The Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology of Happiness

Adapted from a lecture previously delivered to chapters of the Thomistic Institute.  Used with permission.

It is 2008, it is my 16th wedding anniversary, and I am walking into the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray for a miracle. I am about to turn in my letter of resignation from a dream job in Washington, DC. I am about to give up a forty percent raise, wonderful friends, and the best parish I have ever joined. So, I make my way past various side chapels until I find the statute of Our Lady of Sorrows. I kneel down. I am in tears. I pray for a last-minute miracle. 

Why am I resigning? As much as I love DC, my wife hates DC. So, months ago, I began to pray that God somehow would change her mind. I’m praying, praying, but nothing changes at all.

Eventually, after a couple months with no results, I say to my wife, “Honey, I’ve been really praying for you that you can grow to love Washington DC. I just want to let you know. I’ve been praying every day for that.” And she says, “Well, that’s interesting. Have you asked God what God wants?” My first thought was, “No. I haven’t done that.” Next, I thought, “I don’t want to ask God what God wants. What if God wants me to go back to Los Angeles? That’s the last thing I want.” I was afraid to pray. But after maybe three weeks, I thought, “God is all knowing and all loving, and maybe I should check-in with God just to see.” 

So, I finally prayed to ask God what God wanted. I pretty much came to conviction right away that my family ought to move back to Los Angeles. 

I’d like to tell you that when I got back to Los Angeles, I was a happy camper, and that everything was going great. But that would be a lie. In fact, I was miserable and dejected, missing my friends and missing lots of things about DC. 

So, I did what every scholar would do with a serious question. I googled, “how to be happier.” 

What I discovered was a whole new field of psychology called “positive psychology.” It was started by Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania. Seligman’s idea was that psychologists should not only study that part of the human condition that is negative—depression and anxiety and things like that. Psychology should also focus at least some attention on what is positive—resilience, hope, growth, and strengths. Instead of only trying to mitigate problems, how could psychology help people become happier?

So, Seligman and others in positive psychology investigated happiness in an empirical way. Seligman defines happiness in terms of five characteristics: positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning, and achievement—PERMA. 

Seligman did an interesting study diving his college students into two groups. To the first group, he said, I want you to go and have fun. Go out to the movies, go eat ice cream, and come back to me and report about about your positive emotion. 

To the second group of college students, Seligman asked them to serve other people: Go to an old folks’ home. Teach kids to read. 

When they came back, both groups reported that they had an increase in positive emotion. But the people who ate ice cream reported that the positive emotion left very quickly. The people who went out and served others, they had an increase in positive emotion that lasted more than a week. Seligman found people that serve others increase their positive emotion in a more lasting way than people that just do fun things. 

As a Christian, I’ve heard many times about the value of serving others. Now secular psychology is vindicating something that I was taught as a child—that it is a good idea to help your neighbor in need. 

What else did the positive psychologists discover? Christopher Peterson found that forgiveness is essential for happiness. Why is forgiveness so important? Well, every human relationship has its strains. Human fighting and disagreeing goes back to the Garden of Eden. You can go through your whole family, you can go through all your friends, you can go through everybody, and you can be entirely alone unless you have forgiveness. We literally can’t have any long term relationships that are deep unless we have forgiveness. 

If you think about the teachings of Jesus, they are more crystal clear in the importance of forgiveness. Once again, I discovered a harmony between secular psychology and Catholic teaching. 

Yet another thing that the secular psychologists found was the importance of gratitude. If you would like to be happier, you could enhance your thanks for what is good in your life. One reason gratitude enhances happiness is that if you practice gratitude, you train your mind to look for the good things that are already in your life. Gratitude is something that is, according to secular psychology, extremely beneficial for us to practice. 

Now does gratitude play any role in Catholic spirituality? Saint Ignatius Loyola recommended to all the people that came to him for spiritual direction that they do something which he called the “Examen.” In the beginning of the Examen, you think about the last twenty-four hours and recall whatever gifts God has given you in that period. It’s almost an exact replication of what Seligman recommended. 

In the United States, suicides fall to their lowest on Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving Day, more people are practicing gratitude. They’re focusing what they have rather on what they don’t have. Catholics are extremely lucky, because we can have Thanksgiving Day not just once a year in November, but every Sunday, and even more often if we want. The Eucharist is the Greek term for thanksgiving, and every Mass ends with “Thanks be to God.” 

The bottom line is this. In my reading of positive psychology, I saw all these overlaps, all these ways in which positive psychology rediscovered and reconfirmed the wisdom of Christian practice. 

Is positive psychology all we need? What, if anything, does Christianity bring that you couldn’t find in positive psychology? 

I think there are things that Christianity brings that are distinctive and that cannot be found in psychology. I think psychological happiness alone is not enough. 

What are those things? For one thing, all of us are faced with death. Death is the end of positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning, achievement. Secular psychology really has no answer for death. It has no resources for overcoming it. Of course, the Christian tradition does. We have the hope of the resurrection. 

A second thing that Christianity gives that positive psychology can’t has to do with wrongdoing. I don’t think any honest person can say, “I am perfect. I’ve never done anything to wrong anybody.” Now, psychology can help take away feelings of guilt. Just like if you got a shot of Novocaine, it takes away the feeling of your decayed, infected tooth. But positive psychology doesn’t have any remedy for the guilt itself. Psychology can try to take away the feelings of guilt, but this is similar to using Novocain. It doesn’t get rid of the infection in your tooth, but just leaves the problem masked.

