The VaticanNews portal (November 7, 2025) reports on the Ministry of Hope Catholic Conference on Mental Wellbeing in Rome, featuring testimonies from global participants including “Deacon” Ed Shoener (Diocese of Scranton), Samuelle Falk (Respekt organization), and “Bishop” John Dolan (Phoenix). The conference attributes rising mental illness to secular individualism, with Sweden’s suicide statistics presented as evidence of “isolation” caused by declining religiosity. “Bishop” Dolan promotes antipope Leo XIV’s document Dignitas Infinita as the solution, claiming human dignity consists of four levels (ontological, moral, social, existential) and that youth must be told “they are valued just as they are.” The article concludes by celebrating the “Pope Francis effect” in Sweden and claims the “Holy Spirit” inspires this mental health focus in the “Church.”
Reduction of the Church’s Mission to Naturalistic Humanism
The conference reduces the Church’s divine mission to a psychiatric counseling service, prioritizing temporal comfort over eternal salvation. Nowhere does the article mention sin as the root cause of human suffering, nor does it reference the necessity of sanctifying grace through the sacraments for true peace. Pius XI condemned this inversion of priorities in Quas Primas: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony” (n.19). The conciliar sect’s obsession with psychological well-being constitutes apostasy from the Church’s true purpose – the sanctification of souls through participation in Christ’s redemptive sacrifice.
What the portal celebrates as “diverse voices” represents the triumph of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane: “The Church listening cooperates… so that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions” (Proposition 6). By elevating psychiatric professionals and secular statistics above magisterial tradition, the conference embodies the very subjectivism Pius X called “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 39).
False Gospel of Mental Health Replaces Theology of the Cross
The blasphemous assertion that “they are valued just as they are” directly contradicts Catholic soteriology. The Council of Trent anathematizes this error: “If anyone says that man… is able to persevere in the justice received without the special help of God: let him be anathema” (Session VI, Canon 22). Bishop Dolan’s therapeutic language about youth “not needing to be the best” inverts the Gospel imperative: “Estote ergo vos perfecti sicut et Pater vester caelestis perfectus est” (Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect – Matthew 5:48).
The article’s repeated emphasis on “isolation” as the primary evil ignores the Church’s teaching on redemptive suffering. St. Paul gloried in “complementum tribulationum Christi in carne mea” (filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions – Colossians 1:24), while these conciliar innovators peddle a cross-less Christianity. As the Syllabus of Errors condemns: “Philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation” (Proposition 14).
Dignitas Infinita as Idolatry of Man
The promotion of antipope Leo XIV’s document constitutes theological treason. Dignitas Infinita replaces the doctrine of Original Sin with a gnostic four-tiered dignity, implicitly denying humanity’s fallen nature. Pius IX’s Syllabus explicitly rejects such innovations: “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress” (Proposition 5). True Catholic anthropology appears in the Council of Carthage (418 AD): “If anyone denies that infants… inherit original sin… let him be anathema” (Canon 2).
Samuelle Falk’s celebration of Sweden’s “Pope Francis effect” reveals this movement’s demonic character. When apostate clergy celebrate youth “finding faith” in a country where 87.6% of infants are baptized outside the Church (SCB Statistics Sweden, 2024), they confirm St. Paul’s warning about “angelum lucis” (angels of light – 2 Corinthians 11:14). The “mission statement” Falk describes constitutes spiritual adultery – replacing the Church’s evangelical mandate with psychologized activism.
Apostate Clergy Canonize Their Rebellion
“Deacon” Shoener’s claim that “the Holy Spirit is bringing mental health awareness into the Church” constitutes blasphemy against the Paraclete. The true Spirit guided Pius XII’s condemnation of psychotherapy’s dangers in his 1953 address to psychiatrists: “Certain schools… forget the basic truth that man is the union of body and spiritual soul.” The conciliar sect’s clergy – invalidly ordained since Paul VI’s heretical Pontificalis Romani (1968) – lack authority to administer sacraments or teach. As St. Robert Bellarmine states: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (De Romano Pontifice II:30), which applies equally to their subordinates.
The portal’s omission of any reference to the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession, or Last Rites proves this conference is Satan’s counterfeiting of pastoral care. True Catholic ministry appears in the 1917 Code of Canon Law: “The primary purpose of the sacraments is the sanctification of souls” (Canon 731). These modernist innovators have made their “Church” what Pius X called “a society like any other human society” (Pascendi, 25), confirming they are “the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Matthew 24:15).
Source:
Catholic conference on mental health: Dignity is antedote to isolation (vaticannews.va)
Article date: 07.11.2025