SPEAKER_04 0:07

Welcome to Beyond the Beacon with Bishop Kevin Sweeney, a podcast of the Diocese of Patterson. I'm Jay Agnish, Communications Director for the Diocese and editor of the Beacon Newspaper. With me is Bishop Kevin Sweeney. Bishop, how are you? Oh, good, Jay. How are you doing? Doing well, thank you. So so what's new? I know we're a few days away from summer's over, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Yes. The weather is summer still here, but uh so uh Labor Day weekend, um sad weekend for some uh who may not be happy about going back to school, but it is back to school, and we're praying for all of our teachers and students and families as uh this new school year begins. We had a mass yesterday or on yeah, Tuesday um yesterday with uh audas and staff uh to master the Holy Spirit to begin the school year. I did mass this morning at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Wayne, uh as they blessed a new stream room. People might not know STEM or STEAM, but they uh science, technology, religion, oh uh, engineering, uh, arts, and math. So they got it all right. So Father Matt and uh straight to stream from STEM. That's right, yes. Uh so um so uh back to back to action. And um my Yankees have won a few games in a row now, so Oh they have, okay. They're not completely they're not mathematically eliminated. So but uh nice to have college football back last weekend and the NFL coming up uh with some excitement for Jet fans. And I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

After last week's podcast, my my wife's father texted me, Hey, the bishop's a Notre Dame fan. Are you in Notre Dame?

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Okay, well, I think it's in the air when you're growing up in an Irish household, I think. So um had to ask for him. They're looking good. Uh a lot has changed with college football with uh wow, some of the changing of players, and now players can get paid for their use of their uh what is it, likeness. Um there's three letters um that they use, uh um name, image, and likeness, I think, N I L or something like that. But um good for them. Yes, yes. Uh not sure if it's so good for college athletics, but uh it that's been a challenge for many, many years is the best way to do it. But um it certainly brings some excitement uh and uh the NFL will do that too.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

So um Yeah, it's a great, great time of year. Um and okay, so want to introduce our guest today. We have with us Father Edward Red Reding, who is a licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor. He was ordained a priest in the diocese of Patterson, but he serves outside the diocese in specialized ministry. Dr. Ed has a clinical practice in Tom's River, New Jersey called the Matt Talbot Institute. He also has a weekend parish assignment at Good Shepherd in Andover, and he's a distinguished Catholic Charities Board member. He has been an addiction professional since 1969. He's a member of several national and international organizations and has taught addiction studies at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. He's also lectured to medical and pastoral professional groups throughout the United States and Canada. Welcome, Father Ed, and it is National Recovery Month.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Thanks, guy.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

Yeah. So good to have you here. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. And first I'm just gonna ask if the bishop could open us up in prayer.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Sure. We'll place ourselves in God's presence in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As we pray today and in this month in a special way, as we pray for all those who are in recovery, those who may be struggling with addiction, we pray for Father Ed and all those who walk the journey with um those um asking God's grace in in the gift of recovery, and certainly the healing that can come for individuals and families as part of that experience. And so we give thanks for uh the graces that God gives us and that gift of healing. And we join all our prayers together as one as we pray, as Jesus Himself has taught us. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Our Lady's seat of wisdom. Pray for us. Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I was gonna say Saint Matt Talbot, but is he? No, he's only venerable. Right, right, right. Matt Talbot, pray for us also.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

But they were uh when I was there a couple weeks ago, the pastor of the parish that he's buried in, uh Dublin, is that right? Yeah, in Dublin, uh Our Lady of Lord's Parish. Um it's a relatively new building, like 1950s. Uh, but he said, you know, people in Ireland don't think much of Matt Talbot. People in America have a lot of devotion to Matt Talbot. Right, right. So it's kind of interesting uh because I was considering running a pilgrimage to his uh shrine. And he said, No, you don't want to do that. And having spent five days in Dublin with all the drinking going on, I thought, no, it's probably not a good idea to bring Lead Us Not into Temptation. Yeah, yeah. And and then I talked to one of the people that runs these tours, these pilgrimage tours, and he said, Father, I've got a lot of recovering friends. I wouldn't be caught dead bringing them to Dublin.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

So Knock, you can go to Nock.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Too many trips well, I I didn't go there, but uh there there's enough pubs around there that that would probably be a risk also.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

