Integrating Philosophy & Theology into Psychology with the CCMMP - Fr. László Erffa MSP Testimonial

0:06Hello. So I'm father Laszlo Erfa. I started studying at DMU about two years ago. After finishing my theological studies in Rome, I was ordained the deacon, and I was assigned to Germany to work here at the Novice Center of Formation for young men discerning the vocation to join my community, the Legionaries of Christ. So I said, well, if I want to study psychology, I want to do it in a way that helps me in my work. So if I go there and I learn about God knows what, but I don't get the filter, the key to connect it to what I've learned so far, I think I would miss out a lot. This program has helped me my work here because, obviously, everything you learn psychologically applies to this work formation that you're doing.

0:57I can see that a lot of things, I've studied them in the morning, and in the afternoon, I can teach them in my class, or or I'll I'll use them somewhere in in in in a homily or or in any other occasion of formation talk. There's so much it's just very applicable to everything I do, things I learn and the way it's presented here at EMU. Personally, also, these studies have helped me just to grow in self knowledge. Obviously, that's something I've been doing all throughout seminary formation and then now preparing for the priesthood and being ordained as a priest. And it's a great experience also to get this new perspective. Obviously, in the seminary, you're trained to look at things from a philosophical perspective, from the theological perspective, spiritual perspective.

1:47And now I've added another dimension to that knowledge, to that vision, which is this psychological perspective. And one of the things that I appreciate about Divine Mercy University is the fact that it's very scientific. You have in in these courses, it's an online course, but every week we read tons of studies, scientific studies on different psychological realities. So it's it's not just a textbook or some kind of lecture, but it's really you go to the sources, to the studies, no, that people have made and you learn how to judge them. You see how can I use this? What does it actually mean? Now it says here, obviously, does it these are the conclusions, but what does it mean for me? And we don't just do that, but we also do that scientific work with this filter that we have, that we acquire over the years, which is the Christian Catholic, meta model of the person, which gives us a way of understanding psychology, which enriches everything we we study and we learn.

2:52All the studies, we look at the scientific studies, very academic, we look at them through this lens, this lens of the Catholic Christian mitte mangle of the person, and we understand it in a deeper way. And so this is something that has been very valuable for me. Some and it's precisely why I chose to study psychology at Divine Mercy University, because I was looking for this integration of what I already know from my studies of philosophy and theology and how I can integrate that into psychology, which most people think is a very secular science. But really, what does psychology do with it? It tries to find it but from at it, but from a different angle. So this has been very enriching for me in my work, in my ministry, and personally.