Ep85 Creating Integrated Catholic Culture w/ Msgr. James Shea

"The Christian faith does not destroy culture, but purifies and uplifts it. It takes away nothing of genuine value from a society or nation, but strengthens whatever is good for the betterment of all."
~ St. John Paul II

What does it mean to live a beautiful life?
How can I create a Catholic culture in my own life, family, school, or work?
Should I be aiming to create a utopia on earth?

In this insightful episode of This Whole Life, hosts Pat and Kenna sit down with Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary, to explore the deep connection between faith, mental health, and the quest for true integration in everyday life. Monsignor Shea shares personal stories of loss and leadership, reflecting on building an authentic Catholic culture in diverse communities, the challenges and joys of forming young minds, and why embracing imperfections leads us closer to wholeness. The conversation dives into the meaning of integration—both personally and institutionally—and touches on how fragmented lives can be healed through Christ with humility and a spirit of self-giving. With practical encouragement and wisdom, this episode inspires listeners to find beauty, purpose, and unity in the messiness of real life. Perfect for anyone seeking both sanity and sanctity as they walk the journey of faith.

Monsignor James Shea became the sixth president of the University of Mary in 2009. Monsignor Shea grew up on a dairy farm in Hazelton, North Dakota, and has studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., the Vatican’s North American College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard.

Episode 85 Show Notes

Chapters:

0:00: Introduction and Highs & Hards
15:22: What does integration mean?
25:53: Creating Catholic culture
40:03: Building a common vision, not a "utopia"
48:29: Msgr. Shea's book recommendation
53:15: Challenge By Choice

Reflection Questions:

1. What is one specific thing that stuck with you from this conversation?
2. How do you see the connection between integrity and beauty in your own life?
3. When have you experienced fragmentation or compartmentalization, and how did they stop you from living a fully authentic life?
4. How do you create habits to be fully integrated internally and with others?
5. How can we balance the pursuit of excellence and integration without falling into the trap of perfectionism or utopian thinking?

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Highs & Hards
• 15:22 What does integration mean?
• 25:53 Creating Catholic culture
• 40:03 Building a common vision, not a "utopia"
• 48:29 Msgr. Shea's book recommendation
• 53:15 Challenge By Choice

Transcript

Msgr. James Shea [00:00:00]:
If it wasn't for that cocktail of experiences and difficulties, I would have never met the Lord. And I'm just so grateful that once I was a leper. This needs to be the faith filled attitude that we believe that we bring to the nitty gritty of our lives.

Pat Millea [00:00:24]:
Welcome to This Whole Life, a podcast for all of us seeking sanity and sanctity and a place to find joy and meaning through the integration of faith and mental health. I'm Pat Millea, a Catholic speaker, musician and leader, and I'm happy to bring you this podcast along with my bride, Kenna, a licensed marriage and family therapist. This is the stuff she and I talk about all the time. Doing dishes in the car on a date. We're excited to bring you this podcast for educational purposes. It's not therapy or a substitute for mental health care. So come on in, have a seat at our dining room table and join the conversation with us. We are so glad you're here.

Kenna Millea [00:01:35]:
Welcome back to This Whole life. It is such a beautiful day here in Minnesota. We are looking forward to the conversation ahead and I am joined by my beloved Pat. Welcome, darling.

Pat Millea [00:01:46]:
Hello, hello.

Kenna Millea [00:01:47]:
And our special guest today, Monsignor James Shea. Monsignor, thanks for being with us.

Msgr. James Shea [00:01:53]:
Great to be with you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Kenna Millea [00:01:56]:
Absolutely. And for those of you who are not familiar or need a refresher on Monsignor Shea, he became the sixth president of the University of Mary in 2009 and during his tenure at Umary has spearheaded groundbreaking initiatives including a new campus for the university in Rome, an unprecedented collaborative agreement with Arizona State University and Year Round Campus, a new way of conceiving higher education to elevate student achievement and reduce debt, and the university's overarching campaign for growth called Vision 2030. Monsignor's background is one that includes a dairy farm in Hazleton, North Dakota. He he has studied at the Catholic University of America in D.C. the Vatican's north American College in the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard. So with that, thank you so much, Monsignor Shea, for being with us and I'm looking forward to. Yeah. The conversation and what you'll be able to share with us today.

Kenna Millea [00:02:58]:
Before we dive into the topic at hand, I'm wondering if we could begin, Monsignor, with asking you to share a high and hard of life lately.

Msgr. James Shea [00:03:08]:
Sure. So here's a high and it relates a little bit to the work that you good people do down in the Twin Cities, but it's in a different geographical location. You mentioned our partnership with Arizona State University. So we've been down on the campus of that university, which is the largest public university in America, since 2012. But recently we started working with the Diocese of Phoenix more intimately, and we're providing all of the. We're providing all of the academic formation for a new seminary, Nazareth Seminary, that they're starting down there. But we just got notice this past week from the diocese. You know, Bishop Dolan down there is very interested in mental health ministry.

Msgr. James Shea [00:03:57]:
I'm sure you're aware of that. In. Is engaging in that question pretty vigorously down in the Diocese of Phoenix. And I think. Well, we received word from him and from the diocese this past week that they want to further partner with the University of Mary and our Master of Science in Counseling program to bring sort of robust Catholic formation for mental health professionals to the Valley of the Sun. And we've got a great mental health counseling and school counseling program in our Ms. In Counseling and also a new Master of Science in Social Work. And so we feel like we're equipped to do that, and it'll be a wonderful way, I think, to serve.

Kenna Millea [00:04:42]:
Wow. Congratulations.

Msgr. James Shea [00:04:45]:
Yeah. So that's a high. A hard is that. You also mentioned that we have a Rome campus, and we've had that for yet longer, but one of the students studying at our Rome campus lost his brother in a motorcycle accident late last week, and so we had to evacuate him from Rome back to his home on the east coast. And he'll be burying his younger brother. He's 27. The student is a little bit older because he was in the armed services serving our country before coming to college, and comes from a large family. But his brother was young, 19 years old, kind of standing on the doorstep of life, and was tragically killed in a.

