Catholic News Agency reports on Mount St. Mary’s University launching a physician assistant program to address Maryland’s healthcare staffing shortages. The January 3, 2026 article describes the program’s partnership with the Daughters of Charity – the order founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton – emphasizing clinical excellence and a Center for Clinician Well-Being to prevent burnout. Program Director Mary Jackson claims their Catholic identity shapes the initiative, preparing clinicians to serve “at moments of greatest vulnerability.” The article reduces Catholic mission to therapeutic naturalism while omitting the supernatural ends of medicine.
Subordination of Supernatural Ends to Materialist Medicine
The program’s stated vision fundamentally contradicts Catholic medical ethics by prioritizing physical health over the cura animarum (care of souls). Jackson’s description of serving patients “at moments of greatest vulnerability” conspicuously avoids mentioning preparation for death, sacramental ministry, or the ultimate purpose of suffering in Christian life. This deliberate omission constitutes theological malpractice when examined against Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas, which mandates that Christ’s reign extend over “individuals, families, and states” in all matters including healthcare.
Mount St. Mary’s partnership with the Daughters of Charity raises grave concerns given the order’s post-conciliar trajectory. The original charism of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton – which emphasized converting patients through corporal works of mercy – has been abandoned for secular social work. The article’s claim that the program forms “mission-driven” clinicians remains hollow without specifying whether this mission includes leading souls to confession and baptism. As the Syllabus of Errors condemns: “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics because it steadfastly adheres to its views which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Error #63).
Naturalism Disguised as Catholic Identity
The article promotes the conciliar sect’s heresy of horizontalism by defining Catholic healthcare solely through temporal outcomes:
“We aim to form PAs who care deeply for all patients, especially those who are underserved, while also tending to their own well-being.”
This echoes the modernist error condemned in Lamentabili Sane which states: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20). Nowhere does the program require students to study moral theology or the Church’s teachings on euthanasia, contraception, and sterilization – the actual frontline battles in modern medicine. The Center for Clinician Well-Being focuses on preventing burnout through self-care rather than sanctification through suffering, in direct contradiction to Christ’s command: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
Daughters of Charity’s Compromised Legacy
The collaboration with the Daughters of Charity constitutes spiritual adultery given the order’s conciliar deviations. St. Vincent de Paul’s original rule mandated that hospitals display crucifixes in every room and nurses pray with patients – practices abolished in most Daughters’ facilities since Vatican II. The article’s reference to the order’s “legacy of caring for the poor and vulnerable” deliberately omits their historic practice of distributing miraculous medals and catechizing patients, which constituted true Catholic charity.
Mount St. Mary’s “Care for America” scholarships continue the conciliar sect’s pattern of replacing supernatural charity with social justice activism. As Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus warns: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error #55) – a heresy embodied in this state-approved healthcare program that excludes evangelization. The university’s Timothy E. Trainor School of Health Professions exemplifies the neo-church’s obsession with professionalizing ministry while gutting its spiritual substance.
The Silent Apostasy of Therapeutic Medicine
The article’s exclusive focus on emergency room wait times and medical errors exposes the conciliar sect’s surrender to utilitarian ethics. Not once does Jackson mention training students to oppose abortion referrals, contraceptive prescriptions, or gender mutilation procedures – the actual moral crises in Maryland hospitals. This silence constitutes formal cooperation with evil under the guise of “patient-centered care,” violating the Oath Against Modernism which requires Catholics to “reject… the error of those who hold that the faith implanted in man by God… is to be harmonized with progress in science.”
The conciliar sect completes its medical apostasy by reducing clinician formation to technical competency and emotional intelligence, abandoning the traditional medicus catholicus model where physicians served as spiritual directors. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “When men… deny the rights of Christ the King, they inevitably end by rejecting either openly or covertly the sovereignty of Christ.” Mount St. Mary’s program embodies this rejection by forming healthcare workers who treat bodies while ignoring souls – the ultimate medical error.
Source:
How a Catholic university is combating the health care crisis in Maryland (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 03.01.2026