Youtube Interviews
In this episode of Roadmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by Father Conor Sullivan, a psychologist and faculty member at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. The episode focuses on the importance of the nuclear family.
Father Conor Sullivan explains that the nuclear family consists of a husband and wife who are raising children. He acknowledges that there are various definitions of family in today’s culture, including single-parent households, children living with grandparents, and foster homes. However, he emphasizes the unique benefits that come from the traditional nuclear family structure.
The conversation then delves into the significance of the marital relationship within the nuclear family. Father Conor Sullivan highlights the importance of nurturing the love between husband and wife, as it becomes a safe refuge for their children. Contrary to the belief that children should come first, he explains that prioritizing the marriage creates a strong foundation for the family as a whole.
The discussion also touches on the role of mothers and fathers in a nuclear family. Father Conor Sullivan emphasizes that both parents bring unique gifts and complement one another. He shares his personal experience of growing up without his father and the importance of having both masculine and feminine presence in his life. Additionally, he cites Jordan Peterson’s viewpoint that mothers excel at loving children for who they are, while fathers excel at loving them for who they can become.
Throughout the episode, Father Conor Sullivan highlights the intersection of psychology and faith, emphasizing how the two disciplines inform and enrich each other. He concludes by acknowledging the complexities of family dynamics but underscores the importance of the nuclear family’s role in shaping individuals and society.
Overall, this episode of Roadmap to Heaven provides insights into the benefits of the nuclear family structure, the roles of parents within it, and its implications for Catholic families.
Adam Wright:
Well, we are happy to be on the road today with the show, visiting at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. Actually, in the office of vocations here in the archdiocese of Saint Louis with Father Conor Sullivan, who is on the faculty here at the seminary and does some wonderful work in the archdiocese. Father, you are, not just a priest, but you’re also a psychologist. Yes.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yes. I’m certainly provisionally licensed at this point, still working on full licensure. But, yeah, I’m a clinical psychologist. Yeah. Provisionally licensed.
Adam Wright:
Oh, good. This is good because now I want to paint a visual for our listeners. I walk in here with this Pelican case. And if you’ve ever seen one of those movies where they have the president. They’re like, “Bring the nuclear codes.” You know, this is exactly the same kind of case. And we’re here to talk about the nuclear family. So we don’t need the nuclear codes, but I was laughing at the —
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. The irony there. Yeah. It fits.
Adam Wright:
And that’s where your degree in psychology and your training in theology really benefit us in this conversation. So, “nuclear family” is not a new term. It’s a term that’s been around for a while, and maybe some of us are saying, “I remember that from college.” Let’s refresh. What is a nuclear family?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
To my understanding, the nuclear family, when we talk about the nuclear family, what we’re talking about is a mother and a father (a husband and a wife) who are raising children. So it’s that immediate family and the life that it takes on kind of in that immediacy.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. That’s an important definition because we live in an era where we have lots of different definitions of family. You know? We have single-parent households. We have children that live with their grandparents and not with their parents.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Indeed. Indeed.
Adam Wright:
We have foster homes. There are many things. Yes. I want to start with the spouses. This is that question. How does it benefit parents to be spouses, especially, again, going back to the culture that says, “Oh, you don’t need to be married. That doesn’t matter.”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. No that’s a wonderful question. I think one of the things that I like to talk a lot about in marriage preparation when we’re talking about getting ready, with couples who are preparing for marriage. One of the things I like to talk about with them is how their love as husband and wife actually becomes kind of the refuge or the place in which their children kind of feel safe. And so, it sounds counterintuitive in a lot of our — one of the things in a marriage preparation course is that they always take an inventory in the Catholic church. Right? So in the Catholic church, you want to get married, you have to take in a marital inventory that kind of compares and contrasts different opinions about things. And one of the questions that comes up in every marital inventory is, “True or false: Our children should come first.” And it’s a trick question. It always gets them, because the answer is actually false. The love between the husband and the wife actually has to come first. And that sounds really counterintuitive, especially to those really good mothers out there who are like, “Wait a minute. What’s that about?” But in reality, if you put your love first, as a husband and wife, and you cherish one another well, you’re going to naturally be inclined to love your children as well. And that love becomes a safe refuge for them. It becomes a shelter for them. And so it’s oriented towards children, but it also has a life of its own.