Msgr. James Shea [00:05:28]:
In a motorcycle accident. And so we're mourning and grieving with him, and I think we just made arrangements this morning for our chaplain to fly out, to be at the funeral and at the wake and to console the family as best he can. It's very heartbreaking news.

Kenna Millea [00:05:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. And praise God for the community around him right now.

Msgr. James Shea [00:05:51]:
Yeah. You know, I spoke with him on the phone, and I was grateful to do. To do that. When I was a freshman in college, I lost my younger brother, who was almost five years old, in a farm accident. And so my heart was really going out to him in a fatherly way, but also in a very personal way as well, because I know something of the sting of that pain.

Pat Millea [00:06:18]:
Yeah.

Msgr. James Shea [00:06:18]:
And so, yeah, we want to, of course, be there with him as much as we can.

Pat Millea [00:06:24]:
Well, what a beautiful chance to extend a corporal work of mercy from the university, even of helping bury the dead and pray with the family and even just empathize, having been through a tragedy like that yourself. That's a beautiful opportunity. Yeah. Well, I can go next and then we can go. Ladies last. Although we are, we are chivalrous. Kenna insisted on going last. So I think my highlight is this past weekend.

Pat Millea [00:06:50]:
You know, marriage, family life has lots of different ups and downs with parenting in particular. And this past weekend was a real high for one of our sons. He had a. His final flag football game on Saturday morning, and I was his coach whether he liked it or not. And we won our final game. It was this big kind of triumphant celebration. Both of our kids, school teams won their final flag football games. So there was ice cream.

Pat Millea [00:07:15]:
And it was just a great glimpse of. Of pursuing excellence. Excellence, but also having good sportsmanship, celebrating with community afterward. It was just. It was a ton of fun on Saturday. And then we finally, about two months late, took him on his birthday outing on Sunday. We're not a big birthday gift family because we have seven kids and we would prefer to pay the mortgage. So we take our children on individual birthday outings instead.

Pat Millea [00:07:41]:
And he was just on cloud nine. It's great to be able to focus all of our attention on one kid for a couple hours and just really love him. Well, so that was. That was a real gift. It was, it was great. All of our kids have moments like that at times. But this weekend was about one particular son. I think the hard is that, or one hard, I should say, is that we got to unload the storage pod that we had been planning to unload at a new house, but we unloaded it back into our current house because our house just refused to sell.

Pat Millea [00:08:15]:
And we were planning to move just another 10 miles away, back closer into the city, closer to our kids school and our church and our work. And our house would not sell. So it was just. It was. It felt very fruitless and very frustrating to unload all the stuff I put in that pod right back into our house again. But the price you pay for an uncertain housing market, I suppose so.

Kenna Millea [00:08:38]:
And there was a dance party in the empty pod afterward. Pat, like that. That was priceless.

Pat Millea [00:08:44]:
That was a minor high, I'll give you that. All four of our daughters had a dance party in the pod, which was exactly what a few toddlers and a 14 year old wanted to do so. So be it.

Msgr. James Shea [00:08:55]:
Wow. Well, let me cheer you up, Pat, regarding that storage pod with something connected to your first story about getting ice cream with your son. Someone told me recently and I thought it was the funniest thing I had heard in weeks and weeks. Someone said, you know, I have a serious health condition. My body doesn't make its own ice cream and so I have to supplement. I thought that was just wonderful.

Pat Millea [00:09:28]:
Finally, someone who has been describing my exact condition. I never had the words for it.

Msgr. James Shea [00:09:33]:
Yes, that's right. Well, the diagnosis is there now.

Pat Millea [00:09:37]:
Do you hear that, Kenna? It's official.

Kenna Millea [00:09:39]:
I do. You actually need to share that with our, our 13 year old son who along with his buddies on Friday night raided the ice cream to like just crumbs or droplets were left. And then he had the audacity to blame his dad when Pat ate the end of it. He had the audacity to blame Pat of like, there's no ice cream because dad ate. That was like, I think you and your five friends are like the reason we don't have any ice cream anyway. Yes, the, the struggle is real.

Pat Millea [00:10:08]:
Finish us off, my dear.

Kenna Millea [00:10:09]:
Yeah, so I would say I'm going to go with the, the two sides of the same coin, which is we, we continue to grow at the Martin Center for Integration, the clinic that hosts This Whole Life podcast. And so we onboarded a few more clinicians this past week, which is always a time of joy. It's grow the work family. And so there's a definite gift and a high in that. Just new, new personalities, new voices, new faces like in these hallways and sharing in this work and just, yeah, this freshness that they bring, the excitement that they bring. And I would say the hard is anytime you invite someone into the inner circle to see the inner workings of the operation, the, the, the raking over it with that fine tooth comb and this like the, the revealing of things that are procedures, policies, things that have been missed, that the balls that have been dropped. Like, it's just a very convicting experience as well of like, wow, we have room to grow and to get better and to get stronger. And as a bit of a type A choleric like that can be very difficult for me to see.

Kenna Millea [00:11:28]:
And so yes, the, the, the, the high and the hard of these new folks coming on and I know they're only going to make us better and stronger. And also sometimes I'm like, can we just put a shh on some of the feedback and some of these awarenesses that we are gathering together here. So very humbling and also really invigorating all at the same time.

Msgr. James Shea [00:11:51]:
Yeah. Could I offer a word of encouragement in that regard? You know, we. We see. We see something analogous quite often, but even yet more poignant from our perspective in that we'll often have students come to work for us. And so they're literally on two sides of a coin in that. Well, that doesn't make sense literally, but they see two sides because as students, we really pride ourselves on doing our best to go above and beyond to delight our students, to take really good care of them, to make sure that not just their wants, but their needs are met in some reasonable fashion. We're super, super intentional about everything, but when we hire people, then all of the sudden they come behind the veil, so to speak, and it's a whole different story. The making of the sausage.