But again, Christianity has an answer. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world as the remedy for guilt. Thank God there’s a sacrament called confession, where the garbage we make can be thrown away. 

A third thing that Christianity brings that cannot be found in psychology is God. Positive psychology is neutral with respect to God’s existence. But precisely because it’s neutral, positive psychology doesn’t focus on cultivating a relationship with God. Psychology can and does show that those people who practice their faith are on average much happier than those people that don’t. But it doesn’t give us resources for deepening our relationship with God. But that’s precisely the goal of Christianity, to establish, deepen, and nourish our love of God and our love of neighbor. That’s what the sacraments are for. That’s what the stories of the scripture are for. That’s what the death and resurrection of Christ is all about, to unite us again with God so that we can love God and love our neighbor the way Jesus would. 

If Christianity gives us all things that positive psychology would give us, and if Christianity even gives us more than that, there’s still a big problem. Do you know a Christian who is grumpy and unhappy? If what I said is so far true, how do we explain grumpy and unhappy Christians? 

First, positive psychology shows that people have a different genetic set points for happiness. You can see this in children. Some are rays of sunshine, happy, cheerful. Some are little grouches, downcast, and downbeat. Some Christians that are born with a genetic predisposition that’s more negative. If they weren’t Christian, they’d be even less happy than they are now. 

 Secondly, your religious beliefs do not protect you from physical harm or diseases. A Christian as well as an atheist can be run over by a car, and if you get run over by a car, you’re going to be less happy than you were if you weren’t run over by a car. The same thing is true of mental illness. Your religious belief doesn’t inoculate you against all mental illness. So, you can have Christians who have physical problems or mental health problems that diminish their happiness. Their religious practice doesn’t fully inoculate them against those things. 

A third thing that diminishes the happiness of Christians is that many Christians don’t practice what Jesus preached. They don’t forgive their neighbor. They don’t serve their neighbor. They’re not practicing gratitude. They’re not people of prayer. Sin is a major cause of the unhappiness of Christians.

Probably, for most people, the most likely cause of wrongdoing is what St. Thomas Aquinas called “weakness of will.” In conclusion, I would like to talk about ways in which we can grow stronger in our will power. 

If you want more willpower, the secular psychologists suggest you should exercise your willpower. If you want to get stronger, you’ve got to use your muscles. In the Christian tradition, this is called mortification. 

The idea is to do something a little bit against the grain. I’m not talking about something ultra intense like sitting on top of a pillar for thirty years. I’m talking about small things that no one would even notice, like not putting salt on your food or butter on your bread. Your willpower is strengthened when you use it, just like your muscles are strengthened when you use them. 

The second thing that the psychologists recommend for developing willpower is to remember the fact that no temptation lasts forever. In fact, temptations of their very nature can’t last forever. Our minds are naturally restless. If you don’t give in, a temptation is going to move off the stage of your mind, and before you know it, you’ll be thinking about Notre Dame football or whatever your mind turns to next. 

One last recommendation for will power challenges: Let’s try a little thought experiment. Don’t think about white bears at all. Go ahead. Don’t think about big white bears or small white bears or white bears eating other bears. Don’t think about white bears. Go ahead. 

How are you doing so far? Isn’t it hard not to think about something? A bad temptation is like a white bear. The white bear moves on to the campground.Now, you probably know not to feed the bear. Why? If you feed the bear, the bear goes away, but soon comes back with mama bear, dad bear, kid bear, and uncle bear. If you feed those five bears, what happens then? They go back and get all the other bears, and now you got a family reunion. So, feeding the bear does not work. When you’re tempted and give in to the temptation that’s feeding the bear. It’s going to be worse and worse for you. 

On the other hand, the other thing you don’t want to do is fight the bear. The bear comes to your campsite, you go out there with a baseball bat, you hit him over the head, that’s a really bad idea. Don’t fight the bear. If you’re tempted to do something, it doesn’t help much to say to yourself, “Just don’t think about it.” The “ironic rebound effect” is when trying not to think about something makes you think about the very thing you are trying not to think about.  

What should you do? If the bear wanders under your campground, just ignore it. If the bear is not fed and the bear is not fought, the bear is going to wander away on its own. So don’t give in to temptation. That’s going to multiply temptations.  Don’t fight temptation by saying “I’m not going to think about it.” Thinking, “I’m not gonna think about it” is another way to think about it—the ironic rebound effect. 

So, my painful experience in DC led to a surprising discovery of the harmony of positive psychology and Catholic faith. Both teach the importance of serving others, forgiving others, and being grateful. There is, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, a harmony between faith and reason.

Now can I say to you that my life is perfect now? No. The fact is we’ll never have heaven on earth. Why? Aquinas thought that heaven is the perfection of love and knowledge of God. Here below, we cannot have perfect love and knowledge of God. Our friendship with God and with others is always an imperfect work in progress. That’s actually good news, because one way to be a lot less happy than you otherwise would be is if you have too high expectations. 

 We’re not going to have heaven on earth, but we can shoot for something realistic. To love God more, to love our neighbor more, to be more grateful, to be more forgiving, to be more merciful to others, and to serve others better. If we do this with God’s help, we will be happier. 

It is 2025, and I am walking into the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray. I make my way past various side chapels until I find the statute of Our Lady of Sorrows. I kneel down. I am in tears. But this time I pray in thanksgiving. I pray in gratitude for the joy and the suffering that led to growth, and eventually the resurrection to a new life and new knowledge. 

This photo was taken by the author at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Dr. Christopher Kaczor is a visiting fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, the Honorary Professor of the Renewal of the Catholic Intellectual Life at Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute, and Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.