So now did didn't you were you just at uh Talbot's uh grave, say? Yeah. So that was in Ireland.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah, I I was there for a wedding and I needed a place to say mass on Sunday. So I called the parish and made arrangements that I would kind of celebrate. I ended up being the main celebrant, and um, you know, that was a big honor. It was a sele it was a Salesian parish, and they allowed me to do that and preach and all that sort of thing. Which was kind of interesting because I started off the mass and I said, by now you can tell I'm not from here. And I said, um He's a Yank. I I said you're you're probably not gonna understand what I'm saying, and you folks speak so fast that I don't understand what you're saying, so let's try to get this over with as best we can. Yeah. And you said you got good reviews. And I got very good reviews. That's probably because they didn't understand me.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

Well, it's um been a pleasure, Father, getting to know you over these years, as now is in my time here in the diocese, and you can tell us maybe a little bit of some some you know you have a long history, as Jay just said, in Catholic charities and and in our diocese. But maybe uh since we mentioned his name, uh, and I think I learned something new. Um, did you do you say uh you have did you found a center or the Matt Talbot?

SPEAKER_00 7:03

The Matt Talbot Institute is something that I founded. Great.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

Um maybe just uh um some may not be familiar with the name Matt Talbot. I uh I know he struggled with alcohol himself too much of his life.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

And did he stop uh all of a sudden or uh um he he found his recovery when it and this was before AA, so he didn't have much to work with. He did it by getting back to his spiritual roots in Catholicism. Right. And when he started sobering up, he also then got involved in social justice issues through the union movement at the time.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

So it was period, the early 1900s?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, right. Um and you know, so he was involved in union movements, he worked in a lumber yard. He's a Catholic? Uh yeah. Okay. Uh very Catholic.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

And now remembering, if correct me, uh Matt Talbot retreats are Matt Talbot retreats are are popular here, not so much in Ireland.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Um Spirit moves, it's yeah, one of the big movements. Um and I and I think the pastor there was correct. I think in Ireland he's not as popular, even though that's where he's from. But Irish Americans brought his legacy with them with him. And the Matt Talbot Retreat Movement is another New Jersey-based thing where they run uh retreats, and we a number of our priests in the diocese and deacons run these retreats. Um and they're basically for recovering people. They don't talk that much about Matt, but they talk about mostly recovery issues and spirituality.

SPEAKER_03 8:41

Spirituality, right, right, right, right. So maybe um uh give us a little bit of your own personal history and background in terms of I think you grew up in the diocese and when you were ordained and how you got in involved in this work that you've been doing now for throughout your priesthood, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Well, I was baptized a block away from the cathedral. Okay. The old St. Boniface Church, which is now a Catholic charity's food. Father English food pantry and all that sort of thing. Uh so uh that parish was established in the uh 18 uh mid-1800s. And um from what I understand, I was the first person ever baptized there to be ordained. And then a year after me, Stan Baron, Father Stan Baron, was baptized there, and we are the only two people in the history of that parish to have ever been baptized um and ordained. So um they didn't have a good track record for vocations.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Well, two's pretty good. Uh I don't know uh they've two quality. We got quality, not quality, right? So yourself and Father Stan are a good combo there.

unknown 10:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

So um, yeah, so I I was born there, raised in first four years in the city of Patterson, uh my grandparents, both my grandparents' houses. Um then we moved to Totalborough in what is now St. James, which is where I did uh first communion and confirmation. I did one year of religious education for each. Um and uh then public school you were attending, right? And I was public school and moved to Hawthorne in eighth grade. Um my parents were were considering sending me to Catholic school. They knew nothing about the vocation or anything like that at the time, but I didn't like Catholic school kids and I would have had to go to DePaul, so I opted to stay at Hawthorne High School. Oh wow so um we now have a couple of priests in the diocese.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Priest would have thought at that time for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Uh no, not in not until senior year high school is when I kind of got got the bug a little bit. Yeah. And um so was not enthusiastic about Catholic stuff. We went again one year of first communion, one year of confirmation, that was it. And then with senior year high school, I started to get the itch, and um I got led to uh the diocese and went to Seton Hall. Was there a particular priest that yeah, Father Vince Malatesta? He was in Prospect Park, and we lived in Hawthorne, but we were on the Prospect Park border, so it was easier to get to St. Paul's than it was to um uh to St. Anthony's.

SPEAKER_04 12:01

Now you became a deacon in 71.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

A deacon in 71, and uh that's where I was officially signed to full-time ministry at Straight and Narrow. Uh it wasn't called Straight and Narrow at the time, it was Mount Carmel Guild. Okay. Well um and uh that year Bishop Casey allowed myself to go there and Bob Vitillo to go to Catholic Family Community Services uh without doing the mandatory one-year parish assignment. Okay. Um so he kind of uh Which seminary again were you? I I was at Darlington, which was Darlington Seton Hall. Bob had gone to Catholic U.