Msgr. James Shea [00:12:53]:
In other words, in order to care for our student body in that way, in order to provide such personalized and intentional care, all of us behind the scenes are really sacrificing, and people aren't prepared for that. And oftentimes it takes a couple of years before they get. Before they switch from receiving to giving. And giving is a lot more personally exacting, and it can uncover aspects of one's character and personality or of an institution or a community's foibles and difficulties and splotches that you wouldn't otherwise see. And so that's been a great heartbreak because sometimes the students who become employees don't persist. They become disillusioned in that regard.

Pat Millea [00:13:48]:
And what a great sense of clarity to give them that reality check up front so that there's not this illusion that you can just coast your way through anything. Through college, through seminary, through family life, through work. It's not automatic that this will lead you to holiness and joy. Right. There's a sense of investment, intentionality, and focus that really is required for any endeavor like that.

Msgr. James Shea [00:14:15]:
Otherwise, you get disintegration, which, of course, is the opposite of your mission at the Martin Center. I never tire of telling our students, listen, your life is not about you. You have to find a way to give your life away in love. And unless you do, unless you discover that there are other people in the world who need your talents, your gifts more than you need them, unless you find a way to expend yourself upon them and their service, you'll never find happiness, meaning, or purpose in your life. Because we were made for self giving, ultimately spousal love. And so college can be because it's, you know, at a place like the University of Mary, we do our best to form a rich experience of community such that college can be a real scrimmage and actually a laboratory and a true experience as well in the higher stages of actual self gift and contribution. But that takes a mindset which is not easily on offer.

Pat Millea [00:15:22]:
Well, you brought up the word disintegration, Monsignor, in that explanation, which is the perfect transition into our conversation today. We would love to have a conversation with you about the idea, the goal and the meaning of integration in the life of a Christian. For the sake of defining terms and setting a foundation, I wonder how you would describe a Catholic vision for integration, either internally, relationally. What is integration and what kind of integration did God create us for?

Msgr. James Shea [00:16:02]:
Well, there are many ways to address this question, and I feel a little bit, since I'm talking to the experts on integration, like this is an oral exam back in my days in Rome, where you got rated on a scale of 1 to 10.

Pat Millea [00:16:21]:
There's no grading at the end of this interview, I promise.

Msgr. James Shea [00:16:24]:
Okay, okay, that's good. But you know, one of the ways to do it is to go back to the classical vision of beauty. And so, you know, God is the, the true, the good and the beautiful, and the source of all things true, beautiful and good. And you know, Hans Urs von Balthazar, Dostoyevsky is with him here, spoke about beauty as the transcendental most necessary in the modern postmodern world in which we live, because people are still susceptible to it, even if we've inoculated ourselves largely against truth and goodness for various reasons. And so what was beauty for the ancients? And the Christians, by the way, adopted this vision as well. And so you needed, what was necessary was three components. And the very first, the baseline component of beauty was integritas. Integrity was the baseline of.

Msgr. James Shea [00:17:36]:
It was the fundamental requirement for anything possibly to be beautiful. All of the parts needed to be present. But then there was an amplitude beyond that, not just integritas, but consonantia, which is harmony. In other words, the parts need not simply to be present, but they were meant to be in right relation to each other, either locked together in a certain way or orbiting each other in a particular manner. Or you can think of architecture or music. Consonantia is harmony. And then what's amazing is you would think that that would be enough to have everything present and to have it rightly ordered should be enough. But there was this third category, claritas, which means brightness.

Msgr. James Shea [00:18:32]:
It had to shine and so integrity, harmony and brightness, or radiance. Radiance, I think, is probably a better translation. These things were necessary. The Greeks, of course, and again, the Christians adopted this in their vision of education. The Greeks called it paideia. You know, they looked around and they saw excellence all around them. And they were always looking to bring things into their excellence. The excellence of noise is music.

Msgr. James Shea [00:19:07]:
The excellence of a boulder might be a statue, you know. And then they asked this question, can the human person be brought to excellence? And so they set about devising the ideal education for a citizen of the polis. And so they expended a lot of energy on that. But that project ran out of gas at a certain point because it didn't have the metaphysical ballast that the Christian gospel was able to bring to it. And that's why Christian education has been through the centuries so profoundly transformative in its every respect, because it takes into account that excellence of the human person, which is connected to the question of beauty and which is fundamentally tied to integritas. And so from there, I think we could cascade out in all kinds of different directions. You know, one could speak of psychological integration or societal or familial integration. The integration.

Msgr. James Shea [00:20:14]:
And so this is just one small segment of it, the integration that concerns me most of the time. Apart from. And there's much to say about this as well, but apart from the integration of my campus is the integration which is meant to be brought to the individual in the course of education. Not really just in the course of education, in the course of life. But universities are meant to be particular places where this is supposed to happen. Here, of course, I'm borrowing largely from St. John Henry Newman, that great champion of university education. His idea of a university and elsewhere.

Msgr. James Shea [00:20:54]:
He talks about the highest faculty of the mind being its integrating quality, that every area of human knowledge has its own method for study, that you uncover the secrets and that are germane to chemistry or poetry or botany or physics by applying a particular method of inquiry. But that's not simply to become an expert or to specialize. It's because that process, repeated again and again, is meant to allow the mind to step back and to see the whole of things and to be swept away by the way that everything is related. One time, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, came to the University of Mary in February. In February, he came from the southern border.

Pat Millea [00:21:53]:
There's a culture shock for you.

