The EWTN News portal (National Catholic Register) reports on September 17, 2026, that the conciliar sect’s media apparatus has published a free e-book by its resident psychologist, Gregory Popcak, addressing postpartum depression through a synthesis of clinical psychiatry and watered-down piety. The article frames maternal mental illness as a medical crisis requiring routine screening and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), while paying lip service to “spiritual tools.” This maneuver exemplifies the conciliar sect’s fundamental apostasy: the substitution of the Cura Animarum (care of souls) with the cura corporis (care of the body), reducing the supernatural order to a department of therapeutic humanitarianism.
The Therapeutic State Supplants the Confessional
The cited article reveals the total capitulation of the neo-church to the religion of Mental Health. Popcak is quoted stating:
“Research really does show that faith plays a protective element … but we are still afflicted with these things. Being able to respond to this in a way that is reflective of our Catholic faith and the Catholic view of the person I thought was important.”
Note the inverted hierarchy: “faith” is demoted to a “protective element”—a psychological prophylactic—rather than the theological virtue by which we adhere to God as First Truth (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 4, a. 2). The “Catholic view of the person” invoked here is not the Thomistic unity of soul and body ordered to the Beatific Vision, but the modernist anthropological dualism of Gaudium et Spes §22, where Christ merely “reveals man to himself.” The article’s urging of routine screening—”just as standard as getting your blood pressure taken”—completes the medicalization of the spiritual life. The confessional, the true “screening” of the soul (examen conscientiae), is nowhere mentioned. As Pius XI taught in Quas Primas: “He is the author of prosperity and true happiness for individual citizens as well as for the state… The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (Denz. 2198). True happiness is found in subjection to Christ the King, not in the chemical management of neurotransmitters.
Psychologism as the New Gnosticism: Sin Reclassified as Symptom
The central focus of the e-book, per the article, is “addressing the unique layer of spiritual guilt that Catholic mothers often experience.” Popcak asserts:
“These feelings are not the mom… They are the illness attacking your feelings. … You’re not failing any more than you would be failing if you had the flu.”
This is a diabolical confusion of the moral and the ontological orders. While postpartum hormonal fluctuation is a physiological reality, the experience of guilt in a Catholic mother often proceeds from a genuine, albeit perhaps disordered, conscience confronting the radical demands of the maternal vocation. To dismiss guilt tout court as “the illness talking” is to deny the reality of concupiscentia and the possibility of actual sin—neglect of prayer, irritability born of pride, despair against Providence. St. Pius X condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu the modernist error that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Prop. 25); here, the assent is transferred to the psychiatric diagnosis. The article’s disclaimer—”these feelings are not you; they are the illness talking”—functions as a secular absolution, bypassing the Tribunal of Penance instituted by Christ (John 20:22-23). This is not mercy; it is the anesthesia of the soul.
The Conciliar Sect’s Anthropological Heresy: The Body as Tool, Not Temple
Popcak’s analogy—“It’s not irresponsible or selfish or self-indulgent for the carpenter to sharpen his saw”—exposes the utilitarian anthropology regnant in the neo-church. The body is reduced to an instrument (“a tool”) for production, rather than the templum Spiritus Sancti (1 Cor 6:19) destined for resurrection. This language echoes the Masonic “Light-Life” movement’s activism, condemned by true Tradition as activismus masquerading as apostolate. The distinction between “self-sacrifice and self-destruction” is valid in principle, but severed from the scientia Crucis, it becomes a license for self-preservation. The true Catholic mother knows, with St. Paul: “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for his body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24). Suffering, including the dark night of the senses post-partum, is meritorious when united to the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. The e-book offers coping strategies; the Church offers co-redemption.
Pharmakeia as Sacrament: The SSRIs of the Neo-Church
The article explicitly endorses “medical treatments like SSRIs” alongside “psychological counseling.” This is the pharmakeia (sorcery/pharmacy, Rev 9:21; 18:23) of the end times, elevated to a quasi-sacramental status. The Syllabus of Errors (Prop. 56) condemns the proposition: “Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction… it is not at all necessary that human laws should be made conformable to the laws of nature and receive their power of binding from God.” By making psychotropic medication a standard of care for the “Catholic mother,” the conciliar sect admits that grace is insufficient—that the gratia sanans (healing grace) requires chemical adjuvants. This is the practical denial of ex opere operato efficacy of the Sacraments. Where is the recommendation for daily Mass (the true SSR—Sacrifice, Sacraments, Rosary)? Where is the warning that reception of “Communion” in the Novus Ordo assembly, where the propitiatory nature of the Mass is obscured, may constitute sacrilege? The silence is the gravest accusation.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Abomination of Desolation
The article originates from the “National Catholic Register, the sister partner of EWTN News”—the flagship media of the paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican. This outlet, founded by the modernist “Mother” Angelica (a devotee of the false Fatima apparition, itself a Masonic psychological operation as documented in the historical record), functions to pacify the conservative remnant with a simulacrum of orthodoxy. By platforming Popcak—a lay psychologist whose “Catholic” anthropology is indistinguishable from secular humanism—EWTN performs the ecumenism of the bedside, blending the neo-church’s “pastoral care” with the world’s therapeutic regime. The article’s closing subscription prompt—“I agree to receive communications from EWTN”—reveals the commercial nature of this apostolate: merces venalis (hired merchandise).
Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Fruit of Vatican II’s False Anthropology
This e-book is not an anomaly; it is the logical consequent of Gaudium et Spes and the “pastoral” turn. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the Social Kingship of Christ (denounced by Pius XI in Quas Primas as the remedy for “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism”), must fill the void with the Kingship of Man. Psychology becomes the new theology; the therapist, the new confessor; the DSM-5, the new moral theology. The “unique layer of spiritual guilt” is the last vestige of the sensus Catholicus resisting total naturalization. Popcak’s task is to anesthetize this vestige. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The Modernist… makes the religious sense the foundation of faith… Thus the religious sense becomes the foundation of faith, and faith itself a kind of intuition of the heart.” Here, the “feelings” of the mother become the arbiter of reality: if she feels guilt, it is “illness”; if she feels peace on SSRIs, it is “healing.” Subjectivism triumphs; the Cross is evacuated.
Conclusion: Return to the Physician of Souls
The integral Catholic response to postpartum trial is not an e-book from a conciliar psychologist, but the Sacrament of Penance, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (offered by a validly ordained priest in the Ritus Romanus), the Rosary, and the intercession of the Mediatrix of All Graces. The true mother of the Church does not “sharpen her saw” for efficiency; she breaks the alabaster box of her suffering at the feet of the Crucified. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:30)—but only when borne in Christo, not managed in mundo. Let the faithful flee the therapeutic deception of the neo-church and cleave to the Traditio: “Stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have learned” (2 Thess 2:14).
Source:
Postpartum depression: New e-book offers hope and healing for Catholic mothers (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 17.09.2026