SPEAKER_04 12:42

So um So while in seminary you were working at Street and Arrow volunteering?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I I started getting involved uh in what they called pastoral experience, which started off as uh one day a week.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

And I I really got the bug and I started getting addicted to recovering people. And um so I got more and more involved there and um was actually living there for a while when um when I was still in seminary. I okay. This this is self-disclosure to the bishop now. I had an apartment at Straight and Narrow while I was in the seminary. Okay. And I commuted to the seminary and they didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

Those were different days, right? And uh and it worked out. And it worked out right. And uh maybe some the to give us a little history of straight and narrow, because I know coming to the diocese, it's really uh uh it's kind of a trend center on the national level, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

We were one of the first in the country. Um it began in a building that was across the street from the Cathedral Rectory. It was called the uh, I believe it was the Association for International Development. It was a a Catholic lay movement group, and they were involved in helping support missions, mostly in South America. Um and uh Bill Wall, when he was first assigned, was assigned to the cathedral, and he started dealing with alcoholics because that street corner, as it is now, is still a place for street alcoholics to be hanging out. And so he developed a model of education for himself where he had to learn about alcoholism among street folk. And what he did, and I I got this firsthand from some of his first clients, um, on his day off, because he they weren't allowed at the time, priests weren't allowed to have an overnight. So on his day off, he would say the early mass, he would have his black suit, collar, hat, and attache case. He would get on the bus on the corner of Grand Street and go to Port Authority in New York, where he would go into the bathroom in into the stall, and in his attache case, he had old smelly clothes. He would change out of his clericals, dress up as a skid row bum, put his attache case in a locker, and he would go down to the Bowery where he would hang out with the Skid Row folk. Yeah, wow. And that's how he learned the culture of the street alcoholic. And when he came back home, he was then getting an education. Well, he he got the education on how to relate to the people he was working with. And um eventually he got the building across the street where he was able to put homeless homeless drunks um up overnight. And then in 1955, um, and this is a miracle, he managed to get the money to buy 396 Strait Street, which is still one of the main buildings, which during prohibition time was actually an illegal brewery. Um and he he got it renovated, and in 1955, the detox unit was licensed as a hospital by the state of New Jersey. It was the first time that a non-general hospital or a non-psychiatric hospital was licensed as a hospital. And we were licensed as a special hospital for the treatment of alcoholism. And so that was the first time that was the first time that a um a treatment facility in the United States was officially sanctioned and licensed by a state by a state agency.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

So it had started in 55 and I guess was getting up and running over those years, and then it was by the late 60s you were um getting involved yourself.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yeah. Well, in in 1964, they expanded to the treatment of drug addiction. Wow. And then I began in 1969. Um Bill Wall had died in in, I think, May or June. Uh Father Charlie Greco, who was only ordained about two years, was put in charge of it. And the reason he was put in charge was he was the only one who knew anything about drugs. Um he was a former narcotics police officer from Berlin County, and he got ordained, so they put him in charge. And one day, uh Bill Wall did not write anything down. Everything it was in his head, and when he died, everything went with him.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

And I guess eventually he would that became his full-time ministry, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

That was his full-time ministry, and he asked me to come down because on one Saturday he was kind of walking through the place trying to figure out what the schedule was, because the schedule wasn't even written down. And he was walking through on Saturday afternoon, he saw all the addicts sitting in groups of ten in circles, and they were all talking, and he went over to hear what they were talking about, and Bill Wall had them memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. Catholic, Protestant, Jew, agnostic, atheist, they were all memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. And so Charlie called me, because I was in seminary, and I was being kind of specially trained during the summers at Catholic U to pick up on religious education for the diocese. So he said, you want to start a program for religious ed for drug addicts. And that's how I started getting involved down there. And um I I kind of never left until 1980. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 18:36

And now it's come full circle, but in between then and and now, um can you tell us a little about uh being uh a worker priest or or working outside of the diocese as well?

