EWTN News reports that the Commission of the Episcopal Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) has published a study titled “Mental Health in Europe — A Call for Care,” urging the European Union to adopt policies that include “spiritual accompaniment” in hospitals, palliative care, and migration settings, while simultaneously calling for the strengthening of families and warning against the dangers of artificial intelligence and digital addiction. The document, prepared by the COMECE ethics committee, rests on what it calls “Christian anthropology” — the dignity of the human person created in the image of God with body and soul — and identifies loneliness, trauma, job insecurity, and forced migration as drivers of the crisis. Friederike Ladenburger, jurist and secretary of the commission, emphasized the need for “meaningful, authentic, and lasting human connections” and warned that technology must be “supplementary, not substitutive.” The study advocates for a “comprehensive” vision of mental health that encompasses social, relational, and spiritual dimensions, calling on the EU to provide financial support for young families and to include hospital chaplaincies as part of holistic care. This is a textbook example of the conciliar sect reducing the supernatural life of grace to a therapeutic supplement within a fundamentally naturalistic framework — the very inversion of Catholic teaching that the Church exists not to make men comfortable in this world but to save their souls for the next.
The Naturalistic Reduction of the Human Person: “Christian Anthropology” Without the Supernatural Order
The COMECE document claims to rest on “three fundamental pillars drawn from Christian anthropology”: that the human person is created in the image of God, that dignity encompasses body and soul, and that human beings possess an essential relational and spiritual dimension. Ladenburger stated: “One of the most important points of our report is the communal aspect of the human person.” On the surface, these phrases echo Catholic teaching. But what is conspicuously absent? There is no mention of original sin, no mention of the state of grace, no mention of the necessity of baptism, no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of salvation, no mention of the reality of mortal sin, and no mention of eternal damnation. This is not Christian anthropology — it is a mutilated anthropology, a torso without a head. As Pope Pius IX taught in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemning the proposition that “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself” (error no. 3), and that “all action of God upon man and the world is to be denied” (error no. 2). The COMECE document operates entirely within the order of nature while decorating itself with the language of the supernatural — the very definition of naturalism condemned by the Syllabus.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught with absolute clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Kingdom of Christ is not a therapeutic framework for mental well-being — it is the sovereign dominion of the God-Man over every individual, family, and state, demanding obedience to divine law under pain of eternal loss. The COMECE document treats the human person as a patient to be managed rather than a soul to be saved. Salus animarum suprema lex — the salvation of souls is the supreme law — but this axiom is entirely foreign to the conciliar bureaucracy.
“Spiritual Support” as a Clinical Adjunct: The Sacraments Reduced to Counseling
The document calls for “spiritual accompaniment” in hospitals, palliative care, reproductive health, and migration settings. Ladenburger stated: “Every human being must be treated with dignity, especially those who are suffering,” and emphasized that effective support would not only be “medical or clinical … it also entails spiritual support.” The language is revealing. The sacraments — the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession, Extreme Unction — are not mentioned as the indispensable means by which souls are sanctified and prepared for eternity. Instead, “spiritual support” is proposed as a complementary service alongside clinical treatment, as though the grace of God were a therapeutic modality equivalent to cognitive behavioral therapy.
This is the fruit of the very Modernism condemned by Saint Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which rejected the proposition that “the dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (error no. 26). The Modernist reduces religion to its practical, experiential dimension — exactly what COMECE does by treating “spiritual accompaniment” as a policy recommendation for EU healthcare systems rather than proclaiming the absolute necessity of the sacraments for salvation. The Council of Trent, by contrast, taught that the sacraments of the New Law “contain the grace they signify and confer that grace” (Session VII, canon 6), and that they are necessary for salvation, not as optional supplements to clinical care.
Furthermore, the document’s mention of “reproductive health” as a setting for “spiritual accompaniment” without a single condemnation of abortion — the murder of the innocent — exposes the hollowness of its claim to defend human dignity. Where is the cry of the Church against the greatest mental health crisis of all: the guilt of nations steeped in the blood of the unborn? Pope Pius IX, in Apostolicae Sedis (1869), affixed excommunication latae sententiae upon those who procure abortion. The COMECE document is silent on this, as on every moral absolute that would offend the liberal European establishment it seeks to influence.
The Family Strengthened — But on Whose Foundation?
