sense of security that I’m loved to a maturity that I know how to give myself in love, to purity, which is to be able to see everything through the eyes of love. And that’s a lifelong process. None of us reach that perfectly. But oftentimes we try to get purity without maturity and security. And to be able to understand that security is being rooted and grounded in God’s love. There’s nothing we’ve ever done. There’s nothing that’s ever happened to us that’s outside of His love. And as we experience being loved that way, we grow in security because we recognize “I’m just loved for who I am. I’m not loved for what I do, I’m loved for who I am. And even all my failures and weaknesses and impurity can come out into the light, and in that I can become pure.” That’s really the healing process.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s making me think when you said about the shame that often one of the temptations when struggling with sin is just to hide it from everyone. I found that particularly, like for instance, in youth ministry, the topic of pornography and creating an environment where—not that you’re encouraging teens to have to tell people that they don’t want to tell—but just saying that “You need to find someone to talk to about this.” And I know this from experience, and I’ve heard other youth talk the same thing about “Once I opened up to someone that I trusted who could pray with me and walk with me through, that it was so much easier to get over this and to find healing and those things.”

Dr. Bob Schuchts: That’s a great example.

Edmund Mitchell: I can imagine the same with adultery.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: It’s absolutely essential in the areas of adultery. There’s a guy who teaches on destiny, and he says there’s really four denials and have to be overcome. All four of these things need to be brought into light: denial that it happened; that I did anything. Denial that it was wrong and I am fully responsible for it. The denial of the consequences for myself and the people around me. And then a denial of hope. And each one of those things need to be overcome for somebody to get freedom. And what we’ve found is it’s actually shame and isolation that perpetuates sexual sin.

Edmund Mitchell: Hmm.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Because what is lust but a longing for communion; a grasping at communion; a grasping at connection. Anybody who looks at pornography is longing for connection; is longing for love. Anybody who enters into adultery is looking in another relationship for the love that they don’t feel like they’re getting here. That’s not to justify it in any way, because it’s always wrong. But the desire underneath it is a good desire. So when we live in shame, we actually cut ourselves off from love; we cut ourselves off from communion, and we live in that shame. And that drives us then to the sin.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. When you’re teaching RCIA or when you’re in front of a group of people, obviously you don’t want everyone to “Go around the room and raise your hand if adultery has impacted your life,”but how do you encourage that kind of openness or seeking help? And what’s interesting about this in particular is that the sexual sin, it can either be “I’m struggling with this,” or “I know my spouse is struggling with this.” And I think that’s what can be very hard is not wanting anyone to find out that my spouse has committed adultery or is, or whatever. And I can imagine ministers wondering how to open that up or how to create an environment where people can find community around these struggles.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: One of the things I’ve done is I’ve gone through this Commandment and all the things that are listed, and I just list them on a board and I say “You don’t have to tell anybody right now. This is what Confession is for. But just go down through and see how many of these you’ve experienced personally and who in your life, in your close environment, has experienced these things.” And there’d be quite a few of them. And my book, Be Restored, at the very back in the appendix,—if anybody’s interested—I have a life confession model using this Sixth Commandment and have people walk through and then encourage them to share it with a spiritual director, a friend, a therapist, or particularly, in confession with a priest. And just go through and confess and just such freedom when you just lay it all out.

Look at the things that you’re particularly shameful about. I have things in childhood, like looking at pornography, that I was ashamed of; I wouldn’t tell anybody. Now I can tell everybody just because there’s freedom there that I’m no longer in shame about it. I recognize the consequences and can share it. Just like I was in shame about finding out my dad committed adultery. I took shame in it because I loved my dad. And that brought shame to our family. Now I can share it because of walking through the healing.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. This is just coming to mind, but I’m thinking about—and not to promote any TV that people shouldn’t watch—but I do remember in the TV show Succession. Oh my gosh, it’s the lawyer one. Suits. I think it’s Suits

Dr. Bob Schuchts: I’ve heard of that, but I never watched it.

Edmund Mitchell: Well, the whole series, one of the main characters is basically realizing—I’m just realizing this now as an example from media—but a lot of his problems in his life are because he’s made this vow; because he had a father that committed infidelity, and just this struggle and also the struggle with his relationship with his mom. I’m just realizing that. Anyways, just to throw that out there. Another thing I’ve been dying to get your take on is I overheard a conversation between two very bright people. I think one of them has a Catholic philosophy background or something, but they were talking about the trend. There was some study that came out that said that young people are getting married less, but are also having sex outside of marriage less.