SPEAKER_00 18:47

When I started working outside the diocese, that was under Rodimer. Uh he's the one who kind of officially let me do that. And I was involved in beginning in prevention, um, where I started uh I was the first executive director of a group in Morristown called New Jersey Prevention Incorporated. Um and then after that, went into the State Medical Society. I was asked to go to there, and we started the first program in the country that had full-time staff to treat uh addicted doctors, um alcoholic and addicted doctors. Right, right. And I still work for them part-time. That's that's my paying job.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Something to remember, uh especially in National Recovery Month, that uh it we're all human beings, no matter the education or the professional level or your bank account, and uh sometimes we think it's just um those who are struggling who have some of these problems, but we we can pr quickly learn that it can affect anybody in any stage of life or or s or situation, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Physicians probably have a higher rate of drug addiction uh than the general population. They're harder to get into treatment, but once in treatment, they recover at a higher rate than almost everybody else. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Just to go back, uh I know you celebrated your 50th anniversary of priestly ordination last year, right? Yeah. And uh so uh when you were ordained a priest, what was your first assignment?

unknown 20:11

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

I I stayed at straight and narrow. I I was uh Bishop Casey let me go to Straight and Arrow as a deacon, and I stayed at Straight and Narrow until 1980.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

So were you and were you uh helping out in the parish on Sundays? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

I that was one of the things, that was a personal thing for me. Uh at the time, that's post-Vatican II, when a lot of priests that were involved in special ministry were leaving and getting married. Right. And my experience with them was they were isolated from the mainstream church, and I didn't want to do that.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

So um That Sunday worshiping community, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yeah, I asked Bishop Casey through Ken Lash at the time to make sure that I had a weekend parish assignment. So uh the first year it was uh Swartzwood, uh, which was an interesting place. Yeah, because I didn't know anything about Sussex County. And Ken Lash called me up and said, um, yeah, I found a place for you to go on weekends. It's in Swartzwood. I said, Where is Swartzwood? He said, Do you know where Newton is? I said, Yeah. He says, you go to the Commons, the square, um, stay on 206, come to the gas station with the big tree and make a left, and eventually you'll come to it.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

And you may need those directions because it GPS is the that's the one place that I've struggled getting to with GPS.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah, I think if you put Newton in, yeah, we're gonna have to solve that. Yeah, and a lot of that going on. So um that was my first, and then uh and that was really a summer parish. It had a full-time priest, but it was really a summer place. Yeah. And at the time there was no rectory. Uh Lou Bichade was the founding pastor, and he lived in the back corner of the all-purpose room. Wow, easy. And he had a couch that I slept on. But uh following that I started at St. Teresa's in Patterson because that was a lot closer to Straight and Narrow. Okay. And I stayed there until 1980.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

And how long have you been helping at uh Good Shepherd in the United States?

SPEAKER_00 22:12

I started at Good Shepherd in 1980. Uh there wasn't even a parish there at the time. We were still in the fire hall and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Uh and so then um uh both work and education, um, study and then teaching, uh, recovery has become so much a part of um your ministry, right? And that that worker priest uh identity of um not the typical priestly quote unquote work, but certainly. Ministry uh and and a lot of healing, I'm sure that you've seen along the ball.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

When I spoke with Rodimer about going outside the diocese, he said write something up. So I did it as a ministry of healing of healers. Um and that was the addiction piece. Yeah. You know, uh mostly with physicians at the time.

SPEAKER_04 23:00

What what is it about addiction that attracted you to the field to to study that and to I just got addicted to recovering people.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yeah. Um at Straight and Narrow, even while I was in seminary before I got assigned there, um, I just started to get a spiritual connection with recovering people. And my seminary work, uh papers and theology stuff and all that, I kept writing papers comparing recovery issues with dogma, with church history and all that. And some of the faculty I found out later on were very concerned that I might have been an alcoholic. Um and uh they um they were pretty good with me. They I got away with a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

And Father Ed, uh somebody uh maybe finds themselves um struggling with alcohol or uh or drugs um um or have a loved one uh what what what would you what words would you offer to them or thoughts or to um maybe take that step towards asking for help or well the the first thing is in our culture we really don't believe that addiction is a disease, and it really is.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

And not only is it a disease, but it's a very treatable disease. We know how to treat it. The problem is the stigma. People just do not accept it as something that is good. Um they keep thinking that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, and that sort of thing. And there is a way of understanding that, that that's somewhat true, but being an active alcoholic doesn't mean always an active alcoholic. That once somebody gets into the healing process, their recovery becomes as progressive as the disease can be. And um, you know, people So life changing, right? Yeah, people who get into recovery have a real core change in who they are, because no longer is the disease controlling them and their behavior, but recovery begins to do it. So what people have to know is that the stigma that's out there is just not true. That people do and can recover and recover at a much higher rate than other progressive chronic diseases. Other progressive chronic diseases are heart disease, diabetes, that sort of thing. And addiction recovers at a much higher rate than either of those.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

