Research · The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person
A twenty-five-year intellectual project, at the intersection of clinical science and Catholic anthropology.
The CCMMP is not a Catholic veneer over secular psychology. It is the systematic integration of the philosophical and theological tradition of the Catholic Church — Aquinas, Augustine, the desert tradition, Ignatian spirituality, contemporary personalism — with the clinical psychological science of the present moment.
What follows is the work itself: the scholars who built it, the ancient sources it draws on, the presentations and publications it has produced, and the broader Schola community on ccmmp.com that extends it.
Three pillars
Created
The human person is created in the image of God — a unity of body and soul with intrinsic dignity, capable of reason, love, and self-gift.
Fallen
The person is wounded by sin and disordered desire. Suffering, psychopathology, and broken relationships are intelligible against this anthropological backdrop.
Redeemed
Grace heals nature. Therapy and ministry can collaborate in service of wholeness — drawing on clinical science and the long Christian tradition of soul care.
Scholars
A sample of the 92 DMU instructors and contributors documented in the Schola atlas — the faculty, founders, and collaborators who teach and write inside the CCMMP framework.
Sister Prudence Allen, RSM, is a philosopher and member of the Religious Sisters of Mercy who earned her doctorate in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School. She is the author of the acclaimed three-volume work "The Concept of Woman," which comprehensively traces philosophical ideas about womanhood from ancient times to the modern era. In 2014, Pope Francis appointed her to the International Theological Commission, recognizing her distinguished contributions to Catholic philosophical thought.
Hadley Arkes
Biographical Sketch
Hadley P. Arkes, Ph.D. (b. 1940), is the Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions Emeritus at Amherst College, where he taught for 50 years beginning in 1966. He earned his B.A. from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Leo Strauss. He is the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding. He has written extensively on a priori moral principles and constitutional i
Fr. Benedict Ashley
Biographical Sketch
Fr. Benedict Ashley, O.P. (1915-2013) was a Dominican priest and influential Thomistic theologian who authored 19 books, including the foundational text "Health Care Ethics" (now in its fifth edition), which remains essential in Catholic medical ethics education. He earned advanced degrees in philosophy and sacred theology and served as President of Aquinas Institute of Theology and Professor of Moral Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute, making him a major voice in 20th-century Cat
Robert Audi
Biographical Sketch
Robert Audi is the O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in epistemology, ethics, rationality, and the philosophy of action. A past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers, he has written extensively on ethics and political philosophy, with particular attention to the relationship between church and state.
Fr. John Bartunek
Biographical Sketch
Fr John Bartunek, LC, ThD, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and baseball coach. He then spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the religious Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ in 1993. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003 and earned
Kathryn Benes
Biographical Sketch
Kathryn M. Benes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Director of the Training Clinic at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences (now Divine Mercy University). She earned her Ph.D. in School Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1990 and has been a licensed psychologist since 1994. Dr. Benes previously served as Director of Mental Health Services for Catholic Social Services in the Diocese of Lincoln, where she developed a nationally recognized diocesan-wide mental health p
Art Bennett
Biographical Sketch
Art Bennett, M.A., L.M.F.T., is a licensed marriage and family therapist. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and an M.A. in counseling psychology from Santa Clara University. He co-founded the Alpha Omega Clinics in Northern Virginia and Maryland and served as Clinical Director from 2002 to 2010. He was President and CEO of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Arlington for 10 years and served as Vice President for international mental health at SAIC for 15 years. Together with his wife Laraine, he
Thomas Berg
Biographical Sketch
Fr. Thomas V. Berg, Ph.D., is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and Professor of Moral Theology at St. Joseph's Seminary (Dunwoodie), where he also serves as director of admissions. His areas of specialization include natural law theory, medical ethics, and philosophical and theological anthropology. He is the author of Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholics (Our Sunday Visitor, 2017). His work has appeared in Crisis Magazine, the National Catholic Register, The Wall St
Ancient wisdom
The voices the Meta-Model engages.
Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, the Doctors of the Church, the sacred figures, and the magisterial documents that constitute the corpus the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person draws on.