And the first person that was sharing this was saying, “Hey, this is a good sign. It’s not good that people aren’t getting married, but it’s a good sign that people aren’t having as much sex.” And what surprised me was this other person said, “Actually, I don’t think that’s a good sign at all. I think it is a sign of a deeply promiscuous and sinful culture that we’re getting to the point where people are afraid to even have sex with another person, or people are avoiding even trying to have any type of physical intimacy with another person and are instead going to other places.” And I still don’t know what to make of that or how I feel. It’s two kinds of views that I can empathize with, but I’m just wondering where you would land on that or what you think about all that.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. I would say it’s a good thing that young people are not having sex outside of marriage.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Not a good thing that young people aren’t marrying. The reason why a lot of young people aren’t having sex outside of marriage is because of what you described. It’s become just this avoidance of relationship, and avoidance of intimacy, and the social media thing that’s created this isolation. And even during COVID, a lot of the advice was “Don’t get involved with somebody else. Just book a pornography, masturbate, and that will satisfy you.” So even the public recommendations for that was a violation of the Sixth Commandment. I would never say that it’s good. It would be good for people to violate Commandments because there’s always negative consequences. But the breaking of friendship and interaction and affection and learning to know and experience love with the other sex is a dangerous trend.

Edmund Mitchell: Just to be clear, he was not advocating for people to have sex outside of marriage. But it was interesting him saying—and it reminded me of some of the things I’ve heard you guys say—back to that vow, which it’s like, it is good that they’re not having sex, but we can’t assume that it’s from a good place. It could be from a very wounded place. Oh man, I just got thrown off topic for a second. I’m really also interested in chastity for adults, because I think there’s a lot of, “Hey, here’s practical advice for young people.” But in particular, if you’re working with adults in adult ministry or young adult ministry; people out of the college years and married couples. Not often do people get exposed to chastity within marriage, but what is some of your quick advice or practicals for growing in chastity? Like if someone raised their hand during an RCA session and said, “Well, what do I do to grow in chastity? How do I grow in chastity?”

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah, that’s good. I would recommend for married couples my book, Be Devoted, which is all about that in marriage. And for single people and married people, Be Restored is about sexual healing. So what is chastity? Chastity is being able to see ourselves and our sexuality with God’s eyes, which is also the definition of purity: to be able to see things with God’s eyes. So the first part of it is to really understand what God intends for our sexuality. The Theology of the Body is a great illustration of that. I would recommend people start there. It just totally changes your viewpoint. I remember the first time I was studying that in the Scriptures and I’d been teaching and counseling, but I read the Theology of the Body and it was like, “Wow, this is just so well integrated.”

You talk about a brilliant philosopher. St. John Paul II was a brilliant philosopher, but also such a holy man. And he was able to put chastity in a light that was attractive for everybody. And you read it and you felt like you were taking a bath of everything that had been impure; just being washed and cleansed and being able to see it in purity. And we don’t realize how much our culture just inundated us with impurity. So really understanding what chastity is, which is a right vision of our relationships and sexuality. And then how do we live into it? Again, I think there’s some really practical things like, how do we relate to our own sexuality? And how do we relate to the sexuality of another? How do we relate to sexual desire? How do we relate to attraction? And then how do we relate to the places in our life where we recognize that we’ve violated our own chastity; violated our own purity? 

And that begins with Confession. The Eucharist, those things aren’t unrelated. In the Eucharist, we’re receiving the purity of Christ and Confession. We’re receiving His mercy and compassion, and all of that’s bringing us into greater integration. And integration is chastity. And so as we live as whole people and learn to live in communion with others, we’re living in chastity. So there’s a lot of practical things for the particular areas. For example, let’s say in a married relationship, the wife is feeling used by her husband. For her to be able to acknowledge that, and to be able to share that without hurting—it’s always hurtful—but without purposely hurting her spouse. But just to say, “When this happens, I feel used.”