And um the uh the struggle that we face as a society with um opioids now and fentanyl, um um what would be uh I I I I guess it's just something that we have to continue to struggle with, uh, but it's it's certainly uh tearing families apart and well that has to do somewhat with history and somewhat with science.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Back in the days of Matt Talbot, he was addicted just to alcohol, because that was the only drug available to poor people at the time. So he dealt with his alcoholism. As time went on, and especially here in the States and especially in New Jersey, where we have more pharmaceutical production than any place else in the country. Um, people can get addicted to drugs other than alcohol almost as easily as people can get addicted to alcohol. So um history has changed things. Um and people do still get addicted to different things. Our definition of addiction has expanded over the years. When I first started, we saw alcoholism as one disease, drug addiction as another disease. Now we understand that it's all addiction with just different symptoms. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 26:54

And so the excuse me, the treatment of um fentanyl or opioids uh similar methods?

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Very similar, as is gambling addiction, as is sexual addiction, as is work addiction. The the behavioral addictions are now considered part of the diagnosis of addiction. It's no longer just alcohol and drugs.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

And maybe share a little bit about uh the 12-step program. And uh I know that's um I'm sure there are other ways that uh people can uh heal and and and and uh recover from addiction, but I know that the 12-step program has been such a uh a blessing, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah. The um 12-step program initially all of our treatment was based in 12-step recovery. Um as time went on and science continued to pick up on how recovery works, then it started to expand. So not only did we move into drugs other than alcohol and gambling and that sort of thing, but we started to have an understanding that the 12 steps relate to every issue in life. Um there are books out there now that talk about 12 steps for people that are not addicted.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

Um certainly a lot on connections with spirituality, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

And and that's the thing about uh what 12 steps did for our field. Our field was the first profession that was really um holistic right from the beginning because we included the spirituality found in the 12 steps. The other mental health fields, coming out of a Freudian background, didn't want to talk about spirituality. So we were the first ones to really do it, and consequently the profession evolved that way. Now, in the official scientific literature, we understand it not just as biopsychosocial disease, but the official literature talks about biopsychosocial spiritual disease. We're the first medical diagnosis that includes spirituality in the diagnosis. Oh wow, so interesting. And and consequently our treatment includes that. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

And isn't there a relationship between the founder of the 12-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a Catholic priest, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah. In in terms of um Bill W A of other myth, uh everybody thinks uh AA began in Akron, Ohio. Um really a a myth. Um AA as we know it began in North Jersey. Uh huh. Began in our diocese. Oh, okay. Uh Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of AA, was living in Rockaway, and he was commuting to New York for his job in Wall Street.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

And he wrote the big book of AA on the train going from Morristown to New York. Um the in his early days, he knew he needed a spiritual advisor. And he found Father Ed, who was at a Jesuit at Loyola and Morristown. In Morristown. And that's where he got a lot of his insight into the spirituality of recovery. And if you read the steps, there's a very Catholic thread that runs through the whole thing. And if a couple of uh steps? Uh well, anything to do with r forgiveness. Yeah. Acceptance.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

And the importance of asking for forgiveness. And asking for it. Yeah, yeah. And being able to receive it as well. Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

So uh Father Ed, and there's a new biography that just came out on him called Father Ed, um who's a good Father Ed. Yeah, several people sent me copies of it thinking it was about me, but not really. Um but not completely unrelated either. But um you know, that was a good place. And that was the place where the Matt Talbot retreats actually started. In fact, there's a statue on the grounds of Matt Talbot. Uh because that's where Bill initially got his spiritual direction. Um the other thing about uh Bill and the early days of recovery, when Life magazine did a story on it, uh, all of a sudden they went from a few groups. Everybody wanted to start an AA group. So the oldest AA groups in the country were along the train stops going from New York to Morristown and New York to Bayhead, New Jersey, because they were the two train stops. And after work, he would get on the train, he would stop at these towns, meet with a group of people to start an AA group. So the oldest groups in New Jersey are along the train stops for the Morristown line and the South Jersey.

SPEAKER_03 31:57

Wow. Uh a movement of the Holy Spirit, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:00

I mean, well, the the this is one of those things where we have to remember Teahard had something right when he talked about how evolution happens at the time. And you know, the spirit acts not just where the church is, but the spirit acts where the spirit wants to act. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And there's an openness. And if you if you're open and with alcoholics in those early days, these were people who gave up on everything. They had no place else to turn.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

And that word surrender, right, to uh the higher power. Total surrender to the higher power. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it's thank God um uh think of how widespread it is today and and how much healing happens. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