Adam Wright:
So it’s good when our kids come up to us and then see mom and dad sneak a kiss, or sneak a hug, or go out on date night or something like that?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think not only is it good, kids seeing affectionate love between their parents is hugely important for development. Yeah.
Adam Wright:
Now let’s talk about the kids for a moment here, because this is another question we talk about. I’ve heard it probably for the last 20 years since I’ve been paying attention to this term nuclear family. The children greatly benefit from being in that traditional definition of family, where mom and dad are married. They have kids, and everyone lives in the same household together. Let’s go a little deeper into that. Why do children benefit, and how do they benefit from that?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. And I think this is where my faith complements my education in psychology and vice versa, you know. So both the worlds of psychology and faith, there’s a lot of psychology that has different theoretical ideas of this, but my faith informs me and helps me to be, I think, a better psychologist in this regard. But in terms of the living together and staying together as a family unit, I think the first thing that comes to mind is the unique gifts that mothers and fathers bring to their children and to the life of the family. That for fathers, they bring a certain giftedness that mothers don’t, and mothers bring a certain giftedness that fathers don’t. And I appreciate your earlier comment, too, about making sure that we’re including in the conversation those whose nuclear families have been changed or altered in some way. I grew up actually, my father passed away when I was very young. And one of the beautiful things that I learned out of some of the suffering that our family experienced in that, was what spiritual fatherhood looked like. That while my father wasn’t in a large portion of my upbringing, there were many fathers, and I needed that masculine presence in my life growing up. And similarly, I needed my mother’s feminine presence. And so both of their presences bring something too the picture uniquely, and they complement one another. And if you have one that’s missing, we run the risk of missing out on something really important or essential to our upbringing.
Adam Wright:
I like to joke in our household that my wife and I mirror the image of God’s love to our children. She’s the image of His mercy, and I’m the image of His justice, or wrath, if we’re going Old Testament that day. But that’s part of what you’re talking about. Mothers and fathers, or spiritual mothers, spiritual fathers, have different charisms that they bring to the table.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. I think this is more theoretical, and it comes from a source that is somewhat controversial. I give him a qualified approval. So, Jordan Peterson. So a lot of people love to listen to him. I think there are some really important things about his kind of approach that are missing and that our faith brings that he may not have all the time. But he says some really cool things. And I think one of the things that he says is that mothers are really good at loving their children for who they are, and fathers are really good at loving their children for who they are capable of becoming. And you see mothers, wives, challenging husbands to accept their children where they are. And husbands challenging wives to help their children to grow and develop and to move from where they are to where they want to be. And so you can see if you have one — and by the way, it’s really important to note: mothers and fathers do both. Right? But one is easier typically for one or the other. And so if you have somebody who just says, “Oh, you’re good where you are,” without ever challenging you to grow, well then you get entitlement, then you get grandiosity, you get narcissism. But on the flip side, if you have someone saying, “You’re not good enough yet and you need to work,” and you never hear the message, “You are lovable the way you are,” well, then you get anxiety. Then you get fear. Then you get a lot of distress because you’re never good enough. So you need the love of both a mother and a father, a masculine love that drives you into that next stage of development and a feminine love that reminds you of the goodness of who you are right now. And so the complementarity between the love of a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, is really, really beautiful when you start to peel back the layers.
Adam Wright:
I think you just hinted at something that was the perfect setup for this next question. You were talking about being told you’re loved without being called to something greater, you get into narcissism and grandiosity, or the opposite extreme of that being called to something greater and told “You’re better than this, you’re better than this,” or “You could be better than this,” without being told, “But I also love you where you’re at right now,” leading to anxiety and whatnot. You know, we’ve heard it said that the nuclear family is a building block of society. And I think you just started to answer that, but why do we say that? Why do we call the family the building block of society?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
It’s a great question, and you could talk for ages on it, I think. But just to kind of summarize, I think society has a vested interest. Our society, our nation, our state, our local communities, have vested interests in their citizens being really good. Right? If you want to have a really good country, if you want to have a really good community, you have to have really good people. And the family, the nuclear family, the home, is where virtue is first learned. And not just faith based virtues, but also natural virtues. Courage. Right? Prudence, temperance, patience. All of these things that we need to learn, and there’s really only one one way to learn them, which is through the school of hard knocks. Right? Like, we learn to love when we’re being stretched. And so, the family and the home, the nuclear family, can be a place of immense tension, as well as immense love and support and acceptance. It’s both. And that tension is what helps us to grow, I think, in a virtue that helps us to grow into good, healthy, contributing citizens. So everything we learn starts in the home. And so, if society wants to bring up good citizens, it behooves society to support policies that promote that virtue that’s instilled and inculcated in the home.