And it may be a history of pornography use by the husband prior to marriage that he just bringing that into the marriage. Or he may just be insensitive to the wife’s needs or vice-versa. And so just being able to have that conversation, and then being able rather than to just focus on my needs getting met as a man, or a woman just focusing on her needs being met, part of chastity is learning to look out for the needs of the other. And as we do that, we then respect their dignity. We respect their body. It doesn’t take away from pleasure, it increases pleasure, but it’s not just a physical pleasure. It becomes an emotional and spiritual pleasure in addition to the physical pleasure because it’s really two people coming together; loving each other; giving themselves to each other. 

And that’s why sex outside of marriage is always a violation. Because if we haven’t really given ourselves to each other in covenant and sacrament, then to give ourselves to each other physically is always going to be a lie at some level.

Edmund Mitchell: Mm-Hmm.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Because there’s not a giving of our person.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: We’re just using the other person for our good. Even though we think we’re loving them, it’s really not love.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I remember I had a very good friend who is struggling with the Church teachings on this and struggling to be a practicing Catholic. And I remember at one point he was saying, “Man, why is the Church just so concerned about sex? Why is it always about sex?” And I remember telling him at one point, just as a way to answer it, I was like, “Well, everything’s about sex because it’s about what it means to be a human person.”

And I think people that have thought, “Well, I don’t want to read Theology of the Body. I’m not very interested in the sexual topics.” Reading that and understanding the Catholic anthropology; the Catholic worldview of the human person plays into everything, because we’re made for love and relationships and the giving and receiving of ourselves as persons. There’s a reason why it’s the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. It’s the best model we have to try to understand God and His relationship with us and with Himself in the Trinity. And so everything is about sex, in a way, because everything’s about love and about persons.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Great answer. I was just listening to a former atheist who is now Christian. And an atheist was saying, “You’re Christians, everything’s about sin. You’re obsessed with sin.” And this woman responded beautifully. She said, “No, we’re obsessed with love.”

Edmund Mitchell: That’s great. Oh my gosh, what a great answer.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: And sin is a violation of love.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. That’s an amazing answer. I really hope that people will go read Theology of the Body. Be involved; check out your books and your resources. I could talk about this for another hour. Do you have any last minute advice or thoughts you’d have for pastors or parish ministers around these topics? And especially helping others in the context of evangelization and catechesis and the people they’re ministering to?

Dr. Bob Schuchts: I would recommend three things. I would recommend to really understand the Church’s teaching in a way that gives joy. Because when you communicate it with joy, it makes it inviting rather than fearful. Secondly, I would encourage every one of them to do their own work of healing in these areas because none of us have come out unscathed from the culture and from our history. And so to really do a good life and Confession themselves so that they’re not afraid of those areas, because so many of the times we’re afraid of speaking publicly to others because of our own shame or own uncomfortableness. And so to really walk through that healing process for themselves and forgiveness and understanding so that there’s a real freedom of heart. When I get up at an Unveiled Conference, I now have so much freedom of heart to be able to speak intimately to couples about sexual intimacy and about sexual relationships because of what I’ve walked through, that I didn’t have before I walked through. And so I think that’s really critical; doing your own healing, your own freeing, working on your own chastity. And then you’re able to speak it with both compassion and truth. And if we have a false compassion, we don’t help people. And if we have truth without compassion, we don’t help people.

Edmund Mitchell: Amen. Wow. Thank you so much, Dr. Bob. Where can people go to learn more about the JPII Institute and just your work and your books?

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah. So jpiihealingcenter.org is our website. And there’s a lot on sexual healing on our podcast. My podcast with Jake Kim, which is restoretheglorypodcast.com/

Edmund Mitchell: Awesome. And we’ll have links to those things in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Thanks, Edmund

Edmund Mitchell: I’m geeking out. I’m a huge fan. So this is really an honor and thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Bob Schuchts: Yeah, that was great. Thank you. And thanks for the work you’re doing. And God bless everybody who’s doing the work out under the trenches.

Edmund Mitchell: Thanks everyone for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode. Again, Real and True’s mission is to unlock the truth and beauty of the Catechism and help people around the world encounter its pulsating heart, Jesus Christ. You can go to realtrue.org to watch or listen to the podcast, or you can get it on your favorite podcast platforms. And we look forward to you guys joining us next time on The Real and True Podcast.