And another little historical shtick at the time, Bill Wilson was actually studying to be to convert to Catholicism. Um the uh the person that was teaching him Catholicism uh was a priest Monsignor named Fulton Sheen. Oh wow. And uh in the course of the study, he was about to get baptized, not baptized, received into the church, and he decided not to, because in talking about it with his AA friends, they said if you become Catholic, that will reinforce the myth that alcoholics and Catholics are the same thing. So he opted not to formally convert. But again, if you read the writings, they're so entwined with Catholic spirituality. Um so uh Fulton Sheen supposedly said um that Bill Wilson was the only failure he ever had in conversion in conversion.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

Conversion. Yeah. Uh Catholic, uh Catholic charities in our diocese, such an incredible blessing. Straight and narrow. Uh am I remembering correctly that uh somebody got a street name changed from uh to narrow so that it and I don't think the phrase is used as much as it used to be to go back on the straight and narrow, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Um the fr the the phrase was there and Bill Wall, it was on Strait Street, but there was a street, an intersecting street called Cedar Street. And the part of Cedar Street between Strait Street and the dead end at the back of the property, Bill had that change to narrow street. And then that became the corner of Straight and Narrow.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Right, right. Um and uh then DPD and family services, and just uh maybe to talk about uh your ex uh your experience on the board and and what you've seen um especially um in these recent years is under Bishop Savitelli the and and Scott Millick and the and Monsignor Tillier um how the the the board has come together as one board and uh some of the maybe the history at the beginning and and and some of the more recent history.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah, there was a there was a kind of a movement. They each of the agencies got started by charismatic priests. Jack Warlin with DPD, and Jack is a longtime friend of mine. Um he he was with DPD. Uh Bill Wall, Charlie Greco were straight and narrow. Uh Monsignor Shanley was the first director of Catholic charities, and then Joe Champaglia took over uh from him. So we we really had three free-flowing, freestanding agencies. In order for the diocese not to be liable for everything, each one formed a separate not-for-profit corporation and they and they evolved that way.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Um under Ceratelli, there was a move to bring them together under under one Catholic charities. Uh there was a lot of people holding back on that. Um I think probably within the first year of the combined agencies we saw that the staffs of all three agencies, when we had our first major staff meeting like that, even the staff liked the idea of getting together. Oh, yeah. So uh now we've got we still have the three agencies. They still have their own funding sources and that sort of thing, but we've combined a lot in the central office so that we no longer have three separate bookkeeping departments. Okay. We no longer have three separate fundraising departments. We uh we have a combined uh corporate identity as well as the um the individual agencies that have the mission. And that also says that if people make a donation to the any of those individual agencies, when people look where the money goes, it's like over 80 percent goes directly to client services. Right, right. So it like we we're not paying a whole lot to fundraising and all that sort of thing, even though we have it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

The money's going where it should be going, I guess. Awesome. I um you know I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on um something um been reading a lot about lately is the use of hallucinogenics for in therapy. Is that like any thoughts on that? Any any lecturing you've done on that?

SPEAKER_00 37:19

A lot of mixed thoughts on that. Okay. Um is it still developing? Well, it's still developing. Okay. Um it's happening in in a lot of places where it's it's legal and legit. Um uh Portugal and Oregon have gone into legalizing basic to decriminalizing everything. So these are the places where it's mostly being done. Okay. Um I know people, even when it was not legal, who were using hallucinogenics to try to recover from alcoholism and that sort of thing. Um again, going back to Wil Bill Wilson, part of the myth of Bill Wilson that nobody recalls was he tried to understand recovery by the use of LSD when he was in Connecticut. Well, um now he never made it with that, but he he thought that there was a potential for using drugs to treat alcoholism. Okay. Okay. Now, the AA community still doesn't want to hear that, but it's there in history.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

Um, well, there is there is some for um I guess heroin addicts, I believe there's a a drug that's used to help them come off that addiction and for opioids the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah, we've got a lot of uh medications used to help people get off other drugs. Okay. Um I in fact I dug up um a bit of a history bug too. I picked up a book published in uh uh 2019 uh in to 1919 um on the treatment of diseases, two-volume work. And the word addiction wasn't there because they didn't use the word addiction back then. Um they were habits. And in the treatment of habits, it was listed under diseases of men. Okay. And they gave some of the detox protocols at the time, which were not too far off from what we do now. It was kind of a tapering off and that sort of thing. And in the early days of AA, AA members would detox people at home because hospitals weren't always working, and they would do it by giving them controlling the alcohol intake and not letting them go into convulsions. So that was happening there. We actually saw the use of medical marijuana as the beginning of this change. So once medical marijuana started to be used as treatment for some legitimate disease, that's when the hallucinogenic crowd began to pick up. Yeah. So um and and again, pharmacologically, marijuana everybody thinks is a sed a sedative drug. It's really not. Technically, it's a hallucinogenic, it's a very mild hallucinogenic. Okay. So um, you know, we need to be careful how we use it. I think more people are using it for things that probably they shouldn't be using it for. Every every state has a different list of what it's used for. But uh in New Jersey, we have medical marijuana use, um, but it's still illegal federally. Okay. And that's a problem. Uh we need to get it decriminalized from the federal system so that they can do good research. Because right now you can't do good research because you can't federally get the researchable marijuana. Gotcha. Um, because it's technically illegal.