Msgr. James Shea [00:21:54]:
A super courageous human being. But he gave a talk in which he noted. He said, have you ever been brought to tears by watching One of those nature shows that sets the swimming of penguins at the South Pole, for instance, or the flying of birds to Mahler's Fifth Symphony or something, and you realize that you're brought to tears by it, even though the movements of birds through the air or through water has nothing to do with symphonic music. And yet there's a conspiracy that runs under all things, tying them all together. There's a wholeness that is the key to the mystery of the. There's a oneness that's centered, of course, in God as the source of all things. And so a university education is meant to shape and to form the mind, to make those connections, to see the whole. And if you don't do that, then you're not educated.

Msgr. James Shea [00:22:56]:
A highly trained mind in only one subject isn't really even a master of that subject because it can't bring that content or that wisdom or knowledge into commerce with any other area of human. Of human experience. Alasdair MacIntyre notes that this is the source of many of the great disasters in our time. Foreign policy decisions or economic decisions that result in mass economic meltdown or something oftentimes can be attributed to people who graduated from the very best universities in the world, but they don't understand human experience, and they. They can't connect questions of religion and behavior and et cetera, et cetera, with the theories which they're. Which they're supposedly masters of. So, anyway, so there's that, and then I'll save the rest of what I might want to say for later, but you got me going.

Pat Millea [00:23:59]:
I said I wasn't going to grade you, but you already get an A for quoting one of our Notre Dame professors, Alasdair MacIntyre. So, thank you for that.

Msgr. James Shea [00:24:07]:
He just passed away this year, didn't he?

Kenna Millea [00:24:12]:
He's actually on the cover of the quarterly magazine this quarter. We just received it.

Msgr. James Shea [00:24:16]:
Oh, is he? Oh, man. Wow. Well, he had a lot to say about this question. He had a lot to say about it in terms of university life, but also in general about the compartmentalization of life, about how artificial it is for us to be one person when we're at work and another person at home and another person, you know, in social settings with our friends. The cocktail party person is meant to be the father or the mother of the family is meant to be the colleague or the leader in business, industry, service. And if we're putting on different Personas, we become easily exhausted and overwhelmed. He said that. That as I understood him.

Msgr. James Shea [00:24:59]:
Of course, you could correct me, knowing him in studying with him directly. But he said that this was one of the great causes of misery in the postmodern world.

Kenna Millea [00:25:10]:
Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the things we often talk about, especially in the clinic, is that experience of fragmentation. I mean, that's what that is, right. Those, those various Personas, those facades. And yeah. How that it is a front end investment to consider how can I be more integrated in all of these different settings, but in that way, the freedom that we're made for to be able to be who we're called to be in all those settings as well. Yeah. And I think as I was, as I was listening to you, Monsignor, the notion of context was coming to me with some of the things that you said.

Kenna Millea [00:25:53]:
And I'm just aware that, you know, when people talk about the University of Mary, when they talk about the influence that you've had there in, in your leadership over the years there, they talk about the culture of, of the, of the community. They talk about some of the things you've. You've alluded to, the way in which we care for one another, really see one another journey through life, the high highs and the low lows together. And I wonder if you could speak a bit, you know, what are you learning as the leaders, the ultimate shepherd of this university, about creating Catholic culture, like distinctively Catholic culture. And also, admittedly on behalf of myself and listeners of. We aren't presidents of universities, but we are leaders in our workplaces, in our homes, in our communities, in our families of origin. And. Yeah, how can we apply maybe some of the things you're learning to our everyday lives?

Msgr. James Shea [00:26:57]:
Yeah, well, I mean, that's a massive question because I've learned a lot and oftentimes I've had to learn by making mistakes small and big. And part of life is making mistakes. So you hope for the small ones, you know, but I've made big ones too, along the way. I've been here for a decade and a half. I think maybe a shorthand version in terms of that would be that almost at the very beginning, I was aware of the challenge that I was facing here and that the university was facing in wanting to form and shape Christian and Catholic culture on the campus. In that, you know, the university was founded as a regional university with professional majors. Our first two majors were nursing and education. And the sisters who founded us in 1959 did so because those were the needs of the people of our region.

Msgr. James Shea [00:28:04]:
And so we were founded. And through most of our history, we've excelled at serving students not in a liberal arts context, but primarily, although the sisters always wanted a strong liberal arts base for our education, but in a professional context, which distinguishes us from other faithful Catholic universities, from many other faithful Catholic universities, in that our emphasis from the beginning was on that professional education, which can gravitate against the vision of integration of mind that I was just talking about. And we really excelled in serving the small town kids of North Dakota. And so our student body for the vast majority of our history has been Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists from small towns. And in the 60 to 300 mile radius of our campus. You know, I say 60 because that's our primary home is here, Bismarck, Mandan.

Pat Millea [00:29:10]:
Sure.

Msgr. James Shea [00:29:10]:
One of the things that's happened, of course, in the last 15 years is that we've seen a massive, massive influx of students from the wide world. Now we're welcoming enormous classes. I think the incoming student number this year was more than 1200. Of those, about 550 freshmen, 150 transfers, and then a bunch of graduate students. The vast majority of those now come from out of state, and they come for our Catholic identity. You know, at the same time, we've got NCAA Division 2 athletics, and we're still trying to stay true to our founding mission of serving those small town kids from North Dakota. That means that the University of Mary is not a bubble in which there are only serious Catholic students who know all four sets of the mysteries of the Rosary by heart, frontward and backward, you know, and can name the spiritual and corporal works of mercy or whatever. That's not everybody.

Msgr. James Shea [00:30:13]:
It's a growing number, praise God, but it's not everybody. And of course, to integrate a campus like that is very tricky business. And so you have to know what to aim for. Here's my shorthand version, because I could talk for hours about this because it's been very difficult to make a go of this. Very, very difficult. Because otherwise you go to some places and you see a strong division between the uber Catholic kids on one hand and all the athletes on the other. Well, I don't have any time for that. I don't want to lead a divided community, bringing people together in a time such as ours, when the culture doesn't gravitate toward communion and togetherness and forgiveness in communities that are rich and thick and vibrant.