Adam Wright:
Our kids, being kids, sometimes they come home from school and all of a sudden, everything is just harder. They’re not paying attention. Maybe they’re a little bit more emotionally quick-tempered or, quick to cry, for the little ones and whatnot. But then we ask their teachers sometimes, “Are they like this at school?” And the teacher says, “Oh, no. They’re the model of great behavior at school.” And someone said to me, “You know why they do that at home, is because at home they feel safe to let their guard down.” And I imagine, if we want our kids to go out and survive the pressures of this world, this goes back to the very first thing you said. The love of mother and father. The starting point of the family becomes that shelter, that refuge in the storm of life to say, “Okay. Yeah. You can go out and do this every day, but then you’re going to have a place to come back to where it’s just okay to let go and say, ‘Yes. This is hard. Yes. This is difficult, but I’m going to keep going at it.'”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Absolutely. One of the things that I work with a lot is OCD scrupulosity. People who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder in terms of their relationship with God. And a lot of that flows from an anxiety that they can’t ever do anything right. But in order to learn any new thing, we have to know how to fail. Even in the pursuit of virtue, even in the pursuit of love, we have to know that we’re going to fail and fall along the way and to have a refuge where it’s possible to try, and do it wrong first instead of worrying that you’re going to do it wrong and never trying. And so I think there’s a lot of stunted love out there actually, because there are a lot of people who are afraid of failure. When in reality, I think one of the best things about a family is what you just said, like when a kid comes home and can let his or her guard down and say, “This is really hard, and I really don’t like this, and I don’t know how to do it right. And I feel like I’m always failing,” or whatever. And you can work through it, but you can’t work through it unless it comes up to the surface. And it can’t come up to the surface until you invite that.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. I always love hearing, not just in mom and dad saying things like “It’s going to be okay, or here’s how we’re going to do this. Here’s how we’re going to get through this.” But then the siblings doing that too, especially as we’ve just started school, and the older siblings have had the teachers that the younger siblings are having. They’re like, “I didn’t know you do this in this grade.” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah. But it’s okay because the teacher’s going to do that, and it’s going to be great.” And that wisdom gets passed down, but also that camaraderie and that support network that they become for one another to say, “Oh, you know what? I can help you with that math, or I can help you with when you feel this way. Or I can help you with all of these things.”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. That’s a really beautiful thing. I grew up with 5 siblings. So I’m one of 6. And my mom raised me. The fathers who stepped in for my dad when he passed away raised me, but my siblings also raised me. And that’s I think something that some people who have a number of children get a little nervous about. Like, “Oh, I have to raise all these children.” It’s actually — there’s an internal life of the nuclear family that starts to double back on itself and multiply. It’s exponential. And that’s a really beautiful thing about what you’re just saying there is that what your children are doing is seeing how you have guided them and they want to do the same. And so they’re internalizing the beginnings of the love of a mother and a father at a very early age, which is that love that supports and nourishes and nurtures and guides, which they’re already starting to display that, which is really cool.