SPEAKER_04 40:52

Okay. Good. Well, I don't want to take us too far down this rabbit hole, but lots we could talk about.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

Maybe to change one subject a little bit. Uh when I first arrived, Father Ed reached out to me by email and told me about a a group of the priests of our diocese who are not living in the diocese, uh, and I think they might have a name. I went to visit them at least once.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Uh we um group of ocean and mammoth county, mostly uh retired priests. Uh we try to get together. In fact, I'm gonna be sending out an email this week to set up another date. We try to get together it was once a month, but COVID kind of messed that up for a monthly dinner.

unknown 41:33

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Of retired priests who are living in the shorts.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

And uh the name that we gave ourselves was OPA, O-P-P-A, Old Patterson Priest Association.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

And um, I had a great visit with them early on. Is there eight, ten, twelve?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Yeah, yeah, we we still get, even though several have died now, we s we still get about 10 or 12 people uh every month. Uh one comes from Pennsylvania, Father Pete Duty, um, but everybody else is basically the Jersey Shore area.

SPEAKER_03 42:05

And you guys uh are providing uh some help to our neighboring diocese, I think, as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Yeah, most of us have some weekend work that we do in the Tranton diocese. Um and uh, you know, I still travel up to Andover for one or two masses a month and do Tranton when I can and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 42:27

And uh just maybe then a word about your uh teaching experience. Uh at uh you're at uh one of the local colleges?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yeah, I first started teaching addictions right after I left Straight and Narrow. I was asked to teach an undergraduate course at William Patterson, which was an interesting thing because William Patterson at the time was just beginning to teach teachers about alcohol and drugs, and they asked me to teach it. Uh, that was the good news. The bad news was the course was given on Thursday morning at 7 30. That's not the bad part. The bad part is Wednesday night was pub night. So I was teaching people with hangovers in in the morning, uh, which was a difficult thing. But that was my first experience teaching teaching college. Um and at the time there was nobody teaching, there was no clinic people with clinical experience teaching college courses. Um When was this? This would have been uh 7980. Okay. So um the only one was actually George Dr. George Gubar, who is a psychologist at Straight and Arrow. He taught in the psychology department at uh at Seton Hall. Uh, but he was the only one. And um because of my preaching background, I had a style of communication that transferred very nicely over into classroom. So I started teaching college courses because nobody else was teaching it. I consider myself a make-believe academic. Um I wasn't trained, I've never took a teaching course in my life, but I'm apparently good at it. And uh I eventually started teaching at a few places as an adjunct. Um you're still doing it. And and I'm still doing it. I've gotten to the point now where I've designed programs for colleges. I'm involved nationally in the accreditation process for addiction studies programs. I'm currently president of a group called In Case, which is International Association of uh Addiction Educators uh throughout the world. So we're all college and university faculty that teach addiction studies. So I get involved with a lot of students.

SPEAKER_04 44:40

Aaron Powell Is there and I um was watching one of your lectures that you have a few lectures available on our Catholic charity's website. Um yeah, you're definitely a great speaker and uh very insightful. I wonder if there's anything um you you'd want to share with our audience about uh I don't know, the state of addiction or or something that we might be missing or something that we should be mindful of. So how can we learn more or where where are this where is this all going?

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Well, um I wasn't gonna bring this up, but since you brought it up, those three lectures that are on Catholic Charity's website um is a good way to get an overview of the current understanding of addiction as well as the family dynamics that go on with addiction, treatment and and adolescence. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 45:27

I'll put some links to the in the show notes to those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

That's great. And if uh if someone is looking for help?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Um basically any licensed treatment program in New Jersey uh is a good place to start.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