Msgr. James Shea [00:31:09]:
That's been a great difficulty. And so a shorthand version, and it doesn't cover everything, but it might be revelatory, is that toward the beginning I said, you know, what we want is three results, one of three Results. When a student graduates from the University of Mary, one would be this. I came to the University of Mary because I wanted a faithful Catholic education. My parents didn't have a lot of money, and so I could go there for half the cost of the other places that I applied to. And they had my major, and they were highly ranked in that major. I wanted to be a physical therapist or, you know, I wanted to be a nurse or something like that. And they had my program.

Msgr. James Shea [00:31:55]:
And so I went there. And when I got there, I thought I knew everything I needed to know. And what I realized is I didn't. First of all, I didn't realize that I had won the lottery by being raised in the faith. That there's nothing like being given the faith when you're young. And to be raised in it, to know the Lord from the time that you're a child, to receive the grace of the sacraments, to have loving parents in a great big ruckus, imperfect family. That's a great gift. And I didn't realize it, and I wasn't grateful first.

Msgr. James Shea [00:32:36]:
Second, I didn't know how to share my faith. I thought I could stomp around with the right argument and hit people over the head. I had no idea. And you know what? I haven't diminished in my devotion, but I've grown in warmth and winsomeness and nuance. And now I know how to talk to anybody. And I met people here who had vastly different ideas from my own. And you know what? They were interesting. And I learned a lot from them, and I was able to share life with them.

Msgr. James Shea [00:33:09]:
And I didn't catch some awful disease and turn blue and pink and green. It was wonderful. And I'm just so grateful that I've been able to grow in my faith. I didn't expect that. I thought I was done growing, and I just needed to get a career. And maybe I would teach some people some things. That's one possible outcome. A second outcome would be something like this.

Msgr. James Shea [00:33:34]:
You know, I went to the University of Mary, and I had no significant or serious faith interests at all. You know, I wanted to play Division 2 basketball. I wanted to be a schoolteacher, or I wanted to get my business degree or I wanted to study music or something. And so I went there. And I was a nominal Catholic, or I was a Lutheran, or I was an atheist or an agnostic, or I didn't even care. I was just one of the "nones". But you know what? While I was there, I met the living Lord. Like someone along the way told me.

Msgr. James Shea [00:34:24]:
And then I heard it again and again and again, in different ways, in different manners, the saving promises of Jesus Christ. And it's changed everything for me. Now my life is completely different and I'm just so grateful. All my friends are different from how they would have been before, the way I envision my life. And there's nothing that I could do to pay that back. I'm so grateful to God that I experienced a deep conversion during my time. And both of those stories happen and I'm grateful for them. And you'd expect that they would happen.

Msgr. James Shea [00:35:02]:
A Catholic school that doesn't achieve that should maybe consider closing, I think, right? But for us, and this is the important, and this is probably the most important and key point. And here I think I open myself to criticism. But there's a third possible outcome that I'm not discontent with. And it's this one. A person graduates from here and says, I went to a Catholic school and I got a pretty good education. And I'll tell you, I'm not a Catholic. I don't believe everything that they believe. They believe a lot of things, those people.

Msgr. James Shea [00:35:41]:
They believe a lot of things. But let me tell you something. While I was there, I was amazed by them. It was incredible. Everything matters to them. They think about everything. They consider everything. I never felt like a second class citizen when I was there.

Msgr. James Shea [00:36:02]:
I always felt like I was part of this, part of the league. I was a member of the community and I was able to bring contributions of my own. And we tussled it up late night, 2:00 in the morning, in the dining center. And they're amazing, those people, those Catholics. They know how to love each other. They know how to build community. They know how to run stuff. It's impressive that they have a civilizational instinct and they know how to run stuff.

Msgr. James Shea [00:36:34]:
They know how to find the right place for people to be able to contribute. They know when to let you fall on your face. They also know when you need to be surrounded by support. And they don't mix those two up in some weird way. And I'll tell you, they're amazing, the things you read about them. It's not true. Those are great people. If we can get somebody to that point at the age of 22, I'll leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.

Msgr. James Shea [00:37:02]:
I'm not gonna fret that. But that's been the distinctive thing about the University of Mary, that we think a lot about that last possibility because we have to. Because otherwise what will happen is we'll alienate a whole group of people that we're called to serve and we won't have the chance. Lots of college presidents, faithful Catholic colleges, places that I admire a whole lot and who are doing incredible work for the kingdom. Lots of places don't have the ch that I have because the vast, vast majority of their students are there for Catholic identity or because Grandma and grandpa said I won't pay for anything else. But that's not the University of Mary. We have a very, very large portion of our population who come here never having thought hard about very much at all. And what did Mother Teresa supposedly say? She.

Msgr. James Shea [00:37:59]:
To console this. To console the afflicted, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Pat Millea [00:38:06]:
Right, right.

Msgr. James Shea [00:38:09]:
And that's our work. And so you can't come to school here without asking really significant questions about human life. And so that's been a really significant thing. And when those questions are being really asked, then people have to turn to each other. They can't simply go on Instagram because Instagram really runs out of steam pretty quick. And so I meant it to be a short answer to your question.

Kenna Millea [00:38:40]:
Yeah, I mean, just what's standing out to me, Monsignor, is the courage that you're talking about that we need to have as people of faith as well, to engage with ideas as well as the humans who share those ideas that are. That are counter maybe to the things that. That we hold, you know, near and dear. And. And so when I. Yeah, I'm thinking about, okay, how can I apply what you've just shared to my own life as a business owner, as a mom, as a wife? Yeah. How often do I let myself be uncomfortable while it is true that I'm in the boat? Like, how many more opportunities am I missing by not allowing myself to be uncomfortable and to go to places and to be with people who challenge and who are interested in a rigorous conversation and maybe not from a place of agreement with me.

