Catholic Mass and Its Healing Implications for the Addicted Person

Abstract

A convenience sample of 12 recovering alcoholics/addicts were interviewed, using open-ended interviews, during 2009 regarding their experience of Catholic Mass in relation to their recovery. Half of the participants had been raised Catholic, whereas the other half had converted. All have participated in Alcoholics Anonymous and lived in various areas in California. Data analysis used a phenomenological method allowing for use of the participant's own vocabulary. Implications and study limitations are noted, as well as suggestions for further research.

Keywords :

• Catholicism
• Mass
• addiction
• alcoholism
• mystery
• faith
• disease of addiction
• Eucharist
• recovery
• spirituality

Notes

3 Interested readers are referred to William James’, famous work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which explores religiosity's and spirituality's transformative potential and processes and which can be relevant to their nexus for understanding substance use, and its cessation by the faithful, the believer, the participant. Editor's note. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Being the Clifford Lectures on Natural Religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902. (1902). London: Longmans, Green, & Co, retrieved April 9, 2013 (Google books full view).

4 There are many disease models, not just one. These include, among others, biochemical-based models, actuarial, functional, experiential, social, political, religious-spirit-animism, economic, and consumer-based models. Each has their own critical definitions, criteria, goals and agendas, constituencies, indicated and contra-indicated techniques and services, “:healers” and change agents, preferred sites for intervention, temporal parameters, and stake holders. Each has their unique ethical associated issues. The recent “medicalization” of “drug use” (substance use disorder) in the DSM “secular Bible” does not sufficiently serve basic diagnostic purposes of gathering needed information in order to make a needed decision nor give the minimum of needed evidence-based information: etiology, process, and prognosis. Editor’ note.

5 The Second Vatican Council (Latin: Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum or informally known as Vatican II) addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The council, through the Holy See, formally opened under the pontificate of Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed under Pope Paul VI on 8 December 1965. Editor's note.