Um certainly uh straight and narrow they can contact you with the charity.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Uh the difficult thing now is that corporate treatment centers have taken over the field. So a lot of places will not accept you unless you have the right insurance. Uh straight and narrow will accept anyone. Oh, yeah. So uh for detox, they'll detox from any drug, and uh they'll use whatever insurance you have, or if you don't have the right insurance, they can probably get you some kind of insurance that will help pay for it. So uh straight and narrow is kind of out in the forefront of that in terms of dealing with the poor. Uh even though addiction affects the poor a lot more than it does other people, um people again stigma. Uh we need to get past it and let people find recovery, and that means that they're gonna find it in places where they normally wouldn't go. Most people aren't gonna feel comfortable going to downtown Patterson for healing. But this is it it's an old time program, it's got long-term stability. We're in the process of putting up a whole new building, which is gonna make it look a whole lot better.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

Um And uh I'm sure some incredibly wonderful people I know uh the people that work there, right? You know, uh whether it be the administration or counselors or uh God bless them.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Yeah, we've got really good people down there. They're committed to recovery. Um they're they're obviously not there to make money because Catholic charities does not pay a whole lot more. We we Catholic charities staff pays well below the going rate of the for-profit corporations.

SPEAKER_04 47:29

Well, I know there's some who have themselves recovered from addiction who are working there. We had a story in the beacon not too long ago about Michael Jackson, who's who's one of these amazing stories of recovery. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yeah, and you just have to get the right Michael Jackson. But um Yeah, uh the this is this is a field. Now I chair the licensing board in New Jersey for this too. And we have the most applicants that have a criminal history. Of all the social workers, psychology, medicine, all that, we have the most because most of our counselor applicants come out of an addiction background, most of them grew up at a time when use of the drug was illegal regardless of how you got it. So most of our counselors have a criminal history background, uh, more than half, probably. So um yeah, they when people recover from addiction, their criminal behavior stops.

SPEAKER_04 48:26

Forgiveness.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:28

Well, good. Um well this has been a fascinating conversation. Um, I wonder if, Bishop, do you have any final questions for the other?

SPEAKER_03 48:35

Just to thank you for uh what you're doing and um asking everyone to pray for yourself and those who who work with you and in this um ministry really of healing, uh, that gives us great hope. And uh it's so good to see you um going strong uh 51, 50 years into the priesthood now, right? And uh and and still have that that that uh energy and and enthusiasm and uh you know you've been great to me and uh and and helpful in in so many ways. So so thank you and and keep up the good work. And uh thanks, I think, for it's uh important. Uh you reminded me, I remember last year that September is recovery, uh National Recovery Month. So we need to let that be known and uh and get the information out there.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

And as a sideline to that, it's also Suicide Prevention Month. Okay. And they kind of go together.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

Right, right, absolutely, yes. Yeah, and it's also Hispanic Heritage Month. And it's National Banana Month. So Self-Care Awareness Month for all kinds of things. But yeah, no, it's um a great topic, and we're gonna have more on Beyond the Beacon coming up in a couple weeks. We'll uh we'll revisit this this uh topic. And uh thanks again, Father Ed, for joining us. Um and Bishop, before we uh wind down, conclude this episode of Beyond the Beacon, is there anything else you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_03 49:52

Um we can uh mention it uh uh next week, but actually uh this coming Monday um is the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It's hard to believe it's gonna be 22 years since that day. And um so um continue to pray for our country and pray for peace and and recognize um those first responders and heroes who's put on those uniforms of firefighters and police officers and those who work uh in the medical field, um how we need to recognize them every day, not only in the in the worst moments when they shine as they did on that day. And um so um and and to continue to pray for our country, uh um, our leaders and um and and and for peace. And so um so we should we shouldn't let that day go by without um you know just pausing to to remember um and give thanks for those who laid down their lives on that day and um and saved thousands because of um their heroism. So um um uh Father Michael Judge, I um the first one to die, the firefighter chaplain, uh only I realize now he's a strong connection to our diocese. Uh and so um I was at St. Mary's and Pompton Lakes a few weeks ago for the ordaining two deacons, and so many of the Franciscans were there. And uh I know he has a long history, so uh so we have a lot to be grateful for and a lot to pray for, and uh so um we'll certainly do that this weekend and and on Monday on September 11th.

SPEAKER_04 51:18

Yeah, and check check out the bishop's recent column in this week's Beacon uh about about that, and uh yeah, it's a uh wonderful column, and we should never forget. That's right. Okay, well, um thank you for spending time with us. Join us again for the next episode of Beyond the Beacon. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. Give us a positive rating, write a review, and if you're watching this episode on Bishop Kevin Sweeney's YouTube channel, be sure to like the episode, follow the channel, and ring the bell for notifications. Email questions and podcast topic ideas for the bishop to beyond at pattersondioces.org. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Beacon.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Thank you. God bless you. Thank you. Bye bye.