Msgr. James Shea [00:39:34]:
No, that's right. You know, my friend Curtis Martin always says heaven is worth the awkwardness. It's worth considering we're called to love and how much it's a withholding of love to not engage people, especially those who don't agree with us, in light of the treasure that we've been given.

Pat Millea [00:40:03]:
Well, the way you describe that approach to Monsignor, it seems like it's a living example of integration institutionally. First of all, that this probably is a mission and a purpose that dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people have had to work out Together, get on board with, create buy in, seek in a cohesive manner. But also even just every individual having the integration that requires a kind of humility, which is what I'm gathering from you as well, that what I'm hearing is you are comfortable with the idea that Jesus is the Savior of the world, not the University of Mary.

Msgr. James Shea [00:40:48]:
I'm super comfortable with that.

Pat Millea [00:40:52]:
I hate to put words in your mouth, you know, but there is that tendency, I think, for all of us individually, all of us who are disciples of Christ. We love him. We know that everyone would be better off if they knew Jesus better. There can be the pressure and the stress that I feel as a burden that it's my job to. I will not let this person out of my grasp unless they love Jesus. And this happens in all kinds of ways in families where parents maybe get really anxious and afraid, scared of what their kids are doing with their faith or lack thereof. I just love the nuance that you're offering of. We have a part to play.

Pat Millea [00:41:33]:
It's a beautiful part. It's a crucial part. And it's my responsibility to play my part to the best of my ability through God's grace. But the Lord is the master of time and space, and I get to submit my efforts to him and allow him to work on people's hearts even after they have gone from this university, from this home where they grew up, from this high school, that they have a future that I may have a part in. But my job is to be really present and love the people that are in front of me. That's straight from the Scriptures. See how they love one another. I mean, just that witness of love is really a sense of.

Pat Millea [00:42:12]:
It's the relational integration that I think doesn't happen unless the individuals have. Have converted and come to a place of integration internally as well.

Msgr. James Shea [00:42:25]:
Yeah, I think. I think that's true for sure. And it's not an easy process, getting people on board with a vision. It is made easier if there's a conviction that it's what you're called to. What I just tried to articulate without even a scintillity of doubt, that's what the University of Mary has been called to in our contribution to the new evangelization. Not every school is called to that particular thing, but we're called to make a large portion of our campus available to students who come here because they want our academic programs or because they want to play sports, and they don't know what's waiting for them. And so that's important. But the other thing, and I think you've touched here, you've touched.

Msgr. James Shea [00:43:09]:
And Kenna, you've noted questions of workplace and family in some of the remarks that you've made. One of my deep, deep convictions is that I'm an anti utopian. I think the whole concept of utopia, of course, is a modern construct. The word comes of course, from 1516, from St. Thomas More's book on the subject. But he was a Christian. He knew that the world is fallen. And so the title of the book, Utopia, is an inside joke.

Msgr. James Shea [00:43:42]:
Utopos in Greek means no place. And so in a fallen world, there's no place that's a utopia. And so I think there's a lot of freedom. And finally, instead of, you know, taking good to great as our Bible, for instance, we can take the Bible as our Bible, which tells the story of a fallen humanity on its pilgrimage back to God and that God in fact came in search of us. And so I think a lot of our unhappiness comes from thinking that the institutions or organizations or communities that we lead are somehow supposed to be utopian. Otherwise it's a judgment against our character and we just have to try harder. And then there's a cycle of shame and there's all kinds of blame and exhaustion that cascade out of that. It's really very unhelpful.

Msgr. James Shea [00:44:39]:
It's why. It's one of the primary reasons that people get angry so easily with the Church. It's a reason why people think that the schools or the parishes that they're associated with are no good. They become disillusioned and upset about them. It's a reason that really wonderful families sometimes consider themselves to be seriously broken and busted up. And why people who God has equipped with everything that they need to serve him magnificently stay out of the arena because they're waiting for some hypothetical perfection. This thing is all nonsense. We're fallen human beings.

Msgr. James Shea [00:45:26]:
And our lives, our institutions, our communities, our families are meant to be arenas for the paschal mystery, places for the dying and the rising of Jesus. And so we have to get comfortable with fallenness, not content with it because the Lord but to understand that that's where we are. We're in a fallen world. We're fallen men and women. And how are we going to help each other out? How are we going to receive God's grace?

Pat Millea [00:45:54]:
Yeah, I've heard you describe the University of Mary and Bismarck as the Shire before, Monsignor, and.

Msgr. James Shea [00:46:04]:
I need to blame that on Archbishop Charles Chaput. He's the one who first did it. He came here and said that. I think if I've said it, I hope that I've come quoted him because. Yeah, probably, yes, but I cut you off the Shire. Were you going to say something about an invasion of dragons?

Pat Millea [00:46:21]:
I love all the Inklings. I love all the Inklings. CS Lewis is my best friend that I've never met. JRR Tolkien, obviously. And something I learned about Tolkien was exactly what you were just talking about. I have had that kind of suspicion of utopian mindsets and terminology for years, and I never could really understand why. But there is that sense that, like. And you hear people talk about this all the time in the public square, in media, on social media.

Pat Millea [00:46:49]:
If only we could band together in the right political direction, with the right technology, with the right educational systems, with the right institutions. If only we could do this. We could create the Kingdom of God on Earth. And even Christians kind of can speak in that way sometimes, often unintentionally, I presume, and that I was always suspicious of that. And then I learned maybe six or so months ago that for all the times that we human beings think that humanity is progressively getting better throughout human history, Tolkien was very avidly committed that humanity is just constantly getting worse. But he didn't mean it in a way that was. That was hopeless or that was even depressing. He was just looking around.