The document identifies the family as “the basic cell of society” and calls for greater financial support for young families, including “jobs and decent housing.” Ladenburger stated: “They need financial support, financial relief, and the opportunity to start a family.” Again, the naturalistic framework is total. The family is presented as an economic unit requiring state subsidies, not as the domestic church sanctified by the sacrament of Matrimony, ordered toward the procreation and education of children in the fear and love of God. The Council of Trent anathematized those who deny that the sacrament of Matrimony confers grace (Session XXIV, canon 3). The COMECE document says nothing about the sacramental nature of marriage, nothing about the indissolubility of the bond, nothing about the obligation of parents to raise their children in the Catholic faith.
Pius XI, in Casti Connubii (1930), taught that the primary end of marriage is “the procreation and education of children” and that the family is “the cradle of society” — but always within the supernatural order of grace. The COMECE document, by contrast, proposes the strengthening of families through EU fiscal policy, reducing the Church’s mission to lobbying for housing subsidies. This is the ecclesiology of the conciliar sect: the Church as a NGO advocating for social welfare within the framework of secular liberalism, rather than the societas perfecta established by Christ to lead souls to eternal life.
Technology and Loneliness: Diagnosing Symptoms, Ignoring the Disease
Ladenburger warned that digital tools must be “supplementary, not substitutive,” and expressed concern about artificial intelligence, digital addiction, and online harassment. She stated: “The priority is the human being,” whose core capacity remains “to express empathy and feel with others.” The document identifies loneliness as “one of the greatest risks to mental health today” and defines it as “the absence of social contact and the perceived discrepancy between a person’s desires and their actual social network.”
But what is the true root of the loneliness epidemic in Europe? It is the systematic destruction of Christendom — the expulsion of God from public life, the dissolution of the sacramental order, the replacement of the Most Holy Sacrifice with the Protestantized “assembly” of the post-conciliar liturgy, and the abandonment of the social reign of Christ the King. Pius XI identified this precisely in Quas Primas: “This plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The loneliness that COMECE laments is the direct fruit of the apostasy that the conciliar revolution itself accelerated by dismantling the spiritual and institutional structures — the true Mass, the true sacraments, the true preaching — that once gave European civilization its coherence and its soul. To prescribe “community events” and “spiritual accompaniment” as remedies for a crisis caused by the destruction of the Faith is to offer aspirin to a man dying of plague.
The Silence That Condemns: What the Document Refuses to Say
The most damning feature of the COMECE document is not what it says but what it refuses to say. There is no mention of the necessity of the true Mass for the sanctification of souls. There is no mention of the reality of sin as the true disease of the human soul — far more lethal than any clinical diagnosis. There is no mention of the obligation of the state to recognize the Catholic Church as the one true Church of Christ. There is no mention of the duty of rulers to submit to the authority of Christ the King. There is no condemnation of the contraceptive culture that has devastated European demographics far more than any “dramatic demographic change” caused by economic factors. There is no warning that the post-conciliar “liturgical reform” itself — the replacement of the propitiatory Sacrifice with a communal meal — has been a primary driver of the spiritual emptiness that manifests as the mental health crisis.
The document concludes by calling on the European Union to include “spiritual accompaniment” in its public health policies. This is the ultimate reduction: the Church begging secular authorities to permit her to offer consolation within a system that is fundamentally ordered against God. As Pius IX warned in the Syllabus of errors, error no. 19: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free — nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church.” The COMECE document operates entirely within this condemned framework, treating the Church’s mission as subject to EU policy frameworks rather than proclaiming the absolute sovereignty of Christ over all nations and all aspects of human life.
Non possumus — we cannot. We cannot accept a vision of the Church that reduces her divine mission to a provider of “spiritual support” within secular healthcare systems. We cannot accept a “Christian anthropology” that omits original sin, the sacraments, and eternal judgment. We cannot accept a family policy that substitutes state subsidies for the grace of Matrimony. The true remedy for the mental health crisis in Europe is not more therapy, more technology regulation, or more EU funding — it is the return to the integral Catholic Faith, the restoration of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the recognition of Christ the King, and the preaching of repentance and conversion to a world that has forgotten God. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).
Source:
Mental health crisis in Europe: Church calls for strengthening families and spiritual support (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 13.05.2026