Catholic-Infused Support Helps 12-Step Healing

“In my deepest wound, I saw your glory, and it dazzled me,” St. Augustine once said.

The experience of opening our deepest wounds is often the hardest thing a person emotionally endures in their entire life.

A woman who entered Catholics in Recovery, offered at St. Anthony on the Lake, Pewaukee, has experienced how the 12-step program — infused with the Catholic faith and sacramental life — has turned that open wound — and the stigma that often comes from it — into perhaps her greatest place of healing.

“Being able to share the Word of God, my belief in the Eucharist, and the 12 steps at our weekly meetings, has brought me from the most painful pit of my life to a life of promise, hope and great joy,” she said. “A gift by a God who loves me and continues to work on me one day at a time.”

Dcn. Dennis Petrie, who helps coordinate the St. Anthony group, noted that they use Catholic in Recovery to work with — not be a replacement for —someone’s involvement with another 12-step recovery effort such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

“It’s to really augment your ability to bring your faith into it … we go further, and we really try to bring that faith community in to support you,” he said.

Dcn. Petrie said the desire for such a program came about five years ago after he found that numerous parish members battled substance abuse.

“I kind of got the idea or the feeling that maybe we should be doing some sort of ministry directly for people who had substance abuse problems,” he said. “We have a number of 12-step meetings that go on in the area around our church, and we just tried to find something unique and came upon Catholic in Recovery on the web.”

The national ministry, started by Appleton native Scott Weeman years after his own addiction recovery began, has been applied at 127 parishes and sites from Alaska to Florida to Canada. There are also 61 online recovery meetings of various kinds, some on every day of the week.

St. Anthony on the Lake is the only site so far in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, but participation there is open to anyone, Dcn. Petrie said. Support on starting a group at another site also is available.

“The CIR meeting is different than my Al-Anon meetings yet has the same 12-step recovery process at its core. In these meetings, I’m able to fully express my faith in Jesus Christ. I am able to use all of the resources of Catholic Church, including the sacraments, the daily liturgy and our catechism,” another participant said.

“Our sharings remind each other we are loved and forgiven even though at times we don’t feel like we deserve it. We pray for what we need to grow in love and faith, knowing deep down that it is God’s greatest pleasure to provide us with his grace as we become the men and women we are meant to be.”

“God is relentlessly pursuing us. No matter what we do, he doesn’t love us any less. He wants us to just let him in. He wants to be in relationship. He wants to have us turn to him,” Dcn. Petrie said. “And I think there is a term, certainly in Catholic in Recovery, I believe 12-step as well, surrender. That is what the first three steps are about. ‘I cannot do this on my own, God. I’m at the bottom of the barrel. Only you can help me.’”

The program’s General Recovery Group opens those floodgates for people recovering from addiction. The Family and Friends Group also opens the door to healing for those who have suffered the emotional wounds of a loved one encaged by addiction.

“They have to go through the process. They have to admit and take ownership for their problem. Your role is to love them, to be there for them if they need your support, and that is very transforming,” said Dcn. Petrie, who further described how a woman in recovery experienced her family opening up about what they have endured from her addiction.

“She was very, very impacted by just hearing the other side of the story, what her family members might be going through because of her addiction and her struggles. … You really get those feelings coming across from those sorts of conversations.”

Combining these groups with the program’s Catholic in Recovery Addiction Healing Retreat gives people fighting addictions, and their loved ones, the ability to utilize Eucharistic Adoration and the sacraments of Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick and Eucharist to commit themselves to recovery with the help of a loving, healing God.

“You are not alone,” Dcn. Petrie said.

Find more information at stanthony.cc/cir-groups about Catholics in Recovery nationally and at St. Anthony on the Lake Parish, including its General Recovery Group, Family and Friends Group, the Addiction Healing Retreat scheduled for June 7 and a new Recovery Group for Men with Pornography and Lust addictions which will be launched at the Healing Retreat.