Adam Wright:
One last question I just thought of here is to talk about the broken families. And that’s something that we have many broken families in society and even within the church. And it goes back to something you said earlier, that number one: God loves you right where you’re at, in a parental love of God the Father. But also that we are called to more. And that’s a very delicate message sometimes. But what would you say to someone listening right now who says, “Well, our home is a broken home. And so are you saying I don’t have a shot at this? What do I do?”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Such a good question. And I think too, to remember as well, even in the families that don’t ostensibly look broken, there’s brokenness there, too. There’s a book by John Eldridge called Fathered by God. The subtitle I think is “learning lessons that your father could never teach you”. And the reason for that is that we’re all fallen. So there’s brokenness in every family, and then there are some families that are ostensibly, out in the open, that brokenness makes itself known. And in those cases too, it’s really important to remember the rule is the same across the board. That part of life, is going to be figuring out how the Lord wants to go back, with you to your upbringing and say, “Okay. So what was really good about that, and what was I missing?” And to recognize that the Lord can give and can heal and can provide along the way. And it’s important to recognize too, to be patient and gentle with yourself along the way. But if it’s anything, I want the families who experience kind of that open brokenness, where maybe a parent is missing like my father was when he passed away or maybe there’s a divorce or maybe there’s a different kind of brokenness in the family. I think if there’s one thing that I want to instill or say to that is that there’s nothing that’s written off for you absolutely. Right? That the Lord can heal and provide in the midst of that. And part of the beauty of life is seeing how He does that, and how He can bring life out of really remarkably dark and difficult situations. So, I want to recognize the darkness and difficulty of that and empathize with that, but also to say there is real, real hope. Yeah.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to get back to some of the basics of why we, as Catholics, emphasize the importance of family. Before we wrap up, could I ask you to offer a prayer for families?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
I would love that. I would love that. We’ll begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we glory and we thank you for the gift of being able to call you father, and for adopting us as your sons and daughters. We thank you for the gift of family love, for the mystery of the love between husband and wife, and their love for the children who are the fruit of their love and your love for them. We ask that you would bless all families with an abundance of awareness of your great love for them, and your support, and your guidance, and your presence with them. In a particular way, we remember those who are in any family that experiences any kind of brokenness. And we ask that you bring your healing grace to them, that they also might know the love and support of of loving Christians in their lives as well. And we ask all of these things through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father Conor Sullivan, once again, thank you for being with us on Roadmap to Heaven today. It’s been a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
It’s been a pleasure for me, too. Thank you.
Adam Wright:
Well, we are happy to be on the road today with the show, visiting at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary. Actually, in the office of vocations here in the archdiocese of Saint Louis with Father Conor Sullivan, who is on the faculty here at the seminary and does some wonderful work in the archdiocese. Father, you are, not just a priest, but you’re also a psychologist. Yes.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yes. I’m certainly provisionally licensed at this point, still working on full licensure. But, yeah, I’m a clinical psychologist. Yeah. Provisionally licensed.
Adam Wright:
Oh, good. This is good because now I want to paint a visual for our listeners. I walk in here with this Pelican case. And if you’ve ever seen one of those movies where they have the president. They’re like, “Bring the nuclear codes.” You know, this is exactly the same kind of case. And we’re here to talk about the nuclear family. So we don’t need the nuclear codes, but I was laughing at the —
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. The irony there. Yeah. It fits.
Adam Wright:
And that’s where your degree in psychology and your training in theology really benefit us in this conversation. So, “nuclear family” is not a new term. It’s a term that’s been around for a while, and maybe some of us are saying, “I remember that from college.” Let’s refresh. What is a nuclear family?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
To my understanding, the nuclear family, when we talk about the nuclear family, what we’re talking about is a mother and a father (a husband and a wife) who are raising children. So it’s that immediate family and the life that it takes on kind of in that immediacy.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. That’s an important definition because we live in an era where we have lots of different definitions of family. You know? We have single-parent households. We have children that live with their grandparents and not with their parents.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Indeed. Indeed.
