Alliance Avenue. Belfast

Daneo Human and Spiritual development Services Read On ...
Focusing - a Way of living the Paschal Mystery (Pat Duffy CP) Read on ...
Reconciliation (Kenneth Brady CP) Read on ...

Daneo Human and Spiritual Development Services

A Project of Love

Paul Daneo was an 18th century man whose intense interest and actions
around human suffering and its profound meaningfulness, has applications
for us today. His theological reflections brought a powerful and positive
image of how God is drawn to us in our brokenness and how we can unite
our suffering to His, in such a way that brings light and life out of darkness
and death. Thus the memoria passionis becomes a memoria resurrectionis.
As we reflect on these themes we come to see the cross as God's solidarity
with men and women, young and old, in the condition of human suffering

In his book: Passion of Christ - Passion of the World, Boff shares with us that
Christ was rejected by a world oriented toward the preservation of power.
He succumbed to these forces. But he never abandoned his project of love.
The cross is the symbol of human power - and the symbol of Jesus' love and
fidelity. Love is stronger than death, and power collapses before it. The
loyalty of the cross then, the love on the cross, has triumphed. The name for
this, Boff points out, is resurrection: a life stronger than the life of power,
biological life, the life of the ego.

And so the cross enters the history of love. Paul Daneo referred to the cross
as an unfathomable sea of Divine Love. In this the traveller can find hope, a
hope that draws us out of cruel despair. Hope in the face of self-rejection
transfigures the meaning of the sufferer's torments:

Hope is the sensation that the last worddoes not belong to the brutality of
facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is
far more complex than realism would have us believe, that the frontiers of
the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that,
miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will
open the way to freedom and resurrection. (Rubem Alves)

Daneo Services is a hope based initiative that seeks to embrace the radical
implications of the memoria passionis particularly as it translates itself in the
lives of those plagued by despair. We seek to be a project of love that strives
to draw hope and resurrection from within the face of human suffering. We
work to integrate the strengths of psychotherapy and healthy religion.

We acknowledge the tension that has long existed between psychotherapy
and religion. Many psychologists and psychiatrists look on religion with
great suspicion, they see it as overly magical and superstitious and
insufficiently scientific. Similarly many religious individuals have been
mistrustful of psychology and psychiatry, which they see as overly
humanistic, promoting rampant individualism, and lacking in any deep
spiritual dimension.

However, this tension between psychotherapy and religion is unnecessary.
Both theological and psychological researchers are searching for answers to
similar questions. Questions that bring us to reflect on the mystery of
suffering, such as: Why do so many people hate and torment themselves
mercilessly? Why do violence and aggression exist? What is the reason for
so much human suffering? What can we do about it? How can we develop
greater compassion for ourselves and for others? These questions pose an
urgent challenge to us all and invite us to engage in reflection, collaborative
dialogue, and action.

Bringing together the strengths of a sound psychological framework coupled
with a healthy religious discernment can facilitate greatly the process of
change, liberation, and the realisation of the key goal - the installation of
Hope.

Hope is at the core of pastoral psychotherapy. Hope allows us to risk greater
vulnerability. It enables us to continue struggling when growth is blocked or
is very slow. There is a growing realization that a strong, explicit emphasis
on hope has been lacking in pathology-oriented therapies. Like the
"Kingdom Spotter" in Eamonn Bredin's Disturbing the Peace, perhaps the
unique contribution of pastoral psychotherapy is as a "Hope Awakener".
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians links hope with faith and love (1 Cor.
13:13) as crucial factors in constructive relationships.

Studies of prisoners of war show that many of the deaths were the result of
hopelessness. Bruno Bettelheim, in reviewing his experience in a Nazi
concentration camp, observed that prisoners who became hopeless
(because they believed the repeated statements of the guards that they
would never leave the camp except as corpses) became like walking
corpses. These prisoners stopped even getting food for themselves and soon
died. This story finds echoes in the lives of many in the North of Ireland.
People who have lost loved ones as a result of merciless torture and
slaughter and who themselves have given up on life, and wait for death. It is
precisely into this place that memoria passionis becomes a "Hope
Awakener" its energy is released in order to help us seek life and not death.

We let the Scriptures have the final and more eloquent commentary on the
task of Daneo Services in Belfast, and the people and themes that form our
work

We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; full of
doubts, we never despair. We are persecuted but never abandoned; we are
struck down but never destroyed... dead yet here we are, alive; punished,
but not put to death; sorrowful, though we are always rejoicing; poor, yet we
enrich many. We seem to have nothing, yet everything is ours,!
((2 Cor. 4:8-9, 6:9-10).

Current Work
The current work engaged in through Daneo Services includes:
Psychotherapy; Pastoral Counselling; Marital Counselling; Trauma therapy;
Focusing Workshops/ Training Courses; Enneagram Personality Type
Courses; Clinical Supervision for therapists /social workers etc.; Cognitive
behavioural therapy groups; Facilitation work; Workshops (Counselling,
Pre-Marriage Courses)

The client groups include:
Individuals (Depression, Addictions Adjustment/ Transition Issues);
Cancer victims
Ex-prisoners (political); Chaplains (Catholic & Protestant);
Social Workers; Clergy;
Lay Professional Church workers; Volunteer Church workers;
Psychotherapists

Other notable activities:
Inauguration of Focus Group for Psychologists / Psychotherapists on
Spirituality and Psychology.
Ongoing participation in Down & Connor Focus Group addressing issue of
"joyriding" and vengeance - punishments
Participation in Family Ministry Validated Course organised by
Down & Connor
Input in University of Ulster's M.Sc., course in Counselling Psychology