Catholic Teaching and the 12 Steps: 1. The Intersection

Catholics and the 12 Steps:

1. The Intersection 

INTRODUCTION

“HI!  My name is Bob and I’m a (____ fill in the blank—alcoholic, addict, codependent, food addict, gambler, workaholic,…).” Such is the introduction you give in the 12 Step room when you introduce yourself.  There are a few who add and “I’m a recovering Catholic.”  By this they don’t mean they are Catholic and recovering from an addiction, but that they have left the Church.

But that’s not me.  I’m a recovering agnostic, a secular Jew who came to the Church late in life.  The stimulus for this conversion was a gift from God: the addiction and alcoholism of two teen-age children.   In future articles I’ll describe how that gift led me to faith.  I’ll also discuss other conversion and recovery stories taken from the rooms, particularly as they lead to reversion or conversion to the Catholic faith.   With these stories I hope to show how each of the 12 Steps reinforces our Catholic faith.  Note, dear reader, that the 12th Tradition—anonymity—will be preserved in these stories.

In this first piece, I want to paint the whole landscape.  It’s important to see how the 12 Steps and Catholic teaching are synergistic, that is to say, act  to reinforce and complement each other.  Another Catholic 12 Stepper has given an analogy from molecular biology:  Catholic teaching corresponds to the double helix of DNA and the 12 Steps correspond to messenger RNA, that carries the DNA code to cell mitochondria to build proteins.  (For a more detailed account of this parable see here.)

THE 12 STEPS—THEIR CATHOLIC BACKGROUND

Surprising as it might seem for many in the recovery rooms, the 12 Steps and Catholic teaching are related, both historically and in content.  Although Bill W (Bill Wilson) and Dr. Bob (Dr. Bob Smith) are recognized as the cofounders of AA.  Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin also played a very important role in developing a recovery program for alcoholics.  Despite opposition from higher-ups, Sister Ignatia had been treating alcoholics at St. Thomas, a Catholic hospital in Akron, Ohio, before AA began in 1935, rather than  sending them off to an asylum for the insane (the customary practice then).   She developed a medical rehabilitation program for alcoholism in the early years of AA, with the cooperation of Dr. Bob.   Her achievements were recognized by awards from Steubenville College, AA, and a letter from President Kennedy. Here’s a quote that expresses her commitment to healing alcoholics:

“The alcoholic is deserving of sympathy. Christ-like charity and intelligent care are needed so that with God’s grace he or she may be given the opportunity to accept a new philosophy of life.” 

Although the 12 Steps were codified by Bill W without recourse to Catholic teaching, their relation to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius were recognized early on by a Jesuit priest, Fr. Edward Dowling, S.J.  One cold November night in 1940 he laboriously climbed up the stairs to Bill W’s shabby one room New York  apartment to tell him of the connection.  Fr. Dowling, an ardent baseball fan, had hit a home run.  A lifelong friendship developed from this first meeting.  Fr. Dowling effectively became Bill W’s spiritual advisor even though Bill—despite extensive correspondence with Bishop Fulton Sheen—never converted to Catholicism.  The story of Dowling’s friendship and spiritual mentorship is told in “The Soul of Sponsorship,” by Robert Fitzgerald, S.J.

I’ll say a little bit below (more in later articles) about the intersection of the 12 Steps with Catholic teaching.   Many books have been written about this; the ones i’ve read are listed below in References.  While 12 Step programs do not always explicitly specify  “God” as the “Higher Power” referred to in the steps, the Big Book of AA uses “God” throughout.   

Despite this acknowledgement of God in the AA bible, a  few Step meetings are explicitly labeled to be for atheists and agnostics.  At one 12 Step Zoom meeting I happened to attend, the leader announced at the beginning that the term “Higher Power” was to be used rather than “God.”   Such was the problem Bill W faced in developing A.A.’s program:  to emphasize the need for a Higher Power in recovery, without driving atheists and agnostics away.   As the stories I’ll tell later show, a 12 Step program often leads to conversion or, for fallen-away Catholics, reversion to the faith.

WHAT ARE THE 12 STEPS?

And now let’s examine the 12 Steps.  To understand the Steps completely requires more than this short article.  Accordingly, I’ll give links below for more detailed treatments.  Moreover, one should realize that there are 12 Step programs not only for alcoholics, but for many other substance or process addictions.  The Wikipedia page for 12 Step Programs lists 47 such, including drugs, overeating, emotions, depression, workaholism, gambling, codependency, families of addicts, …

Here’s one version of the 12 Steps, adapted to be general (blanks for the substance or process addiction of concern).

• STEP 1: We admitted we were powerless over _____ – that our lives had become unmanageable.
• STEP 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
• STEP 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
• STEP 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
• STEP 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
• Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
• Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
• Step 8: Made  a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
• Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
• Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
• Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
• Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other ______, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The blanks  can be filled in by alcohol, drugs, work, other people, emotions, sex, pornography, gambling, family dysfunction,  … The staircase to recovery is the same for each, the 12 Steps.  In many stories from the rooms, people have told how they started recovery with AA, then turned to other 12 Step programs as “a finishing school,” to solve fundamental character problems: ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), WA (Workaholics Anonymous), DA (Depression Anonymous),….

THE 12 STEPS AND CATHOLICISM—THE INTERSECTION

So, where do the 12 Steps and Catholic faith intersect?  Here are some general considerations.  And, as in teaching any subject, the general principles are made clear by examples, which will be given in future articles.

Steps 1-3 reflect our Catholic faith in the Trinity.   When we admit we are powerless and turn our will and lives over to God, we fulfill  de Caussade’s “Abandonment to Divine Providence.   We acknowledge that we need God’s grace for salvation, through His only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit.

Steps 4-10 relate to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Confession.  Some Catholic alcoholics do Steps 4 and 5 with a priest, as Confession, the Sacrament of Reconciliation

Step 11—I can only add “ipse dixit,” “it speaks for itself.”

Step 12—reinforces Jesus’s Great Commission, “Go out into the whole world….” (Mark 16;15, Matthew 28:19, Acts 1:8, Luke 14:21-23).  The quotation below tells the story:

“…when we see Christ present in the Twelfth Step caller, we see Him still demonstrating His loving concern for mankind. We are only His instrument, making His healing power alive and active in modern times. If we participate in Twelfth Step work with this purely Christian attitude it will give us enlightenment, courage, and, yes, strength to meet with failures. It will also motivate us with true charity which will guard us from selfish interests” 

—Fr. Arnold Lugar, “Calix and the 12 Steps”

The quotation is from a book by Fr. Arnold Lugar about the Calix Society, a fellowship whose goal is to integrate Catholic teaching with the 12 Steps.

I know of two Catholic 12 Step Groups, “Catholic in Recovery,” and “The Calix Society.”  Please go to the linked web sites to find out about each.  Each has Zoom meetings on topics related to 12 Step recovery, literature resources and Catholic teaching.   

WHAT’S TO COME

In future articles I’ll recount some stories of recovery, conversion and reversion and say more about how the Catholic 12 Step groups mentioned above integrate Catholic teaching with the 12 Steps.  As in AA meetings, it’s somebody’s story that hits you in the gut, rather than the reading from the Big Book.  Please note dear reader, that this article is no more than a framework, as when you see a partially built house with the wooden wall frames, but not sides, windows or roof.  More is to come.

REFERENCES

The 12 Steps and the Sacraments, Scott Weeman

Calix and the 12 Steps, Fr. Arnold Lugar

Twelve Steps with Jesus, Daphne K

Helping Families Recover from Addiction, Jean Heaton

A 12 Step Approach to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Jim Harbaugh, S.J.