Adam Wright:
We have foster homes. There are many things. Yes. I want to start with the spouses. This is that question. How does it benefit parents to be spouses, especially, again, going back to the culture that says, “Oh, you don’t need to be married. That doesn’t matter.”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. No that’s a wonderful question. I think one of the things that I like to talk a lot about in marriage preparation when we’re talking about getting ready, with couples who are preparing for marriage. One of the things I like to talk about with them is how their love as husband and wife actually becomes kind of the refuge or the place in which their children kind of feel safe. And so, it sounds counterintuitive in a lot of our — one of the things in a marriage preparation course is that they always take an inventory in the Catholic church. Right? So in the Catholic church, you want to get married, you have to take in a marital inventory that kind of compares and contrasts different opinions about things. And one of the questions that comes up in every marital inventory is, “True or false: Our children should come first.” And it’s a trick question. It always gets them, because the answer is actually false. The love between the husband and the wife actually has to come first. And that sounds really counterintuitive, especially to those really good mothers out there who are like, “Wait a minute. What’s that about?” But in reality, if you put your love first, as a husband and wife, and you cherish one another well, you’re going to naturally be inclined to love your children as well. And that love becomes a safe refuge for them. It becomes a shelter for them. And so it’s oriented towards children, but it also has a life of its own.
Adam Wright:
So it’s good when our kids come up to us and then see mom and dad sneak a kiss, or sneak a hug, or go out on date night or something like that?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think not only is it good, kids seeing affectionate love between their parents is hugely important for development. Yeah.
Adam Wright:
Now let’s talk about the kids for a moment here, because this is another question we talk about. I’ve heard it probably for the last 20 years since I’ve been paying attention to this term nuclear family. The children greatly benefit from being in that traditional definition of family, where mom and dad are married. They have kids, and everyone lives in the same household together. Let’s go a little deeper into that. Why do children benefit, and how do they benefit from that?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. And I think this is where my faith complements my education in psychology and vice versa, you know. So both the worlds of psychology and faith, there’s a lot of psychology that has different theoretical ideas of this, but my faith informs me and helps me to be, I think, a better psychologist in this regard. But in terms of the living together and staying together as a family unit, I think the first thing that comes to mind is the unique gifts that mothers and fathers bring to their children and to the life of the family. That for fathers, they bring a certain giftedness that mothers don’t, and mothers bring a certain giftedness that fathers don’t. And I appreciate your earlier comment, too, about making sure that we’re including in the conversation those whose nuclear families have been changed or altered in some way. I grew up actually, my father passed away when I was very young. And one of the beautiful things that I learned out of some of the suffering that our family experienced in that, was what spiritual fatherhood looked like. That while my father wasn’t in a large portion of my upbringing, there were many fathers, and I needed that masculine presence in my life growing up. And similarly, I needed my mother’s feminine presence. And so both of their presences bring something too the picture uniquely, and they complement one another. And if you have one that’s missing, we run the risk of missing out on something really important or essential to our upbringing.
Adam Wright:
I like to joke in our household that my wife and I mirror the image of God’s love to our children. She’s the image of His mercy, and I’m the image of His justice, or wrath, if we’re going Old Testament that day. But that’s part of what you’re talking about. Mothers and fathers, or spiritual mothers, spiritual fathers, have different charisms that they bring to the table.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. I think this is more theoretical, and it comes from a source that is somewhat controversial. I give him a qualified approval. So, Jordan Peterson. So a lot of people love to listen to him. I think there are some really important things about his kind of approach that are missing and that our faith brings that he may not have all the time. But he says some really cool things. And I think one of the things that he says is that mothers are really good at loving their children for who they are, and fathers are really good at loving their children for who they are capable of becoming. And you see mothers, wives, challenging husbands to accept their children where they are. And husbands challenging wives to help their children to grow and develop and to move from where they are to where they want to be. And so you can see if you have one — and by the way, it’s really important to note: mothers and fathers do both. Right? But one is easier typically for one or the other. And so if you have somebody who just says, “Oh, you’re good where you are,” without ever challenging you to grow, well then you get entitlement, then you get grandiosity, you get narcissism. But on the flip side, if you have someone saying, “You’re not good enough yet and you need to work,” and you never hear the message, “You are lovable the way you are,” well, then you get anxiety. Then you get fear. Then you get a lot of distress because you’re never good enough. So you need the love of both a mother and a father, a masculine love that drives you into that next stage of development and a feminine love that reminds you of the goodness of who you are right now. And so the complementarity between the love of a husband and a wife, a mother and a father, is really, really beautiful when you start to peel back the layers.