Pat Millea [00:47:36]:
And you can see this in Lord of the Rings, right? I mean, like, there is. We are surrounded by darkness, and all I have to do is to keep pursuing the good. You know, it's Sam's great speech at the end. It just that that sense of reality was a really good, like, shower of cold water for me of just, okay, like, things are gradually getting worse. I shouldn't expect them to be perfect ever. And all I can do is play my part for the mission of love. So let's go pick up your tools and let's work.

Msgr. James Shea [00:48:06]:
You know that's right. And then you can love instead of hate. Then, then, then your motivation is, I've got something to defend, I've got something to fight for. This is a worthy cause. As opposed to things aren't going the way that they're supposed to. I'm discouraged. And so I'm going to pout, complain, and sit on my hands. Let's talk about Tolkien for just one nanosecond.

Msgr. James Shea [00:48:29]:
Have you. This is related to the question of utopianism, but also it's related to one of the most healing books that I've ever read. Have you seen. Have you Come across this book, Leaf by Niggle?

Pat Millea [00:48:41]:
No, I don't think so.

Msgr. James Shea [00:48:42]:
Okay, so this is super important. I was one of the preachers for the Eucharistic revival. And so I was at a retreat in Chicago, and who shows up at Father Mike Schmitz? And so he and I were talking, and he referred to this book, and then he related to, in a talk that he gave to all the priests who were gathered there for this convocation on the Eucharistic revival. And I had never heard of this, and I was embarrassed by that because, of course, I love Tolkien. Evidently, this is one of my great sort of triumphs of failure. This is a kind of Newmanian phrase, the triumph of failure. But when I was reading the Lord of the Rings the first time, this is before the films came out, I came to that part when they're kind of in the mines of Moria. And I just couldn't go on.

Msgr. James Shea [00:49:36]:
I got so tired and lethargic and a kind of melancholy cast over me, and I could barely turn the pages. And I would put the book down or I'd throw it against the wall. I mean, it was just. It was an awful time. And I thought, what is wrong with me? I found out years later that Tolkien had been stuck at that point in writing the book, that he himself had been in this long writer's block, and he just. He couldn't find his way out of the minds of Maria. He was just stuck. And so I felt like I was one with this genius.

Msgr. James Shea [00:50:10]:
I was really amazed by it. But here's what Father Mike told me. He said that during that time, his family got hungry, as families want. There was no income, and they needed groceries. And so he sat down and he wrote this little book. And it's like a little book, like, you can read it in an hour or less. It's called Leaf: By Niggle. And you have to read it because it's so profoundly healing.

Msgr. James Shea [00:50:37]:
I read it once on a retreat and wept through the whole thing. It's about a man whose name is Niggle. Niggle, you know, is the kind of British word for fiddling around, fiddling around, fiddling around with something. And he's a painter who can't get his painting right. He can't get it right, and he goes back to it again and again, and he keeps getting interrupted by his annoying neighbor, you know, who needs a favor from him, and by the police who come, and he keeps getting interrupted, interrupted, interrupted. And it's a story about, I won't ruin it for you or for our listeners, because it's really magnificent. But it becomes this great parable about human life, about the things that will get done and the things that will never get done, about the mercy of purification. Purgatory comes in to this little story, and then the power of grace and how God finishes everything that we set out and strive to do as a gift to us.

Msgr. James Shea [00:51:44]:
It's unbelievably beautiful. So I want you to read it and then tell me what you think.

Pat Millea [00:51:50]:
Really, I am really excited now to buy this book. That's amazing. Thanks for that.

Msgr. James Shea [00:51:57]:
It's super important for people in mental health, ministry and practice. It's super important. I teach a course here in the summer as part of our master's program in applied Catholic theology. And the course's title is the Healing of the Mind. And we read that book as a kind of capstone almost to the whole question of the healing of the mind.

Pat Millea [00:52:25]:
Wow. Sounds like almost a Tolkienian approach to something like a Flannery O'Connor story. Just like a parable that really puts meat on the bone of something really significant. You know, I presume that maybe his approach is a little less dark and rough than Flannercy is.

Msgr. James Shea [00:52:41]:
Yes, it. It has less handguns.

Pat Millea [00:52:52]:
Yes, I. I would hope so.

Msgr. James Shea [00:52:53]:
Yeah.

Kenna Millea [00:52:57]:
Well, I am just looking at the clock and want to honor your time, Monsignor. So I'm going to ask if, other than reading, remind me of the title one more time. The leaves.

Msgr. James Shea [00:53:08]:
Leaf. Leaf: By Niggle.

Kenna Millea [00:53:10]:
Leaf: By Niggle. Okay. Leaf: By Niggle. Which we'll link in the show notes, too. But yeah, thinking about how we can bring some aspect of this conversation to bear in daily life with a challenge by choice, a question that we could take to prayer or to journaling to ponder, or a concrete step that we could take to bring something forward. On this discussion on integration, what do you want to offer our listeners today?

Msgr. James Shea [00:53:40]:
Yeah, I think that one of the chief. So let me just offer a personal reflection before I offer the challenge, because I think sometimes when you offer a challenge, it can start a cycle of a cycle or of shame because people really struggle and they want to be whole. We want to be integrated. We want to be effective and beautiful and happy and all these things. And sometimes it seems like we're so far away. I think it's important for people to know they're doing better. Everybody, listen to me. You're doing better than you think you are.

Msgr. James Shea [00:54:16]:
You're doing way better than you think you are. And God sees you as you truly are. I say this to our students all the time. I just told them on Sunday, I looked out and I said, you guys, you're struggling so hard and you think that maybe you're just lousy or whatever, but I see you and you're beautiful. You can't see it. I see it. And it's important for people to know that, you know, there was a time and I don't want to get nostalgic here, there's no room for nostalgia in Christian life. But there was a time when the things that most of our listeners are attempting to do were easier to do in our modern industrial age.

