from Greg Popcak, picking up on our discussion below:

The Catholic helping professional must, of course, be sensitive to this lived experience.  For the client, it represents the sum total of everything they’ve been through.  But for the Catholic helping professional, lived experience is merely a starting point for intervention, not the ending point from which we take our cue. The relationship between the theologian and the pastoral counselor should be akin to the relationship between the architect and the general contractor.  The theologian draws the plans and the pastoral counselor helps coordinate the effort involved in building the final product–as it were.  Pastoral counselors recognize that we must harmonize the lived experience of our clients with the purpose and ends for which they were created (i.e., being mindful of an "adequate anthropology").  Furthermore, we must make certain that we are helping our clients pursue both their divine purpose and end in a manner that moves them forward without demanding so much at any given time that they burn out or give up.  Like any coach or trainer, you keep the goal ahead of you at all times while respecting and working through the limits that stand in the way of immediate progress. Over time, you can move the person forward toward greater wholeness and perfection in Christ without causes them to lose heart.

This is where organizations like Dignity and NACDLGM fall down.  They use the "lived experience" of the people they serve as the starting and ending point of their work.  They are caught up in an antiquated Rogerian idea that acceptance will make you free.  But really, acceptance only makes you ready to do the real work. That’s not just true for Christians, btw.  Research shows that to be true of progress in any therapy.   And unless the real work is begun, then the only alternative is seeing oneself as a finished product and then working to get the rest of the world to agree. 

Sound familiar?

More.