Adam Wright:
I think you just hinted at something that was the perfect setup for this next question. You were talking about being told you’re loved without being called to something greater, you get into narcissism and grandiosity, or the opposite extreme of that being called to something greater and told “You’re better than this, you’re better than this,” or “You could be better than this,” without being told, “But I also love you where you’re at right now,” leading to anxiety and whatnot. You know, we’ve heard it said that the nuclear family is a building block of society. And I think you just started to answer that, but why do we say that? Why do we call the family the building block of society?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
It’s a great question, and you could talk for ages on it, I think. But just to kind of summarize, I think society has a vested interest. Our society, our nation, our state, our local communities, have vested interests in their citizens being really good. Right? If you want to have a really good country, if you want to have a really good community, you have to have really good people. And the family, the nuclear family, the home, is where virtue is first learned. And not just faith based virtues, but also natural virtues. Courage. Right? Prudence, temperance, patience. All of these things that we need to learn, and there’s really only one one way to learn them, which is through the school of hard knocks. Right? Like, we learn to love when we’re being stretched. And so, the family and the home, the nuclear family, can be a place of immense tension, as well as immense love and support and acceptance. It’s both. And that tension is what helps us to grow, I think, in a virtue that helps us to grow into good, healthy, contributing citizens. So everything we learn starts in the home. And so, if society wants to bring up good citizens, it behooves society to support policies that promote that virtue that’s instilled and inculcated in the home.
Adam Wright:
Our kids, being kids, sometimes they come home from school and all of a sudden, everything is just harder. They’re not paying attention. Maybe they’re a little bit more emotionally quick-tempered or, quick to cry, for the little ones and whatnot. But then we ask their teachers sometimes, “Are they like this at school?” And the teacher says, “Oh, no. They’re the model of great behavior at school.” And someone said to me, “You know why they do that at home, is because at home they feel safe to let their guard down.” And I imagine, if we want our kids to go out and survive the pressures of this world, this goes back to the very first thing you said. The love of mother and father. The starting point of the family becomes that shelter, that refuge in the storm of life to say, “Okay. Yeah. You can go out and do this every day, but then you’re going to have a place to come back to where it’s just okay to let go and say, ‘Yes. This is hard. Yes. This is difficult, but I’m going to keep going at it.'”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Absolutely. One of the things that I work with a lot is OCD scrupulosity. People who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder in terms of their relationship with God. And a lot of that flows from an anxiety that they can’t ever do anything right. But in order to learn any new thing, we have to know how to fail. Even in the pursuit of virtue, even in the pursuit of love, we have to know that we’re going to fail and fall along the way and to have a refuge where it’s possible to try, and do it wrong first instead of worrying that you’re going to do it wrong and never trying. And so I think there’s a lot of stunted love out there actually, because there are a lot of people who are afraid of failure. When in reality, I think one of the best things about a family is what you just said, like when a kid comes home and can let his or her guard down and say, “This is really hard, and I really don’t like this, and I don’t know how to do it right. And I feel like I’m always failing,” or whatever. And you can work through it, but you can’t work through it unless it comes up to the surface. And it can’t come up to the surface until you invite that.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. I always love hearing, not just in mom and dad saying things like “It’s going to be okay, or here’s how we’re going to do this. Here’s how we’re going to get through this.” But then the siblings doing that too, especially as we’ve just started school, and the older siblings have had the teachers that the younger siblings are having. They’re like, “I didn’t know you do this in this grade.” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah. But it’s okay because the teacher’s going to do that, and it’s going to be great.” And that wisdom gets passed down, but also that camaraderie and that support network that they become for one another to say, “Oh, you know what? I can help you with that math, or I can help you with when you feel this way. Or I can help you with all of these things.”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Yeah. That’s a really beautiful thing. I grew up with 5 siblings. So I’m one of 6. And my mom raised me. The fathers who stepped in for my dad when he passed away raised me, but my siblings also raised me. And that’s I think something that some people who have a number of children get a little nervous about. Like, “Oh, I have to raise all these children.” It’s actually — there’s an internal life of the nuclear family that starts to double back on itself and multiply. It’s exponential. And that’s a really beautiful thing about what you’re just saying there is that what your children are doing is seeing how you have guided them and they want to do the same. And so they’re internalizing the beginnings of the love of a mother and a father at a very early age, which is that love that supports and nourishes and nurtures and guides, which they’re already starting to display that, which is really cool.