St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, is the Dominican friar whose synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy with Christian revelation defined Catholic intellectual life for seven centuries. His Summa Theologiae remains the cornerstone of Catholic moral and metaphysical thought; his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics is a touchstone for virtue ethics. Declared a Doctor of the Church and patron of Catholic schools, Aquinas's account of human nature, the passions, the virtues, and the natural law underlies Divine
Aristotle
3,455 chunks · 319 distinct works
Aristotle of Stagira, student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great, founded the Lyceum and produced a body of work that shaped every later philosophical tradition. His Nicomachean Ethics articulates virtue as the habituated mean between extremes — the philosophical bedrock of Catholic moral psychology — and his De Anima offers the first systematic treatise on the soul, intellect, and the appetites. Through Aquinas and the Scholastics, Aristotle became 'the Philosopher' for the Catholic trad
Augustine of Hippo
2,960 chunks · 385 distinct works
St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church, is the towering theologian of Western Christianity whose Confessions invented the spiritual autobiography and whose City of God shaped the Christian philosophy of history. His penetrating analyses of memory, desire, time, and the restless heart anticipate modern psychology by fifteen centuries and remain indispensable for any Catholic account of selfhood, conversion, and grace. Augustine is cited continually across Bloom's corpus as the pa
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)
2,163 chunks · 205 distinct works
Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger — Pope Benedict XVI — was one of the great Catholic theologians of the twentieth century before serving as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II and as pope from 2005 to 2013. His encyclicals on love (Deus Caritas Est), hope (Spe Salvi), and charity in truth (Caritas in Veritate) reframed Catholic social and spiritual teaching for a secular age. His writings on reason, conscience, liturgy, and the relationship between faith and cul
Plato
2,150 chunks · 191 distinct works
Plato of Athens, student of Socrates and founder of the Academy, wrote the dialogues that gave the West its first sustained inquiry into justice, beauty, the soul, and the Good. The Republic, Symposium, and Phaedo lay the groundwork for the tripartite soul, the theory of the Forms, and the contemplative life — themes that early Christian thinkers, particularly Augustine, baptized into the Catholic tradition. Plato remains the indispensable interlocutor for any Catholic philosophical psychology.
Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła)
2,005 chunks · 491 distinct works
Karol Józef Wojtyła — Pope John Paul II — was a Polish phenomenologist and Thomist who, before and during his 27-year pontificate, produced one of the most consequential bodies of Catholic teaching in modern history. His Theology of the Body lectures, his philosophical work The Acting Person, and his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, Fides et Ratio, and Evangelium Vitae set the framework for Catholic moral theology, marriage and family teaching, and the dialogue between faith and reason. Canonized
Immanuel Kant
1,953 chunks · 163 distinct works
Immanuel Kant of Königsberg is the central figure of modern philosophy whose Critiques redrew the map of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. His Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, and Critique of Practical Reason cast a long shadow over every subsequent Catholic engagement with secular thought — both as resource and as opponent. The Bloom corpus engages Kant primarily through Catholic critiques of his autonomy-based moral framework and his constraint of religious
Hans Urs von Balthasar
1,872 chunks · 83 distinct works
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Swiss Catholic theologian and one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century, produced a fifteen-volume trilogy — The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic — that recast theology as an aesthetic, dramatic, and logical contemplation of God's self-revelation. A close friend of Adrienne von Speyr and a major influence on John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Balthasar's work on beauty, holiness, kenosis, and the descent into hell pervades Bloom's writi
Recent presentations
Recorded lectures, conference talks, and podcast episodes from CCMMP scholars.
The Schola is the contributor atlas hosted on ccmmp.com — the people, institutions, and texts that constitute the Catholic Christian Meta-Model as a living scholarly tradition. It collects DMU faculty alongside the sacred figures, magisterial documents, and contemporary scholars whose work the Meta-Model engages.
DMU Instructors
The faculty teaching and writing inside the CCMMP framework today.
Cited Authors
Contemporary scholars whose work shapes the Meta-Model's clinical and philosophical claims.
Sacred Figures
Saints, mystics, and Doctors of the Church whose insight grounds the tradition.
Magisterium
Encyclicals and magisterial documents that anchor the Catholic anthropology.
DMU Faculty Papers
Primary sources by DMU scholars — peer-reviewed work that operationalizes the Meta-Model.
Curated Readings
An evolving reading list for newcomers and serious students of the tradition.
DMU welcomes research partnerships with institutions, NGOs, and clinicians whose work aligns with our mission. Inquiries about collaboration, data access, or shared studies are routed through partnerships.
