How to Be Happy: Lessons from Psychology and Theology | Professor Christopher Kaczor

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This lecture was given on April 21, 2022 at the University of North Texas. For more information please visit us at https://thomisticinstitute.org/. About the speaker: Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and a member of the James Madison Society of Princeton University. In 2015, he was appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life of Vatican City, and he serves as a Consultor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He is an award winning author of twelve books including The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life IssuesMedical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at
0:05.4	tamistic institute.org. Today I want to talk to you about happiness and I want to tell you
0:14.5	about a really happy time in my life. I got this great job in Washington, D.C. and the job came with a 40% raise over my current salary.
0:24.7	So I was like really stoked.
0:26.6	And I get to the university and I just really love it.
0:29.9	And we find this great parish, my family and I do.
0:32.5	And the parish is like the best parish I've ever been in.
0:36.3	There's great singing.
0:38.8	There's great preaching like there's great preaching,
0:44.6	like A-plus. It's a beautiful church physically. But the best thing of all was all the people at that parish. They were like totally amazing people, inspiring, fun. They were just absolutely terrific.
0:52.1	So you'd think, well, this is great. Everything's going
0:54.5	great for you. But there was one big problem. My wife hated Washington, D.C. And so I thought to
1:02.2	myself, well, God, I've got to do something about this. And so I thought, what I'm going to do
1:06.5	is I'm going to pretend like it's lent. And I'm going to offer up all these Lenton sacrifices
1:11.2	and pray that God somehow changes her mind so that she loves D.C. and she finds great friends there.
1:19.8	And I'm just going to pray that everything changes. And so I started to pray. And so I'm praying
1:24.9	for, you know, a month or two, maybe even three.
1:28.3	It was a long time.
1:29.5	And nothing changed at all, right?
1:31.5	My wife totally hated it.
1:33.2	And so I went back to her and I said, well, I'm going to help out God a little bit.
1:36.8	And so I went back to my wife and I said, honey, just to let you know, I've been praying a lot that you're going to love DC, that you're going to find great friends here that's going to be
	...

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