Adam Wright:
One last question I just thought of here is to talk about the broken families. And that’s something that we have many broken families in society and even within the church. And it goes back to something you said earlier, that number one: God loves you right where you’re at, in a parental love of God the Father. But also that we are called to more. And that’s a very delicate message sometimes. But what would you say to someone listening right now who says, “Well, our home is a broken home. And so are you saying I don’t have a shot at this? What do I do?”
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
Such a good question. And I think too, to remember as well, even in the families that don’t ostensibly look broken, there’s brokenness there, too. There’s a book by John Eldridge called Fathered by God. The subtitle I think is “learning lessons that your father could never teach you”. And the reason for that is that we’re all fallen. So there’s brokenness in every family, and then there are some families that are ostensibly, out in the open, that brokenness makes itself known. And in those cases too, it’s really important to remember the rule is the same across the board. That part of life, is going to be figuring out how the Lord wants to go back, with you to your upbringing and say, “Okay. So what was really good about that, and what was I missing?” And to recognize that the Lord can give and can heal and can provide along the way. And it’s important to recognize too, to be patient and gentle with yourself along the way. But if it’s anything, I want the families who experience kind of that open brokenness, where maybe a parent is missing like my father was when he passed away or maybe there’s a divorce or maybe there’s a different kind of brokenness in the family. I think if there’s one thing that I want to instill or say to that is that there’s nothing that’s written off for you absolutely. Right? That the Lord can heal and provide in the midst of that. And part of the beauty of life is seeing how He does that, and how He can bring life out of really remarkably dark and difficult situations. So, I want to recognize the darkness and difficulty of that and empathize with that, but also to say there is real, real hope. Yeah.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to get back to some of the basics of why we, as Catholics, emphasize the importance of family. Before we wrap up, could I ask you to offer a prayer for families?
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
I would love that. I would love that. We’ll begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we glory and we thank you for the gift of being able to call you father, and for adopting us as your sons and daughters. We thank you for the gift of family love, for the mystery of the love between husband and wife, and their love for the children who are the fruit of their love and your love for them. We ask that you would bless all families with an abundance of awareness of your great love for them, and your support, and your guidance, and your presence with them. In a particular way, we remember those who are in any family that experiences any kind of brokenness. And we ask that you bring your healing grace to them, that they also might know the love and support of of loving Christians in their lives as well. And we ask all of these things through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father Conor Sullivan, once again, thank you for being with us on Roadmap to Heaven today. It’s been a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Fr. Conor Sullivan:
It’s been a pleasure for me, too. Thank you.
In this episode of Roadmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by Father Conor Sullivan, a psychologist and faculty member at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. The episode focuses on the importance of the nuclear family.
Father Conor Sullivan explains that the nuclear family consists of a husband and wife who are raising children. He acknowledges that there are various definitions of family in today’s culture, including single-parent households, children living with grandparents, and foster homes. However, he emphasizes the unique benefits that come from the traditional nuclear family structure.
The conversation then delves into the significance of the marital relationship within the nuclear family. Father Conor Sullivan highlights the importance of nurturing the love between husband and wife, as it becomes a safe refuge for their children. Contrary to the belief that children should come first, he explains that prioritizing the marriage creates a strong foundation for the family as a whole.
The discussion also touches on the role of mothers and fathers in a nuclear family. Father Conor Sullivan emphasizes that both parents bring unique gifts and complement one another. He shares his personal experience of growing up without his father and the importance of having both masculine and feminine presence in his life. Additionally, he cites Jordan Peterson’s viewpoint that mothers excel at loving children for who they are, while fathers excel at loving them for who they can become.
Throughout the episode, Father Conor Sullivan highlights the intersection of psychology and faith, emphasizing how the two disciplines inform and enrich each other. He concludes by acknowledging the complexities of family dynamics but underscores the importance of the nuclear family’s role in shaping individuals and society.
Overall, this episode of Roadmap to Heaven provides insights into the benefits of the nuclear family structure, the roles of parents within it, and its implications for Catholic families.
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