Msgr. James Shea [00:54:58]:
Human life is fragmented by design and so you have to really swim upstream. It's an apostolic adventure to raise a family to live the faith. I was raised by hard working Christian parents on a farm and it was a small town America in the last gasp of Christendom. And there were lots of things not perfect about my upbringing. But I'll tell you, integration is a lot easier when your livelihood is where you live and where your community is where you live and everybody knows each other. And so you can't hide and you have to contribute and you can't be proud. You have to be humble. And this is one of the points that Jonathan Haidt brings up in his most recent book on The Anxious Generation.

Msgr. James Shea [00:55:49]:
And you've got other parents not afraid to help you raise your children so that you don't have the exhaustion of trying to do it all by yourself. In other words, everybody. When I grew up, I grew up in a town of 200. My parents, my teachers, my coaches,

Msgr. James Shea [00:56:08]:
the Catholic priest, the Lutheran minister, everybody in town was on the same team. And they all were asking themselves. It was as though they had a meeting. We've got a town full of kids and we've got 18 years. How are we going to do it? Like, we've got to get them to the point of being Christian believers and solid American citizens. That was their whole sort of they didn't have a strategic plan, they just did it. And that's a lot easier in many ways than what almost all of our listeners are attempting to do in a new apostolic age. It's just a whole different story.

Msgr. James Shea [00:56:44]:
And so I want to say that, that people are doing better than they think they are given the circumstances. And God sees that. He takes it into account. He's not a dummy. He knows all things. And so that's important. And then I would say this. So that's the prelude, so that I'm not misunderstood in what I say when you're gazing at your life, you need to renounce this utopian delusion of thinking that you're supposed to get to a place where you can just coast, where your excellences and virtues are such, where everything is in order and there's nothing left to convert within your heart, nothing left for God to assist you with.

Msgr. James Shea [00:57:37]:
That's just another form of the self reliance that got the whole human race into trouble in the first place. And so I think that rather it's helpful to look into your life and say, where are the places where I am expecting perfection? Where it's not reasonable or it's not rational, Where I need to be okay with a certain amount of messiness? Because that messiness is a gift to me in some strange fashion that will lead to my integration. You know, this past Sunday was the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers. And one of them comes back thankful and Jesus says to him, rise and go. Your faith has saved you. And so he received saving faith for the rest of his life. He must have gone around and told his friends, maybe he told his children and grandchildren, the best thing that ever happened to me is I was a leper. Because if I hadn't had that terrible disease, if I hadn't been an outcast, if I didn't go through the trauma of being cut off from my community and walking down the road calling out unclean, unclean.

Msgr. James Shea [00:58:57]:
If it wasn't for that cocktail of experiences and difficulties, I would have never met the Lord. And I'm just so grateful that once I was a leper. This needs to be the faith. Easier said than done, but it needs to be the faith filled attitude that we believe that we bring to the nitty gritty of our lives, that God's at work, he's not anxious, he's not overwhelmed by us, he's not thinking, oh, what am I going to do about that stupid person down there? This isn't the Lord's aspect. He sees us, he knows us, he loves us and he likes us. He doesn't just love us, he likes us like he's fond of us as we are, not as we might be.

Pat Millea [00:59:46]:
Yeah, it's beautiful. What a great challenge. What a great encouragement.

Kenna Millea [00:59:50]:
Yeah, yeah. And I just am already feeling, yeah. My own heart feel convicted, particularly around parenting. Monsignor of I think that, yeah, in some ways I'm chasing something for my children. That a life without hardship, a life without struggle. You know, just thinking that that's a reflection of me as a mom. So thank you for that. That feels particularly profound for my role, my vocation.

Msgr. James Shea [01:00:15]:
You're the mom that your kids need because you were the one they were given. And God knows what he's doing. And so. So you're doing better than you think.

Kenna Millea [01:00:23]:
So I'm like, can I get you on tape? Record?

Pat Millea [01:00:26]:
That's right.

Kenna Millea [01:00:27]:
Just replay. Replay.

Pat Millea [01:00:28]:
Oh, yeah, you too. Oh, Monsignor, would you mind closing us in prayer as we wrap up here?

Msgr. James Shea [01:00:35]:
Of course. Thank you. Oh, Jesus, lover of every human heart, we lift our hearts up to you and we ask that you grant us the grace to receive your gaze of love. Bless the work of Pat and Kenna and all those who work with them. Bless all of our listeners to the podcast today and bring us all into your kingdom where you form the perfect community and the community for which deep down, we long and thirst all throughout our long pilgrimage upon this earth. In the meantime, grant to us the strength and the wisdom to form small foretastes of that heavenly community here on earth, imperfect but flowing and filled with life. We ask this in your most holy name. Amen.

Msgr. James Shea [01:01:30]:
Amen.

Pat Millea [01:01:32]:
Monsignor James Shea, thank you so much for being with us. What a blessing to have you. Friends, please feel free to check out the University of Mary for all of your educational and encouragement needs. They're doing great things up in Bismarck, North Dakota, even in January and February. It's worth it to go to Bismarck.

Msgr. James Shea [01:01:51]:
We do our best work then. All the weak people are gone then.

Pat Millea [01:01:59]:
From a man who knows a thing or two about it not being Utopia, Monsignor James Shea. Friends, you can check out the show notes, all the books and resources that Monsignor mentioned in the show notes. You can follow us along online and on Instagram @thiswholelifepodcast. You can check out the website at thiswholelifepodcast.com. We would love to get your thoughts on anything that Monsignor mentioned, how you see this integration playing out in your life. And we will see you next time on This Whole Life.

Kenna Millea [01:02:28]:
God bless you. This Whole Life is a production of the Martin Center for Integration. Visit us online at thiswholelifepodcast.com.

Pat Millea [01:02:55]:
And then I'll just cue you up to. To tell the story of your. Your. What's the right word? Emancipation from email, something like that.